Chapter 61

Putrid smoke entered my nostrils. My garden was the base of a rising column of smoke. Everything around me was on fire, but the heat from the flames were a drop in the bucket compared to the heat from the elders.

Their silhouettes stood among the angry flames of blazing grass and wood. Fields of heat pulsed off their bodies. I could feel the warmth on my skin as if I was next to a fireplace.

The elders halted behind their two ancestors. They were members of the Dao Journey Stages, the stages above the nine Dao Formation Stages. After being alive for more than three hundred years, they were the true heads of their sect.

The ancestors of top sects almost never showed themselves outside their sects. It was an unwritten rule in the Grand Flames City and beyond : Dao Journey level experts aren’t allowed to meddle in outside affairs.

This was a policy created because of the extraordinary amount of damage Dao Journey experts caused whenever they used their power. Dao Formation stages eight and nine were also expected to be aware of their collateral damage.

For the Crimson Fire Sect to come out in full force against a pill merchant was something never seen before. Such an action would attract disapproval from the whole city and deal a blow to their reputation.

For them to do this was insane.

One of their Ancestors, an old woman, stepped forward to speak. She leaned on her walking stick to help her forward. A gem larger than my fist shone on the tip of the stick. “Dao wishes to have you dead.”

I let out a deep, guttural grunt. Mark did this? Why?

She continued, “But we recognize you have strength. Even if we cannot kill you now, Dao will arrive soon and you will die. But we of the Crimson Fire Sect are not blind. We offer you another option. Join our alliance. You, Dao, and our power together make an unstoppable team.”

“Deal,” I said instantly. Anything to get out of here and save Hui Ming. “Now call off whoever is attacking Hui Ming.”

She frowned, “I’m not aware of anybody attacking that girl.”

So the Crimson Fire Sect didn’t know. My arms drooped to my sides. “Then I’m leaving.” I jumped in the direction Jing had gone.

The old woman lifted her walking stick and smashed it into the ground at an angle. She shot in front of me, blocking my path forward. “Where are you going?”

I stopped, “To Hui Ming.”

“We can’t let you go. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it probably has something to do with Dao. We won’t let you interfere until our alliance has been solidified.”

“You’re joking. I said I’d join and you’re still not going to let me go?”

“We can’t. Your word isn’t enough.”

Of course they wouldn’t let me go so easily. They probably thought I was lying to escape, which wasn’t far from the truth.

“Then the deal is off,” I would have to fight after all. A palm large enough to crush a school bus reached out from underground.

The earth rumbled and an enormous body crawled out from beneath the earth. It was my Colossus. It cost thirteen thousand mana to make, and I had put twenty thousand mana into Improving it. Myriad Flame Snakes wrapped around its body, adding an extra layer of defense.

The Colossus was a twenty story tall plant shaped like a man. Seeing that it didn’t need or eat or think, I didn’t include a head.

I jumped onto its stump of a neck and created a dome of clear wood above me. Like a layer of glass, a transparent layer of wood appeared between me and the outside. I melded it with the Colossus’ neck.

I had the Colossus grip its hands into fists. Come to think of it, controlling this thing was like controlling a mecha or one of those robots from Pacific Rim.

Three out of five Prolong slots left!

Jing and Hui Ming had used another seed.

I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or panicking. They were using seeds so they were still fighting, but I couldn’t tell if that were good or bad thing. The Prolong slot counter was like a countdown clock. Jing and Hui Ming had one less lifeline everytime that window popped up. I dreaded the moment all of them were gone.

I couldn’t defeat these people in time to help. I was putting all my faith into Jing, but I still had to win here. They needed a safe haven to return to. The pressure was trampling me. This time, other lives were on the line.

The world will see my power. They won’t dare touch me or the people I care for again.

I remembered my anger from before. I remembered how my aura had changed from peaceful to outraged. I mimicked it, focusing on my desire to kill. An aura of bloodlust erupted from me.

“This is my last warning to you. Try fighting, and I’ll kill you,” I said.

She responded by lifting her walking stick. The gem on the staff began to shine. A glowing red ball the size of my fist formed above the staff. It was a ball of light without a fire glowing in the night sky, like a light from a firefly.

She pointed the staff at me. The ball launched towards me, getting brighter as it neared me. A cluster of snakes leapt off the Colossus and intercepted it. The resulting explosion was something I’d never seen before.

A flash of light, and the snakes became ash. Pure heat, light, and force. It was like an explosion, but without the soot or fire.

The other ancestor appeared in front of the Colossus and punched it in the stomach. The punch left a long cut at the stomach of the giant plant.

Five snakes jumped at him, fire spewing out of their mouths and their fangs dripping poison. He moved his hands in looping arcs before gripping them into fists. He punched the snakes. His bare hands were a knives, splitting the snakes in half.

