After messing around with his divine will for a moment, Silas sensed something to his left.
He quickly turned and saw a bear seemingly appear out of nowhere.
[Brown Bear (Beast) - Qi Cultivation: Late Transcendent - Body Cultivation: Late Transcendent]
Silas could now effortlessly kill this beast with his scythe and a hint of his divine power(divine power is the energy of body cultivation), but he wanted to use his Dao for the first time.
He first split his mind, using one to employ the Lesser Dao of Rot and the second to wield the Lesser Dao of Crumbling.
Instead of using rotating leaves, he transformed the Dao into four sickles rotating around each other—two for death, two for destruction.
The bear continued to close the distance, ignoring what Silas was doing and not at all aware of the significance of those sickles made from Silas's peak Mortal Qi.
Soon, the bear closed in enough for Silas to entrap it with the four sickles. He then began to grind down on the bear. As the sickles revolved, the bear, caught between them, felt nothing—not even pain—but it knew something was wrong. Before long, its entire body seemed to lose all feeling. Soon after, the bear's brain rotted and then crumbled to dust, dying painlessly.
While the above took time to describe, a battle between experts was incredibly fast.
From the moment Silas created the sickles to the moment the bear died, only a heartbeat's worth of time passed.
"Damn," Silas muttered, his heart filled with surprise and delight. He had just killed a Late Transcendent lifeform with next to zero effort.
The peak Transcendent Qi cultivator, currently standing outside the formation looking in, was now furious. His beast companion had been executed instantly.
'Within my Four-Seal Entrapment Formation, even if you are incredibly talented, you will still die a horrible death!' the young man thought. (Once again, 'young' is relative—the man is in his 40s, which is young by a cultivator's standard.)
"Boom!" Suddenly, lines of red energy began to surround Silas from all sides.
"Hmph!" Silas harrumphed. He now knew someone was definitely targeting him and that he was likely trapped inside a formation.
'They must have seen me breaking through and now want my secrets,' he thought.
He instantly created the four sickles again, using very little of his peak Mortal Qi.
The sickles began to rotate. The outer layer was made of death sickles, which first started to rot the energy, and whatever energy managed to pass through was crushed and crumbled by the destruction sickles Lesser Dao of Crumbling.
No matter how many times the energy crashed against the rotating sickles, no energy was able to break through to Silas.
"What? How is this possible?!" the peak Transcendent Qi cultivator was shocked. His formation was extremely strong when used with his peak Transcendent Qi. It was more than strong enough to grind down even a peak Transcendent body cultivator, but now it wasn't able to get past the youth's mysterious sickles made of mere peak Mortal Qi.
But how could the man know that not only had Silas reached minor completion in two Daos, but the Lesser Daos he controlled were much stronger than normal Lesser Daos on the path of death and destruction, with his comprehension of the two Daos coming directly from his Grim Reaper King Fiendgod body refinement technique as well as from his Grim Reaper King bloodline itself?
Silas had initially enjoyed using his new Daos, but he was starting to get tired of this attack. He quickly dashed forward toward where the bear had appeared from, his four sickles continuing to surround him as he ran.
"Dammit!" the peak Transcendent Qi cultivator exclaimed upon seeing this. His formation was an entrapment formation, but if the traps weren't able to keep the enemies in the center, they could easily escape.
"Whoosh!" Silas quickly broke past the formation flags, and with him now being outside the formation, he could clearly see his surroundings again. To his left stood a tall, lanky man.
[Human - Qi Cultivation: Peak Transcendent - Body Cultivation: Early Mortal] (Remember, early Mortal body cultivation means they aren't body cultivators, strictly Qi cultivators.)
"Die!" Silas yelled as he controlled two of his sickles to chase after the man.
"I have to run!" the man yelled, scared for his life. He was just a peak Transcendent Qi cultivator—how could he fight head-on with a body refiner whose transformation had been so profound?
