Prologue: Encountering the Daoists of the Otherworld (part 5)

The youth flicked his fingers and issued an echoing thunder that resounded throughout the wastelands. Consequent to that, a giant sky-blue magic circle with the size of a person emerged from thin air and cascaded its brilliance behind the youth's background.

The appearance of this magic circle seems to change of quality belonging the youth's aspects. Which made the elder worry for a bit as he saw this and couldn't fathom why.

At the same time that Ben Li flicked his fingers, the elder also made his move. Stretching his right hand out front and forming his left hand into a seal, his right arm began to sizzle with smoke as the nerves underneath its skin began to glow red and eventually, set his right arm on fire.

The hot blazing fire did not burn his arm to ashes but had instead gave him power unleashed from his Power Core Cultivation. Instead of the real fire that consumed oxygen to burn, it seems like the elder's fire was made of spiritual substances consuming his energy stored inside his body. Which made the youth interested to how he conjured such flames that almost seemed divine. Yet, the youth couldn't just sit by and relax as the elder swept that fiery blazing hand over at him.

The blazing flame arm seemed to have a transformed into a spirit weapon as it grew into a giant flaming hand with blazing flames blasting out from its fingertips, forming into a Claw strike exuding a scorching aura of coercion!

Seeing such deadly hand coming towards him faster than a split-second, the youth was unperturbed and simply manipulated the magic circle behind him to conjure Elemental Magic Manipulation.

In his retaliation, the youth's right hand formed into a hand blade while a 5-meter sky-blue light beam extended from its fingertips.

Using that hand blade, the youth swept it diagonally towards the flaming hand and bisected it in half with ease. Extinguishing the flaming hand into thin air.

The elder remained unfazed despite seeing his attack easily negated, because at the time after he first attacked was another time to attack again.

Traveling faster than the speed of sound, the elder had managed to arrive behind the youth's blind spot and drove his Qi to full throttle. Enveloping his entire body in powerful Spiritual flames in an instant as he slams down a mighty blazing fist that was heavy as a mountain!

'It seems this lad is quite adept in Spell Arts, I can't underestimate him in this department.' the elder's thoughts raced in lightspeed as he quickly assessed the youth's strength when he saw how easy it was to bisect his attack earlier. 'If I can't rely on my Spell Arts, then I'll just have to settle with my Martial Arts prowess!'

'Take this, Scorching Heavens Fist!'

The elder's attack came fast as a millisecond passing and swept his flaming fist at the youth's seemingly defenseless back. As the Fist exuded a much stronger pressure than before, the youth can actually feel it biting his skin cells. But in the end, it was not enough to faze his composure.

In an instant that the elder brought down his fist attack, the youth's figure blurred and split into two identical figures and dodged the elder's fist to the side by going opposite directions.

The elder's fist brushed past the two figures dodging and hit nothing but empty air and devastated the landscape below by the hot fist pressure brought down.

The elder became alarmed that the youth could split himself into two in an instant and saw the two had turned around to counterattack. Launching their light beams at him like swords stabbing up to the heavens. Targeting his chest.

The elder couldn't fathom how dangerous those light beams were in their hands, but his instincts honed by his experiences could and sensed the danger emitted by those peculiar spell armaments. He immediately reacted to their counterattack by throwing a whirl kick coming from the left. Hitting the two figures before they could complete their attack.

Unfortunately for the elder though, those figures were nothing but illusions conjured by the youth's magic. Bearing no real danger and only tricked the instincts honed by humans. And dissipated into a haze as the elder's kick went right through them with no physical contact.

And as for the real counterattack of the youth, it was from behind the elder's blind spot all along!

The youth appeared instantly near the elder after his illusions had were erased and stabbed his light beam into the elder's back.

Because the youth's light beam was practically made of light itself, the beam just passed through the elder's body without harming his flesh at all. Yet, the elder acted like he did get stabbed by the beam like he was stabbed with a sword and even his face contorted in alarm and agony.

