"Who said anything about it being over?"
Felix heard a young voice and felt a strong trepidation. Ken didn't use the chance to run away; instead, he did the most atrocious thing he could've done. A Core Formation cultivator was hunting down a sixth-stage cultivator.
"ARGH! DAMN BEASTS! FUCK OFF!"
Felix screamed in anger as bolts of lightning raged around him, inflicting heavy damage on the charging buffalos. He didn't get a second of rest; before he could deal a decisive blow to one of the beasts, it had already moved on after being deflected and the next one attacked.
The buffalos accumulated injuries, but their powerful bodies as beasts granted them enough defense and vitality to resist the man's attacks without taking any life-threatening injuries.
Felix was channeling his Qi without sparing any effort, trying to kill the beasts fast and move on, but killing a hundred beasts that worked as a team wasn't that easy. He was only at the early phase of the sixth stage while the beasts' ranks varied from the early phase of the fifth rank to the peak.
He struck the ground with the butt of his spear, and a loud "clunk" resounded around him. Flashes of Lightning spread on the ground, numbing the incoming buffalos and making them stumble in their charge.
Using this chance, he jumped above the buffalos and executed another spear technique, killing the first buffalo with a thrust that broke its horns and put an end to its life. As soon as he landed on the ground, he already had to clash with another buffalo, and he was sent stumbling back this time.
He was tossed from side to side by the relentless stampede. His arms were getting tired, and he had barely killed a few of them. The more he killed, the more enraged the other beasts became.
Felix hit the front leg of a beast with his spear's blade, cutting it off and making the beast fall. He jumped above the next buffalo and tried to kill it with a thrust, but the buffalo covered itself with Earth Qi, making itself as hard as stone. His sword only penetrated the surface of its skin before it was already gone.
His greatest anxiety didn't stem from the beasts; he was confident in his ability to run away from them if the situation worsened. It was the kid who turned from prey into a hunter.
Ken concealed himself with Sheathed Man. Because of the technique's characteristics of making his presence disappear, the attacking herd influenced and empowered it, as the large number of bloodthirsty animals overshadowed his already dim presence.
'Screw this, I will retreat and find an opportunity later to get revenge!'
Right when Felix made this decision, he felt danger incoming, a swift movement that he could barely keep up with.
*Clunk!*
The sound of metals hitting each other echoed in the forest as Felix barely stopped a certain someone's flexible sword from cutting him in half, and with a twist of his body to dodge the curving tip, he managed to remain mainly unharmed other than a shallow cut on his stomach.
"Coward! Come out!"
Ken used the last trait of his One Step, moving his body during the dash. He couldn't keep Sheathed Man while executing another technique, but he could switch between those two techniques rapidly.
From that point on, Ken didn't let his enemy think again about leaving. Whenever he recognized this intention from Felix's body language, he'd lunged forward and slashed with his sword.
Thanks to the extreme speed of One Step, it was enough to leave small, shallow cuts on his enemy, while making it almost impossible to deflect the buffalos efficiently. One of the main problems of accumulating shallow cuts from Ken was the invasive Qi that Felix had to purge.
"Enough! Kneel before me!"
Ken and the beasts instantly felt a strong pressure on their minds. It wasn't just bloodlust, but it did contain some. It was a combination of bloodlust flaring and imposing pure mind pressure.
'This must be the power of the sixth stage in which cultivators' minds go through a qualitative change.'
Ken thought to himself as he did his best to resist the pressure. It made it harder for him and for the beasts to manipulate their Qi, but he could hold on. Spreading his Bloodlust Qi into the air, he defused the bloodlust component of Felix's pressure, alleviating some of the burden on him and the beasts.
"HOW CAN YOU RESIST MY BLOODLUST??"
Felix screamed in fury when he noticed the changes. Using his mind to press so many enemies at once was heavily taxing, and with the lessened effect, it might not even be worth it for him to continue channeling it.
However, he was only met with silence. No matter how much he looked for his main enemy, he only caught glimpses of the menacing silver mask that so many of his fellow disciples saw before their death, and it was already gone again.
"Don't think you can constrain a sixth-stage cultivator so easily!"
Felix shouted as he jumped straight into the air. Ken managed to swing his sword one last time, making the man leave his ankle behind. With a painful scream, Felix ran away by kicking the air with a single leg. Ken and the surviving buffalos could only watch him leave.
'So that's the power of a sixth-stage cultivator.'
The mind of those cultivators was powerful, which allowed them to elevate their Qi manipulation skills to the next level. With their empowered minds, they could condense Qi into solid form and use it as a platform.
That was exactly what Felix did in order to run away when he understood he would die if he stayed. He tried to prolong this decision because he knew Ken would have a free strike once jumps upward, but it was better to lose a foot than life.
'Oh well, I will just get him killed on another day. I have work to do here now.'
Ken thought to himself as he looked at the buffalos who surrounded him and waited for their rewards.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