The whole Jade Grass City was in an uproar. Everyone was hiding in their homes or running for their lives, people were in full panic mode the moment they got wind of two nascent soul cultivators fighting it out in the city. This was a city with millions of people in it, but there were no such things as the police force or a fire department to help people out in the time of need.
Every prominent clan or sect that was living here just closed off their doors and hid away in their mansions, protecting themselves behind their defensive formations. The people with the lack of these sorts of protective measures either hid in the cellars or tried seeking shelter somewhere else, even deciding to run outside and wait it out in the nearby mountains.
While everyone was running around like headless chickens a certain elegant looking gentleman was standing at a large gate. The gate looked to be made from pure gold and it had two winged serpents entangling the columns on each side. Right at the top of the gate, there was a large red sign with the words ‘Yinglong Pavilion’. Behind it was a large building that looked like a reverse triangle with the bottom flattened.
The man was sticking out like a sore thumb, mostly due to what he was wearing. He had a very western looking tuxedo, pure black jacket, and trousers that had a satin stripe. Under the jacket, he had the usual black vest and white dress shirt. He wore nice black leather shoes and his cufflinks had a dragon shape to them. The whole getup was completed with a black-tie and a monocle that the man was fiddling with. His gray hair and beard went quite well with his refine gentleman looks, which made you think that this was some kind of butler that worked for a noble.
“Reporting to Lord Tian!”
The man nodded at the other person that looked more like your traditional cultivator as he was wearing a robe. This robe had a similar winged golden dragon pattern on the back like the one on the gate.
“Following the large explosion, the Sect elder that was at our auction house had left towards its source.”
“The explosion originated from the Colosseum where the Dao Festival was taking place this year.”
“The sect that owns this town had sealed off the access to the building before our men could get more information, but after a further inspection this is what we have found out…”
The man started telling his superior about the fight inside the arena building and the two nascent cultivators that burst out of it. One of them was the Dark Palm Sect Wu Ming that was a special guest at this branch auction house. The man also brought over the info that the two were seen destroying the main base that the sect was located at. The man called Tian was given Zhang Dong’s description and that he was an unknown cultivator that suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It was unclear how or why the man sneaked into the city, but they were speculating that he probably hid his cultivation level.
“After the two nascent soul elders left a group of cultivators belonging to the Feng, Huo and Zhang clan came out. They showed hostility towards the Dark Palm Sect that was blocking people from getting out of the Colosseum building. A fight ensued soon and they left in the direction of the docks. It is unknown if they are related to this incident but it’s highly likely…”
“Hmmm…Quite interesting…”
The butler looking man nodded while thinking about something.
“Announce my message to everyone, the Yinglong Pavilion will stay neutral in this matter. Activate the defensive formation and bring all the treasures to the main vault.”
The man clasped his hands and headed inside, moments after the sound of the defensive formation activating was heard and a barrier flickered around the large Pavilion building. The man himself remained outside, his eyes focusing in one direction as he felt a battle taking place.
‘They began their battle… that one is Wu Ming… the other one… quite peculiar…’
The man fixed his monocle while slowly floating up and standing on the large gate as if he wanted to get a better view of the battle.
‘Wu Ming’s opponent is in the early stage, but still…’
Thunder and lightning resounding throughout the area, giving even this dandy looking man a shock. The man wasn’t going to get involved in this, but he was quite curious. Who would attack a large sect in one of their cities out of the blue, was this a prelude to something larger?
‘Quite peculiar, indeed. A storm might be coming to these lands… maybe something interesting will finally happen!’
The man chuckled to himself and peeked at the battle through this monocle, the item enhancing his view to the point that he could even see the two fighter’s silhouettes even though they were multiple kilometers away from him. He zoomed in just in time to see the two men clash with each other, the shock-waves from their clashes reverberated right towards the city and caused many mini earthquakes.
Matt floated back and looked to his arm, he was holding onto a hilt of a sword. Yes it was mostly just a hilt now as the blade of this sword of his had been cleanly sliced off after a couple of exchanges. The weapons that he had were only of the earth grade, so they had no chance of lasting against that man’s black sword that was a heaven grade treasure.
“You’re a slippery bastard and you don’t even have a weapon!”
Wu Ming scoffed at his opponent, he was slowly getting into the groove. Ever since he pulled out his sword he was on the attack, his opponent had already gone through multiple weapons. He had sliced and diced them into scrap metal each time and finally noticed that this poor sap didn’t have any high-level treasures.
“I’m not convinced, who are you really, stop hiding your real age!”
Elder Ming was also unconvinced about this man’s origins. The part about being a renegade cultivator was probably true, but Zhang Dong’s youthful appearance was throwing him off. A nascent soul cultivator below the age of two hundred was already hard to find, but this man looked to be below the age of a hundred. For this reason, the man had a theory that he was using some kind of high-level disguise technique.
“Hiding my real age? What are you on about?”