"GAA!!!" the elder screamed in so much pain.

He reacted immediately by flying back by a large distance.

The pain was unbelievably real, yet, when he came to touch his chest, nothing was injured. But after checking himself with his Spiritual Awareness did he realize that his Spirit Vessel was punctured with a gaping hole!

Inevitably, the Qi flowing in his meridians were oozing out from the holes and depleting his Qi reserves at a rapid rate.

'How is this possible?!' the elder panicked as he tried to seal his Acupoints near the gaping holes and tried to mend the holes of his Spirit Vessel. But to his surprise, the holes in his Spirit just wouldn't close up no matter how much he nourished its healing attributes.

To the elder, this was certainly a painful wound that needed immediate treatment at this very moment. If left unchecked for long, it might result in permanent damages with no hopes to ever mend his Spirit Vessel back into tip-top shape. Weakening his initial and maximum strength and energy reserves by a large margin and could even deteriorate himself from the inside.

His strength right now was less than 40% of his maximum. And if he pushes himself too much then it will only weaken himself further.

Realizing that he had already lost the battle so quickly, he stared at the youth, who calmly observing his light beam, in absolute horror.

'I must retreat and report to the others at once!' of all the plans that the elder had devised, a retreat plan was something he did not expect to execute do so shortly.

He inserted his Spirit Vessel inside his Power Core to lessen its deterioration and switched to the supernatural powers of his Physical Body. Dissipating the flames enveloping his body and lit up the nerves underneath the skin in flaming colors as the strength of his physical body had been raised for a temporary moment.

The elder wasn't going to fight the youth anymore as the latter was an enigma with mysteries pulling out from his sleeves. Any further combat will only damage himself or perhaps even kill him on the spot. Concluding this, he swept up the two young men from the ground and fled right away.

Meanwhile, the youth was still keenly observing his light beam that he had used to stab the elder.

What lingered on the light beam were spots of hazy red flames that contained concentrated Spiritual substance belonging to the flame attribute, condensed into some kind of essence that won't dissipate nor erode even without material to contain it.

This unknown essence came from the Spirit Vessel of the elder as the youth analyzed them meticulously like he was looking at strange looking blood that coated his blade.

'Interesting.' the youth's interest was piqued once again as his thought raced in lightspeed. 'It seems that these people from the other world had managed to weaponized the Astral bodies inside themselves into something like a spiritual container to store energy.

'It's fundamentally difficult to convert something that humans can't possibly touch but it isn't impossible either. In order for them to weaponized the Astral body into another form of energy storing body, they essentially needed a catalyst that's extremely radioactive like miasma but doesn't corrode the flesh nor spirit as it stimulates the potential of the life force inside the Astral body.

'They also essentially needed a refining technique that involves refining the life force into energy that's easy to manipulate and store that energy inside a Spiritual Container inside their bodies.

'With that kind of Spiritual weaponizing, it was no wonder that elder could conjure Fire attributed Magic as if he was breathing like a spirit.

'And because he was fighting like a spirit, I eventually deduced that one of his weaknesses was anti-spirit magical attacks.'

The youth concluded so as his train of thought became clearer and deeper. His gaze remained on the light beam and remembered the past days where he had to vanquish evil spirits with this crude magic light beam he effortlessly conjured.

'But why does it seem that when I look at this substance sticking on the light beam, it doesn't seem to be something converted from life force? And not to mention that the elder clearly was older than a century yet he still had a longer life span despite converting his life force into another type of energy to empower his supernatural abilities.

'But what if, it is not the life force that was converted but something else entirely? Something abundant like air or mana?'

The youth's train of thought eventually came to halt as he found no other aspects to deduce anymore.

As he concluded that all valuable information he needed was possessed by the elder he fought just a second ago, he shifted his attention on the elder and soon realized that the latter had changed his tactics. Dissipating his flaming aura and lighting up the nerves underneath his skin, the elder swept up the two young men on the ground with telekinesis and fled away.