Chapter 374: The Final ‘Mountain’ of a Soulbeast!
The Dual Flame Arts was the invention of a predecessor of the Crafting Schools. It required two fireseed essences and was separated into two chapters.
The first chapter emphasized the ‘training’ needed to use two fireseeds and how to increase one’s strength.
The second chapter emphasized the way to ‘battle.’ As its name implied, this chapter focused on how to fight using the technique.
The two fireseed essences could support one another and stimulate the body due to the conflict between the two, causing the body to power up even more.
There were two different forms explained in the battle chapter that required the two fireseeds to stimulate the body.
The first form was ‘coil.’ By adjusting the frequency and intensity of the two fireseeds, elemental fire would wrap around the body and collide to bring forth unbelievable power. In this form, the user would be able to break their limits and increase their strength—the form Bai Yunfei was in right now.
Normally, Bai Yunfei possessed the strength of a late-stage Soul Ancestor, but in this form, he could break the limits and advance past the bottleneck he faced to attain the strength of an early-stage Soul Exalt!
An effect like this really emphasized just how perverse the Dual Flame Arts was.
However, soul skills that had power-boosting effects also came with side-effects. The backlash of a power-boosting soul skill was an extremely important thing to watch for.
But the side-effects for the Dual Flame Arts were practically nil! In the coil form, Bai Yunfei could persist for half an hour before he’d have to return his second fireseed to the Cataclysmic Seal. Not only did this ignore the backlash that’d normally come to roost, his body wouldn’t suffer any effects from using the skill!
This was only if Bai Yunfei remembered to cancel the coil form before it was too late—before he used up all of his soulforce.
The last time Bai Yunfei had used of this form, he had been so caught up in the euphoric feeling of his newfound power that he lost himself to the feeling and used up all his soulforce, leaving him bedridden for a whole day and night…
The Bai Yunfei of today was no stranger to this form. The power he received from breaking through to become a Soul Exalt was already familiar to him. That much could be seen from how quickly he dispatched the soulbeasts.
The step that divided a late-stage Soul Ancestor and a Soul Exalt was essentially the same as the step that was needed to cross from the earth to the heavens. With so much power filling his body, Bai Yunfei felt as though he’d never be able to use it all. His control over elemental fire was far more powerful, and he didn’t even need to use the elemental fire in the world, the amount of elemental fire in his body was all he needed.
The speed that came with his newfound strength… the power… the soulsense… everything…
He felt so powerful!
Only one word could be used to describe this feeling: ecstatic!
……
“Boom!!”
There was another explosion as a burst of elemental fire erupted in the air. Bai Yunfei speared a late-stage class four scythe mantis through the chest before its body was rendered into ashes. Then, in a burst of wind, the ashes scattered over the earth…
Five minutes.
It took just five minutes for over a hundred class four soulbeasts, dozens of class five soulbeasts, and nearly a dozen late-stage class five soulbeasts to be reduced to corpses!
In a blur of shadows, Bai Yunfei stepped away from the battlefield to return to his spot in front of the village. A pair of ordinary-looking shoes could be seen on his feet, glowing slightly purple when he moved.
When he came to a rest, the shoes started to dim in color before returning to their original gray color.
The purple light symbolized elemental lightning. For Bai Yunfei, who focused on training in elemental fire, the fact that elemental lightning could even form underneath his feet could clearly be said to be because of the boots.
In other words, it could clearly be said that these boots were also soul armaments of the lightning affinity.
The speed Bai Yunfei was capable of moving at was partially due to the newfound strength when he broke his limits and partially because of these boots.
Boot stats:
Equipment Grade: Mid Earth
Elemental Affinity: Lightning
Upgrade Level: +10
Defense: 900
Additional Attack: 460
Soul Compatibility: 10%
+10 Additional Effect: Increase speed by 100% for one second in exchange for soulforce.
Cooldown of 1 second
Upgrade Requirement: 105 Soulpoints
Author Note: The boots come in a pair since it’d be rather unsuitable for them to have separate effects. Please try not to be too serious.
The one second duration effect was very compatible with the short-burst nature of lightning. The fact that the boots had a cooldown of one second also meant that only one second was needed in between uses for another burst of speed, which meant it was an extremely powerful effect.
Usage of this effect to move felt anachronic in nature, bizarre and strange. At first, Bai Yunfei wanted to call this technique the “Lightning Step,” but it felt rather ordinary to say. After thinking about the instantaneous movement, Bai Yunfei figured that people would perceive this movement as ‘flashes.’
With that reasoning in mind, he came up with a proper name for this technique—
The Flash Step!!
Consequently, these boots were named the ‘Flash Lightning Boots.’
……
Any other soul cultivator would have been in utter shock after watching these two hundred soulbeasts get slaughtered, but Bai Yunfei’s face didn’t seem to share those feelings of relief or joy. Without dispelling the coil around him, Bai Yunfei charged straight at the pack of soulbeasts with his spear.
Roughly a minute later, Bai Yunfei’s eyes lit up, “It’s here!”
“Crack! Crack! Pop! Pop!”
A series of pops and cracks echoed from deeper within the forest—sounds that seemed as if the trees themselves were breaking. Due to the dirt the soulbeasts had kicked up in their rush here, Bai Yunfei was only able to see a large shadow slowly meandering toward him!
The tremors of the earth were starting to get even worse. The trees in front of him were swaying crazily and the black shadow was getting closer and closer.
Finally, a giant mountain towered right in front of him!
A mountain!
One that was two hundred meters tall and a hundred meters wide! There were several large jagged stones and dozens of trees rooted on its back!
No matter how one looked at this thing, it was a mountain, but it was moving!
The palpitations were small, but the smallest of footsteps could clearly be seen on the ground behind it!
“A hillbeast…” Bai Yunfei grunted. The signs were there for him to see it, but no matter how he prepared himself to feel, it was still hard to hide his surprise.
A hillbeast was a soulbeast with the earth element. Like its name implied, it was basically a mountain!
No one knew the origins of these types of soulbeasts nor were they spotted out in the wild often. This was due to the fact that for eighty percent of their lives, hillbeasts tended to ‘hibernate.’
When they hibernate, all presence of their existence vanishes, making them another mountain in the landscape. Even if someone were to step or prance all over their bodies, hillbeasts wouldn’t react. In normal situations, it wouldn’t be strange for them to wake up once every two or three hundred years, but only so that they could relocate and continue their slumber elsewhere.
This way, they could continue their existences as part of a mountain range.
Only one appeared in front of Bai Yunfei today, but it’d be more accurate to say one ‘mountain’ appeared right in front of him.
These hillbeasts weren’t meant to appear in places where there weren’t any soulbeasts, yet this one was heading straight for the village! Should it be left unchecked, only razed ground and death would be left in its wake.
“Mid-stage class six…” Bai Yunfei muttered. “That’s the same as a mid-stage Soul Exalt. I can’t fight against it but… how am I going to stop it!?”