Zhang Dong was floating up in the sky, a shroud of purple lightning energy was still swirling around him. This residual energy was getting quickly absorbed by him and to others, it looked as if a tiny circle inside of his chest was sucking it all in.

Wang Long with his soul beast in front was perplexed to see his enemy somehow using his own attack to power himself. This didn’t mean that he was in a state of panic, to him this only meant that there would be more points to be gained.

“So what if you bought a few good tricks? Don’t think that you are the only one with a system to back you up!”

He called out while slapping his spatial ring. When he did a burst of sword energies flew out along with hundreds of swords. These swords quickly shot in all directions and started to dance around. Their flight patterns painted the sky red and produced a phantom image of a red lotus.

The blades continued to fly at such a speed that the figure of the lotus remained intact and moved towards Zhang Dong’s location. Before he could react he found himself surrounded by thousands of sharp swords.

“I’ll shred you into minced meat!”

The swarm of sharp objects descended towards Zhang Dong before he could continue with his cultivation breakthrough. Even though he had absorbed enough energy to push him to the other level he would need some time to cultivate.

“Swords huh?”

Luckily for him, he was on his home territory, a place in which he created many treasures. Many of which were perfect for this occasion. With a loud clap, his aura spread through the entire Spirit Spring City and the Sect.

From his spatial ring, a massive swarm of various flying weapons escaped, and even more, appeared from the sides. The metallic objects all rose from the ground, from the destroyed buildings, and even from people that had already fallen in this battle of the sects.

“Did you know that when a master craftsman creates a weapon that a slither of their will remains in them? Even if the weapon chooses a master if the will is strong enough it will always listen to its creator instead.”

The flying sword formation that was about to devour him was soon intercepted by a torrent of metal. Zhang Dong’s counter formation was not only made from swords. If one looked closely they could see various other weapons like maces, axes, and polearms being absorbed into a grand flying weapon formation.

“Now give me a moment…”

While the two weapon formations were collying with each other, Zhang Dong used this as a chance to slip away. The torrent of energy and the loud sound of metal grinding against metal made spotting him quite difficult.

“Do you think you can hide from me?”

Wang Long had momentarily lost his opponent but he had ways of finding him. With the aid of his own system and the mapping function, he was quickly able to find Zhang Dong that had hidden himself away in some rubble.

“There you are!”

Wang Long moved his hands together and started to focus. A small ball of purple energy appeared in the middle that started to get progressively bigger. The energies that he was gathering quickly became chaotic and he raised them above his head.

“Take this.”

He shouted while lobbing the ball of energy towards the area that his system map was showing him. When the ball of spiritual energy collided with the ground a giant explosion was made.

The half-destroyed building where Zhang Dong was supposedly hiding in was incinerated. The explosion pushed debris in all directions while also melting anything that was directly in the spot that was hit.

“Hm?”

Wang Long was waiting with a sword in hand and had already his next attack ready but something was off. He expects Zhang Dong to dodge out of the way of that large attack and his aim was to then cut him. Instead, the whole explosion only caused more dust to be blown up which lowered the visibility even further.

“Did he get hit by that?”

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“Hah, you must be joking. Do you really think that I’m not aware of the system’s mapping function?”

Zhang Dong’s voice echoed through the area. To Wang Long, it seemed as if he was somewhere close but also somewhere far away. When he looked at the map once more to lock onto Zhang Dong’s unique power signature he spotted a problem.

His system map that he had relied upon was showing him more than one location in which his opponent could be. It was as if he was fighting a small troop of Zhang Dong’s that were hiding from him.

“Maybe if you learned how to use your spiritual sense correctly you would be able to find me~”

“Screw you! I’ll just blow up everything!”

Wang Long’s expression became full of malice as he gathered even more energy. His soul beast roared out loudly and did the same. Soon both of them started blasting everything in the vicinity but mostly aimed at the locations on the map.

At this exact moment, Zhang Dong was actually quite far away. He used a hiding technique to slip away while also leaving some dummy spiritual ghosts behind. These spiritual avatars were created from a special technique he learned and could even fool the system’s mapping feature.

