With his Aperture Opening Realm Cultivation, killing a puppet nearly an entire realm below him was incredibly easy.
This was also the case with the late stage Inner Heaven puppet, the strength difference between the two just too crushing.
With only slightly more difficulty then last time, Minos also rend the puppet into pieces, handling it with ease.
But by this point, the easy fights were over, Minos's next opponent being a puppet in the same realm as him.
Taking a serious stance for the first time, he waited for it to manifest, his Third-Eye activating secretly from beneath his forehead.
As it finally appeared completely, Minos swapped over to his True Vision, turning on his Future Sight immediately.
Not surprisingly, the future he saw was one where the puppet instantly attacked with overwhelming force, sending a massive flame tornado towards him.
The puppet was clearly aware of his wind-type Nux, knowing that even if Minos tried to defend himself, he would just end up empowering the flame tornado, making it even more difficult to deal with.
Unfortunately for the puppet, that would be true for most, but not Minos, quickly making use of his True Vision to spot the tornado's weakness.
All tornadoes had one critical weakness, which was the eye of the storm, the region that kept the entire thing twisting.
Just like with Tylia last time, as long as one applied equal and opposite strength to this eye, they could cause the tornado to immediately collapse.
Of course, the calculations required to do such a thing were impossible for most Aperture Opening Realm Cultivators, so even if this weakness was well known, it made no difference.
Snapping back to reality, Minos watched as the puppet summoned up the flame tornado and sent it towards him.
Having already dealt with it in the world of Future Sight, doing it again was no problem, so Minos quickly gathered a small wind orb into his hand.
With a toss, the wind orb landed precisely in the heart of the tornado before exploding instantly.
The explosion caused the flame tornado to begin flickering, only lasting a few more seconds before it completely shattered into small wisps.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Minos immediately followed up the attack with a dozen wind scythes, each cutting towards the puppet from different angles.
Had the puppet been a normal person, seeing its attack so easily disarmed would have likely surprised it, giving Minos a chance to catch it off guard, but that wasn't the case.
Instead, it acted immediately, stomping heavily onto the floor and causing a large flame shell to form around it.
The shell quickly devoured Minos's wind scythes, becoming even larger and hotter as it did so.
With a twist of its hands, the puppet gathered the large flame shell into its hands, extending it out into a massive whip.
Lashing out, the fire-whip swept towards Minos, the puppet clearly wanting to split him in two.
But his reaction was too fast, and with an agile side flip, he evaded the attack completely, the whip sweeping underneath him.
Of course the puppet wouldn't stop there, immediately taking a stance as it proceeded to levy a barrage of lashes towards him.
With its strength, the whip moved at a tremendous speed, the constant sounds of sonic booms like a thunderous storm.
Despite the speed, Minos's quick movements, Divine Sense, and Future Sight allowed him to avoid it with ease, but that wasn't a solution.
Instead, while dodging, his mind got to work, quickly coming up with a plan to break the stalemate.
Such a plan didn't take long, after all with all his new abilities, his options were nearly endless.
This was also a good opportunity to further test his Heart Path's full abilities, after all he had only used happiness, anger, and fear so far.
He still had three emotions left that he had yet to make use of, fortunately he already intuitively understood their powers, so it was only a question of finding a chance to use them.
As for what emotions he had left, they were disgust, sadness, and finally, surprise, and their abilities were just as amazing as the other three emotions.
However neither surprise nor sadness would be very helpful at the current moment, and instead Minos was looking towards disgust.
As the whip once again blasted towards him, he decided to make use of its power, his still lips moving for the first time.
"Disgusting." He whispered under his breath while looking towards the flame whip.
As he said that, the words seemed to alter reality, causing the whip to shatter into hundreds of little flames, which also soon fizzled away.
While the puppet didn't understand what just happened, it lacked the higher functioning to question it, just getting ready to throw another attack towards him.
But as it attempted to gather a fireball into its palm, its summoned fire repeatedly dissipated, as if it could no longer take form.
'What an amazing power…' Minos thought as he looked towards the puppet.
This was disgust's ability, which he called Revulsion, allowing him to temporarily forbid that which he found 'disgusting.'
In this case, he had forbidden fire, making all attacks that used the element completely useless.
While the puppet didn't understand this, the soul within the Nine-Tailed Tower quickly adapted, realizing Minos had once again used some sort of strange power.
Though it didn't understand what the power was or how it functioned, it guessed that its effects only worked against fire, so it quickly gave the puppet a new element.
This time as the puppet summoned a water orb, the water formed with no issue, proving the tower's earlier guess correct.
Unfortunately, while the tower had guessed right, it had yet to understand the full extent of Minos's abilities.
This time Minos once again used Revulsion, but instead of aiming for a certain element, he simply forbade Nux all together.
As he did so, the space seemed to immediately become a vacuum, all the Nux vanishing from within, rendering all Nux-based attacks useless.
In this case, the water orb in the puppet's hand quickly collapsed without any Nux to support it.
However, the tower didn't understand what Minos had done, thinking he was just repeating his last move, but this time against water.
But as it had the puppet funnel through different elements, it quickly realized that wasn't the case, soon sensing the missing Nux from within itself.
For as many things as the tower had seen and as wise as it was, it had no idea what had just happened, this move being unlike anything in its records.
Making use of the towers' confusion, Minos quickly attacked the puppet, the Nux battle from before turning into a hand-to-hand confrontation.
All the spectators couldn't help but wonder why the two were just fighting with fists now, a few of the more perceptive one's having spotted the strange events earlier.
Among those perceptive few were naturally Asumi and her siblings, the three once again discussing what the hell had just happened.
But as per usual, they reached no conclusion, having to just admit Minos had access to abilities far beyond their current understanding.
While everyone was confused, Minos was certain, using his superior combat skills to pummel the puppet.
Without any Nux getting in the way, the battle quickly reached a conclusion, Minos shattering the puppet with a few well-placed blows.
It was only as the puppet turned back into light did the tower come back too, still pondering over Minos's last move.
But the Heart Path was even beyond Minos's understanding despite being a user of it himself, so it went without saying that outsiders could make nothing of it.
Knowing that the battle must go on, the tower could only summon Minos's next, and last, opponent.
This time it was a middle-stage Aperture Opening Realm puppet, and while the difference may seem like only one small stage, it was actually massive.
The Aperture Realm was special for two reasons, the first being that one now had access to a much bigger reserve of Nux, which just became exponentially larger the deeper they cultivated.
As for the second, and arguably more important reason, it was because at the Aperture Opening Realm, one could awaken their Spirit Affinity.
Once they opened 3650 apertures, aka the middle stage of Aperture Opening, their bodies would transform into a Mutilated Spirit Body, and in turn, they would gain a Mutilated Spirit Affinity.
While it may not sound like much, a Mutilated Spirit Affinity would give them a 20% increase in their natural affinity.
And this increase was comprehensive, from strength, to absorption rate, to control, making it incredibly valuable.
If one was lucky, their opponent would awaken an affinity towards a different type of Nux than the one they cultivate, but Minos's current opponent had zero chance of that.