Its front claws glowed with a faint blue light, and a cold aura lingered on them, silently telling its opponent that the power of this scratch would not be small.
The Spirit Cat’s strength was on the weaker side, but if it truly landed a solid scratch, the injury would be no joke.
The Black-clothed Cultivator, who was entangled with Hua Jian, did not dare to take the Spirit Cat’s attack head-on.
He had to give up his suppression of Hua Jian and twisted his body to dodge the cat’s pounce.
“Junior Sister’s strength is indeed impressive.” After dodging the cat’s attack, he stood still and spoke with appreciation.
From her dodging his sneak attack to exchanging so many moves with him, he had roughly gauged Hua Jian’s strength.
This girl was definitely not someone who only knew how to bully others with her strength, but a true powerhouse.
The most terrifying thing was that her age was so young. With such talent and age, once she entered the sect, she would definitely start as an Inner Sect Disciple.
“But Senior Brother, your strength makes me a bit disappointed.” Hua Jian, however, did not give the Black-clothed Cultivator any face.
Just now, she was only using her Ling Sword to face the enemy.
In that situation, the Black-clothed Cultivator could only manage to slightly suppress her; he was completely incomparable to Linglong.
When fighting Linglong, Hua Jian had to use all her skills just to contend with her, and winning required finding that tiny sliver of hope under the terrifying pressure Linglong exerted.
This Black-clothed Cultivator did not give her that kind of pressure at all. Fighting him, Hua Jian felt she didn’t even need to use her true killing moves.
To beat Linglong, Hua Jian only had two ways: one was the Liqi Bullet, and the other was the Dream Flower Mist.
But this one… Hua Jian figured she could play him to death using just her vines.
“Next, I should use some of the methods a Wood Element Cultivator should use!”
Hua Jian shouted and threw a clump of black items toward the Black-clothed Cultivator.
“What?!”
The Black-clothed Cultivator’s face changed. He had fought with fellow disciples from Lingcai Peak and knew that few things thrown by Wood Element Cultivators were good.
Seeing Hua Jian throw a handful of pitch-black objects, he hurried to dodge.
The circling black eagle also whipped up a gust of wind to scatter the black objects Hua Jian had thrown.
But what the Black-clothed Cultivator did not expect was that what Hua Jian had thrown was not some secret weapon at all, but simply a handful of black ash.
The real trick was hidden underground.
After dodging the ash, before the Black-clothed Cultivator could steady himself, a large number of thorny brambles suddenly surged from beneath his feet, scaring him into dodging again.
He was familiar with these thorns—they were common plant tools used by Lingcai Peak Cultivators.
Once entangled, breaking free would require a lot of effort.
“Meow!”
The Spirit Cat appeared once again, attacking the Black-clothed Cultivator’s face, trying to stop him within the effective range of the brambles.
Seeing this, the black eagle immediately dived from the sky to intercept the Spirit Cat’s attack.
But it did not expect that the main target of Hua Jian’s attack this time was not the Black-clothed Cultivator, but the big bird itself.
As everyone knew, the combat power of Wanling Sect Cultivators came from their cooperation with their Contract Spirit Beasts, achieving an effect where one plus one was greater than two.
However, once they lost the help of their Contract Spirit Beasts, the strength of a Wanling Sect Cultivator would drop to less than one.
Therefore, dealing with the Contract Spirit Beast first was the best way to deal with a Wanling Sect Cultivator.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”
Hua Jian pulled her long-unused Spiritual Firelock from her Storage Pouch and pulled the trigger on the diving bird.
The Maze Mist Bullet, which had long been loaded in the chamber, instantly ignited, rushing out of the muzzle at a speed invisible to the naked eye and shooting straight toward the descending bird.
The black eagle was already very close to Hua Jian in its attempt to rescue its master. Facing Hua Jian’s sudden shot, it naturally couldn’t react in time.
With a bang, the black eagle’s descending body jerked to the side, and its entire body was covered by an even denser Colored Mist.
It tried to fly back into the sky unsteadily, but Hua Jian gave it no such chance.
She casually threw out several bramble Seeds, accelerating them into a large net that fell over the black eagle.
Meanwhile, Hua Jian calmly reloaded her bullet and aimed the muzzle at the Black-clothed Cultivator, who had escaped the Spirit Cat’s entanglement and was rushing toward her.
Seven steps away, the gun is faster than the sword!
Pop!
The Black-clothed Cultivator’s momentum was abruptly broken, and the concentrated mist in the bullet made him feel like his five senses were significantly blurred.
This mist could not even be completely removed by the Poison-Dispelling Pill he had taken?
A flash of silver was caught by his peripheral vision. He immediately swung his blade toward the direction of the silver flash, knocking back a thin vine with a silver blade tied to its tip.
In the moment he was briefly distracted, Hua Jian brandished her Ling Sword and rushed in front of him.
While swinging her Ling Sword, several vines with gaping maws grew from behind her, snapping at the Black-clothed Cultivator.
The Black-clothed Cultivator was still a young man, after all. He had never seen Hua Jian’s bizarre combat style.
Fighting her was not like fighting one person, but like fighting several people at once.
He rarely experienced the feeling of being outnumbered in a one-on-one fight.
Even so, he swung his double blades so tightly that not even water could seep through, and for a moment, Hua Jian found it difficult to break in.
He was, after all, a talented Disciple who had cultivated in the Saint Sect for several years, which was very different from the new Disciples Hua Jian had faced before.
