Less than ten minutes later – after my war spirit had successfully absorbed all of the yin qi in the area to strengthen himself – Mu Rong Shu returned.
"How is he?" she asked, glancing at my war spirit. I shook my head.
"He only absorbed the qi, but he won't actually integrate it until later. I will train him after we get home, when we are safe and not in such a dangerous place."
It wasn't as if my war spirit suddenly got a power boost and leveled up from absorbing all the ghostly qi from the surroundings. He would need a lot of time to assimilate the newly ingested qi with his own, solidifying his cultivation foundation and getting used to his evolving body. Obviously we didn't have time for him to adapt now, not when we were inside a tomb filled with dangerous beasts and traps. Furthermore, we couldn't wait. It was possible that other explorers would show up eventually. When that happened, there would be conflict.
Unfortunately, it was very common for different groups of explorers to wage war against each other. As I said before, cultivation resources were scarce in today's world, so cultivators had no qualms attacking and robbing each other of their treasures. They obviously couldn't do that in public, but in a tomb – far from the eye of authorities and eyewitnesses – as long as nobody reported it and they covered up the incident by eliminating the evidence, no questions would be asked.
Of course, there were many people who would wonder about the suspiciously inordinate number of "accidents" that explorers succumbed to while scouting out tombs, but they had no evidence. The explorers themselves accepted that there would be such a risk…and in fact, most embraced this window of opportunity to operate outside the law and gain as many benefits for themselves as possible.
I detested such despicable means, but I wasn't naïve enough to believe that nobody would rob me. That was why I remained cautious and wary of other explorer teams, preferring to avoid them entirely if I could help it.
That meant we had to speed up our progress and grab whatever we could and made our exit before any rival explorer teams showed up. Taking a deep breath, I nodded at my wife.
"What did you find?"
"As I expected, the central chamber is up ahead. It's being protected by defensive spiritual formations and a killing array."
Mu Rong Shu wasted no time guiding me toward the central chamber, in the direction where the wraiths emerged. When we turned around the corner, I immediately spotted the massive door at the far end of the corridor, which my wife suspected led to the central chamber where the lord of this tomb was buried. The glittering jewels embedded within its surface and the intricately sculpted marble murals that decorated its arches only lent credence to her conclusion.
I sent my war spirit ahead to test the waters and spotted the spirit formations that Mu Rong Shu told me about. Rotating circles embedded with arcane runes and sacred sigils glowed brightly on the ground that directly covered an area of several dozen square meters in front of the enormous door, generating barriers and qi blades. My war spirit was forced to withdraw when he got too close and accidentally triggered a killing array. Golden blades of sharp qi bombarded his position, forcing him to deflect them with his spear.
Even with his consummate skill, my war spirit wasn't able to block all of the qi blades. Several of them cut deeply into him, tearing out chunks of armor and spirit matter, causing him to stagger. Fortunately, his speed and skill allowed him to retreat without being obliterated by the lethal barrage. His wounds slowly regenerated when I fed him my qi, but I wasn't reckless enough to carelessly expend my qi by sending him into the killing array and hoping he destroyed them before I ran out of qi.
Brute force was not going to win the day.
A few moans caught my attention and I turned to watch the exterior of the spirit formations. Guarding their edges and staying just beyond the glowing circles were hordes of wraiths, wandering about seemingly aimlessly.
That wasn't all. Two huge wraiths stood by the colossal door at the far end of the corridor. Different from their smaller brethren, the towering wraiths had more elegant features, their humanoid forms clad in spectral armor. One of them sported a pair of scythes that curved along the length of its arms, while the other held a halberd that was almost as long as it was tall.
"Wraith guards," I muttered under my breath, recognizing the sleek phantoms. They were the elite of wraiths, formed from the spirits of very powerful cultivators who had died when exploring the tombs. They retained a significant amount of their former power and almost all of their combat skills from when they were alive, though they understandably were less adept at wielding more esoteric techniques such as the manipulation of elements.
Nonetheless they were still deadly foes.
"So not only do we have to deal with the spirit formations, we have to deal with the wraiths too," Mu Rong Shu said with a sigh. "I tried to lure them away earlier, but they refuse to stray too far from the formations. Unfortunately, the tactic of leading them elsewhere and killing them before returning here and hoping that the chamber is empty will not be viable. This is going to be difficult."
"Yeah. It'll be a lot easier to deal with one threat at a time as opposed as both of them simultaneously. Damn it."
"I said that it will be difficult, but I didn't say that it will be impossible." Mu Rong Shu laughed softly at my tone. "We didn't come all this way to give up now, did we? And where's the satisfaction of conquering this tomb if there isn't much of a challenge?"
"And you claim that you want to be a musician instead of an explorer."
"Hey, just because I dream of being a musician doesn't mean I can't appreciate overcoming a challenge and testing my skills to their limits."
I shrugged and pushed up my glasses. "Any suggestions?"
"Yeah. Can you and your war spirit handle the wraiths? Draw them off from the spirit formations. I'll deactivate the formations and disable the killing arrays."
"All right, I'll leave them to you."
