'Faster, faster, faster!' Baotian thought, flying as fast as he could.
He had already exhausted all the blood arrow formations he had set up and, now, he was only surviving the incessant attacks thanks to Shooting Blood Dancing Armor, which he had already used multiple times by now, mercilessly taxing his spiritual energy.
"Come back here, you brat! Perhaps I won't be able to slaughter your nine generations, but there will be at least one disappearing today!"
Baotian frowned, seeing him pursue him relentlessly:
'Did I slaughter his ancestor or something?' he wondered, not realizing just how close to the truth he was.
However, this distraction had a heavy cost as, momentarily stopping his assault, Na Fengxia used a special move:
"Wind Buddha Command: stay put!"
Immediately, the wind around Baotian seemed to wrap around his soul, and he was immobilized. He could only watch, powerless, as a fist came crashing against his cheek, cracking a layer of blood armor around the helmet.
"Argh!"
Baotian groaned in pain, but the elder did not seem to care as he kept Pummeling him. A kick to the shin, an elbow blow in the stomach, a palm right in the face, another in the solar plexus, and even an uppercut in the chin, such attacks came as a rain of merciless strikes aimed to reduce his body to paste, which would have certainly happened by now with all these hits taken.
But even the layers of protecting armor couldn't completely absorb the shock and, by the time Baotian recovered the control of his body, he had crashed down on the ground, laying on it, with serious internal injuries. Most of his protections had been shattered, and he wasn't in a state where he could use his move again. The elder of the Divine Storm Sect, on the other end, gracefully landed on the ground, a few meters away from him, and glared at him with a sneer:
"I commend the effort, and thank you for sparing me the trouble of chasing you" he said. "Any lost word?"
Baotian tried to get up, only to fail:
"Fo… for…"
"Fo? For? What is this gibberish?"
The young demonic cultivator smiled:
"Formation killer move, Blood Red Flame Torrent!"
Using nearly all his remaining spiritual energy, Baotian activated the last formation he had set up, unleashing the same devastating killer move that had defeated Ye Me, right on the elder. An entire section of the forest they had landed on was burned in the massive torrent of fire.
Fortunately, he had managed to fly just in range of the formation before getting struck down.
"Did… did I get him?"
Unfortunately for Baotian, Na Fengxia quickly came out of the flames, protected by a wind spell:
"I don't believe so" he said.
His body had been badly burnt, and small parts of his skin were gone along with most of his hair. Even then, he had no problem standing and, as a mid stage Core Formation, his injuries were already starting to heal.
"Ah… damn it" Baotian swore, weakly biting his finger.
"It wasn't a completely bad attempt. I already saw it at the contest, but this formation killer move is pretty impressive, for a brat"
"Yeah, though I wasn't planning on showing it back then… but you didn't really leave me the choice when you immobilized me with your Wind Buddha Command, when you tried getting Ye Mu to kill me, did you?"
The elder of the Divine Storm Sect scoffed:
"Ah, ending your life with a rhetorical question as your last words, fitting for demonic filth" he said, preparing to decapitate Baotian with a wind spell.
However, upon raising his hand, a wave of incomprehension washed over him as an intense pain invaded his entire arm.
"Argh!"
Following with his eyes a large fox with a beautiful snow-white fur, he saw his forearm resting between its jaws, brutally torn right before the elbow. Seeing it, elder Na's eyes widened:
"You… it's you, the one from the Fox tribe!" he exclaimed.
The one who had just ripped his arm off was none other than Ye Mu, who had successfully reached the Golden Core realm!
Seeing this, the elder rapidly tried to make a move but he was too late, the fox had already executed his killer move:
"Deadly Autumn Leaves Storm!"
The move, due to his recent advancement, had its power multiplied and Na Fengxia, already worn out, was mercilessly cut in all parts by the leaf storm, only managing to put his valid arm around his head to protect it.
"Ahh… ahh…"
By the time the killer move was over, his entire body was drenched in blood, his second arm was completely destroyed, and he barely stood on his legs even with a wind spell assisting him.
"You bastards… you… tricked me" he said.
Baotian tilted his head mockingly:
"Did we? I mentioned a senior helping me, and then proceeded to inform you of a very interesting trick" he said. "You're the one who misinterpreted such innocent words"
Hearing this, Na Fengxia felt his heart being filled with despair. Using his wind techniques to the fullest, he forced his body to move to avoid a bite that would have ripped off his jugular, and used a spell on himself to make his body roll on the ground, painfully avoiding more leaves that were aiming to cut him down.
He knew. He had arrived at a point where every chance of survival had already disappeared. Even though he kept struggling for his life, his heart and soul were getting colder every instant that passed.
'Ahh… great-aunt… she probably died in such an ambush, too' he thought lethargically
He heard the sound of a string being pulled.
'If she did, I wonder, did she also feel that the world was so, so…'
The string released.
'So unfair?'
His head was pierced by Baotian's arrow, and he died on the spot, full of bitterness.
Barely a few minutes later, his body had already been disposed of, his Spirit Core and blood essence harvested by Baotian.
"It was a good plan to keep my advancement secret, and to first fool him into believing that your senior was assisting you before revealing the opposite, making him lower his guard" Ye Mu praised. "However, don't you think you took far too much risk, fellow Zhang?"
Baotian shrugged:
"Had you helped any earlier, the advantage of surprise would not have been as considerable, and the ambush might even have failed" he said. "I am at the pseudo-Core Formation level and, even though you just advanced, I am confident your strength is relatively close to the mid stage. With the advantage given by the ambush, it's true that we would have definitely won anyway. However, our opponent is still a mid stage Core Formation nonetheless, and one specialized in wind spells, at that. With his nimbleness, there is no guarantee we could have stopped him from escaping. That's why taking some risks was indeed necessary"
The fox nodded, convinced:
"Indeed, that does make sense" he replied. "I have many things to learn from you, fellow Zhang"
Baotian nodded along with him: in truth, he had not anticipated in the slightest that the elder would suddenly abandon all carefulness and chase him so hysterically. Had he known the risks were so high, he would have indeed changed his strategy according to Ye Mu's words, so it was undoubtedly a mistake on his part, even though everything turned out alright.
Baotian decided to take it as a lesson: in this world, just because something had a high probability of happening as one wishes, one should never blindly trust such probabilities if they could do otherwise, interesting themselves completely as, one day, an unpredictable result was bound to come out, dragging them down in the abyss.
"I would rather not be the one teaching you to be as cunning as a human" he replied, half-joking. "Anyway, now that we are done here, what would you say about returning to our little secret base?"
"Secret base… The hideout of human demonic cultivators, you say? I suppose it would be interesting to see" Ye Mu replied. "Let us go"
"Good. We will probably meet back with Bai Zisheng, there. And most importantly-"
Baotian smiled, starting to fly, inducing Ye Mu to follow him:
"You'll have the honor of meeting my great, magnificent, oh-so-talented senior sister" he said, smiling.
Ye Mu, following him, tilted his head:
"Seeing how excited you are to meet her, I assume she truly has a shining personality among demonic cultivators"
"More than just a shining personality" Baotian said, smiling more, struggling not to laugh. "She truly has a… blazing heart"
Baotian could already imagine the scene, and had to gather superhuman willpower not to laugh, all while rejoicing his harvest of the day. Today had been a good day, and tomorrow promised to be good as well. It was during days like these that Baotian thought he had made the right choice.
The choice to live.