Those Disciples still retained some of their old habits, and their combat power had not yet formed a gap from that of Loose Cultivators.
But this true Saint Sect Disciple was completely different from a Loose Cultivator. Without special means, Hua Jian really could not take him down.
Ordinary mist could certainly blur his five senses, but the Poison-Dispelling Pill from the Saint Sect was enough to protect his mind from being too disturbed.
Hua Jian’s most proficient method could be said to be ineffective against him.
If the fight continued, Hua Jian didn’t know whether the Black-clothed Cultivator’s Antidote Pill would wear off first or her Spiritual Power would run out first.
After several months of hard cultivation, her endurance had significantly improved compared to before; her mana bar could even be said to have doubled.
But even so, she was still a little worried about her endurance. After thinking it over, she felt she had to use a powerful move to decide the victory in one go.
While continuing to apply pressure from the front, Hua Jian secretly channeled her Spiritual Power.
After the Black-clothed Cultivator blocked her downward sword strike, she suddenly poured Spiritual Power into the Ling Sword.
In an instant, the flowers on the sword’s guard began to bloom.
Metal petals shot out from the hilt one by one, heading straight for the Black-clothed Cultivator’s chest.
The Black-clothed Cultivator cried out in alarm and hurriedly pulled back to dodge, but he was still wounded in the right arm by several petals.
“You actually used hidden weapons!” He clutched his arm and retreated two steps, so angry he started cursing.
Hua Jian was too lazy to answer such nonsensical words. What was wrong with hidden weapons? Wasn’t winning enough?
In a life-and-death battle, would you not use a hidden weapon if you had one? To her, this was a life-and-death battle in every sense.
The Black-clothed Cultivator wanted to move his Spiritual Power again, but he felt a wave of dizziness.
He immediately realized that Hua Jian had coated the petals with a potent toxin—one that even the Poison-Dispelling Pill he had taken could not resist.
Not only did she use hidden weapons, she even used poison!
How shameless!
At that moment, on the other side, the black eagle finally broke free from the bramble net and the Spirit Cat’s entanglement. It wobbled as it took flight again.
The Black-clothed Cultivator took a deep breath, knowing that today he had lost. If they continued, he was afraid he would truly be defeated by this youngster.
“Hmph, Little Black, let’s go!” He took several small fire-red balls from his Storage Pouch and threw them at Hua Jian.
Just as Hua Jian was about to pursue, the fireballs exploded in mid-air, forming a wall of searing fire in front of her.
By the time the flames died down, the Black-clothed Cultivator had long since disappeared.
‘Retreating behind a smoke screen because you couldn’t win?’ Hua Jian alertly observed her surroundings.
Only after confirming that the opponent had truly fled did she breathe a sigh of relief.
She retracted the petal hidden weapons that had performed so well back into the sword guard.
She gently stroked the colorful glowing edges of these sharp petals, knowing that the Black-clothed Cultivator had fled because he was hit by the Deadly Poison on the petals.
If it weren’t for the poison, and if he were only injured, the Black-clothed Cultivator wouldn’t have left so hastily and in such a mess.
Lest anyone forget, the former owner of this Ling Sword was a Disciple Surnamed Hua from Wanhuagu.
Could the Spirit Tool used by such a figure be bad? Could the poison coated on it be weak?
Hua Jian’s Colored Mist was helpless against the Black-clothed Cultivator’s Antidote Pill, but the poison from Wanhuagu was different!
That Black-clothed Cultivator was going to have a hard time now.
……
High in the sky of the Secret Realm, several floating pavilions remained that could not be seen from below.
This was temporary housing provided by Jade Pool for the examiners of the Ascension Gathering, and it also served as the examiners’ dedicated fountain.
When the Black-clothed Cultivator walked in through the door, clutching his arm and stumbling, the other Disciples who were eating melon seeds in the pavilion were instantly amused.
“Oh, look at you. Could it be that you were ambushed by one of those little kids?”
They knew exactly what the Black-clothed Cultivator had gone out for this time. To put it bluntly, he went out to bully the juniors on official orders.
As it turned out, not only did he fail to bully them, but he was also ambushed in return and came back with injuries.
“That youngster’s strength is quite unusual. I think she has the talent to enter the Inner Sect directly.”
The Black-clothed Cultivator defended himself, then hurriedly asked the Cultivators there for an Antidote Pill.
“Give me some Antidote Pills; the poison I was hit with isn’t normal.”
“You didn’t bring your own?” a Cultivator wearing the Tiandao Sect Waimen Disciple uniform couldn’t help but ask.
“I did, but it had no effect.” The Black-clothed Cultivator tried his best to control his body.
It was okay at first, but now he felt as if his entire body was about to catch fire.
The poison on that sword was truly terrifying; even the Poison-Dispelling Pill he had prepared was completely useless against it.
“Useless? Let me see.”
A young girl from Jade Pool quickly put away the playful expression on her face, ran to the Black-clothed Cultivator’s side, and unfastened the clothes around his wound.
Looking at the already ulcerated wound, the girl froze for a moment before speaking the name of the poison in disbelief.
“This is Wanhuagu’s Body-Burning Fire. Those poisoned will feel as if their entire body is being scorched by fire, and their desires will be unbearable. If the poison is not neutralized in time, they will—”
She paused and softly spoke four words that made the men present turn pale.
“() () death!”