Chapter 182: Falcon and dragon
As the Star Mole Dragon was still a bit stunned, Elder Ying propelled himself toward it. He tucked his wings and his shock wave blew away several trees in the valley. The very mountains trembled. And he reached an unbelievable speed while his Qi was gathering around him. For all intents and purposes, he became a literal dart launched toward the demonic beast.
Just before he could reach his target, the Star Mole Dragon shoved his claws into the ground. In front of it, two walls of stone appeared from underground to act as shields. His own blackened Qi gathered all over these walls. The moment Elder Ying collided with them, they exploded into dust but his own momentum got stopped. Just before the Star Mole Dragon could attack him with its tail, tens of wheels of fire appeared on both sides as well as behind the demonic beast. Huang Liyue was controlling them to distract the creature.
Unfortunately, her own cultivation was too weak to fight off such an opponent. It didn't mean she had no way to help the Blue Mane Falcon though. Some rotating iron fans were able to superficially wound the tough skin of the subterranean dragon. Disregarding the attack, the Star Mole Dragon knew that its most dangerous threat was the Blue Mane Falcon. From around his nose, fleshy tentacles coiled around the bird to try and prevent his wings from opening again. Its black Qi spread all around its prey as Elder Ying regained his composure.
Sensing the threat, Elder Ying tried to ignite his own wings with his blood but the constriction was too powerful for him. A Star Mole Dragon had an incredible physical strength as it literally spent its life digging into dense rocks. On the other hand, a Blue Mane Falcon essentially relied on his speed and on diving attacks from the air to kill his preys. He clearly lacked the strength to free himself. And the Star Mole Dragon was resisting the heat he was generating around him. Yes it was slowly burning its fleshy tentacles but it seemed not to care.
Up in the sky, Huang Liyue continued controlling the iron fans who were harassing the demonic beast. But this was not enough at all. She pointed to the sky and several iron fans aligned themselves with her finger. From the wheel of flames behind her, several tongues of fires coiled around the rotating fans. Their rotation was becoming faster and faster as the flames around them were flattening and spreading. These iron fans were so close they looked like one unique flat plate from which blades of blazing fire were coming out.
Suddenly, Huang Liyue sent this rotating disc hurtling toward the ground. As it was tearing and burning the air around, a powerful screech echoed throughout the valley as though a Fenghuang was soaring through the sky. It attracted the attention of the Star Mole Dragon but too late. Due to the weak attack from the fans it was experiencing, it had completely disregarded the human and it was going to pay the price for this mistake. Huang Liyue knew that even with all her strength, she would be hard pressed to penetrate its skin very deep. Hence, she didn't aim for its body.
Instead, the burning disc sliced through the fleshy tentacles keeping Elder Ying on the ground. The flames around the iron fans were extremely concentrated and incredibly thin. They sliced through those appendages like they were nothing at all. Even the black corroding Qi around them did nothing to protect them from being cut off. And as soon as his was free, Elder Ying opened his wings as wide as he could. With a powerful fluttering of his wings, a firestorm got created and went toward the 9-core demonic beast.
Engulfed in flames, the Star Mole Dragon tried to go back underground but Huang Liyue had won an inch and she wouldn't back down. The wheel of flames behind her turned into two majestic wings in which all colors seemed to harmoniously meld together. All her incandescent iron fans flew down below. This time, they didn't attack the body of the beast, neither did they aim toward its face. This time around, Huang Liyue went for its limbs. Accompanying the iron fans falling from the sky, the wings behind her threw down feathers of fires. They almost looked like columns of flame falling down from the sky, as if the heavens were intervening in the world.
The Star Mole Dragon did not repeat its mistake and took her attacks seriously. Using its tail, it chased away some fans and retracted its hinder legs under its body. However, it really needed its front legs with their claws to protect its head. The firestorm from Elder Ying collided with those claws and sharp discs of flames tried to cut through them. Of course, they were incredibly tough, even tougher than its own bones. Only its skull was maybe as tough as its claws. Small tendrils of flesh began to come out of the sliced tentacles around its nose as the demonic beast was slowly regenerating.
