"Should we get going?" Wei Ying suggested as she took out a few pulls to help restore her qi.
The rest mirrored her actions as they each consumed different objects to replenish their qi.
The fight had drained them to almost their last reserves, better to restore a bit of it now rather than delay it even with the fight finished.
It was one of the things emphasized in their adaptation classes by Dean Chu Zhen who from his own personal experience when he was trapped in the Myriad Beast Sect's wasteland for all those years, had learned intimately how important it was to have even the tiniest bit of qi. It could be the difference between life and death, in a dicey moment, and if you were stuck in an area where you couldn't replenish it naturally, better to have dozens of supplementary means to do it.
This was why every graduate who took his classes, always had hundreds of pills, potions, and natural treasures on them, and in case they couldn't access them fast and were in desperate need, the dean had even created a few utility spells and techniques that enabled them to store a bit of it on their bodies. They could release it with just a thought.
After hearing of Dean Chu Zhen's harrowing ordeal because he became an instructor of the Order, the students understood his over-preparedness on certain things, and because they had his story as a cautionary tale, almost every single student who took the adaptation and cultivation classes had qi replenishing measures embedded on their body somewhere.
Yang Qing even with his abundant qi reserves was one of those people, and the judges next to him were all the same. They each had those measures on their body to act as an emergency trump card, should they need it.
"Can you give me a second first to say goodbye.." Yang Qing said as he pointed to a withered branch that was barely hanging on.
As he was about to agree to Wei Ying's suggestion he heard the branch weakly call out to him.
It was the Wisteria tree, a husk of its former self. All the beauty, splendor, and mystical qualities it had earlier had vanished and all that was left behind was a single withered branch about the size of half his arm, withered and looked to be just about on its last legs.
The judges nodded, but just as Yang Qing was about to head there, his pupils froze, and a millisecond later so did the rest of the judges.
Acting in one mind with zero hesitation, the five judges instantly formed similar seals that launched to the ascendant grade treasure above them.
Five golden lights disappeared into it, and the treasure instantly let our a dark light accompanied by a pressure that not only surrounded the entirety of the Ice Emerald Sect's territory but it even spread outwards to the surrounding territories.
A few palace realm experts who were still lurking about kilometers away got caught up in the dark radiant light of the treasure and its pressure, of which the ancestor of the Twin River Empire was one of them.
All of them, irrespective of their cultivation base, were frozen on the spot. They could feel the overbearing weight of the universe fall upon them, instantly pinning their bodies to the ground as a primal fear welled in them. They could not move; not their limbs, their qi, or even bat an eye, all they could do was wait helplessly for what was to befall them.
They didn't have time to regret it as a massive explosion that felt like it brought the might of the heavens flooded the area.
At that moment, they knew what it felt like to be truly afraid and to feel insignificant as an ant, despite them being palace realm experts; cultivators powerful enough to lord it over millions and millions of people.
...
At that moment, when Yang Qing was about to go to the dying Wisteria tree, he felt the object left by Green Cocoon flicker with a heavier intensity than it did before. That reaction was also exhibited by the universal bee he had created earlier as it let out a radiant intense glow signalling that something dangerous was afoot.
The other judges all seemed to have their own means because they too detected something that instantly prompted them to activate their medallions to unlock the seal and full abilities of the ascendant-grade treasure.
Beneath, the greyed-out pupil of the Ba She had produced a small red flicker that was the source of their alarm and reaction.
Within an instant, the light turned into a pea-sized rune that transformed the whole body of the Ba She both the decapitated head and the other half of its body, into a single red seed that exploded bringing with it a terrifying power of destruction.
The space around it was torn, and the clouds above it were colored red, as it sought to drown everything from the skies above, and the ground below to extinction.
Yang Qing, and the rest from the moment that red flicker appeared, alarm bells went off in their minds, and without hesitation, they triggered the ascendant grade treasure that created a massive black ball, with starlights flowing around it.
When the red seed exploded, the force it created was instantly covered by the black ball that was aiming to contain it so it couldn't reach Yang Qing and the rest who were outside of it.
However, despite the intervention of the blackball, a tiny part of the energy from the red rune explosion managed to pass through which barrelled through the bodies of the five judges and pushed them back a few hundred meters from the blast site.
They all hacked and coughed up blood immediately with deep lacerations all over their bodies.
They didn't have time to attend to their injuries as they saw something even more terrifying happen before them.
The black ball was losing. There were red cracks appearing all around it, which extended to even the treasure itself. It was just inches away from being destroyed, and from the energy that was leaking out, the explosion didn't look like it had subsided.
If the defenses got breached, Yang Qing and the rest would no doubt, perish.
They didn't even have time to process where that red rune came from, who triggered it, and how it had enough energy to overwhelm a top-tier ascendant-grade treasure in full capacity, which was basically the same as a late-stage domain expert.
All they could now was try with all their might to ensure they didn't die here.
"Convocation golden radiant feather"
They all formed a similar seal that triggered five golden feathers to appear from within the black ball. The five feathers from a radiant translucent membrane that covered the ball with golden runes floating around it.
The black ball that was just at the cusp of being broken through looked like it had been given a new lease on life thanks to the membrane which not only strengthened it but also restored it.
The dozens of cracks started getting restored albeit at a slow pace, and with the radiant membrane sharing the burden, the explosion happening within it looked like it was well on its way to being successfully contained.
At least it looked that way to Yang Qing and the rest. However, Yang Qing had a shout in his mind filled with deep dread telling him
"RUN!!!"
But alas, the warning arrived too late.
Crack!
A cracking sound like that of a bird breaking its shell sounded, and it seemed to transcend space and the void.
Everything and everyone within a 50,000-kilometer radius all heard the same cracking sound. That cracking sound seemed to echo down to their very souls.
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