Dyon continued his steady rhythm, leading the celestials further and further away from their clan without a single bead of sweat on his face.
Every time they would get close, he would flash forward again. He even made a showing of favoring the leg he used so that the celestials would become more and more cocky. It was to the point where they didn’t even send the signals they were supposed to. They were clearly blinded by greed.
The celestial movement technique usually required wind, space and celestial will, and despite its name, it was a great assassin’s technique because the celestial will was meant to erase your presence. Unfortunately, Dyon had always neglected his movement techniques because he relied so heavily on his calculations in battle. Simply put, he had other things that raised his battle power more efficiently, and because he had spent so little time in the martial world and rarely ever got a true break, he simply didn’t have the benefit of splitting his attention.
While he thought of using the Florence family technique to learn it, the efficiency of a clone in learning a technique obviously paled in comparison to himself. This was the flaw of the Florence family technique. It was much better used to gain affinity for wills. But, since Dyon now had the perfect bodily constitution, the technique had become completely useless to him and he now regretted using his master’s blood essence to power it.
However, hindsight was 20/20. The road of cultivation couldn’t be tread without mistakes, and Dyon learned that the hard way.
Because of all of these reasons, Dyon had only managed to cultivate the movement technique to the second stage of the first act of three. So, it was nowhere near what it would be at its peak. Not to mention the fact the technique itself wasn’t very compatible with Dyon. He couldn’t be blamed too much though. He hadn’t known anything about cultivation when he chose it, and his master had long since sealed herself away, so he just chose the best technique the celestial deer sect had to offer. Who could turn down a low-level divine movement technique? The martial world would salivate over such a thing.
Hours passed by, but the celestials still didn’t seem agitated. They knew how powerful Dyon was, and it was no big deal for a saint to be capable of keeping up their top speed for about this long. The trouble was that the sun was beginning to set… What they didn’t notice was that within the red and purple hues left by the sun, hid arrays that were slowly being formed beneath Dyon’s feet. By the time they realized, it would be too late. Dyon had waited for the perfect moment to execute this.
Normally, any array creation would come with it a flash of light. But, with Dyon’s abilities, and the clever use of the environment, they couldn’t tell the difference between the dying sun rays, and the arrays!
Suddenly, the celestials began to grin. From what they could see from Dyon’s back view, he was drenched in sweat and his skin was paling. Even his once freely flapping linen shirt was clinging to his skin, clearing matted in a clear liquid.
“It looks like the little thief is finally tiring out. Keep running little mouse, we’ll see how long you can go for!”
Laughter filled the quickly darkening forest, however Dyon showed no reaction, only continuing along his path as though nothing was said. If those fools paid any real attention, they would have noticed that it had been a long while since Dyon had used his movement technique, yet his speed was steadily getting further and further away from them. If he was tired, then why was he still able to speed up?!
After another half hour, one of the celestials finally realized that something was wrong. But, by now, the forest was filled with an eerie quiet that was only cut through by the soft sound of feet hitting tree branches. As for why they didn’t fly, why use more energy when it wasn’t necessary? Plus, few had the nimbleness necessary to fly in a dense forest. Although crashing into trees would hardly slow them down as celestial experts, they cared a bit too much about saving face.
‘A circle?’ The celestial suddenly felt apprehensive. His mind was a bit clearer than the rest, so he felt like he had been here already. In the dark, they were far more susceptible to this trick, but after years of being a border patrol guard for the Viserions who were constantly in the state of war, he had grown to have a cautious personality after seeing the fates of his fellow guards who slacked in their duty.
“Fellow clansman, there’s a trick!” The moment the celestial saw Dyon burst with an extra bit of speed, he was absolutely certain. Unfortunately, he was too late.
The reason why Dyon was sweating profusely wasn’t because he was tired of running. He was hardly using any of his strength, with his regenerative capabilities, how could he be tired?
The truth was that Dyon had been steadily playing arrays for the past few hours, leading them around in such a large circle that it wasn’t until the end that they noticed that something was wrong! Because of how tyrannical using the aurora flame stones were, it was no wonder that a heavy price was being weighed on Dyon’s body. This was especially so since Dyon was no longer using the purple-gold stones…
No. The stones he used were filled with streaking comets!