"His!"
The Fire Cloud Python writhed in pain, an unmistakable look of agony and fury on its face. Its forked tongue flickered as it suddenly rose into the clouds.
"Smack!"
Its enormous body, dozens of meters long, lashed out with sudden, astonishing speed and agility, producing a sonic boom in midair.
"Not good!"
Su Shi'er instantly felt a fierce gust bearing down on him, leaving him nowhere to draw leverage. In the critical moment, he hurriedly activated the Turtle Pattern Shield and Ice Shield.
The two defensive magical artifacts, one in front and one behind, shimmered with magical light and enveloped his body.
The next second, that enormous body came crashing toward him.
"Bang!"
After a muffled boom, Su Shi'er felt as if he had been hit by a mountain while running at full speed. His body flew backward uncontrollably.
His internal organs felt as though they were being torn apart, and he vomited mouthfuls of blood.
The instant he landed, Su Shi'er gritted his teeth. With the Wind Calling Technique assisting the Shadowless Illusionary Steps, he quickly widened the distance between himself and the giant python.
When he looked carefully, his heart bled.
His top-grade magical artifact, the Turtle Pattern Shield, had been utterly shattered by that blow, transformed into countless fragments without a trace of magical light remaining.
Fortunately, the Ice Shield Shen Miaoyin had given him was merely dimmed and had not cracked in the slightest. He did not know whether that was due to the material.
This at least allowed Su Shi'er to breathe a sigh of relief. If he could preserve this artifact, then after tempering it with the Mysterious Pill Furnace, it would at worst become another top-grade defensive magical artifact.
He reached out and swept up the Ice Shield. With the Shadowless Illusionary Steps and Wind Calling Technique, he began circling the giant python at high speed. Every so often, he hurled out a handful of attack talismans. This time, he did not dare remain airborne for long.
Before coming, he had prepared a large number of talismans. But using them like this made the talismans on his person diminish rapidly.
In a mere quarter of an hour, he had thrown out no fewer than three hundred attack talismans, and possibly as many as five hundred.
By the end, all that remained were some first-grade low-quality talismans and even half-finished ones.
Still, Su Shi'er did not care. To him, as long as they could be used
and could inflict even the slightest injury on the Fire Cloud Python and disrupt its recovery, that was enough.
Seeing that only one last handful of talismans remained, Su Shi'er hurriedly turned his gaze toward Shen Miaoyin in the distance.
"Hey! Are you done yet? I'm about to collapse!"
"Lure it over!"
At that moment, Shen Miaoyin's face was as pale as paper, her forehead covered in beads of sweat.
Hearing Su Shi'er's voice, she clenched her teeth, took out the last Azure Restoration Pill on her, and swallowed it in one gulp.
Then, she condensed all her true essence into a hand seal and sent it into the Ice Sword.
Five flying swords shot into the sky and vanished into the clouds.
"Good! I'm coming right over!"
Su Shi'er relaxed slightly and, without the slightest hesitation, rushed to Shen Miaoyin's side.
Behind him, the Fire Cloud Python pursued relentlessly, but just as it was about to approach the sword formation, it suddenly stopped. Its pair of bell-like eyes revealed wariness.
"Hm? That thing didn't take the bait? What do we do now?" Su Shi'er asked with a frown.
"How much true essence do you still have inside you? Transfer it all to me!" Shen Miaoyin shouted coldly.
To her, the sword formation had already been completed. Whether the Fire Cloud Python came over or not was unimportant.
The problem was that she had no true essence left in her body, and she had also exhausted all her pills for recovering true essence.
Without mana, she was simply unable to activate the sword formation.
After saying this, she saw the hesitation on Su Shi'er's face and hurriedly urged him, "Hurry! It'll be too late if you wait any longer!"
"This... how do I do that?" Su Shi'er asked awkwardly.
He knew clearly that he did not have many choices left. It was just that he had never transferred his true essence to someone else before.
"Put your hand on my back. Leave everything else to me." Shen Miaoyin spoke quickly, only then realizing that the young man before her was still a complete novice in cultivation.
Su Shi'er did as instructed, placing his palm on Shen Miaoyin's back. Though a layer of clothing lay between them, the soft sensation and faint warmth still gave him an experience he had never had before.
But the feeling lasted only an instant.
The next second, an immense suction force surged from his palm. The true essence within his body began to roil, pouring out of his control and being drawn away by Shen Miaoyin.
"I didn't expect that despite your cultivation at Qi Refining Stage Four, you would have so much true essence." Feeling the true essence flooding in from behind her, Shen Miaoyin raised her brows slightly, rather surprised.
From what she sensed, the true essence in Su Shi'er's body was at least one-third greater than that of other disciples at the same stage.
Although Mixed Spiritual Roots made cultivation incomparably slow, they were not without benefits. Mixed Spiritual Roots contained every type of Spiritual Root, and once one's cultivation advanced, one would naturally possess a more vigorous foundation than others at the same stage.
Su Shi'er had never discussed this with anyone, so naturally he knew nothing about it. At present, his face was filled with bitterness. "Leave me some! If this continues, you're going to drain me dry!"
Shen Miaoyin did not speak again. With the true essence reinforcing her, her hands had already begun forming seals. ??
The hand seal shot into the sky. Within the clouds, five Ice Swords reappeared, spewing frigid air.
As the freezing air churned, an enormous sword image appeared once more.
"Frost Sword Array! Slay!"
Shen Miaoyin let out a frigid shout. The enormous sword image radiated astonishing cold, descending from the sky and cleaving straight toward the giant python not far away.
The Fire Cloud Python refused to be outdone. It abruptly raised half its body, opened its mouth, and spat out a blaze of fire to withstand the sword image head-on.
It possessed only simple intelligence, yet it knew full well that this was a Life and Death Pass. Its Demonic Essence surged as it mobilized every last bit of it, actually contending with the sword image in the air without giving ground.
At that moment, Shen Miaoyin grunted. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth once more, and the aura around her became extraordinarily chaotic.
She was already injured, yet she had forcibly activated the sword formation with cultivation at the Qi Refining stage. The toll this took on her was immense.
"No way! Hold on! You can't collapse!"
Sensing the change in Shen Miaoyin, Su Shi'er's heart pounded wildly, and panic seized him.
"Let's go all out!"
He gritted his teeth. His gaze fell on the Fire Cloud Python, and his expression hardened as he flipped his hand and hurled out seven Soul Severing Nails.
He threw all his remaining attack talismans out with them.
At that moment, the Fire Cloud Python was exerting all its strength to resist the power of the sword formation. It had no time to bother with Su Shi'er's attack, nor did it believe that seven tiny iron nails could cause it any harm.
"Pfft!"
With a muffled sound, the Soul Severing Nails and attack talismans sank into the wounds on the Fire Cloud Python's body.
The next second, more than a hundred attack talismans detonated simultaneously.
Although they were all defective products of mediocre quality, exploding together inside the Fire Cloud Python's wounds was no less than a devastating critical blow!
"Boom! Boom!"
Caught off guard, half of the Fire Cloud Python's body was blasted apart, its flesh torn and skin ripped open.
The Demonic Essence it had been channeling with all its might also stalled.
Seizing this opportunity, the enormous sword image, carrying vast and mighty force, swept across its brow.
The nearly hundred-meter-long giant python was cleaved in two by that sword, dead beyond any doubt.
"Pfft!"
After finishing all this, Shen Miaoyin could hold on no longer. She spat out a great mouthful of blood, her body going limp as she collapsed to the ground.
She had been gravely wounded in this battle. Now... she did not even have the strength to move.
In the air, the five flying swords that had formed the array also clattered down to the ground.
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