Chapter 67

He smoothly glided across the clearing. As he moved past the injured, down phoenix, it looked up in his direction, as if seeing him. This caused Yuhao to freeze to try and prevent himself from being noticed. The bird stared through him for a few seconds before letting out a sad cry and laying its head back on the floor, gazing sadly in the direction of the younger phoenix and Scarlet King.

Yuhao continued moving towards the Scarlet King, acknowledging that the phoenix sensed him but subconsciously certain that it won't attack him as long as he attacks the evil dog. He didn't know why he knew that, however, now was not the time to be thinking about that.

When he was finally within three metres of the battle, the mastiff had finally completely and utterly beaten the phoenix. While the younger phoenix was not dead yet, the mastiff was slowly and sadistically using its three heads to pull off small chunks of feathers and meat of the bird. The dog seemed to be enjoying this action, as it was making audible growls that sounded like laughter.

Yuhao took one more step before, just as he attacked the evil spirit masters, simultaneously releasing his incorporeal status and swinging down his scythe.

Sensing the appearance of Yuhao, the Scarlet King's right head snapped around in his direction. Yuhao scythe, boosted by the massive strength and sharpness increase from his spirit skill and Shiva's energy, slices cleanly through the left side of the mastiff's right face. The mastiff howled in pain as it felt it receive the injury.

It lunged horizontally from a still position, straight in Yuhao's direction. Rather than attempt to defend himself, Yuhao pushed through the instinct to do so and simply swung his FrostFire spirit once again. His second swing hit the mastiff just as its paw swatted at him. His blade sunk into its shoulder by at least thirty centimetres, cutting through skin, muscle and bone alike. In turn, the mastiff's own paw hit Yuhao and knocked him flying over twenty metres away, almost out of the clearing and directly away from the two downed phoenixes. The hit was barely felt by Yuhao, however, he could feel that his blood energy has decreased by just under one fifth.

Yuhao quickly rolled to the side, just in time to avoid a stomp attack from the mastiff and used the roll to spring himself up on his feet. When he landed, the mastiff lunged again. Yuhao went to sidestep to the left and swing his scythe, however, the left head of the mastiff lunged out and bit onto the FrostFire spirit's handle. Thinking on his feet, Yuhao quickly activated his incorporeal status to negate the physical hold. The mastiff was shocked at losing its grip, only to reel in pain at feeling a hammer slam down on its spine.

With a painful roar, it jumped back almost eight metres to distance itself. Not wanting to give it a chance to reorient itself, Yuhao using his movement technique to sprint after it.

Catching Yuhao moving towards it, the mastiff sucked in a breath before unleashing a dark, red fire blast out of its three mouths. Yuhao used his currently, super-enhanced reflexes to dodge the three blasts of fire. He was fairly confident that this fire would be over his fire immunity limit. The fire blasts behind him contacted the ground and exploded, sending dirt fragments and stones everywhere. One particularly large fragment collided with his back, causing him to stumble.

Seeing its target off-balance, the mastiff roared and lunged for the throat. Yuhao quickly collected himself before grinning, realising that through their fighting, he was now far enough away to not damage the phoenix. Keeping his grin on his face, which the mastiff noticed but disdained and disregarded, Yuhao used, for the first time ever, his Ice Jade Empress Scorpion torso bone.

As soon as he used the spirit bone skills, two particular things happened. Firstly, the exact aura of the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion was unleashed from his body. The pressure it exuded was massive, faltering even the prideful, Scarlet King. Bing Bing, the Ice Empress was over one hundred thousand years older than the mastiff, so that was well within reason.

Alongside this pressure, Bing Bing's unique permafrost domain exploded out from Yuhao's body, turning all organic and inorganic to ice. This even included the moisture in the air, as small 'clink' sounds could be heard from everywhere as the moisture, turned ice, shatters against the ground. The heat from Yuhao's bloodline caused the ice below him to swiftly melt. While the mastiff was unable to melt the ice in the same way and as rapidly, visibly droplets and steam could be heard from the mastiff ice block.

Knowing that he wouldn't be able to move along the ice without slipping as it melted, Yuhao decided to unleash his inner Doc Ock, or from the people on this planet's point of view, his inner Tang San. In deciding on this action, nine fox tails suddenly sprouted from just above Yuhao's tailbone. In the next moment, the tips of these tails morphed into nine separate scorpion stingers before powerfully stabbing down into the ground. These tails briefly tensed, which allowed them to lift Yuhao up off the ground by a small amount. With these new tails to allow him to move, Yuhao rapidly began stabbing and 'crawling' over to the still frozen mastiff.

As he arrived next to the ice block, he allowed himself to descend back on to the floor to get a good grip ad stance. Having experience in not being able to cut all of the way through the mastiff, Yuhao decided to first take out the dog's mobility. Thus, his first swipe of the scythe was aimed at the back-left leg, cutting straight through and severing the paw from the rest of the body. Even being frozen in ice, Yuhao could hear the internal roar from the mastiff as it felt pain which it had never felt before. This roar was accompanied by the ice melting at a slightly faster rate than before.

Yuhao did not want to give the mastiff to chance for the severed part to reattach itself through regeneration, and therefore, willed three of his tails to stab into the severed paw. Upon piercing it, they wrenched it from its frozen position and threw it several metres away, far enough to not give the mastiff the opportunity to be able to reach it.

Not satisfied with only one paw being severed, Yuhao repeated the same process for the mastiff's front left paw this time. However, when he moved to repeat the process once again, the mastiff's intensely hot, built-up energy finally exploded outwards from the ice block, freeing the now, two, limbed spirit beast from its confinement. The explosion swept Yuhao off of his feet and caused him to slide along the ice.

The mastiff meanwhile collapsed on the ground, unable to support itself with only two legs, and a plethora of other injuries. It looked at Yuhao with a ruthless glint in its eye before the energy in its body began surging violently.