"Argh!"
Feeling a spear of ice piercing through his armor and his chest, narrowly missing his core, Baotian clenched his teeth to support the pain as he grappled Xiao Chen, forcing the two of them forward.
"Useless" she said, creating more ice shards to pierce him, and damaging his armor and body more and more.
Even though in this position where he was stuck to her, she couldn't gather much momentum to strike him efficiently, it didn't matter: she didn't need to have momentum herself to hurt Baotian through the use of spells. And so, barely a minute after he managed to grapple her, Baotian's armor was completely destroyed and he was forced to let go of her. Even then…
"Shooting Blood Dancing Armor!"
Using the move once again, he propelled himself forward once more toward Xiao Chen, only to be greeted by an ice spear plunging toward his head. Baotian didn't slow down a bit, grabbing it between his teeth and snapping his neck to the left, deflecting the blow. His entire jaw was ripped apart, along with the helmet of his renewed blood armor, but he kept advancing and grabbed her by the waist again, propelling the two of them even farther.
Pain didn't matter, all that mattered was that this cold-hearted witch had to die. The elder kept hurling spells at him as he stuck to her body, cutting off his foot, ripping away part of his shoulder, stabbing his guts, his lungs, his tights, but Baotian simply refused to let go until finally, with a last push, she managed to injure him enough to force him to let go once again. This time, she directly used a movement technique, flying backward at high speed and creating a safe distance between them.
Because of the injuries accumulated, Baotian, left without something to hold himself to, fell forward, what was left of his body barely staying together.
"Was this your plan? Taking me away from your comrades?" Xiao Chen asked. "While it is true that I can't harm them from there, in your current state, I can slay you, return back to our previous position, slay them as well, and enough time would remain for me to drink a last cup of tea before my core is completely consumed"
Baotian, struggling to stand back up, smirked:
"Well then… go on, elder Xiao" he said, using the Golden Owl Bow to stand up.
"I will" Xiao Chen said, raising her hand to summon a spell…
… before freezing abruptly, her eyes widening. At this view, Baotian chuckled:
"Ah, you finally realized?" he nagged. "See, I wasn't just dragging you away in the end, right?"
Xiao Chen had realized too late: all this time, he wasn't only trying to get her away from the others, he was dragging her into the range of action of the Martial Devouring Mountains! He had only used his desperate act as a cover to induce her to believe that he was sacrificing himself to save his friends… cunning to the end! Xiao Chen had even suspected that he was trying to sacrifice himself and take her with him and put distance between them… which was what ended up putting her in the mountains' range!
"I wouldn't desecrate my master's body for less than to avenge him from his killer" Baotian said, arming the Golden Owl Bow again. "Or maybe I would. Probably, even. Either way…"
He fired a blood arrow at Xiao Chen, who was trying to escape the mountains' range of action, causing her to be sent flying back. Baotian fired more and more arrows and, unable to use spells, fly or regenerate without being locked on by the mountains, Xiao Chen could only do her best to avoid them. However, without the ability to fly or heighten her speed, she quickly accumulated even more damage, while Baotian was slowly healing. Xiao Chen had already been in bad condition before but now, she looked no different from a mangled corpse, no trace of her beauty left. Soon, she found herself on her knees, unable to move.
"Goodbye, elder Xiao" he said, firing one last arrow at her.
However, against his expectations, she used a spell to freeze the arrow and shatter it. Baotian, his eyes widening, tried to react but at the same moment, the Golden Owl Bow, which had resisted the strain for so long, finally snapped, exploding and distracting its user.
Xiao Chen could have used this moment to exit the range of the Martial Devouring Mountains, but she knew better: with how much damage she had taken, she wouldn't be able to fight anyway. Killing Hanchen to clear the clan's honor was no longer an option. And so, she chose to use this moment where she was free to act to use one last killer move with all her remaining spiritual energy, without bothering to get out beforehand:
"Heavenly Winter Execution!"
And so, once again, Baotian was trapped inside of a large circle of diamond-though ice, as the clouds above him were slowly turning into millions of tiny ice blades. Once again, he was trapped as his impending doom was coming. The only difference this time was that, due to her weak state, Xiao Chen had been forced to use herself as the core of the killer move, trapping herself in as well.
"Ah… At last I am back there… dammit" Baotian said, not even finding the strength to shout at heavens.
Normally, in the early realms, a dual path cultivator at the early stage was at least as strong as a regular late stage cultivator of the same realm, often even as strong as a regular grand perfection stage one, both because of spiritual energy being twice as large, and the fact they could count on both the advantages of humans and Spirit Beasts.
However, as he had taken a short cut to become a dual path cultivator, until he cultivated the formulas of the Body Tempering realm and the Foundation Establishment realm, which normally came before forming a Golden Core, he would only be able to benefit of the larger spiritual energy reserves, limiting his strength to that of a mid stage Core Formation cultivator. Though the elder of the Xiao clan had been exhausted, her killer move still held the might of the grand perfection stage.
