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Lu Ye was just a Second-Order Cloud River Realm cultivator. It was unlikely he would be able to contribute anything to the situation.
Lu Ye came to a stop right behind Zhou Hai before crouching slightly. As he sucked in a small breath, his Spiritual Power churned, and his vitality merged even deeper with Amber’s. The Inviolable flashed as he held it in front of himself. At the same time, his right arm abruptly swelled like a balloon as vitality poured into it.
At that moment, Zhou Hai felt like someone was pressing a blade against his back. His senses were screaming for him to get out of the way.
“Pull your sword!” Lu Ye yelled.
Without hesitation, Zhou Hai did as he was told, crouched, and jumped to the side.
The second Zhou Hai withdrew his sword, the surrounding flesh immediately started wriggling unnaturally. If Lu Ye waited even a second longer, the wound might just heal up before he could do anything.
He did not wait. His arm blurred as he stabbed into the wound five times in a row!
Combo was a blade technique to Lu Ye. If he could use Combo with Flash, then of course he could use it with other techniques as well. It was just a matter of application.
Every time the Inviolable plunged into Niu Meng’s flesh, its blade would emit a brilliant light. It was because he had empowered the Inviolable with two Sharp Edges. They granted the saber incredible sharpness and allowed Lu Ye to penetrate just a bit deeper with each successive stab.
Four stabs came and went in the blink of an eye. On the fifth stab, the saber finally pierced three inches out of Niu Meng’s chest!
Both Zhou Hai and Pang Dahai perked up when they saw this. Neither man had anticipated that Lu Ye, a mere Second-Order cultivator, was capable of executing such a powerful move.
Unfortunately, they needed Lu Ye to do more. Niu Meng was still struggling, so it was clear that the stab wound still wasn’t enough to disrupt the integrity of the Beast Imprint on the sect master’s chest. It wasn’t like they hadn’t left some injuries on his chest earlier, but they had all healed in a matter of seconds. If Lu Ye withdrew his saber now, then all their efforts would be for naught.
Lu Ye was aware of this. That was why he applied Burster to the Inviolable the instant it pierced through Niu Meng’s chest.
There was an outburst of Spiritual Power as countless skewers made of invisible energy exploded into existence. If his target was anyone else, the attack would’ve been enough to kill them ten times over. However, Niu Meng only shuddered in place. He just had that much life energy and tenacity.
Thankfully, Lu Ye had one more trick up his sleeves. He constructed an Explosion next and successfully blasted a hole through Niu Meng’s chest.
There was no denying that the sect master of the Black Tortoise Sect was ridiculously tough. Most ordinary attacks could only burn some skin off his flesh. However, Lu Ye had constructed the destructive Glyphs inside his body. No matter how tough the sect master was, his internal organs could not possibly be as tough as his flesh and bone.
“Moo!”
Niu Meng had not said a word since he emerged from the flesh sac. This was the first time the mindless man who only knew how to kill his foes made a sound at all. Even as his viscera splattered messily across Pang Dahai’s chest, everyone could sense his tremendous vitality suddenly falling into disarray. Following that disarray were clear signs of separation.
That was all Lu Ye got to see before Niu Meng abruptly turned around and threw a punch at him.
He immediately constructed Protection, but the Glyph shattered the instant it made contact with the fist. It felt like he had been punched by a mountain. The next thing Lu Ye knew, he was flying uncontrollably across the air before slamming back first into the flesh wall. He hung there for a good few seconds before slowly sliding to the ground.
His head spun, and his insides churned like a tsunami. For a time, he couldn’t even draw breath until the pain abated a little..
By the time he recovered enough to realize that it probably wasn’t a good idea to lie prone on the ground, at least a dozen breaths had passed since he took the hit. There were dark tendrils encroaching on his vision and threatening to overcome his consciousness completely, but there were just enough flares of Spiritual Power for him to see how the battle was going.
The Great Elder and Pang Dahai were currently working together to pin down Niu Meng. Lu Ye’s saber was still stuck inside the sect master’s chest.
On the other side, Zhou Hai was chasing after a Spirit Beast that looked like a Kui Niu. It was mooing non-stop while desperately trying to dodge Zhou Hai’s attacks.
[It worked!] Lu Ye thought to himself and nearly blacked out again when relief washed over him. He had no doubt that the Kui Niu was Niu Meng’s Chosen Beast, meaning that Zhou Hai and his all-out attack ultimately succeeded in breaking Niu Meng’s Beast Imprint after all. Without the Beast Imprint, it was impossible for Niu Meng to maintain his Beast Form. Of course, they could not rejoin either.
Niu Meng was far, far more manageable now that he had lost his Beast Form. Although he was still overflowing with life energy, he wasn’t that much stronger than a conventional Ninth-Order Cloud River Realm cultivator. In fact, he was far weaker than before because the poison was finally taking effect properly.
Not far away, a woman shakily crawled to her feet and channeled a spell. She was none other than Xia Qianqian.
She wasn’t the only one who survived the onslaught. Kitty Shen, Lan Ziyi, and even the Seventh-Order body-tempering cultivator were still alive. They were all forcing themselves to stand despite their condition because they knew that victory was right within their grasp. It was time to give it their all.