He lept back and stopped in front of the female ancestor. He held up his hands and bent his knees. Behind him, the female ancestor levitated three glowing balls.

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The elders also formed ranks. Their long ranged members stayed in the back, firing arrows and tossing flames.

A normal patch of forest the size of my garden would´ve been wiped out by a couple shots from an elder. But almost all of my plants were harder than iron and resistant to heat.

A thirteen thousand mana Myriad Flame Snake emerged from the foliage. My largest Treefather shook off the plants it had been raising in preparation for the battle. Snakes from all over the Colossus crawled to its two hands, forming a pair of sissing gauntlets.

I sensed the placement of each Explosive Bulb in my garden and flung them at the Crimson Fire Sect members. Around a hundred bulbs from all over my garden flew at one point. They met in the air above the Crimson Fire Sect’s elders.

The resulting explosion might’ve been the largest the world had ever seen. Without atom bombs, nobody else could hope to make a bomb of this destructive power.

All of the individual explosions overlapped and combined. A light enveloped my garden. Even I had to turn away. The shockwave flattened all of the nearby buildings. I melded the Colossus´s feet with the garden floor so it wouldn't be blown away.

But that didn't mean my Colossus wasn't affected. My garden sunk into the ground, pushed down by the blast and bringing everything else with it. The blast generated an enormous fireball that consumed my yard. The only thing between me and the fire was the dome of clear wood over me.

The light and fire slowly dissipated.

My head turned from side to side, my eyes looking across the new landscape. The explosion had bent the garden into a shape of a trampoline about to launch somebody into the air, except my garden wouldn't bounce back. The center of the blast punched a burnt hole through the layer of plants.

Two elders lie at the bottom of the burnt hole. Two Blades to crawl to the elders, one for each.

“I'm sorry, but I warned you,” I whispered.

The Blades stabbed into their chests. My connection with the Blades forced me to feel the sensation of the Blades enter their hearts. It felt as if my own hand was digging into their chests. I clenched my jaw as I felt their hearts stop.

I grimaced and focused on the battle again. The Elder´s formation had been wiped out. Now I just needed to pick them off one by one.

I sensed somebody's feet touch one of my plants. I looked in its direction and found another elder struggling to get up. She spat out a clump of blood.

The blood sizzled in the heat. The dead smell of burnt vegetation strangled the air, smoke clawed a path into the sky. The earth was black. Ash mixed with dirt, dirt mixed with sand, sand mixed with dust. This was no longer a garden, this was hell.

I turned the plants underneath her into quicksand. The vines swallowed her and funneled her into the mouth of a Pluto Flytrap. The trap injected six types of poison into her and began digesting her. Digesting the body of a ninth stage cultivator would be difficult, but the Pluto Flytrap could do it.

I´m the Cultivator. I cultivate, create, and construct. But here I am, emitting an aura of death and ravaging my own garden. It felt wrong, but it was all necessary.

The elders who had been blasted out of my garden rushed back to save their fallen comrades. This would be their fatal mistake.

I found an elder near me. The Colossus stepped forward, reaching out to grab him. Three glowing balls slammed into the side of the arm. They exploded, blasting a hole in the side of the limb. The male ancestor span in midair before smashing his foot into the wounded part of the arm.

Stacked on top of each other, the three blasts and kick cut the arm in two. The forearm and hand fell to the ground.

What's the point of creating if I can't protect the things I create?

I had at first worried about my power corrupting me. But over time, I realized how stupid that worry had been. I despised this fight. I would never go out and seek a fight. Using my power for anything other than creation didn´t just go against my ideals, it went against my personality.

But anybody who wanted to harm anything I cultivated would face the consequences.

The other arm of the Colossus flew at the pair of ancestors. They dodged out of the way and the arm slammed against the floor of plants. The earth shook. The arm groped for a plant and found a Twentytacle Trap. Under my control, it threw it at the ancestors.

The trap tangled them. Without the ancestors here to intervene, my snakes sank their fangs into the elder at my feet.

I saw the severed arm on the ground. My Colossus grabbed the limb and put it against its stump. I melded the arm back onto the original body.

In their rush to help their comrades, the elders that had been knocked away by the blast came back onto my garden.

The female ancestor looked at the dead elders and realized her mistake. “Run!” she screamed at the rest of the elders. The ancestor duo charged at me, thinking that they could distract me.

I put my hands with the palms up in front of me, as if I were holding an invisible tray. Similar to a buddhist prayer, I brought my hands in front of my chest and clapped them together.

Two halves of my garden rose on each side of me. My garden folded in half like a sheet of paper, bringing everything with it. The earth rose and clapped together. The garden stood upright, a sheet of vegetation reaching into the sky.

The Control skill cost next to nothing to use, but this one movement cost me hundreds of mana. In one swift motion, all my plants folded and trapped the rest of the Crimson Fire Sect members. They squirmed, sandwiched between two halves of my garden.

