Aimless Ascension

Battle of intent mostly depended on the Will of the practitioner. Thankfully, Gale's condition hadn't weakened his Will in any way.

Although he couldn't bring forth everything, he was still winning the conflict. He could barely see the transparent figure in the dim light, entranced in their spot, mustering all their will in resistance.

It was only a matter of time before he wins this contest and imprisons this person.

However, it didn't go as smoothly as he hoped it would. It turned out that the ghostly person had other abilities that complimented their unique spiritual nature.

They threw a psychic attack at Gale, which phased through every bit of his defence and struck his mind. Tremors of chill ran down his spine as Gale's legs shook.

Again he found himself among the corpses. Mutilated organs, corpses surrounded him all over, some even on his body. Gale gritted his teeth and mustered a mental barrier to ward away the psychic attack.

Gale almost succeeded when dozens of cold arms pulled him down into the dead again, overpowering him, devouring him. Sweat dripped down his forehead as he clenched his jaw. In this vision, Gale was powerless–even though he was not. This wasn't going to be easy.

"I am not your enemy," a voice told him. It was most likely the creepy stalker.

Gale had to muster some strength to pull himself away from his traumatic experience. The attack wasn't lethal in any way, merely a ploy to slow him down.

Gale would be a fool if he let them. He formed another mental barrier, far stronger than before. He formed a firewall, fuelling them with all stray thoughts of fear, misery, anger, fury in them.

"You can find the real enemy half li in the east. close."

Just as the voice finished, Gale regained his lost will.

The vision broke instantly as Gale appeared on the farmland again. He clenched his jaw, finding no one there. The ghostly person overcame his weakened intent and escaped when he was busy dealing with the traumatic vision.

"Damn," Gale muttered, his chest heaved. He scanned the surroundings thoroughly for any peculiarities, but the ghost was nowhere to be seen.

"Looks like I need to work on the defence mechanism early."

* * *

Twilight groaned as she shifted to physical form. She dropped to the ground a few miles away in the mountain, clutching her chest.

'All the unworthy gods, this pain is insanity.'

There was no blood on her body, but she was injured quite heavily. It was the first attack–the knife throw that had taken her back and inflicted the attack.

That foreigner did come with more attacks after that, but all the lightning did was restrict her escape. Clearly he didn't intend to kill her outright, but capture and question her. Thankfully, Twilight wins every time someone tries to capture her.

The foreigner was trying to do something terrible, which irked her spirit to resist right at the very moment. If she was only a moment late, she didn't know where she would be right now.

"I was careless," she mumbled.

Nobody, not even gold rankers, could find her when she was in her spiritual form and emitted no ripples of intention. That blinded her today and cost her almost everything.

She had no clue how the foreigner found her. It could be merely luck. Twilight didn't like to bet on that.

There was absolutely zero chance for this weird foreigner to be a gemheart expert. She could feel something holding him back, as he didn't go all out. But the intent was something that was still fresh on her mind.

Twilight could swear that the intent was no weaker than a Master practitioner. And one had to be at least a gold ranker to become a master practitioner. Merely one in a thousand could inherit the mantle of a master. Shi Fan's dead master was one, whom Twilight had met a few times when she was still enlisted in the sect.

All master practitioners seemed to have a mysterious aura around them that set them apart from the normal crowds. Twilight had felt little of that around the foreigner during their battle.

But even so, he should be someone notable. Why the hell was he doing farming here?

Twilight sighed and remained on the ground for several minutes. Through miraculous endeavour, she got herself this unique inheritance. Still, she wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse.

True, it let her have some unique abilities for only being at the Silver rank, but it had its demerits as well. Twilight didn't get injuries most time after getting this inheritance, however, when she does it take several times longer than a normal practitioner to heal up.

What's worse was that most healing potions or medicine didn't work on her.

"That bastard almost got me good," she mumbled, and dismissed her cloak.

The black cloak spread into black mist and disappeared into her body, leaving her completely naked on the grass field along with a small dimension storage device

Twilight even though still retained her physical body in some form after the inheritance transformed her, it was nothing like her normal body. Her skin was pure white, like she was born albino. Moreover, whenever she was in her physical form, she couldn't use any Qi, save for enhancing the defence of the soul cloak.

However, even with her soulcloak on, that bastard's knife had struck right below her right breast.

Twilight squinted her eyes and examined the glittering cut mark under her breast. It wasn't bleeding—she didn't bleed, not truly. The cut was shallow, yet it would take her over a month to heal up.

Clutching the storage device, Twilight changed into spiritual form. She could only use Qi in her spiritual form. Twilight brought out a blue vial of elixir and changed back to physical form again. She could eat in her spiritual form, though that was a weird experience every time she tried.

She drank only a couple drops of the blue elixir and put on a black cloak that resembled her soul cloak completely, save for spirituality.

Now all left to do for today was alert Shi Fan about this foreigner and complete her commission.

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