As soon as Shin Sumi's foot landed on the rocky slope, she already considered herself much safer than she had been previously.

"As strong as that tortoise might be, it can't be nimble with such a huge stone like body!" she logically thought.

Rumbling noises cut off her mental sentence suddenly. The ground had started trembling.

It was a special ability that the Stone Leaf Tortoises developed over the years. When the specimen grew to be an adult, its affinity with rocks and stone elements was so symbiotic that it was able to make the ground tremble and provoque landslides. It was akin to a cultivator's technique or magic and showed how powerful the tortoise was.

Shin Sumi was immediately destabilized, allowing the tortoise to advance towards her with an agility on the moving ground that defied logic.

She jumped again sideways, evading at the last moment a charge that would have a devastating impact on her small body.

The Stone Leaf Tortoise's shell would have impaled her had she been the slightest bit slower.

Shin Sumi's second jump was more lucky than the first. Because of the unstable ground she had lept sideways unintentionally, giving her a few extra breaths to prepare for what was to come as the tortoise turned to face her.

That fact did not escape Shin Sumi's eyes of course. In order to verify she lept once again to the side, making sure she landed on one of the biggest boulders.

The tortoise's powers didn't seem to affect the giant rock the size of a cabin. Because the beast was preoccupied with Shin Sumi, its powers were spread out all around. Shin Sumi didn't know if they would be enough to make the boulder tremble but didn't intend on staying long enough to find out.

The reason she had chosen this landing spot was in order to secure her next trajectory. If her speculations were correct, the tortoise would need a few seconds to face her before it attacked. If she was wrong, at least she could jump out of the way immediately and hope for a new alternative.

"One, two, thr... Here it comes!"

As it turned out, Stone Leaf Tortoises were as fast in a direct line as they were slow turners. Shin Sumi was still shocked about the beast's speed.

Jumping from boulders to dried branches of sparse vegetation, Shin Sumi kept on evading every attack the tortoise sent her way. Her reflexes were barely able to keep her safe for now. The pressure emanated by the tortoise was slowing her down and slowly sapping at her reserve energy.

"If I don't act, I'm going to run out of juice at some point. This is bad."

With each turn, Shin Sumi focused eighty percent of her attention on the tortoise. Although it was impressive, the tortoise didn't seem too intelligent and kept attacking in the same way over and over.

The rest of Shin Sumi's attention was observing their surroundings. With a body this big, the tortoise would be a piece of cake to escape from, in the forest.

The barren land that was the side of the mountain, though, was not the most tactical place.

"This is really bad."

Shin Sumi still had different options, although not many. She made her way in front of the same big boulder as before. She had been evading for close to ten minutes now and her stamina was starting to diminish progressively.

Gathering all of her energy in her legs, Shin Sumi took a deep breath before jumping vertically. The tortoise that had just been about to impale her with the lone horn on its shell was already in full momentum. It was too late to stop.

The Stone Leaf Tortoise rammed into the rock, nearly oblitering it in the process. Even the beast that was stronger than a rock itself was stunned for half a second.

The moment it had made contact though, Shin Sumi was reaching the apex of her trajectory. She could only jump about twice the height of the tortoise, but any height was already progress.

A golden light shone into her hand. The Gold Tyrant Flying Sword swung on her way down. Using all the strength she could muster in such a short lapse of time, her muscles bulged as she slammed the sword onto the tortoise's shell.

ZOOONG !!

"Bwah!" Shin Sumi spat a mouthful of blood. The blow had landed but the brute strength of the impact had mainly reverberated into her arms.

Shin Sumi could tell her left forearm had been pretty damaged.

"It might even be broken" she thought as she rolled off the shell of the tortoise.

A low grunt escaped the beast's clenched jaws. Its head and the point of its shell were still stuck in the rock.

Forcing herself to ignore her potential injuries for the time being, Shin Sumi ran. After the Black Wind Bees incident, she thought she had found her maximum speed but she surpassed herself once again.

The slope was gentle and she remembered the area. A small plateau was visible a few hundred meters ahead and then she would be able to rejoin the forest.

From there, Shin Sumi estimated her chances of shaking off the tortoise at about eighty percent.

She ran downwards, not even turning around to see what state the tortoise was in.

She had only covered a quarter of the way to the plateau when a loud bang erupted with the complete destruction of the boulder that was keeping the tortoise stuck.

The dark eyes of the Stone Leaf Tortoise picked up another shade or two of darkness. It cried with pain and rage. A greyish light was visible under the tree trunks that were its feet.

The beast was now angrier than it had ever been. Its mind that was already not so bright went completely blank.

Shin Sumi kept running but she was slower than the grey light propagated. Following that magical light, the ground shook with even more strength than before.