Flapping again and gain, Elder Ying produced many firestorms to completely overwhelm his opponent. At the same time, he regained some altitude and prepared another diving attack. Completely overwhelmed by all those attacks, the Star Mole Dragon felt small cracks slowly weakening its claws. Without hesitation, it plunged them into the ground. Underground, its Qi spread and infused the ground.
Elder Ying opened his wings which became as sharp as blades thanks to a layer of blue Qi. He dived toward his opponent to literally slice it in two halves. Just as he was about to collide with the demonic beast, triangular walls of stone emerged around it. All of a sudden, they formed a robust pyramid. Changing his course at the very last moment, Elder Ying's wings cut one of the walls. A perfect line lacerated the stone and the wall fell beautifully on the ground. And just as the dust was settling, tens of sharp stone spikes flew from the opening toward both Elder Ying and Huang Liyue.
Elder Ying was attacked in the back. But he felt the disturbance in the air and acted quickly. While he was flying upward, he closed his wings and spiraled several times to pass through the barrage of spikes. Not a single one even scratched him. On the other hand Huang Liyue who was farther and way smaller had no problem whatsoever to avoid all the attacks. However, she also had to divert a part of her concentration to control Huang Cixi who was floating in the air alongside her.
They had no time to breathe. If the Star Mole Dragon went back underground, the fight would extend in time and they would be in more danger. Gathering all her spiritual senses, Huang Liyue used them against the demonic beast. A huge advantage that human Spirit Warriors had over demonic beasts were indeed their mind. What characterized a Spirit Warrior compared to a Mortal Warrior was the formation of a Soul Embryo. Once such a Soul Embryo was formed, it gave spiritual abilities to the cultivator. And in the final stages of the Spirit Warrior realm, the embryo even contained parts of the cultivator's mind or all of it. As such, this Soul Embryo could allow a Spirit Warrior to survive the death of their body for some time. But it would ultimately disperse as well, resulting in the true death of the cultivator after several months or years depending on the cultivation level.
Right now, Huang Liyue used a spiritual attack against the Star Mole Dragon. The beast felt a gigantic pressure all over its body and got incapable of movement. Huang Liyue couldn't maintain it for very long as the beast was trying to resist with its powerful body. But she didn't need to because Elder Ying was used to fighting alongside humans and knew exactly what was going on. Expertly, he changed his course once more and dived toward the Star Mole Dragon.
Elder Ying knew perfectly well where he wanted to strike. He sent another firestorm just before reaching his target, blowing away all the walls of stone protecting it. His claws penetrated the black body of the beast. And with his beak, he ripped apart pieces of flesh. Through the gaping wound, spurts of blood stained the beautiful feathers of the Blue Mane Falcon. But his own body was so hot and surrounded by Qi that all this blood began immediately to boil and some small drops even vaporized instantly. Under the effect of the pain, the Star Mole Dragon squirmed like crazy, straining Huang Liyue's mind. She was really at the limit of her endurance. If she persisted, she could endanger Huang Cixi as she was using her mind to keep her in the air.
Behind all the blood and flesh, a lustrous red light shined through. Elder Ying had targeted one of the 9-cores of the demonic beast. It was a gorgeous gem surrounded by various organic tissues. Now exposed, the 9-core was quickly ripped out of the beast's body by Elder Ying. This time, the pain and fury of the Star Mole Dragon completely annihilated the spiritual pressure of Huang Liyue as the beast writhed and squirmed like a dying fish. In its furious movements, it chased away Elder Ying who spat out its 9-core away.
Deprived of one of its 9-cores, the Star Mole Dragon had lost a huge part of its energy. But with its despair, it became even more dangerous as it was ready to die with its opponent. Sadly for the beast, it now lacked the strength to take the bird down. Elder Ying simply flew around the bleeding beast and launched several firestorms toward its wound. Writhing in pain, the Star Mole Dragon tried to protect its innards and was attacked by the claws and beak of the Blue Mane Falcon. High in the sky, Huang Liyue focused her mind and controlled the majestic wings still behind her. They came down as torrents of flames toward the creature. Twisting around the body of the beast, they invaded the wound and attacked it from the inside.
