Story 7 - To Kill Demonic Vines (15?)

Story 7 - To Kill Demonic Vines (15?)

More of the infected moaned in pain. At this point, I was certain that ‌all of these people were still alive!

Spear That Weaves took out his bottle of trick pills and flicked a few of them at the edge of the continuously growing zombie horde.

The pills crashed into the infected, exploded into clouds of gold, and surrounded the bodies.

The pink vines that wrapped around limp limbs darkened and shriveled.

They became unconscious and collapsed to the ground. Their zombie buddies stepped over them to keep coming at us.

Wait. The amount of people kept increasing, pouring out of buildings and side alleys. The demonic cultivator must be desperate for more energy and was trying to use them as a distraction to prevent us from getting to the Life Gate.

“Seniors! We can’t waste time here.” Spear That Weaves said. “I can handle these with the trick pills and my weapon. Please go on ahead!”

Clear Eyes Mad Tongue nodded and jumped onto the plastered stone wall that separated a line of houses from the street. To keep moving, he ran forward while kicking away any of the vine-covered hands that attempted to grab his feet.

Little Spring followed after him.

I briefly squeezed Spear That Weaves’ shoulder. “Don’t get overrun. Retreat is always an option.”

“Yes, Senior Lin!” He threw another pill at the horde and I handed him back the bottle he gave me. He needed it more than I would. And in the worst-case scenario, Little Spring still had his.

As I jumped onto the top of the wall and started running, I called back, “Also, don’t die!”

He looked exasperated. “Don’t curse me!”

He’d be fine. Probably.

Okay, I couldn’t help but worry about him, since he was only a few years older than my current body. Still, we didn’t have time to deal with these vine zombies. But we also couldn’t let them attack us from the back while we dealt with the monster guarding the gate.

They didn’t have any cultivation. If he wasn’t able to take them down, then I would doubt the vision of my sect’s most honored Spear Grandmaster.

Using an Impossible Leap, I quickly caught up to Clear Eyes and Little Spring.

The fog had thickened to ‌where we could only see twenty feet in front of us.

We came to a large intersection. A massive Vine Wyvern, four times the size of the first one, stretched its wings threateningly.

As it moved, the sound of a hundred squeaky doors echoed through the intersection. Which was, apparently, what it sounded like when thick vines rubbed against each other.

The eerie glowing pink dots inside its triangle eye sockets focused on us.

If we came any closer, it would definitely start attacking.

And we had to fight this fucker to get at the flag that it stood on top of.

Mad Tongue pulled out his sword, then glanced at us.

He had a half-crazed expression — like he wasn’t sure that he could defeat it but was going to try anyway.

“Do you think its size matters?”

I looked him right in his eyes and very seriously said, “Yes. Yes, it does.”

If we were in a Manhua version of this universe, then black lines would have darkened his forehead.

I grinned. “Listen up. If you’re dealing with giant creatures, they’ll have a larger mass. And that means that they’ll have more power behind their attacks. However, without an increased realm, they will also move slower to start out. It will take them more time to turn. Use that against them.”

Little Spring nodded.

Clear Eyes looked like he had calmed down.

“Come on.” I pointed my sword at the entity. “This vine monster isn’t going to kill itself, and we only have ten minutes.”

“We have to stop this thing in that short amount of time?!”

“That’s right. You only have a short amount of time to kill it.”

He opened his mouth.

“You can do it!” I encouraged.

“I believe in you!” Little Spring added.

“Hey! Don’t act like I’m the only one who’s going to fight this giant monster!”

I gestured to myself and my junior brother. “We’ll make sure you aren’t attacked from the side so you can better strike its weak point.”

“We can watch your back too!” the kid said. “It will be a nightmare if those infected people run over here and get in the way of your fight.”

“I also need to keep in touch with the other team to make sure they’re killing off their vine wyvern, too.”

“Their what?”

“I can’t simultaneously beat this monster and keep track of the other group of cultivators at my current realm.”

Little Spring followed up by stabbing his blade into the ground, where they’d popped up. Then he sent a blast of Qi in to slice the roots further down while collapsing the dirt around them.