The elders tried to escape with all their power. Burnt patches appeared across the tower of vegetation as nine eighth and ninth stage cultivators unleashed their flames. The ancestors broke out, but all the elders remained trapped.

Perhaps the Elders could’ve escaped if they were at full power, but the combined explosion had decimated their battle power.

A crunch. I spent another thousand mana condensing the plants, sealing in the elders. My plants equipped with poison wiggled through the gaps left in the plant tower. One by one, each elder’s flames shut off.

Everything in the garden had been clamped together, me included. Without the moonlight and fires, I lit a Glowing Pineapple for a light source. Black patches were burnt into messy vines tangled together like spaghetti. The stump of a Prison Pineapple. A molten bit of brick from my house. My garden, destroyed.

My plants parted in front of my Colossus and I walked out. I was met by a flaming turtle shell, about as large as a car and pulsating with heat. I took another step towards the shell. I could tell I could get a burn if I touched the crimson shell, and it was only getting hotter. The earth beneath it melted, forming an expanding ring of lava.

The ring of lava crept at me. I dipped the Colossus’ hand into the lava. The lava trickled down its palm without singeing the hand.

All the mass of my garden was in the tower behind me. Moving the entire thing took huge amounts of mana, mana I couldn’t spare if I wanted to help Jing and Hui Ming afterwards.

Using a tiny amount of mana, I tipped the tower towards me and the turtle shell. Gravity took hold and it fell. I jumped out of the way.

Just before the shell was crushed by the tower, the two halves of the turtle shell separated, revealing the two ancestors. I felt the pressure of Qi on my skin, making it tingle and my hairs stand on end. I’d never felt such concentrated Qi in my life.

The two parts of the turtle shell stretched out. They became two flaming wings, ready to take flight. The rest of the Qi became a bird’s head and tail. The two ancestors screamed a battle cry and the phoenix shot at me.

The bird twisted in the air. Its two wings turning like blades of a fan, so fast it became a blur. Too late, I realized I’d made a mistake as well.

I’d underestimated the Crimson Fire Sect.

The Colossus’ arms crossed in front of me and I threw a seed in front of me. The bird hit the two arms. Its wings diced and burnt the arms in a spiral pattern.

The seed in front of me sucked away thousands of mana. A brown-gray substance burst from the seed, forming a shield between me and the phoenix. The attack met the Protect before the Protect could fully form.

A crack like a crack of thunder. My Protect shell shattered. A ball of flame the size and shape of a small pigeon burst through the shattered remains of the Protect. It sliced through the clear wood as if it weren’t there at all.

I tried to block the bird with my bare hands. It cut into my palms and scorched my flesh. I didn’t have the time to scream. I moved my hands away, before realizing that was a mistake too. My hands were the only things between the attack and my chest. I could stop the strike if I sacrificed my hands, but I didn’t know what would happen if the attack hit my chest. Would it run out of energy before it hit the front of my body? Would it leave a small mark? Or would it pierce my heart?

It struck my chest. The hit felt dull and blunt, like a punch. My body jerked back, my back hit the wood dome behind me and demolished it. The spinning motion of the bird transferred into my body. I spun until I hit the ground.

I tried to get back up, but fell to the ground again. I lie on the charred soil, waiting for the dizziness to wear off. I hands shook as I pushed myself back up. I tilted my head down to look at my chest. A mark was left in the middle, a steady stream of blood poured down the front of my body. My palms were also burnt and bloody.

I maintained my connection with my plants. With my plants directly on top of the ancestors, I put all my focus into killing the two fighters. My plants went to work. Vines wrapped around them and they brought the rest of the fortress to join the assault.

The ancestors stood no chance. They died under the plants.

All of them were dead.

I shuddered and fell back to the ground. The earth beneath me was dried from the battle. The bit under my knees cracked and became dust. It scattered into the wind, fleeing from the desolate battleground.

It was still the middle of the night. The landscape darkened as the last of the fires burned out.

I grit my teeth. I was like when I first came to this world, injured and alone. My fingers found a small rock and squeezed. I cracked it effortlessly. I felt a small tug at the corners of my lips. There were a few differences. Even wounded, this body was filled with power.

Some of the dust drifted up and touched my raw palms. I winced. A seed turned into a giant aloe plant. It squeezed itself, dumping aloe slime all over me. Ignoring the pain, I reached into my robes and pulled out a small bottle of a numbing salve. I rubbed it on my palms and chest, covering my wounds and stopping the bleeding. I swallowed a Totality Pill.

The pain didn’t go away, but decreased enough for me to move. Covered in sweat, blood, and aloe, I looked at the blue screen always at the corner of my vision.

Vincent the Cultivator

Lv7

MP : 2048/13000

I got to my feet and ran to find the rest of my family.