"Tell me you have a backup plan now that you've pushed him into a corner," the spear-wielder asked Mo Lingtian nervously, his hands trembling slightly as he desperately steadied his thousands of energy spears.
Mo Lingtian just smiled, remaining perfectly composed in the sky.
"It is up to you if we can survive this time," he replied.
"What do you mean..." Before the Dao Realm elder could finish what he wanted to say, the crushing pressure coming from the screaming skull came cascading down on him, forcing his right knee down onto the solidified sky.
In a flicker of seconds, Mo Lingtian vanished from the clash zone, reappearing directly beside the dragon beast.
The skull slowly closed its mouth, and the haunting scream stopped. The cultivators who were previously affected by the searing sound slowly recovered, sitting cross-legged in the air to channel their energy and stabilize their minds and seas of consciousness.
Standing before the dragon, whose consciousness was still trapped in the Dao plane, Mo Lingtian suddenly coughed up a mouthful of dark blood. The veins popped out from his neck and forehead as if they were ready to burst at any moment. The clash between the two cores within his sea of consciousness grew increasingly violent, and his body could barely take it anymore.
The fusion of these vastly different kinds of energies continuously resisted each other. This meant his physical body had to bear an internal explosion equal to the power of an immortal.
Mo Lingtian shut his eyes tightly, clutching his chest as his knees gave way to the solidified sky underneath him.
"How was I able to combine these energies?" Mo Lingtian muttered to himself, tracing his memories as far back as when he had suddenly begun to absorb the lunar crystals in the middle of the ocean.
"Focus!" Mo Lingtian yelled internally as he slowly opened his eyes. He could see some of the cultivators slowly standing up in the sky after they had finished stabilizing their seas of consciousness. They looked at him, watching blood trickle from the corner of his mouth, his veins popping out, and his hands clutching his chest tightly and a dry, sinister smile formed on their faces.
They slowly drew their weapons. Everyone from the Qi Refining realm to the Vessel Cleansing stage. Mo Lingtian was the only obstacle standing between them and the dragon's body now that the two Dao Realm elders were locked in a standoff.
Blood trickled down Mo Lingtian's chin again as the clash within continued to intensify. The greedy cultivators smiled and laughed, watching the once mighty predator groveling at the brink of death. It was exactly like how they had dared to subdue the dragon only because it was undergoing a highly dangerous Dao tribulation.
"Brat! Even you can't escape the net you have created!" the Dao Realm elder roared, violently releasing his thousands of energy spears at the hunched old man.
"Ten breaths! Buy me ten breaths!" Mo Lingtian yelled back, turning slightly toward him.
"Deal! But you'll have to handle those ones by yourself. This old man is enough trouble for me," the Dao Realm elder shouted, watching his spears travel violently toward the hunched old man.
"Even the Empyrean couldn't kill me. Will a bunch of lowly ants who do not know the heights of this world be able to touch me?" Mo Lingtian muttered coldly, turning back to face the hungry pack of wolves.
"Give me your life!" one of the cultivators shouted, suddenly dashing through the air with a large axe in his hand. Almost immediately, scores of cultivators followed closely behind him, closing in heavily on Mo Lingtian and forming a massive arc of flying cultivators in the sky.
It was like the sight of a shooting star tearing through the air, trailing violent stardust in its path.
The multitudes of weapons the cultivators held reflected the golden light piercing from the tunneled clouds. The brightness of the reflection was so intense it even stole a momentary glance from the two Dao Realm practitioners. The killing intent radiating from them was so strong, you didn't even need to use energy to feel the oppressive aura around them.
Mo Lingtian narrowed his eyes as he watched them flying toward him. And then he smiled, a wicked, bloodstained smirk. A few of the cultivators at the front saw it and immediately paused mid-air in terror. The others, blinded by greed, didn't notice in time. It became too late for them.
Mo Lingtian's body suddenly lit up with lightning. In a single breath, he dashed through the entire vanguard of approaching cultivators numbering in their dozens, leaving behind a jagged trail of lightning as he reappeared directly behind all of them.
The physical toll of the movement hit him instantly. Mo Lingtian stumbled forward, coughing up another heavy mouthful of blood as the rampant energies inside him threatened to tear his meridians apart.
The cultivators didn't even have time to react. They all dropped from the sky lifelessly, like birds shot down in mid-flight.
"When I was at the old demon's house recovering, I learned a lot about the physical body from him. In his words, it was just a simple technique for self-defense," Mo Lingtian whispered as the bodies continued to plummet from the sky into the ocean.
"What did this scheming fox just do?" one of the surviving cultivators asked no one in particular as he watched the bodies drop.
"I didn't sense any energy fluctuation apart from that lightning step," another replied, furrowing his eyebrows in dread.
"If you want to end up like them," Mo Lingtian said, pointing at the bodies dropping from the sky, "...take one more step closer to this beast."
Mo Lingtian stretched out his hand, arching his fingers as if pulling invisible strings out of thin air. Suddenly, from the dozens of bodies floating on the ocean below, tiny objects flew out, swiftly shooting upward and disappearing into Mo Lingtian's sleeves.
"Those... those are... needles?" one of the cultivators stammered, his eyes wide.
"That's a terrifyingly intricate needle technique. What faction is this boy actually from?" another cultivator muttered, tightly clenching his fists.
"I can't seem to remember exactly how I fused these powers," Mo Lingtian groaned to himself as the energy from the two cores violently crashed against each other once more.
"I can't hold on anymore! I could only last five breaths!" the Dao Realm elder yelled. He and his thousands of energy-shaped spears suddenly plummeted from the sky. Both of his arms had been severed, and his eyes were completely withered.
"Forget it! I will force these energies together," Mo Lingtian decided ruthlessly, forcefully driving the two cores into one another. They cracked, spun, and trembled as a blinding white light emitted from within them. The cores were on the absolute brink of destruction.
"It's... your turn now," the hunched old man rasped, locking his sunken eyes onto Mo Lingtian. Red, vein-like tattoos now covered his body. His hair whipped wildly like a madman's as he gripped his staff in one hand. His back was entirely straightened, his aura full of intense malice and murder.
Mo Lingtian grunted and let out a yell as he continued to forcefully compress the cores.
"Go!" the old man commanded, pointing a bony finger at Mo Lingtian.
The eerie metallic skull floating behind him, glowing with a dark red luminescence, obeyed. Its empty eye sockets burned with a strange, corrosive dark fire as it moved majestically toward Mo Lingtian.
Its rusted jaws unhinged, expanding wide enough to swallow the entire remaining horde of cultivators whole.
As it moved, it screamed again. This time, the sound waves it emitted weren't just mental attacks, they were now physically lethal. A few invisible lashes of sound landed on Mo Lingtian, searing his flesh open as fresh blood oozed out.