This must have pissed the wyvern off because it flapped its wings. Blades of air sliced toward us.

I grabbed a defensive talisman from my spatial ring and used it as a barrier between us and the attack.

Because the talisman wasn’t supposed to be used this way, it quickly burnt out. A blast of the remaining wind pushed us back several feet.

That was not supposed to happen. That meant that it was stronger than I’d originally estimated.

How the fuck were we going to kill it in time?

***

Being surrounded and in a bad position didn’t mean that Spear That Weaves Through Lightning was out of commission just yet.

He swung his weapon and swept the zombies’ legs out from under them.

Of course, most of them just stood up again, but a few ended up in a heap, as if cuddling.

After several more clever attacks, a literal pile of vine zombies started to grow and connect. Their vines braided together like rope and grew stronger.

They’d soon combined enough that a mesh of knocked-out people had turned into a giant snake. There was even a child sticking out of the snake’s tail.

What the fuck?!

Fortunately, the fog affected my divine sense enough to blur most of the details or the sheer weirdness of it might have distracted me from the other fights.

Spear That Weaves looked up at the snake and stood in a stance like he was about to take it on.

::It’s okay to run if you need to!::

::Senior Lin. I got this!::

Just as the snake of zombies reared its head to attack the young man, he thrust his spear forward. Lightning — well, maybe it was closer to electricity — zigzagged out of his weapon’s tip and tasered the shit out of the snake.

Smoke rose from the collapsed mass.

The vines might not burn, but they definitely weren’t taser-proof.

Well, fuck. That was an interesting technique! He must have comprehended it when he dodged all those talisman attacks in the finals.

It also explained his full name.

And somehow, the lightning left the people relatively uninjured and only damaged the vines. Of course, since these demonic plants were a mix between a disease and a parasite, I knew that these infected weren’t cured just because of a little electricity.

***

To the other team I sent, ::Someone protect Drunken Edge!::

Incapacitating Wind had just finished her fight with a zombie. When she heard my telepathic message she looked toward her fellow sect member to see that his ass was about to get entangled by tumbleweeds.

She didn’t hesitate and threw out her weaponized cauldron spiritual tool.

It zipped through the air at the vine cannonballs hurtling toward Drunken edge.

The tool and the glowing pink balls collided at just the right angle that — instead of bursting apart — the evil weeds bounced back to where the duck smugly bobbed its wood-like bill.

One ball smacked its face, causing it to stare at my fellow sect members like it couldn’t believe they had the audacity to do that.

Apparently, the vine duck disliked it so much that it waddled its massive body away from the place it was guarding and loomed above the sword cultivators ready to smash them with its wings.

Unfortunately for it, Swift Dove used this opportunity to strike at its weak spot — the base where its roots connected to the main plant.

An icy sword technique burst from her white blade. It both sliced and froze the area around it. The vine duck went from hot pink to cold tundra in a matter of moments.

Yes! They did it. Now they just needed to find the Death Gate.

***

I watched as root after root burst up from the ground, always from different directions. Little Spring and I worked together to chop them up.

Unfortunately, this was getting us nowhere. We didn’t have the time anymore since we’d already wasted minutes just trying to keep ourselves and Clear Eyes alive.

Considering the giant wyvern’s strength, it looked like I’d have to step in with some big moves. I’d have to ‌cast something at the Foundation Establishment level. Of course, the reason I’d been avoiding that was because of the horrible backlash I’d suffer.

Let’s see, lightning seemed to work well against these plants. While it didn’t seem to kill them off entirely, it did appear to have a debilitating effect.

That left only one technique I knew of that I could currently cast. The Three Fires Phoenix Energy Technique.

It was something I’d picked up on a whim in my last life and never mastered before outgrowing it.

I turned to the Wyvern, readying myself to run towards it. And that was when I noticed it raising its wings high into the air, all while staring hatefully at Little Spring.

It flapped both wings. Thick air blades shot toward my junior brother. Then they melded together and rotated to make one thick blade that could blow apart several houses.

Since he was focusing on slicing up the attacking roots, he wasn’t paying attention to the wyvern. But even if he did, I didn’t think he had anything on him that could take care of an attack like that.