Chapter 97: Fire the Fire Drakes

Fu Xi continued to fend off the fire drakes that were descending from the skies to harass us. He bore the brunt of the attack, using his Eight Trigrams Swordsmanship to keep them at bay. He even succeeded in slaying a few of them outright.

Eight different styles…eight different elements. It was an impressive sight to behold, almost as if there were eight different swordsmen fighting together. The eight trigrams glowing brightly as he executed style after style, unleashing eight different elements in response to the growing horde of fire drakes.

The rest had seen what their brethren were up against and they were flocking together, in an attempt to overwhelm Fu Xi's spectacular swordsmanship through numbers alone. Even if he was at the Yellowed Land realm, against such numbers, Fu Xi wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer.

Fortunately, I was done.

Rising to my feet, I activated my killing array. Hundreds of golden beams lanced out and pierced through the fire drakes, outright killing a good proportion of them. They had been so focused on hunting down Fu Xi that they didn't notice what I was doing a few dozen meters away. It also helped because Fu Xi had conjured a bunch of pseudo-mountains with his Gen style in order to hide me from the sight of the fire drakes.

Those mountains had been blasted apart by my golden beams of light and I had directed the lasers toward the most tightly packed cluster of fire drakes, which allowed me to reap a great toll upon them. Their bodies fell to the ground, riddled with many holes.

The rest of the fire drakes turned toward me, spewing torrents of superheated liquid fire from their terrifying jaws. Holding up two spirit talismans, I combined a protective talisman with an ice talisman to conjure a hybrid ice barrier.

Bang!

The flames washed over my shimmering azure barrier, only to be frozen. Using my qi to manipulate the properties of the hybrid barrier, I fired another volley of golden laser beams from my killing array and took out another bunch of fire drakes. They weren't able to react in time, their heads, chests and wings punctured by the lethal rays.

The remaining fire drakes tried to scatter, only to be caught by a raging tornado. Behind them, Fu Xi had used his Xun style to transform his wind blades into a gigantic whirlwind, and he was catching whatever fire drakes that were desperately trying to flee into the skies. With a flick of his sword arm, he sent them crashing down toward me.

I immediately understood his intent. Pointing my finger in the general direction of the struggling fire drakes, I lanced them with another fierce bombardment.

It took about fifteen minutes before Fu Xi and I annihilated the swarm of fire drakes. Honestly, they were still tough opponents. And even though I was able to tap into the rich dragon vein underneath my position to supply most of the qi required to power the killing array, I still felt drained. It was no mean feat to manipulate and control the tremendous amount of energies powering the formation and bind them to my own will.

That was another reason why array masters were relatively rare. It required not just memorization of spirit runes and arcane patterns, but also an adept mastery of the esoteric energies flowing through the formations. A slight mistake and the qi would run rampant, causing the formation to self-destruct and blow up the person who tried to use it. Or, if you were lucky, the formation would just fail to activate.

Good thing Su Yan taught me how to wield spirit arrays or I would have screwed myself over.

"Huff…"

Deactivating the formation, I staggered to where Fu Xi was standing. He seemed just as exhausted as I was, leaning on his sword and catching his breath.

"Heh…seems like we managed to win." he looked up with a grin before wiping the perspiration from his brow. Despite his exhaustion, there was not a single scratch on him. The guy was totally unscathed despite handling dozens of fire drakes earlier.

Wow. What an amazing guy.

Glancing in the direction where I could detect the huge number of what seemed like Mystic Fire Fruits, I also saw that the sun was rapidly dipping over the horizon and the skies had turned a dull yellow. As much as I wanted to rush toward the Mystic Fire Fruits, I understood that we should just retire for the day. Not only would it be night in less than an hour, we were both weary after fighting so much. We needed the rest.

There was no telling what would be waiting for us at the field of Mystic Fire Plants that bore the fruits.

"Let's set up camp and rest for the night," I suggested. Fu Xi nodded, looking grateful.

"Yeah. I don't think I'll be able to walk for more than a hundred meters today."

Under the diminishing sunlight, we quickly erected a tent next to the killing array. I kept it active just in case spirit beasts showed up at night, so that I could use it immediately. That was the best thing about formations. As long as you didn't erase them, you could leave them there permanently. That was why so many cultivators set up formations in their homes, to protect themselves from an attack at night or intrusion from an enemy.

In addition to the killing array, I set up a second formation – a defensive formation this time, the same type that produced a barrier around our campsite. It was the same basic protective array I used during the mission at Starry Forest where we were looking for the thousand year old ginseng.

"With this, we can both sleep. No need to take turns performing sentry duty." I stifled a yawn. "Best to get as much rest as possible. We have a long day ahead tomorrow."

"Impressive."

