Mo Kuang

"So you three are finally here," rasped the figure on the throne. "You have taken your sweet time to get here." The voice was gravelly like the stone grinding.

"The senior must be the patriarch of the Mo Family, Mo Kuang. This junior pays his respects." Nie Li cupped his hands and bowed. He didn't want to make a conflict with someone with unknown capabilities. Girls copied his actions. "We would have visited earlier, but there were too many ghosts in our way."

"Humph." Mo Kuang snorted annoyedly, and turning to Xiao Ning'er asked, "Are you a descendant of the Winged Dragon family?"

She turned to Nie Li not knowing what to say. Nie Li nodded. It was not information that could be hidden from this person. It was Nie Li's fault anyway. He had added their families' coats of arms into their armors just because he thought that it would look cool. He is going to remove them as soon as possible after they get out of here.

"Yes," answered Xiao Ning'er. "Does the senior know my family?"

"Do I know?" hatefully spat out the Mo family's patriarch. "It's your family's fault that I'm in this condition. Oh, how long I have waited to get my hands on one of yours. Torturing those half-mad ghosts of your family does not cut it anymore. Girl, take off your helmet! All three of you, take off your helmets!" he ordered. It looks like the ghost had no wish to talk. But it was no wonder he had a very short temper. Only staying in this world for 6 or so hours was already fraying the trio's nerves. This ghost had lived in this world for 70 years. And he might have been mad even before that.

"Senior, we just want to find a way to get out," said Nie Li in a last-ditch effort to avoid the conflict.

"I said take off your helmets!!!" the former patriarch thundered. All three of them felt great pressure, and dark tendrils appeared and attacked them trying to pry open their helmets.

The armors repelled and disintegrated the tendrils. But Nie Li could feel that this one attack had dried up 15 percent of the armor's charge. This was almost a Black Gold rank attack. They couldn't afford to take many attacks like that.

Mo Kuang looked surprised that his attempt failed. He had full control of the environment near the center of his world. Then he looked at Nie Li who had an inscription scroll in his hand, and said condescendingly, "You think that your tricks will work here?"

"I'll have to try anyway." Nie Li shrugged and activated the scroll. It was not a lightning-type attack because he could feel the strong suppression of lightning nature attacks. It looks like their enemy had prepared for this meeting as well. That means he felt threatened by them, so he is not as strong as he feared.

It was called Sunburst, the Light based mostly harmless technique except for beings that feared the light. It should work against ghosts as well.

When a small bright globe appeared and flew towards him, Mo Kuang looked surprised. Most likely he had expected a lightning-type attack, which would have fizzled out. So he wasn't able to put up any defense in time.

The globe burst out into a large pillar of ambient light that completely engulfed Mo Kuang. He roared in pain trying to get away from the light. It looks like the light-type attacks are really effective against him. Nie Li wasn't sure because Mo Kuang wasn't a normal ghost. He felt more material than the ghosts they met until now.

Before Mo Kuang could come to his senses Nie Li fired another attack, the Life energy blast. It was a completely harmless attack and did what its name suggested. But against ghosts, it was very effective. He hadn't used this type of attack much against the ghosts outside, because he wanted to keep some tricks up his sleeve.

Burned by light, his soul feeling extreme pain, Mo Kuang wasn't able to even notice the second attack coming. This attack was even more devastating. Mo Kuang was only able to let out an excruciating cry before he was disintegrated.

The silence reigned in the chamber. But none of the trio thought that the enemy was dealt with permanently. The scanner detected a brief flare of energy at the red orb when he disappeared. And they were right. The red orb released a dark cloud that slowly started to take humanoid form.

"I am the god and this is my realm! How dare you little pests act presumptuously before me!" the figure shouted. "Now die!!" he said firing three black misty meteors towards Nie Li.

Nie Li could feel the danger those balls contained, so he activated one of the three defensive scrolls he made. It created a light-based half dome in front of them. It should be effective against death energy attacks.

Two of the meteors were dispersed by the barrier, but the third one collapsed the weakened barrier and Nie Li had to take it on his sword. The sword shone brightly and collided with the cloudy meteor. The meteor collapsed releasing a dark blast wave that was countered by the sword's aura and defensive field of the armor. But Nie Li was thrown back by the attack towards the girls behind him.

"Nie Li," shouted the girls worried. They already started to create a new minefield with explosive inscription stones with different elements. Nie Li nodded at them telling them to continue. They weren't a match against this enemy in close range.