Before this, he had first relied on his beast companion to fight at close range, and then on his formations. But now there was nothing between him and the youth, and fighting a body refiner at close range was suicide for a Qi cultivator.
'An early Transcendent whose battle power is this strong... he's a monster. But my master will surely want to see him dead,' the man muttered to himself, thinking his master would surely come to save him soon.
"Yes, my master will surely kill you and take your secrets," he said as he continued to flee.
"He fucking ran!" Silas said, a little angry. The man had trapped him in a formation and tried to execute him, but now he was just going to run away. He quickly began to chase. His movement comprehension, mixed with the strength of his new body, made him extremely quick.
The man turned back and noticed Silas giving chase, slowly gaining on him.
'How could an early Transcendent be so fast?' he thought in fear. He then pulled out a divine movement seal. It was a beige, leaf-like paper seal that looked to be covered in veins of blood, with weird runes drawn on it that rippled with aura. He sent his Qi into the seal, and his body began to speed up.
Seconds went by.
'It's not enough!' he thought as he pulled out a second movement-type seal.
'It's still not enough!' he yelled internally as seconds went by, but Silas was still running on par with him. He quickly pulled out his third and last movement-type seal.
After using the third seal, he finally started to increase the distance between the two of them. Now he just had to run for about 10 more seconds, and he would be by his master's side. Then surely his master would take action and capture or kill the youth.
"Damn, he's getting away," Silas said through gritted teeth. If this had been a random beast that attacked him and then quickly realized his strength and ran, he might have let it off. But this was a human who had seen his power firsthand, and instead of being proud of another human's strength, had clearly wanted to dig out his secrets for himself. The man had to die.
Silas quickly pulled out his [Grim Reaper's Eye] and saw the man's soul, then attacked.
"Ahhhh! Master, save—" the peak Transcendent Qi cultivator yelled out in pain, but since he was the same rank as Silas and Silas used his innate talent and divine ability, the man stood no chance of getting away.
"Master?" Silas thought, slightly panicking.
'Was he just trying to scare me before his death?' Silas quickly thought.
'No, he had no idea he was going to die instantly. He must surely have his master close by,' Silas began to panic. While he was much stronger now, he wasn't sure how strong he truly was, and the man's master was likely much stronger than him.
"Kai, I need you to come now!" he quickly called Kai, who was currently a little less than a hour away from him, but if Silas rushed toward Kai as well, they could meet in half the time. He wasn't exactly sure, but he felt he could use his innate talent one more time today, so if he used it and Kai used his innate talent twice, just maybe they would be able to weaken the master enough to get away or even kill him.
"On my way, boss," Kai quickly sent back.
"Red, just stay where you are and he shouldn't notice you," Silas sent to Red, who was still perched in a tree next to the spatial lynx and the hawk.
***
Moments before.
The master and Early Rank 3 Disciple watched as his disciple began to attack Silas Armstrong.
'Surely the secrets from this boy will help my Riverstone Clan,' he thought. He was an elder and retired lord prefect of the Riverstone Clan, which was slightly stronger than Silas's Armstrong Clan.
He continued to watch his disciple, whom he had brought here to temper himself. While he knew his disciple couldn't handle the youth, it was a good chance to further temper him, so he allowed it.
- - -
'It's time for me to take action,' he told himself, as his disciple was now 10 seconds away from him, being chased by the Armstrong youth.
He then watched as a grey and black eye appeared on Silas's forehead, an eye that even managed to make his soul tremble slightly.
'What is that…?' he thought, at the same time hearing his disciple cry out in pain.
"Ahhhh! Master, save—" His disciple then fell to the ground dead, but he didn't really care about that at the moment. All he wanted to know was what that eye was. It had to be a godly divine ability to be able to kill his disciple, who was several sub-realms above him, instantly. (He's not referring to the divine ability/innate talent of a divine beast; he's just referring to man-made divine abilities.) What could he do with this kind of power? Could he dethrone the long-standing hegemon of this region, the Redstone Clan?
'I've got to have it,' he told himself as he moved.