Fu Xi was studying the formation I had set up, but he was careful not to poke at it. Of course, simply poking and touching the spirit runes and esoteric symbols wasn't enough to disrupt a formation. Even regular techniques might not be able to destroy the spirit runes that constituted a formation. One would require very powerful techniques to destroy them – and the reason why I didn't have to rely on overwhelming firepower to destroy them was because I could use my enhanced sixth sense to detect the currents of qi that flowed along a formation, pick out the weakest spots, and then disrupt them by attacking those critical places.

And those places weren't necessarily where the spirit runes were located.

Of course, extremely powerful cultivators could rely on brute force to destroy entire formations or at least burn out the spirit runes. The winged demonic tiger did exactly just that with its incredible lightning techniques. I shuddered when I remembered how close to death I was at its paws.

Despite my assurances, Fu Xi didn't dare touch the spirit runes. Better safe than sorry, I guess. Especially since our lives would be depending on the barrier generated by the defensive formation to work while we were sleeping. I understood his anxiety to a certain extent.

"Your formation is similar to my Eight Trigrams technique," Fu Xi remarked, much to my surprise. I stared at him questioningly, and he elaborated. "The runes…symbols. It might not be exactly the same, but the technique to tap into ley lines or dragon veins and manipulate natural qi is similar. I would say that my Eight Trigrams Swordsmanship is pretty much a pseudo-formation. One I can execute immediately, but it works on the same principles."

"If you can execute it immediately, I don't see how they work on the same principles." I frowned in bewilderment. Fu Xi laughed.

"No, well…you see, Eight Trigrams Swordsmanship is complex. Even though I say I can execute it immediately, that's not entirely accurate. There are heavy restrictions."

"Huh? Restrictions?"

"Yeah." Fu Xi nodded and sighed, glancing at his sword. "At first, I can only execute one sword style at the same time. For example, if I start with Xun style, I can't execute any of the other 7 styles unless I stop Xun and switch stances."

He rested his sword against his chest, poking the bottom of his scabbard against the warm rock under us. "But once I've executed all eight styles, I will be able to use all eight styles at the same time. It will require some time to activate, but at that time, it will be almost as if there are eight swordsmen fighting simultaneously, each with their own distinct styles."

"Are you sure you should be telling me about this?" I asked incredulously. "You shouldn't be giving away the secrets and weaknesses of your sect's ultimate technique to an outsider like me so easily."

"I trust you." Fu Xi laughed. "If you meant me any harm, you had plenty of chances to stab me in the back. Back then, when I was fighting off the fire drakes…you stayed and completed your killing array to help me wipe them out. I've seen your footwork techniques. If you weren't a decent person, you could have easily surged ahead to where the Mystic Fire Fruits are, take them for yourself, and then escape while I was distracting the fire drakes. But you didn't."

���Even so…" I sighed in exasperation, unable to believe just how naïve this powerful but innocent swordsman was. "You should be more careful."

"Ha ha, sorry." Fu Xi raised both of his hands. "Even though I have not spent much time outside my sect and met very many people, I would like to think of myself as a good judge of character."

He then studied me keenly. "My gut instinct tells me that you are a trustworthy person. And my gut is rarely wrong."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Besides, what can you do even if you know?" Fu Xi grinned confidently. "Will you be able to defeat even a single of my eight sword styles when I can freely switch back and forth between any of them? Most of the times, I don't even need to wait until I complete the formation and attack with all eight styles simultaneously to finish off my opponent."

Then he lowered his voice. "Even before I get to that ultimate move, after executing at least four of my individual styles, I can begin to combine two of any styles together, to counter whatever you throw at me or overwhelm you. That's why I say there are sixty-four variants, including the eight major styles."

Now I understood. Fu Xi didn't just trust me. He was also confident that there was nothing I could do even if I did know about the restrictions of his Eight Trigrams Swordsmanship.

Nonetheless, I had no intention of breaking his trust and sharing what I had just heard with anyone else. His trust would not be misplaced.

"All right." I handed him some rations that would serve as our dinner. We had picked up a lot of the fire drakes' parts which included ruby fire scales, claws, fangs and other stuff, but we didn't bother with the meat. Spirit beast meat was…well, it was edible, but it was incredibly potent. We could easily kill ourselves trying to ingest that, especially with all the qi present in it.

For spirit beast to be safely eaten, we would have to process it first. Refine the qi so that it would be nutritional rather than harmful. Obviously, just because you ate spirit beast with all that qi didn't mean it would help you breakthrough or improve your cultivation, otherwise everyone would risk eating spirit beast meat. It was simply nourishing.

But without the facilities or tools to properly process the fire drake meat, we decided to eschew it.

"Get your stomach filled, then rest for the night." I glanced off into the darkness, still able to sense the cluster of Mystic Fire Fruits even from this distance. "We'll be trying to grab the Mystic Fire Fruits tomorrow. Heavens willing, there wouldn't be any major obstacles…"

Like the fire dragon I heard from the rumors flying among the miners…