Did- did Hong Ling just die? Mei was stunned.

"Haha... HAHAHA!"

The guardian spirits stared, dazed. From the gauntlet of the guardian, a spirit rose out.

"Finally... I'm free!" Hong Ling shouted.

He laughed uncontrollably.

"You... you weren't absorbing its qi!" Shi Xin yelled. "You were giving it a final burst of power!"

The jade-less spirit took off without a word.

"Stop him! He's trying to escape!" Shi Xin yelled.

As he yelled, streaks of white light condensed around him.

Soul restraining cage!

But in the next instant, the radiance dissipated.

"That- that bastard! He sealed off our jades!"

Shaking off their shock, Xiuying and Wang Wei were the first to pick up the jades of their guardian, only to see rows of glowing characters binding them.

Unlike Hong Ling, the other guardians were entirely normal spirits, relying on the qi stored within their jade to cast spells. Their jades were not prisons, instead, batteries that served to empower them.

In the next moment, without Dian Ying's support, the projection faded away.

Hong Ling flew straight through the solid metal walls, past Mei and her group, and towards the barrier. Light glowed around a conjured fist as he threw a punch at it, shattering it!

Almost as if they were glass, a crystalline sound rang through the air as the qi fragments fell from the sky, slowly fading away. From such a small point of impact, a barrier more than a hundred metres in diameter had been obliterated.

Mei and the others could only watch in awe.

Within the ruins, out of sight from Mei and the others, Shi Xin shook Feng Shen desperately.

"Fe-Feng Shen! Why aren't you doing anything?" he shouted. "Are you betraying us as well?"

"Hmph. I have no interest in that. But Hong Ling is an old friend of mine, so I'm sitting this one out." Feng Shen said. "The sect has never treated him well. Are you really that surprised that he wants to cut off ties?"

"You- but... Even so!"

"There's no doubt the barrier has been shattered by now, the sect elders alerted. I know Hong Ling well enough to guess his schemes."

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"The-there are sect elders guarding the ruins?"

Shi Xin suddenly had a flash of insight.

"He lured us all here so he could delay us with the elders guarding the ruins!"

"It was also his best shot at finding something that could even break his jade."

Shi Xin launched out a barrage of swears.

"I'll report you to the elders!"

"That will come later, we don't have much time." Feng Shen said. "I'll go protect the disciples. You should grab any spoils from below while you can."

----------------------------------------

As a group of 10 Nascent Soul elders in a battle formation flew over, Feng Shen soaring out of the ruins just in time to intercept them.

"What have you done!" one of the elders yelled. "Do you have a bone to pick with the Xing Clan, intruding on ruins we've claimed and shattering its barrier?"

The ancient barrier array had been a topic of interest for the Xing Clan for quite a few decades now. Despite its strength only being mediocre, the fact that it was still functional after countless years without maintenance was a testament to how ingenious it was.

From research on the barrier alone, the Xing Clan had reduced the cost of maintaining their barriers by more than 20%. The elder's hearts were bleeding as they witnessed the barrier gone in its entirety.

Not feeling as chatty as the first elder, the other 9 elders immediately launched coordinated attacks, sending a blazing phoenix at Feng Shen!

The very air distorted from the sheer heat, and even trees as far as 20 metres away caught on fire immediately.

Feng Shen quickly conjured a barrier of wind around him and the disciples, protecting them from the worst of it. Even so, the air within was unbearably warm.

The phoenix splashed onto the wind barrier, erupting into a blast of flames. Beneath them, the ground was reduced to magma.

Feng Shen launched a massive razor projection at the elders, the elders quickly bringing up a barrier.

The illusionary slash struck the barrier, passing through without any resistance. It was as if there had only been tofu between them.

A burst of blood. Halves falling from the air.

A streak of red appeared on Feng Shen's feathers.

Xiuying was the first to scream, several others following suit. Mei didn't let out a sound, however. Her mind had gone blank.

"Y-you killed them!" Xiuying screamed.

"You want to be the ones dying instead? I needed to incapacitate them as fast as I could, to protect you lot!" Feng Shen said.

"Calm down! They're not dead yet. Cultivators don't die so easily. I'll patch them up."

Behind Liu Qiang, his guardian spirit spoke up.

By now, Hong Ling's seals had worn off. After all, he didn't actually have intentions to endanger Mei and the others, only to stop them from chasing briefly.

As the wounded elders tried to crawl and fly away, the guardian spirit smacked them unconscious before piecing them back together.

Finally, Feng Shen swept all the disciples onto his back before taking off to the skies.

...

One of the elders let out a mouthful of blood he had been holding in with a raspy cough. Seeing that the intruders had left, he finally clutched his reconnected abdomen, gasping in pain. In the guardian spirit's rush, one of the elders had not been truly knocked unconscious.

"T-that bird... It couldn't have been."

A memory came back to mind, making him shudder.

More than a month ago, after the Xing Clan had purchased a dragon from an auction... an absurdly powerful spirit beast charged in, ambushing the hundred Nascent Soul elders and snatching it away.

Miraculously, none of the elders had been killed. The Xing clan attributed that to the attacker having had been in too much of a rush, and had allied with another clan to hunt it down, but to no avail. It was almost as if the bird had vanished off the face of the planet.

"I must inform the sect..." he reached to his pouch for an elixir and drank it in a single gulp, before letting out a groan of relief. "That blood... it got on its feathers..."

No longer wracked by pain, he pulled out a transmission jade and whispered into it anxiously.