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[AI Cultivation] Chapter 160
🕑 Added 2023-07-12 19:55:47 +0000 UTCAn explosion of spiritual pressure — with actual force — presses the grass into the dirt and causes Wu Yulan’s and Lan Xiaohui’s expressions to change. Though their hearts are still stable, that roar and accompanying explosion is enough for them to lose their cool briefly.
The origin of that roar is the white tiger before them.
For two months, after visiting the Master of Thousand Calamities Palace, the two have ventured into the Forbidden Lands and searched the area relentlessly for the items they needed to cure Yun Fei. Though they never found even a sign of such items, they have become familiar with the demonic beasts and the hierarchy in this place.
This clearing, in the deep forests and valleys of the Forbidden Lands, was the domain of something they called a “Beast Lord” — a supreme existence within its territory. Other demonic beasts would not attack it or challenge it, choosing instead to flee, give way, or even prostrate themselves in front of it. Such behavior was not entirely unusual between demonic beasts, but in the case of the white tiger, it was even more exaggerated.
Furthermore, the Beast Lord would attack anyone that entered its territory with extreme aggression and xenophobia. Nevermind other demonic beasts, cultivators were even higher on its kill list.
As such, every time they ventured into this area, they were aware that the white tiger was hunting them, and, for the most part, they tried to avoid confrontation.
Because the white tiger was a late stage Core Formation demonic beast, and a Beast Lord beyond that.
But today, they’ve decided that it would die.
Wu Yulan was the first to blast forward, wielding her cyan-white sword in both hands and holding it high above her right shoulder. Her movement was so quick that even I find it difficult to track her motion and predict her trajectory.
This was not the [Eternal Moment Swordsmanship] that she had learned recently, but rather her own style of martial arts that she wielded previously. I praise Wu Yulan for her smart decision to conceal her true strength — especially with its vast disadvantages — but even so, I find it a dangerous gamble.
A gamble she ends up paying dearly for.
A burst of black energy emits from the white tiger, briefly forming a halo around its body, and the pressure is enough to slow Wu Yulan down just enough for the tiger to not only defend itself, but to strike pack.
This tiger is as tall as Wu Yulan, and its massive paw is the size of her head and could crush her easily. After all, demonic beasts cultivate their bodies first, and their spirit second.
When it raises its paw and its claws extend through the fur, there is a glimmer of faint light upon the ruinously sharp edges and points. Because of that mysterious and unnatural light, I recognize this white tiger. It is a Devil White Tiger — a beast corrupted by dark and devilish energy, wielding energies of almost entirely pure Yin attributes. Not only is it incredibly destructive, but its energies are extremely venomous — almost as terrifying as Yun Fei’s poison. Once they penetrate the inner vessel, it would be extremely difficult to expel for even a Nascent Soul cultivator, and its damage would spread ceaselessly, withering the spiritual veins and even eroding the soul sea until either the poison or the victim was exterminated.
Wu Yulan’s sword smashes against the white tiger’s claw and stops, as if frozen in mid-air. Wu Yulan’s eyes narrow to thin slits, even as the ice energy of her strike blasts from her sword, at the moment of impact, and washes over the tiger. Though the ground beneath the tiger freezes and crystallizes, the white tiger itself shows no change in status.
A split second later, the claw continues on its trajectory, pummels Wu Yulan’s sword against the side of her chest, and then smashes into her and sends her flying nearly a dozen steps through the air.
Wu Yulan’s sword flies out of her hand, arcing through the air and glimmering as it catches the final rays of the sinking sun, while her body fares no better than the sword, bouncing off the ground several times.
When she finally comes to a stop, Wu Yulan places a trembling hand against the ground, and tries to push herself back to her feet, but all she manages to do in the end is worsen her injury, which causes her to cough up several mouthfuls of blood.
“Yulan!” Lan Xiaohui shouts and rushes forward, their strategy now in shambles.
The plan was rather simple and effective against a beast of low intelligence. Wu Yulan would strike first, restraining herself enough to create an opening in the tiger’s defenses, while also concealing her threat level. Then, Lan Xiaohui, with her more powerful continuous strikes would take advantage of the opening to drive the tiger into a corner, and then Wu Yulan would finish it off with [Eternal Moment Swordsmanship].
But who would’ve thought that even though the difference is just two stages — they are in the early stage of Core Formation while the tiger is in the late stage — that the difference would be this great.
In fact, they knew that it would’ve been a great difference, they just did not expect it to be like this. They even remarked that it takes at least three or four late stage Core Formation cultivators to barely suppress and kill one late stage demonic beast. But this was “common knowledge” for average cultivators. They knew they weren’t average.
Right now, Wu Yulan is likely reconsidering her evaluation of averageness. If Wu Yulan did not possess an enhanced Physique due to my blood, she would be half a step from death, though her current situation is not that far from that state either.
Lan Xiaohui inhales sharply as she takes her first step, and the chaotic swirling of her inner energy comes to order immediately. A gold halo bursts behind her back as her gold core pulses with deep strength and power. Her sword domain comes alive on the top of my vessel, blasting a wave of stillness into the surroundings. I can sense the strange ever-present, yet weak, manipulation of the mysterious laws of space come from that domain clearer than ever before.
As she rushes forward, the tiger turns its attention towards her and without approaching, it swings its paw towards my owner, and a burst of black and purple energy expands from that light on its claws.
Four arcs of black light — as solid as swords — launch from its claws, screaming and howling through the air as it closes the distance towards Lan Xiaohui.
Lan Xiaohui is charging forward with the Vanishing Moon Steps technique, but as the claws approach, I sense her internal energy immediately enact a rapid transformation. Such a rapid transformation would not be possible for her, if it were not for my assistance.
She takes one more step, and before, whenever she stepped on the ground, there would be a black burst of energy from her feet, but this last step, instead, contains purple-white lightning discharges.
Liminality Steps.
She tosses her body into the air, and rotates around her axis, slipping effortlessly between the third and fourth energy arcs. Her body passes through the small opening of lethal might. Only the very edge of her sleeve gets caught in the final arc, as is mercilessly torn to shreds by the deadly energy.
Before her arc reaches its peak, her body suddenly propels forward like a comet, completely defying her own inertia, and she lashes out with my vessel which is shrouded in dark, violent energy.
— Heartless Blood Lily: Autumn-Severing Petals!
When my vessel strikes the claw, the black energy shrouding my sword solidifies and scatters, falling off my edge like petals of a lily flower. Each one of these petals vibrates in a peculiar manner, blurring in the vision of normal, mortal creatures. Even in the eyes of the white tiger, the black and red petals that reflect on its glazed surface are smeared across the space, and within that smear of color, countless swords lurk.
To the Heartless Blood Lily, the petals that scatter in the autumn are not submission to season and nature, but defiance of fate — to cut the notion of death and withering and to overturn the natural order of the universe.
Then, those pupils that perfectly capture the likeness of those petals, moments before they touch the white tiger’s skin, narrow to tiny points, before widening completely. But it is too late.
The petals tremble one final time before scattering, releasing the compressed sword energy.
The white tiger howls; my divine-grade vessel cuts through the white tiger’s claws and sinks into the meat below, severing its right paw; the sword energy within the petals explodes into the tiger’s body, blowing three large holes into its perfectly snowy fur.
Bloody mist explodes into the air.
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Weaver Writing
This fight was supposed to be a short thing done in 600 words to serve as an interlude to the 2 month time skip. I don't know how it ended up this long, and spilled into the next chapter.