I was confident that Mu Rong Shu would carry out what she promised. When she trained as an assassin under the Mu Rong family, she had learned how to circumvent and dismantle spirit arrays. Often, the Mu Rong clan assassins were dispatched to eliminate high value cultivators, and their targets weren't weak or stupid. They knew how to protect themselves behind layered shields of spirit formations and traps constructed out of killing arrays. To successfully assassinate such targets, the Mu Rong family assassins had to learn how to deal with spirit formations. Evading their attacks and navigating a safe route through them was simply one of their methods.
As for wraiths, my war spirit was the perfect counter to them. And in order to learn how to summon my war spirit and command him, I had to learn how to prevail over spirits in battle. Otherwise my war spirit wouldn't respect me and obey my orders. I might not be an assassin, but I was confident of beating up the wraiths. So this was a matter of delegating the specific job to the right person.
"Stay out of range of the killing arrays as best as you can. I'll try to keep a low profile as possible, but I can't exactly stay invisible, so I need you to draw as much of their attention away from me as possible."
"Leave it to me." I was already moving forward and preparing to fight. My war spirit hovered next to me, his spear glowing. With a single thrust, he unleashed a gigantic beam that lanced through the heart of the horde of wraiths, mowing them down in an instant.
I was already in their midst before they knew what was happening, slaying the wraiths while they were still reeling from the sudden attack. Launching a sneak attack might seem cowardly, but the wraiths had overwhelming weight of numbers on their side while it was just me and my war spirit against the entire tide of specters.
Grinding my foot against the ground, I spun about and struck a wraith in its featureless face, almost beheading it. Pivoting on my leg, I lashed out with a kick before stomping on another fallen wraith that was trying to scramble back to its feet. Qi flared along the length of my limbs while I attacked relentlessly, my palm smashing into the featureless face of another wraith, and then crashing my knuckles against the cheek of another. Without missing a beat, I whirled around and kicked a wraith in the gut, flooring it. While it writhed on the ground, I stepped on its head, crushing its skull, and proceeded to slam both my hands against the chest of a lunging wraith, blowing a hole through its body with the sheer force of my attack.
A wraith launched itself at me from behind, only to be decapitated by my war spirit. With a single vicious slash, he cleaved three wraiths at once, bisecting them at an odd angle. They staggered for a while before the top halves of their bodies slid off their chests or waists. Without pause, my war spirit hammered the blunt end of his spear shaft against a wraith behind him, pulverizing its torso, and then he swung his spear about to slice apart two wraiths that were scrabbling at his arms.
There was an ominous creak. Turning my head, I saw that the two wraith guards had finally broken out of their slumber and were lumbering purposefully toward me and my war spirit. Their weapons were raised and their bulky legs crunched into the stone floor with indignant fury, sending tremors throughout the ancient structure. The wraith guard that was armed with dual scythes moved faster, swinging his twin blades at my war spirit with surprisingly swift and precise movements.
My war spirit parried the scythes with his great spear, twirling his weapon and warding the surprisingly agile wraith guard off. Then the second wraith guard crashed into him, its halberd swinging down with devastating power. Even though my war spirit parried the deadly halberd with the shaft of his spear, the ground beneath him shattered from the impact as violent shockwaves battered the ancient stone.
While he was struggling against the wraith guard with the halberd, the wraith guard with the dual scythes slashed toward his chest, preparing to slice him into pieces.
It never got the chance to.
Crashing into the wraith guard from the side, I knocked its attack off course and causing its scythes to go wide. The wraith guard turned to glare at me, though I couldn't tell because of the lack of features on its smooth, domed face.
For some reason, it felt as if I was fighting an automaton…a mannequin or a puppet. Something that wasn't living.
What the hell was I talking about? Wraiths were spirits of the dead. They weren't living to begin with. Even so, I had expected some sort of emotion, resentment or even hatred, a semblance of their personalities from when they were alive. But I received none of that. Just cold…nothingness.
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to ponder on the matter. The wraith guard slashed at me with its scythes, forcing me to duck. While it leaned forward to pour more strength into its attack, I crouched and swung my foot out, sweeping the undead automaton off its feet.
Damn, but it was heavy. Despite my best efforts, it almost didn't budge. Fortunately, I was able to shift its center of gravity and use its momentum against it, allowing me to knock it off its feet and send it crashing to the ground.
Then I jumped up and made use of gravity and my full bodyweight to stomp onto its chest, cracking the crystalline material that composed its body – which was a lot more solid when compared to the smaller wraiths.
"Whoa!"
To my surprise, that did not finish off my opponent. I was forced to jump away when it slashed at my foot, almost taking it off at the heel. Flipping in midair, I landed on my feet some distance away. The wraith guard slowly and methodically rose to its feet, creaking its head from side to side. I watched in astonishment as the cracks that I had just caused in its chest disappeared, the crystalline material seeming to melt like liquid stone and flowing to fill the gaps. A few seconds, it was smooth, almost as if I had never damaged it to begin with.
"Damn…you're one hell of an opponent, huh?" I murmured as a bead of perspiration dripped down my face. As much as I hated to admit it, I hadn't anticipated my enemy being able to regenerate its wounds. This wraith guard was going to be a lot more trouble than I expected.
Silently glaring at me, the wraith guard then raised its dual scythes before charging at me.