While taking his time to build up his sect Zhang Dong didn’t stop studying the techniques that he found in the secret ground. He focused a lot of his time on ones that would allow him to escape from stronger opponents or ones that were good for spying. Some of them when leveled up could even fool his system.

He put his hands together as if he was praying and a thin layer of energy surrounded his body. This was a sound canceling technique that would give him some time during his breakthrough.

While he set up many dummies of his aura signature around the area, this didn’t mean that his opponent would not be able to find him. Thus he started circulating his energies throughout his body and pushing his cores to their apex in an attempt to breakthrough.

The great circle realm was somewhat harder to transform into than the previous two realms. When he attempted it now he could feel similar pain to when he pushed through into the foundation establishment realm.

This step was a bit different as the great circle realm was more or less a transitional period between the smaller and higher realm. Regular core formation masters at the great circle could access some nascent soul only techniques like lesser flight that allowed them to float without a flying sword.

His great circle core formation realm was a lot different though as it would bring him closer to an enhanced version of the nascent soul realm. He was already able to fight masters at the middle stage, how strong would he actually be if he rose to that level of power?

“ARGHhhh…”

“Why is this so painful, it's as if my body is trying to reject this transformation…”

Zhang Dong felt like if he made a mistake he would explode right here. It was as if this world was rejecting him from achieving these breakthroughs. If this continued he feared that he would lose his mind when he actually attempted a breakthrough into the nascent soul level.

“There you are!”

Due to this painful transformation, he was soon discovered by Wang Long. The man might not have been the best fighter but Zhang Dong knew that he would not be able to take many hits. He was still in a somewhat pseudo nascent soul state and his opponent had bought superior skills through the system.

The only reason he was able to continue fighting was due to his battle experience. If the battle continued for too long, Wang Long could very well shorten that gap to land a critical blow.

‘Shit, he was a lot faster than I expected, did he use the system to find me?’

There was also the system. There was an unknown number of points that his opponent still had, he only used them to cancel out the barrier but how much he could do was unknown. Zhang Dong’s old system store allowed a person many functions that even he didn’t have time to discover during his travels.

Soon he found himself below a large ball of concentrated spiritual energy. This time around Wang Long had done some alterations as the spiritual energy was not aligned to any particular element like before.

“It’s time to die!”

He pointed with his fingers and a dark purple orb that was about ten meters in diameter descended. Zhang Dong was now left with the options of either remaining here and taking the hit or escaping.

Both choices would put him under a different amount of strain. One would cause him to suffer cultivation backlash as he was attempting a breakthrough while the other one would expose him to Wang Long’s energy attack.

“Oh no, you don’t!”

He heard a very familiar voice not far from where he was. This was followed by hurricane light winds and an emerald glow that collided with the purple energy balls. This collision of spiritual energies caused everything to rumble and also revealed the spot that he was hiding in.

“It’s you? Have you come to beg for mercy?”

Who appeared was a certain busty woman with caramel skin and light pink hair. It was Zhang Liena riding on her emerald soul beast that had managed to intercept the blast coming towards Zhang Dong’s location.

“Beg? It is you that is going to beg!”

“Hah, I like girls with some spice, I’ll be sure to give you a good time when we return.”

Wang Long licked his lips while laughing, even now he was convinced that he would be returning victorious. While he was fixated on a certain part of Liena Zhang Dong used this chance to converse with his wife.

‘What are you doing here, I told you to remain in the fortress. It can't function without a person piloting it!’

Zhang Dong was concerned that without the fortress that the sect would not be able to achieve victory. There were just too many nascent soul masters on the other side.

‘Fear not my husband, someone else is using that construct!’

‘Someone else?’

Zhang Dong peeked into the distance and could see the fortress continuing to fire. It was a bit slower than before but it was still operational. From it, he could also hear an older man’s voice that he also recalled.

“Do you think you can attack my grandson’s sect and live?”

“Gramps?”