Her feet unable to find a stable spot, Shin Sumi rolled on the floor. The tearing of her disciple's robe and the trails of blood that resulted from her fall were the least of her worries.

The tortoise was rapidly approaching, the downwards direction and its huge mass augmenting its velocity greatly.

Shin Sumi took advantage of the beast's momentum and inability to turn to escape to the side. It was a close call as she felt the blast of wind from the huge rocky mass punch her in the face.

In the same swift movement, Shin Sumi flung her arm sideways.

A yellow paper square, tiny in comparison to the huge tortoise, was propelled towards the beast.

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BANG

The paper talisman stuck to the top of the tortoise's hind legs, immediately blowing up.

Shin Sumi had picked up the talismans from the bag of holding of one of Elder Zhu's disciples after the battle in the clearing. Its use was fairly simple, Shin Sumi only had to send a sliver of Shinsoo into it before throwing it away.

She had never forgotten about the paper talismans, but if possible she had wanted to not use them. The Rising Star Tournament was about to start and she would need all resources available.

Shin Sumi was wearing a sly smile on the corner of her lips. The paper talisman had worked perfectly!

The tortoise grunted as it was blasted to the side. A big piece of rock-like armor fell down from the zone of impact, revealing soft pinkish flesh underneath.

The tortoise let out a painful howl, clacking its jaws repeatedly at the same time.

The trembling of the ground was temporarily stopped as the beast recovered. Shin Sumi sent a few more talismans towards the huge creature.

Not getting caught in the same trap twice, the tortoise simply bent its legs, half retracting them inside its shell. The talismans stuck to the shell instead of the softer upper legs.

The blast of the explosion was impressive to Shin Sumi but had virtually no impact on the tortoise's shell.

As soon as the fire died, the tortoise was back on its feet, fixating Shin Sumi with its dark eyes. Now that Shin Sumi had used a different kind of attack and with relative succes, the tortoise had calmed down a little bit.

Even if it couldn't be considered smart, it definitely had some degree of intelligence. The explosion from the first talisman had hurt it badly, but the others had been useless. At least the Stone Leaf Tortoise knew it could be blocked.

Shin Sumi breathed raggedly. The tortoise had stopped its constant attacking for a few seconds. Both were looking at each other, probably pondering their chances of success in this fight.

Shin Sumi was puzzled.

"How in the world did this huge tortoise evade the second salvo of paper talismans?! It is the only way I've found to defeat it, it has to work!"

She wondered if there was anything she could do to make the paper talismans more effective.

"It doesn't matter what, just a slight improvement will suffice... Maybe make them fly faster to prevent the tortoise from evading? Or maybe an even stronger blast of white flames?"

The tortoise was also starting to feel its stamina run out. It still attacked Shin Sumi whenever she moved, preventing her from escaping. Although it had calmed down, the beast still planned on fighting this small human girl, who had dared to hurt it, to the death.

Shin Sumi rolled to the side and resumed running around the tortoise. No matter what rage animated it, the animal couldn't turn easily due to its large body and heavy legs. At the same time she was thinking deeply.

Scenes from her fight in the clearing passed in front of her eyes. Ever since that fateful day she had tried her best to forget the incident. But as the paper talismans had come from one of the three Affairs Pavilion disciples, so would the answer to her problem if ever there was one.

Suddenly her eyes seemed to illuminate!

"That may be the solution! I remember the explosions of white flames clearly!"

Shin Sumi watched in her mind a tree being completely burnt down by a paper talisman provoking a blast with a radius of a few meters.

By comparison, even the talisman that had succeeded in hurting the Stone Leaf Tortoise only affected it in at most a meter. So how come the explosions coming from the Affairs Pavilion disciple were so much bigger?

Shin Sumi had looked into paper talismans before, even asking Xiao Yue and Lan Hui what they knew. The kind she had looted on her attacker's corpse were the most common. The only thing that could change the capacity of the blast and the strength of the flames was...

"Yang type Shinsoo... Of course! Flames are by essence of Yang attribute. That must be it!"

The rocky ground trembled under the tortoise's fast steps but Shin Sumi still managed to take out the Copper Bell. The item was useless in a fight, but if Shin Sumi was able to use it on herself then it would be a different matter.

The first two tries failed due to her inability to concentrate enough in order to control her Shinsoo and absorb the bell's powers.

"It is so much easier on stable ground" she muttered, gnashing her teeth.

For the third time she evaded the tortoise, leaping until she was completely behind it. According to her calculations she had barely three breaths of time to absorb the bell before she would be at risk.

One... Two... Three!

Finally Shin Sumi succeeded, just in time to evade the next slam of the pointed horn on the tortoise's shell.

Shin Sumi felt her Shinsoo type immediately change, the white blue darkening until it reached a reddish coloration.

