Just as they were congratulating themselves, a Tier 2 lord Naga monster, which was double their size and had blood red scales appeared in front of them from the mist. It looked at its dead brethren and let out a shrilling scream filled with hate. It was also a mental attack and all the half step cultivators except Luo passed out.
Luo was guarded from the attack by Master Yin 'I'll guard against its mental attacks. You can take care of it without any worries.'
'Thanks master. I won't let you down.'
Luo went alongside Ma Jiande as he prepared to attack it. The Qi condensation cultivators had not passed out but it was a strong mental attack and only Ma Jiande was unaffected. "Luo, it seems it's just you and me. Don't piss your pants now."
"In your dreams brother."
Luo asked him if he had a finisher attack with his machete and Jiande said "I do but that thing's defense is very hard. It won't pierce through."
"You let me worry about that and prepare that finishing of yours." Ma Jiande looked at Luo, his scraggy brows furrowed in a puzzled expression but he nodded and lowered his legs into a solid , wide stance, with his left leg in front of his right and his machete in his right hand, his left hand elongated with the palm thrust outwards.
He began gathering his Qi as Luo got the monster's attention by throwing a rock at its face.
The monster shrieked and slithered its way toward him at an amazing speed. Luo assumed a natural stance with his right palm thrust outward and he gathered a drop of pure Yang Qi in it.
He had learnt the limits of his body while using techniques with the Yin and Yang Qi's from the battle with the wolves last month and during his cultivation had learnt how to draw upon it in a limited way so as to not hurt himself.
With Yin Yang clap[1], the Yin Palm[2] or the Yang Palm[3], he could safely use one drop of Qi from his Dantian without hurting himself. Two drops each and he would be at risk but it would not cause as much damage. Three drops and his current body would not be able to take it and his hands would be hurt like last time.
He could also use the Qi like a beam to cause explosions (Yin Qi blast and Yang Qi blast [4]) and this would not hurt him if he was outside the range of explosion but it would then become easier to dodge and the possibility that the attack would be wasted was higher.
Besides, he did not want to use the Tier1 Qis, the Yin and the Yang Qis, as it would draw too much attention like the master said, so he preferred to not use them until he absolutely needed to.
He readied his Yang Qi blast and as the red Naga reached and used a downward swipe to attack with its claws, he blocked it with his left forearm and struck the Naga's chest with the blast. The Yang Qi exploded on the Naga and it broke its defense.
The attack had more efficacy than expected and didn't just break its defenses but took out a huge chunk of muscle and even parts of its heart were heavily damaged.
Purple blood covered Luo as the Naga leader slowly dropped to the ground, while Ma Jiande looked on, his killing strike ready, his jaws wide open in surprise at what the boy had done. "It's ..It's.. You killed it in one strike. Not even I could have done that. How did you do it? "
"I did not expect my technique to be so effective. But it is a secret technique so I don't wish to say anything about it. If you could, please don't tell the others what you saw. Just say that you had killed it."
"Oo..Okay. Fine, young master."
After a few moments the other cultivators came to their senses and looked around at the pile of Naga bodies. They had seen how Luo had performed and immediately praised Ma Jiande and Luo for their bravery. Cai Bo came up to Luo and said " You are a monster, brother. I have never seen such a display of strength from a Gathering Qi realm cultivator. Your future achievements....I'm looking forward to seeing how far you'll go."
"Haha, you praise me too much brother. Now let us regroup and move forward."
They moved forward after harvesting the monster cores, without encountering any more beasts. A day later, just as the sun was about to set they reached near the Divine tree. It was a thick overbearing tree, easily breaking the canopy line of the forest and standing wide and tall.
Dense heaven and earth Qi surrounded the tree and even from a distance the fragrance of the Blood essence fruits was high. A Tier 3 monster, a 20 ft tall Fire Lizard was sleeping under the tree, guarding the fruits.
"That monster can only be defeated by True Foundation realm cultivators, so no one here should even think of aggravating it. And there are the Blood essence fruits. They are a Xian tier treasure and can be used for cultivating the physique of the Lower grade Xian Tier.
Ma Jiande took out sleeping soul mist, another Xian treasure which would render the target's soul in a deep sleep for at least a couple of weeks. He opened the bottle and threw it so that it just landed in front of the lizard's nose.
A purple mist came out and the group waited for a few minutes for it to take its effect. Then Ma Jiande slowly slinked up to the Fire Lizard and made childish noises. It did not wake up. Growing confident from this, he put one of his palms on it and posed back looking at his team members.
Cai Bo and the others sighed "Boss, get away from that thing. We should quickly take all the blood essence fruits we want and get out of here." Luo and the others got started with picking the many essence fruits on the Divine tree.
After a couple of hours, they were done with it and had managed to pick 3 big bags worth of fruits. "NOW, TO SPLIT ITT" , one of them yelled.
Ma Jiande outright picked one bag and gave it to Luo. Everybody looked at each other's faces at a third of the fruits being given to one person and that too one at Gathering Qi realm. But none of them had any complaints as they had seen him fight and knew that the damages would have been much worse if Luo hadn't fought like he had.
Luo thanked them and after they had all split the bounty including the monster cores, the members started to make their way back and Luo bid them farewell. Luo had a big harvest and he climbed up the tree and found a big hollow part in one of the main branches which could accommodate him.
He started to refine all the monster cores he had and as he went on his speed became much faster and he started unlocking different types of Tier2 Qi's by refining these cores. This took him a couple days. After he was done with this he refined the Blood essence fruits under a little guidance from Master Yin.
After he used so many blood essence fruits for refining and cultivating his physique, his body was now equivalent to an upper grade Soul tier weapon. Refining so many things and absorbing Qi from Tier 2 monster cores pushed his bottleneck and he broke through to the 4th layer of Gathering Qi realm. He now had 50 drops of Primordial Chaos Qi in his Dantian.
15 more days to go for the Summer competition.