With the specific intent of capturing the woodland zombies that had been causing terror among the citizens dead or alive, Aksai turned back and reentered the fray once more.
He traversed through the still-safe suburban zones and entered the conflict area, where tree devils roamed like mindless zombies searching for their prey.
The Spirit farmer quickly located a group of tree devils inside an abandoned alley and decided to target them.
As soon as the tree devils caught sight of Aksai, they ran towards him intending to take him down and turn him into one of them.
“Feels like I’m playing some kind of special edition zombie survival game. Hehe. Come and get me, you mindless numbnuts.”
Aksai drew his Lian sword and met their charge head-on.
With agility and precision, Aksai unleashed a flurry of strikes, combining the fluid movements of Qi Flow Arts with the fierceness of Qi Sword Arts. His sword released a storm of flying qi slashes around him like a small tornado.
If only he could wield three swords at the same time as well as three capable swords, he would have mimicked a certain sword twister attack.
Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.
The woodland zombies were pushed back from their positions when Aksai’s charged attacks landed on their bodies. Their bodies were damaged, and dark red blood oozed from the wounds. However, these wounds were quickly sealed away before the zombies charged at Aksai with renewed momentum.
“Hm? Reanimation. Moving on pure instincts, set patterns of attacks, and bodies that can heal themselves quickly. These tree devils… These are practically a form of puppets.”
Aksai thought to himself as he looked at the tree devils’ rapidly closing wounds. Having used his own puppets, Aksai didn’t take long to discover the nature of the tree devils.
“Wait a minute. How can puppets cast Spirit spells? What kind of puppetry is this?” Aksai’s expression turned grim as he battled with the tree devils.
“Is that corrupted druid controlling them? But how can he control so many of them? This is beyond any 1st-order or even 2nd-order puppet art I can find in Dadangar,” Aksai concluded while dodging the incoming attacks before quickly responding with counter moves of his own.
“Interesting. I’m even more determined to extract the genetic sequence from that puppeteer now.”
Aksai smiled wickedly as he looked at the tree devils with a predatory gaze. If the tree devils had their sanity intact at this time, they would have run away from Aksai after seeing his creepy smile.
***
Aksai wasn’t the only one in Serenity Peak who could battle with the tree devils. There were still many martial artists belonging to various schools who could engage with the woodland zombies.
However, Aksai was the only one from his generation who dared to challenge multiple zombies head-on without any backup in sight. That too out of his own volition.
One had to say that the Spirit farmer in Aksai was very dedicated to the field of science. He would go to extreme lengths to get his batch of guinea pigs.
And why shouldn’t he?
Thanks to his Spirit Sense, Aksai held a significant advantage over the other martial artists from Sharang when it came to dealing with the tree devils.
Additionally, he could counter Spirit spells with Spirit spells.
Aksai didn’t fall prey to the tree devils’ sneak attack tactics. He utilized his own set of elemental Spirit spells to intercept the opponents’ attacks. Moreover, he often acted against them before they had the chance to finish casting their Spirit spells.
Acknowledging that the tree devils possessed formidable bodies after being transformed into some sort of reanimated woodland zombie, Aksai could still detect vulnerabilities thanks to his Spirit Sense. Alternatively, he created these vulnerabilities himself using Spirit spells.
Hence, Aksai systematically targeted the tree devils. Each strike was calculated and executed precisely, aiming for vulnerable points on the tree devils’ bodies.
Through a series of well-timed strikes, Aksai succeeded in severing the heads of four tree devils, rendering them powerless and incapacitated. For the remaining two that he couldn’t defeat outright, he employed devastating techniques from his five martial arts, sundering their bodies beyond repair.
Aksai’s qi entered the bodies of these tree devils and destroyed them from within. It was very difficult to kill or neutralize something that had been reanimated. In the end, Aksai managed to neutralize two tree devils without outright killing them. This was a huge success to him than the killings of the remaining four.
Aksai had to put in a lot of effort to deal with his enemies. Especially so when he was trying to neutralize some of them without destroying them completely for research purposes. After getting the two tree devils completely neutralized, Aksai decided he should retreat.
With the threat neutralized, Aksai wasted no time in collecting the four fallen tree devils’ bodies, storing them within the storage space of his enchanted ring. He couldn’t store the remaining two tree devils in his storage ring for some reason. As such, he summoned his own Scarecrow puppets and asked them to carry the tree devils on their shoulders.
The dead and somewhat alive tree devils would serve as valuable subjects for Aksai’s experiments in the underground facility of Serenity Peak, allowing him to unravel the mysteries of their nature and uncover any weaknesses they might possess. As such, he decided to reveal the existence of his own Scarecrow puppets.
Aksai summoned four more Scarecrow puppets to protect him as well as the puppets that carried the two tree devils.
This was not all. He also summoned two special puppets that he had created after fusing the Blood Fiend creation technique with the Scarecrow Puppets technique. One could say that the 12 years he had spent in a low-key manner were extremely productive in various ways.
These two puppets were as strong as Aksai in terms of the Body Stats. Most importantly, they were created from the bodies of two martial artist prisoners, which granted their enhanced agility.
Aksai called these fusion puppets the Scarecrow Fiends.