Matt threw the destroyed sword hilt into his spatial ring, not bothering to pull out another one. The items that he had weren’t able to handle his increased cultivation level, so even if he wanted to use them they would start crumbling. His opponent didn’t even have to destroy them himself, if Matt pushed his energies into the blades they would start to burst from the inside. The weapons at the earth grade just weren’t able to hold the massive nascent soul Qi load that was getting poured into them.
Wu Ming pointed his dark jian at Zhang Dong and continued.
“You are clearly hiding your true appearance, there are no masters on your level that are this young, what’s your purpose here, are you trying to start a war?”
From Elder Ming’s perspective this man was plotting something, he had already mentioned the sect that the Dark Palm sect was on bad terms with previously. This made him think that this opponent was from a third group, one that would gain something if they and the Demon Subduing Sect went to war. There were a couple of options here, but there was nothing to he could go off of here. This man was a mystery and he used a strange cultivation method that he never had seen before.
“Hiding my true appearance? Buddy, I think you have things mixed up here…”
Matt didn’t really care what this man thought about at this point, he would be taking him out one way or another so he didn’t have to lie anymore. The only thing he had to be careful was from other people that might be listening in on them.
“I’m just your regular thirty-two year old, but enough about me, I have a question for you.”
“Are you considered strong in your sect?”
Zhang Dong moved his hand to his chin and looked upwards to his enemy, the old man not looking too happy about the whole ordeal.
“What? Of course, I’m one of the core elders of the sect, the only one that is truly above me is the sect leader!”
The man stuck out his chest as if he was happy with his proclamation, he was also hoping to give this man a fright by saying that he was on the stronger side.
“Is that so…That makes things… easier.”
Zhang Dong moved his hand to his neck and proceeded to crack it a couple of times before slowly rising up.
“You did well to handle my strength at 15% of my true power, but what will happen if I further increase it to 30%!!!”
He shouted out the last part dramatically, his body began radiating with the already familiar golden light but it was a lot more condensed this time around. Matt wasn’t really being serious with the percentages, he also had no way of truly measuring his own output as they did in some shows that he watched back in the day. He still wanted to say that line, it was something that the people in this world weren’t all too familiar with.
His body flickered as he activated the higher tier version of his Embodiment of the Thunder God. His eyes started turning white, golden lightning bolts flickering on and off within them. His white locks shifted into golden energy and rumbling of thunder filled the area as he charged forward. Before his opponent could even flick his sword, he was able to blitz him thanks to his increased speed. The Dark Palm elder found himself with a footprint embedded into his cheek as he received a swift kick that propelled him into some boulders on the side.
Matt had already spent some time exchanging blows with this man, he had figured out a couple of things during this. For one, he was in no way weaker than someone at the middle stage of the nascent soul level. He also noticed that if he remained in close-quarter combat at all times, the other person’s battle prowess dropped significantly. He had a theory concerning that, it was probably mostly due to the upper-level cultivators spending more time learning large scale attacks than sticking to the basics of combat.
Matt was still someone relatively fresh to all this battling nonsense. He had only two years of fighting under his belt and he wasn’t afraid to duke it out at close proximity. This was also attributed to him having quite the strong body refining technique that made him impervious to most damage and lowered the pain that he felt.
On the other hand, the most powerful cultivators had long abandoned the early gained techniques. Exchanging them for grander ones, but the harder the technique the more Qi it used, and the longer the activation time was. Sometimes the basics were the way to go, it was far easier to deliver a simple kick or punch to your enemy than to focus on that flashy finisher move to end it all. Even the swordmasters that you’d think would fight at close range, mostly used some ranged slicing attacks that parted the rivers. You didn’t actually see them exchanging blows with each other at close range instead, they clashed with their strongest attacks that were backed by their Dao.
‘I only learned that one new move it would be wise to just end it like this, but…’
This was also why Matt was staying close to Wu Ming. He didn’t really have any nascent soul moves beside one that he learned during this week. This was the safest way of winning this fight, just using his superior cultivation method that gave him better all-around stats than this person that probably knew some peculiar techniques that could shift the tide of this battle. There was also a flip side to this, he wouldn’t really learn anything new, he wanted to test his limits while he had the chance to do so.
‘I guess, I’ll give him some time to recover.’
“Is that all? Is this what a Dark Palm sect elder amounts to?”
Matt flew upwards into the air and looked down at Wu Ming, the man shook the rubble off his robe. His body flickered with shadowy light as he jumped upwards. He began making some strange hand gestures that culminated in him putting them together. The moment he did that a spike in spiritual energy was felt by Matt in the area and something started appearing from behind him.
It looked like a mass of black energy that was getting sucked into a certain spot. The energy started taking form soon after, Matt clearly saw something being created out of nothing. This ‘being’ looked like a massive looking Raven. This being of shadowy energy was even larger than he was in his avatar form as it towered over him.
“That certainly is a big boy…”
Matt commented while looking at the two beady eyes that were locked on to him.