Win and Run

After defeating Chen Liao, the Gatekeeper did not have much spirit energy left to use.

The amount of spirit energy a Fourth Cycle Cultivator could wield was limited. Even after exchanging for the complete versions of various Awakened Spells, even with five Blazing Flame Orbs enhancing the spells and reducing expenditure, his spirit energy had been depleted by the Gatekeeper's indiscriminate bombardment of wide-area attacks.

In Ren Suo's previous two hundred-odd playthroughs, he had always tried to use rhetoric and empty-fort tactics to reduce the number of enemies he had to face at once in this one-man-against-the-world battle. He divided the enemies into three waves and defeated them one by one.

Yet by the end, Ren Suo had discovered that the Gatekeeper's spirit energy was simply not enough. Even if he proceeded cautiously and pushed the Puzzle Matrix to its limits, he still could not make up for the drain on spirit energy.

Even squeezing every advantageous condition to its utmost, he could only barely defeat the enemies in the second wave.

Had Yu Kuangtu not been sent flying beforehand, the Gatekeeper would not even have been able to defeat Yu Kuangtu.

Yu Kuangtu's flames had nearly melted the ice covering the Gate of Truth just now. Essentially, the Gatekeeper no longer had enough spirit energy to keep the Gate of Truth frozen.

After repeated exploration, Ren Suo had finally found a way to break the deadlock.

He first gave Yu Kuangtu a chance to transform, allowing him to successfully become elemental. Yet elementalized Yu Kuangtu was, in a sense, a fire elemental creature. Ren Suo had not exchanged for the spell "Elementalization," but he could exchange for Yu Kuangtu's Awakened Spell, then strengthen it with "Demon King Returns" and use flames one level higher to devour Yu Kuangtu's flames!