Baotian was too exhausted to use the Blood Red Flame Torrent, and he couldn't use Shooting Blood Dancing Armor anymore now that his bow was broken. There was nothing he could do to block the move. He turned to Xiao Chen:
"In the end, you decided to let the mountains take you as long as you could take me with you? Even if that means letting the others escape?" he asked bitterly.
The elder smiled tiredly:
"It seems so, junior Zhang" she replied. "It's a shame but, in my current state, I wouldn't have been able to get to the other anyway, so I might as well take you with me. And that way, by dying in a cave, somewhere inside one of these mountains, I'll at least have the satisfaction to choose my death on my own terms, instead of doing so by the hand of a filthy demon like you"
She looked at Baotian one last time as she felt one of the mountains lock on her, and started to feel some sort of spatial distortion pulling her in.
The next moment, she was pulled out of the killer move by some sort of spatial tunnel and a minute later, found herself in a cave, alone, with for only company a lamp attached to the ceiling of the small space. She tried to get up but failed miserably, instead staying there, laying down on the cold ground, her blood running out of her body and her core finishing to burn away.
Left to die alone, she looked at the roof, her eyes slowly losing their light.
"Everything I did… was for the clan" she said, even though there was nobody else to hear her words.
Her eyes closed, and one last sentence escaped from her lips:
"I truly believe… it was all worth it"
Xiao Chen, just like Liu Jianhong, died alone.
Baotian, left alone, sighed. Then, without panicking, he walked forward, and only stopped once he was in the exact same spot his enemy had been in a few seconds ago, turning around so he would face the same direction as she had.
"Did she really believe that I couldn't think of such a simple solution?" he wondered out loud. "Or, when she said she would take me with her… was she laughing at me?"
If so, then it was the proof that even the most lawful cultivators could show spitefulness that rivaled the most vile demons.
"It's a shame" Baotian thought out loud again. "I wish I could have said good goodbye to the others"
Standing in the exact same spot she had stood in, as the cataclysm of ice had almost descended upon him, Baotian resumed his regeneration.
Regeneration counted as a spell. Immediately, one of the mountains locked on Baotian, and began to create a spatial connection between them.
'Considering the fact that the range of action of the Martial Devouring Mountains is fixed, it could signify that these mountains obey to a fixed set of criteria to capture people inside themselves' Baotian reasoned. 'So, by putting myself in the exact same spot as Hanchen's master was in, there's a real chance of being transported in the exact same cave as her'
Of course, from what he had heard, it was normally impossible for two living cultivators to be pulled in the same cave but, considering her state, Baotian believed that she had likely died upon arrival, so she wouldn't exactly count as a 'living' cultivator. In this case, Baotian would have the chance to loot the storage bag of the grand perfection stage Core Formation elder from a major clan!
If it worked, he would hit the jackpot!
'Still, if I had to choose… I would rather stay with them'
Right before the Heavenly Winter Execution descended upon him, a spatial tunnel materialized inside of the killer move area, connected to the same mountain that had swallowed Xiao Chen. Baotian didn't resist, letting the attraction force take him away and escaping death by a hairbreadth.
However, as he was rapidly transported, he saw a figure below, motionless, as if they had been paralysed by something. However, upon seeing the second spatial tunnel in a row materialize above him, they seemed to snap out of their trance and looked up, one word escaping their lips:
"Is… is that you, Baotian?" Liu Zhenyun asked.
Grinning one last time, Baotian pointed his fingers at Zhenyun in a finger gun gesture:
"Haha, well, Zhenyun, I wasn't expecting you to be the last person I would see for the next few centuries" he said. "But I'm happy you're the last person I get to see… and also that I get to see you one last time without fighting. Goodbye, senior brother"
After that, Baotian was absorbed by the mountain, and sent into a cave.
"Argh… stupid pile of rocks, at least grant me a soft landing…"
Swearing as he got up, Baotian looked around the cramped space of the cave, and smiled as he saw Xiao Chen's corpse a few meters away, her storage bag still intact, and laughed:
"Hahahaha, you were right elder Xiao, you indeed ended up taking me with you! Alone, with this nice, full purse of treasures just for me, hahaha!"
Baotian couldn't help but laugh:
"Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahahahaha! Huhu! Ahh… haha…"
His laughter soon died down, and he realised just how suffocating this dark, lonely, cramped space truly felt:
"Haha… ahh…"
Baotian sat down, covered his forehead with his hand, and breathed slowly, trying to calm himself down.
"Senior sister… senior sister… I won…" he said. "I won and I saved you, I know it. I know it!"
His face twisted to absolute fear at the thought of how long he would stay in this cave: most likely multiple times the duration of his entire life so far.
"I know you'll live to see tomorrow so please, come join me… Don't leave me alone"
Nobody answered.