The attack was black gold rank. There was no doubt about it. Nie Li expected the Mo Kuang would be at Gold rank most. Because he was at that level when he died. And after turning into a ghost his strengths should have dropped to a low silver rank at best. Even if he got some benefits from this world, he shouldn't have reached the black gold rank. Because it was not easy for a ghost to advance. Especially considering they couldn't integrate with a demon spirit. But he was flinging black gold or gold rank attacks easily.

Nie Li moved to the side, so the girls wouldn't be on the line of attack. Even though their armors could take four or five black gold rank attacks, that would completely drain the power of their armors leaving them practically defenseless. His armor had lost 20 percent of its power already.

Nie Li slashed his sword horizontally. A crescent-shaped wave of extremely high-temperature plasma flew towards Mo Kuang. After modernization, Nie Li's sword could not only turn its edges into plasma but could create any shape out of plasma and control it to a degree. The closer the plasma was to the sword the better Nie Li could control it.

Mo Kuang simply snorted and flicked his hand. The black cloudy wall suddenly rose from the ground and turned into a thick stone wall that took the attack on its surface. The attack hit the wall leaving a burned scar.

"I told you I am the god of this realm. I control everything here." The wall slowly sank to the ground revealing unscathed Mo Kuang. He slowly turned into vapor and sunk to the ground.

The scanner couldn't detect the current location of Mo Kuang because of the dense death energy interference. "Activate the traps!" Nie Li shouted to the girls fearing them to be targeted. But he was the target. He was only able to get a short glimpse of a dark meteor that appeared from underground and flung him into the air. But he was able to regain his bearings in the air and activated two defensive scrolls consecutively.

And he had done it just in time. A large dark jagged sword hit his defenses with tremendous force. The first barrier was destroyed, and the second one was seriously weakened. Before Nie Li was able to get his sword in position the second attack came and broke through the second barrier and hit his armor. The charge dropped to 50%. If this continues like that Nie Li may lose his life here and girls will follow him after. But now Nie Li was ready and from the tip of his sword appeared a huge spear that clipped unsuspecting Mo Kuang on his side. He roared in pain and turned into vapor form and retreated.

He glared at Nie Li balefully. "You dare to resist me? Your deaths will be slow and painful." Then he slightly rose into the air and spread his arms to the sides tilting his head back as if he was praying.

His body and the walls started to release black vapor that spread blocking their view. Quickly the entire chamber was plunged into darkness. Their eyesight was blocked. That is if you don't consider the scanner. For some reason, the black vapor held very little real energy, so it couldn't obstruct scanning.

And Mo Kuang seemed to think that he was invisible now and started to move towards the girls. Maybe he decided that they would be easier targets than him. He got to the border of their 'minefield' and stopped. And Nie Li took the opportunity to attack him. He released the another gold-ranked inscription scroll Firestorm towards Mo Kuang. It was an area of effect attack that could even hit the girls, but their armors would barely notice it.

Mo Kuang, who wasn't expecting an attack from him and was concerned about the 'mines' girls activated, hadn't even noticed the attack approaching before it was too late. Attack hit and a large firestorm appeared burning everything around. Nie Li, who was running after his attack saw the large area that was cleared from the dark mist.

And in the middle of it was a figure of their enemy who was burning like a matchstick screeching in pain. Girls also were adding their bit to the attack by activating the elemental traps near their enemy. It looks like this idiot's grasp of death energy was quite low. Only that could explain why he and his power was so vulnerable against other kinds of energy attacks. Normal death energy shouldn't be so easy to deal with.

But that was a thought for later. Nie Li jumped into the air and with an overhead slash unleashed the full power of his sword on Mo Kuang. A large sword-shaped plasma appeared on top of the sword and hit the ghost. Again Mo Kuang's body was very vulnerable to the attack, and he died.

But this time Nie Li didn't wait for him to resurrect again. He ran to the Mo Kuang's throne and pried the red orb from it and threw it into the center of the 'minefield' where the elemental storm was still ongoing.

"Girls trigger all of the traps near it. Don't allow him to resurrect." Nie Li shouted. All kinds of explosions started to happen around the orb disrupting the death energy forces around it. As Nie Li suspected Mo Kuang was even more vulnerable in this state. A simple light energy explosion near his slowly appearing form sent him back to the orb, howling.

"I am an immortal god! You're courting death!" a new vaporous face from the orb roared. It looks like he was not giving up yet.

"Nie Li we can't continue like this forever. We have used up most of the explosive inscription stones already." Ye Ziyun said.

"You don't have to. Just keep him occupied for a couple of minutes. Also, take these," Nie Li gave them 6 remaining inscription scrolls.

Girls nodded and started hunting Mo Kuang's apparitions before they were able to fully form.