A slap of her hand onto the bag of holding at her waist, a few paper talismans appeared between her fingers.

She threw them one by one, the tortoise facing the other way after its last attack. Before it could even see what she was doing, the talismans connected to the rough patches of rocky skin.

BOOM!

The Stone Leaf Tortoise was taken by surprise by the intensity of the blast. Shin Sumi was right. The Yang type Shinsoo boosted the explosion magic by at least five times!

The tortoise howled even louder than before. But contrary to Shin Sumi's expectations, it did not stop. The tortoise ran into her, not stopping for even a second to lament its wounds.

A malevolent light shone into its eyes, as it to say "I knew you would do that, now you can only suffer"!

By reflexes alone, Shin Sumi summoned the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword. Holding it vertically, the piece of dull metal could only offer a very slim protection against the ramming power of the beast, but that was the only thing she could do.

Shin Sumi was already thinking that everything was over when the unexpected happened.

Between her fingers, the metal started shining. A fierce light ran along the edge of the blade. It was blinding at first but when Shin Sumi was finally able to discern the weapon through the light, she almost gaped in astonishment.

It all happened instantly, as the tortoise was about to crush her to death.

Shin Sumi thought about how shiny and sharp the sword had looked like before Fen Wudao had handed it to her. Between her fingers, the sword now looked almost exactly like it had then.

Sliiing.

Shin Sumi had braced for impact but it was useless. Unlike the powerful impact she expected, a slight vibration was all she felt. In an instant the sword had deflected the impact of the Stone Leaf Tortoise, pushing the horn to the side.

It fact it didn't simply push the horned shell to the side, as she would soon realize. The pointy bit of the leaf shape had been cut off in an instant!

Even the very top of the tortoise's head was spurting blood a deep cut wound etched in the hard skin.

The tortoise had no idea what had happened, the slicing pain sharper than even the powerful blasts from earlier.

As if a voice inside Shin Sumi's head prompted her to do it, she jumped vertically.

It just felt right in that instant. Following the exact same pattern of movements she had done earlier, Shin Sumi gave a powerful sword strike to the middle of the tortoise's shell from above.

She still hadn't fully realized what had happened to the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword. Until the sword's circular motion cut unhindered through the entire tortoise.

Zhiiiiiiiiing!

With an almost melodic sound, the shell split in half over the entire length of the tortoise, from the already cut off pointy part to the rounded back. Under the shell, the soft pinkish flesh was also sliced open. As were the bones, the organs and then more skin.

When Shin Sumi landed back on the floor, she stood between two gigantic mountains of flesh.

Dark blood poured out of every bit, dyeing everything in brown.

The Stone Leaf Tortoise had died quickly without even realizing it.

Shin Sumi held the sword in her hand, motionless, puzzled by the whole situation. She had been about to die but suddenly the sword had started shining and now...

"I am alive... I... defeated the tortoise?!"

For months now, Shin Sumi had been used to the blunt and rusty appearance of the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword. No matter what she had done, the blade didn't change one bit. Its cutting powers had started returning, but no matter how she viewed it, they should not have been able to cut through a tortoise this hard and big!

Now that the pressure on her shoulders was gone, the spirit beast being dead, Shin Sumi fell to her knees.

All of a sudden, she seemed to remember all of her wounds, from the torn flesh where she had scraped herself on the rocky ground to the pain in her forearm where the bone was probably broken.

Her Shinsoo level was rapidly draining so she popped a red beast core inside her mouth, all the while returning the Yang type powers to the Copper Bell.

The Copper Bell was really draining in terms of powers, especially in a fighting situation, she realized. It was only when the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword stopped shining that she understood the importance of the bell.

The sword in her hand felt lighter and still had the slim and proud appearance as before, but suddenly lost its radiance.

"It is because of the bell! All I needed was Yang attribute all along?!"

A wave of pain and fatigue took over, cutting off all of her ability to think straight for a moment.

"I need to act fast before I lose consciousness. Let's get to work!"

Using beast cores to gain somewhat of a boost, Shin Sumi cut open the belly of the tortoise. Inside was a dazzling green gem.

"Green beast core!! No wonder the tortoise was so strong..."

Shin Sumi was running out of time. She had to get back to the chasm before she completely lost all her energy in order to heal herself. Testing the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword's new prowess, she dismembered the beast quickly, the blade cutting the stone-like flesh like grass.

She finally left when all the pieces were in her bag of holding. One more beast core absorbed later, she was back at the chasm, drained but alive and happy.

Slumping in the pool beneath the waterfall, Shin Sumi finally allowed herself some peace.

Without a prompt, the little nut flashed out of her wrist's leaf imprint and started releasing healing waves mixing with the fresh water.