Unfortunately, Lu Ye wouldn’t be able to participate in this final showdown in person. Although he had managed to construct Protection in time, Niu Meng’s final punch before he was separated from his Chosen Beast still hurt him badly. Every time he tried to move, his abdomen would hurt like someone was stabbing his insides. He was pretty sure it was because some bone fragments had gotten inside his internal organs.
That didn’t mean he was completely helpless, however. His Weapon Holder buzzed as nine flying weapons whooshed into the air and attacked the Kui Niu from multiple angles.
The Kui Niu’s fate was sealed from the moment it became separated from Niu Meng. Even though it was as strong as a Ninth-Order Cloud River Realm cultivator, there was no way it could evade or withstand their combined attacks. Not even half an incense stick later, the Spirit Beast lay dead on the floor while a pool of blood slowly grew beneath it.
Niu Meng was still struggling not because he was particularly strong, but because neither Pang Dahai nor the Great Elder lacked the ability to end him in one strike. No matter how many wounds they left on Niu Meng, the sect master was always able to recover thanks to his exuberant life energy.
This stalemate continued until Zhou Hai finally reached them and launched a thunderous strike, causing Niu Meng to skid to a sudden stop. The next moment, his head flew into the air, and his headless corpse hit the floor with a resounding thud.
The battlefield suddenly grew much quieter after that. For a time, the only noise that resounded in the insectoid nest was everyone’s panting.
Pang Dahai let out a string of curses before collapsing on his butt. This was easily the hardest and most exhausting fight he had ever fought since becoming a cultivator. If possible, he never wanted to experience another fight like this, especially if it required him to be a body-tempering cultivator again.
The reason Pang Dahai mostly fought at the backlines even though he was also a body-tempering cultivator was because he was terribly afraid of pain. If the situation wasn’t as desperate as it was, he would never have revealed his hidden abilities.
Suddenly, a flash of light caught everyone’s attention. It came from Niu Meng’s headless corpse.
Zhou Hai screamed, “Watch out!” and attempted to cut the golden light in half. However, the golden light managed to evade the attack before zipping toward the farthest edge of the battlefield; toward Lu Ye!
Lu Ye had been focusing on his recuperation since Niu Meng was dead, and even if he hadn’t, he couldn’t possibly have anticipated that the battle wasn’t over yet. He attempted to intercept the golden light with his nine flying weapons, but it easily dodged them all before zooming out of view. The next thing he knew, he felt a pinprick of pain behind his neck.
Lu Ye instinctively tried to slap it like a mosquito, but all he felt was a massive bump that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago. At the same time, he felt something burrowing into his body and grabbing hold of his cervical spine.
It was the parasite; the one that had been controlling Niu Meng all this time!
From what they learned, the parasite that controlled the Spirit Beast or the cultivator would self-destruct if its host was killed. It was why the cultivators of the Myriad Beasts Domain never found the true reason the Spirit Beasts went insane.
In fact, the insectoids were so elusive that even the cultivators of Jiu Zhou were unable to detect it until one of the parasites tried to take over Amber.
Niu Meng was obviously controlled by a parasite as well, but it would seem that this particular parasite had unusual abilities. Not only was it gold in color, it was actually smart enough to leave its dead host and infect another!
They had all relaxed their guards after the grueling battle. No one realized that the parasite controlling Niu Meng wasn’t dead yet until it was too late.
For a moment, Lu Ye tensed up as if he had been struck by a lightning bolt. At the same time, he felt a ridiculous amount of auras above their heads and millions more in a particular direction. It was where Bilandia was at!
More information had poured into his head, but he wasn’t able to make sense of it before his neck hurt, and the parasite in his neck let out a strange chirp. The next thing he knew, the parasite had burrowed out of his body!
Golden light touched the edges of his vision once more, but this time it wasn’t able to take flight before Lu Ye caught it in one smooth motion. He was wondering what he should do when shadows suddenly cast over his person. When he looked up and saw that everyone was looming over him with severe expressions, he hurriedly said, “Calm down! I’m fine!” while showing off the parasite in his grip.
Pang Dahai was the first to recover from his surprise and ask, “Why did it leave your body?”
The rest of the group were puzzled as well. They had rushed over after seeing the parasite flying to Lu Ye and infecting him. They had thought that they might be forced to perform the detestable. No one expected the parasite to burrow out of Lu Ye’s body, however. It made no sense considering its behavior until now.
Right now, the parasite was struggling furiously to break out of Lu Ye’s grip, but it seemed powerless without a host body to control. Lu Ye was pretty sure that even a low level Spirit Creek Realm cultivator would be strong enough to hold it in place.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re not meant for each other?” Lu Ye gave an outrageous excuse.
He knew exactly why the parasite had left his body, of course. The Tree of Glyphs had come alive the second it burrowed into his body and tried to control him. The Tree of Glyphs could purge even the pill poison in one’s body, so why wouldn’t it work on a body-controlling parasite? If the parasite was slower, it would’ve been burned to a crisp already.
It must be said that the parasite was incredibly “unlucky”. It could’ve chosen to infect anyone else in the chamber, not to mention that Lu Ye was lying at the farthest corner of the chamber too. However, it still chose Lu Ye as its target for some reason—not that it could’ve averted its fate even if it had chosen anyone else.
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