Using this as a distraction, Elder Ying attacked another spot on the exposed belly of the beast, ripping away another of its 9-cores. The end was near. Thankfully, unlike a human cultivator with his Dantian, a demonic beast could not detonate its cores. They were just crystallized Qi that supplied energy. The massacre lasted several minutes considering that a 9-core demonic beast was extremely resilient. But as its cores were ripped away one by one and its organs exposed, the Star Mole Dragon finally stopped moving around. With one final attack, the Blue Mane Falcon landed on the head of the gigantic dragon covered now in blood and dirt. He pierced its skull with his beak and through the opening, Huang Liyue threw a column of fire inside. In one last spasm, the demonic beast died.
As Huang Liyue and Huang Cixi were floating down toward the ground, Huang Cixi observed the valley. It had been severely damaged and a few lesser demonic beasts had been killed, unable to flee away. Of course, the Huang family had enough resources and Spirit Warriors to repair most of the damage, but in her mind, she was already calculating the cost of such an operation. One of the mountains had even been pierced through in its center by the Star Mole Dragon when it first appeared. Clearly, she couldn't keep training here. While she was noting all the damage, she saw Elder Ying who was gathering the 9-cores remaining in the demonic beast's body. He also collected the ones he had ripped away and put them all together. Despite the gigantic size of the demonic beast, its cores were the size of a big fist.
9-cores were extremely rare. And all nine of them had been taken out of the demonic beast. Moreover, its body was mostly intact, apart from the head. This meant that they could collect lots of resources from it. And as she was thinking about it, Huang Liyue used her spiritual energy to extract the blood from the beast. Draining blood and other fluids was essential to preserve the body as long as possible. Even in a spatial ring, keeping a body with all its fluids inside was a terrible idea. Hence, Huang Liyue took out several containers and controlled the blood of the beast to drain its body completely. Now that the beast was dead, she could easily control mentally its innards without problem.
A living being was always surrounded by several layers of Wei Qi. But once dead, Huang Liyue had no problem to send her spiritual senses inside the corpse and controlling it as she saw fit. After she took out all the blood and fluids, she enveloped the beast with her spiritual senses and her Qi to send it into her spatial ring. Once again, if the beast had been alive, its Wei Qi would have prevented Huang Liyue from doing that unless it was extremely weak. Moreover, only inanimate object or corpses could be sent into a spatial ring or they would instantly die. Unfortunately, it was impossible for a Spirit Warrior to literally store his armies of cultivators or demonic beasts in his spatial ring to use them on the battlefield...
Huang Liyue took the corpse of the demonic beast but did not touch the 9-cores. Indeed, Elder Ying had kept them at his feet and showed no sign of letting them go. Although he was a demonic beast himself, Elder Ying was considered as a full-fledged member of the Huang family. And he had rights on the spoils since he had killed this beast mostly alone, Huang Liyue had just assisted him. That was why he let her take the corpse.
Surprising everyone, Elder Ying took the nine 9-cores in his beak and walked toward Huang Cixi. Then, he let them fall right in front of the young girl. Nodding his head forward without a small cry, he made her understand that he gave them all the 9-cores. Such a gift was incredible. A single 9-core contained almost as much energy as an early Spirit Warrior's entire body. With just one of those 9-cores, Huang Cixi could cultivate for more than a decade. Shocked at first, Huang Cixi took one of them and felt its incredible energy. Just by absorbing a little surge of Qi that naturally escaped the core, she felt several of her acupoints opening up. She even had to control herself to stop other acupoints from opening. If she went too fast without controlling the process, she could lose some benefits.
Huang Liyue was also utterly shocked. But those 9-cores were the spoil of Elder Ying and he could do with them as he wished. Now she had to concern herself with other problems. How did such a powerful demonic beast arrive here?