The power of soul cultivators

The beast was a giant hawk almost ten feet tall and thirty feet wide, and was at the early Qi Condensation realm.

John's eyes narrowed as he stared directly at the beast, scythe in hand.

"Let me handle this!" said Miko as he raised his sword and prepared to attack.

Although Miko was also only at the early Qi Condensation realm, he was more than confident in taking down this beast. While ordinary cultivators feared beasts in the same realm as them, Miko was anything but ordinary.

John nodded his head, but internally he was conflicted.

'I really want to test my strength against this beast. Although I don't know if I can beat it, I'm sure I can at least give it a good fight. But my blood essence reserves are limited, and I used over half during the lightning trial. I don't know what other dangers I will face, so I should play it safe for now.'

John took many steps back and watched as Miko casually walked towards the beast, sword by his side. The arrogant look on his face told John that he was not even slightly concerned by this beast's power.

The beast had been sleeping at the top of the tree, which it considered its home. It guarded the fruit, and every hundred years would harvest them for its young. However, just as the fruit were about to ripen to be harvested, it had spotted these two youths approaching, completely igniting its anger.

Screech!

The hawk squawked angrily at Miko, hoping to scare it off, but much to its surprise, Miko continued to approach. The hawk flew up into the air and slashed its wings down directly at Miko. A sharp stream of air, powerful enough to shatter boulders crashed violently down on Miko.

'Clearly the hawk is an air elemental beast. Why are there so many elemental beasts in this world?' John couldn't help but ask himself curiously.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The vibrant green field exploded as dirt and rock was kicked up. The hawk continued to send air attack after air attack towards Miko, making sure to kill him in one fell swoop, since it had felt great danger from the boy.

Che!

A sharp sword light flew out of the cloud of dirt and rock, and struck the hawk in the chest before it could even react. Blood erupted out of the wound as the hawk flew higher into the sky, giving itself more time to react to attacks.

The cloud of dirt soon disappeared, revealing Miko standing there unharmed, although his clothes were quite battered.

"Bastard, these are my favorite robes!" Miko yelled as he noticed the damage.

The hawk squawked in anger at seeing the boy unharmed, and prepared to send an even more powerful attack down towards him.

"I was planning on letting you live if you figured what was good for you and scrammed, but its too late for that now. Die for me!"

Miko focused his mind to his most powerful state and quickly slashed his sword towards the hawk that hovered high in the air. A bright white light that contained a holy aura flew directly towards the hawk, and hit it before it could even react. The white light passed directly through the hawk, but no visible damage appeared on its body.

A second later, the hawk let out one last shrill cry before it fell directly towards the ground below. John watched in shock as the hawk collapsed violently onto the ground, and ceased to move at all afterwards.

As he was watching the attack fly out, John winced slightly as his soul trembled.

'That must have been one of Miko's soul attacks. I'm not even the target of the attack and I felt my soul tremble. I know beasts typically have weaker souls than humans, making it a poor matchup against Miko, but still. How terrifying.'

Beasts typically had extremely strong and durable bodies, but at the same time had weaker souls. This was not an issue most of the time for these beasts, as soul cultivators were very rare, but when they did fight one, they would be at a massive advantage. While there were some beasts that focused on the soul and were exceptions, this quick battle John just witnessed showed just how fearsome soul cultivators could be.

Without a strong soul, the beast wasn't even able to resist slightly as Miko's attack snuffed its soul out of existence. Miko stared at the beast before turning to John with a large smile on his face and quickly swapped out his damaged robes for new ones.

"Haha, that was easy. Lets go get our fruit!"

John nodded his head and joined Miko.

"Hey, can I have this beast's blood essence?" John asked.

"Uhh, sure, just take the entire thing, but what do you need it for?" asked Miko in confusion.

"It aids one of my techniques," responded John. He didn't want to go into too much detail, as it involved his biggest secret, but didn't want to leave Miko in the dark either.

"Oh, okay, that makes sense."

"Anyways, it seems like the tree is clear of beasts now, let's climb and grab those fruits!"

John put away the corpse in his palace realm, and planned to harvest its blood essence later. Although beast blood was no longer efficient for cultivating the Immortal Asura Body, it was still very useful in replenishing his body Qi reserves, allowing him to fight much longer while using the Supreme Battle Art.

John and Miko climbed the massive tree, and took some time to get to the top of it. Bright red fruit, with small black dots soon appeared in their eyes, and both Miko and John found themselves starting to salivate. The fruit released an intoxicating and vibrant aroma.

"Haha, up close these fruit are way more amazing than expected. Coming this way was the right decision," Miko laughed as he started reaching out towards the fruit.

Just as his hand was about to grab one of the fruit, a small shadow darted towards the back of Miko's head.