Thunder and fire filled the sky, turning the endless snowy peaks bright as day.
Still over a hundred li away, Xie Jinhuan spotted the firelight and thunderclouds among the mountains, and the stone weighing on his heart settled a little.
As long as there was still activity, at least Sect Master Lu's soul had not returned to the Blood God. Still, it was rather unusual for a fight between two sect masters to drag on into such a prolonged war of attrition.
Normally, barring those bald Buddhist donkeys who deliberately dragged things out, a single mistake was all that separated life from death between evenly matched opponents of any other tradition, regardless of grade.
For a Daoist and a Martial Artist to fight like this, the Martial Artist had to hold an overwhelming advantage, with the Daoist relying on movement techniques to keep his distance and find an opening. If the Daoist held the advantage, a burst of attacks from extreme range would make it very difficult for the Martial Artist to force his way into close quarters again.
After entering the Transcendent Grade and fighting repeatedly, Xie Jinhuan had gradually discovered how heavily the major traditions countered one another. For example, unless the Buddhist fighter was a mere place-filler like Fanyun Temple's abbot, the Buddhist Sect suppressed Gu Masters in every respect. Aside from running, Gu Masters had almost no means of countering them.
Martial Artists followed the Way of Balance and suffered no inherent disadvantage against any tradition. Their weakness, however, was their short reach and frail divine souls early on, leaving them easy prey for Daoist kiting and Witch Cult beguilement. Presumably, only after reaching "Subduing and Responding" in the Sixth Realm—the perfected state in which everything learned throughout one's life resonated from beginning to end, leaving