"Enough, both of you!" I exclaimed, as their bickering had gotten on my nerves. "Lately, you've both been abnormally unbearable! And you often interfere with my work!"
"Brother, don't you love Jiaxing Er?" she asked worriedly, making puppy-dog eyes, which even my decaying soul reacted to.
"I do, but as a sister. So stop clinging to me for every little thing. I have a lot to do!" I said, pushing her aside and heading towards the scorpion corpses. I needed to work quickly, or the noise from two battles might attract a bunch of different monsters. And I needed to do something about this situation and curb Jiaxing Er's enthusiasm, as she had started crossing boundaries due to her perceived impunity. I literally felt like the protagonist of some harem anime! And it made me sick! I still hadn't forgotten Lin Yun Er, which left a suffocating emptiness in my chest, so my mood was completely ruined.
"You truly are incredible! He was at least at the peak of the mid-level, and you basically killed him!" Zhou Min exclaimed enthusiastically, recovering herself.
"Nothing special. The difference between stages isn't that great; it can be leveled out by using cunning and tricks. True, until those tricks are known to your opponent and he doesn't use them himself."
"I see," Zhou Min agreed. After that, she and Jiaxing Er sat nearby in the shade of an awning, each lost in their own thoughts. And Jiaxing Er was still sulking at me for my own words! She had completely lost her fear, but oh well, her feelings weren't that big of a problem. Maybe someday I'd even enjoy them, but for now, a tool in love with me was very useful.
Fortunately, all the work was finished in just a couple of hours, and during that time, no monsters attacked us. It was truly great luck. Gathering all our belongings, we headed back to Dunhuang; there was no point in staying here any longer. Soon, another night fell. We walked according to the path I had plotted. As I said, I have a good sense of direction, so finding the right way was not difficult. I also made Zhou Min cultivate all night again, not letting her rest, while I analyzed my fight.
A full-fledged battle with such enemies turned out to be quite difficult. If I had slightly higher speed, I could have resolved everything more easily. But alas, this is my limit at the moment. Even with space magic, I won't become much faster, but for fighting elder and higher leaders, it will be almost necessary. There are two ways to solve this problem: the first is to continue tempering my body, which is quite long. The second is to reach either the fourth stage in wind magic or learn to use the star map for spells like wind rush and so on. There is a certain problem with the fourth stage. If my theory is correct, my tooth will eventually be able to supply me with souls to strengthen the stars, but when that will be is a good question. And using the star map is still difficult for me, despite everything. In the end, I didn't come to any specific conclusion all night, and with the sunrise, we moved on. I still have many other urgent matters.
All the time we walked, I noticed that someone, namely that annoying quartet, was following us. However, they didn't attack at night, and soon they disappeared somewhere. Although their presence made me uneasy, I didn't care much about them, as they couldn't really do anything to us. At most, they would force me to show my full strength, and then they would die, so it was all the same. We had already left the territory of the fire scorpions when I felt danger behind us.
Turning around, I saw a sand tiger rushing towards us from the direction of the hills we had recently overcome! Looking closer, I realized that the quartet had, with great difficulty, forced it to charge at us. First, they had obviously angered it, and then they hid using Kan Guang's earth magic. Those scoundrels! Well, I'll find them yet.
"Run! A sand tiger is chasing us!" I shouted to the girls, who were walking leisurely ahead, silently surveying the desert.
"What!" Zhou Min screamed, turning around and seeing that a tiger was indeed chasing us. Her eyes widened, and she dashed away after Jiaxing Er, who immediately obeyed my command.
I ran at the end, accelerating us with wind magic. This was essentially the first time I had used it for general purposes, so it was quite amusing. Of course, I could have dealt with this tiger myself, but that would have required using all my strength, which I really didn't want to do in front of Zhou Min. Although if we couldn't escape, I would have to fight, risking my life.
We ran for about five minutes. The tiger didn't fall behind; on the contrary, it was slowly catching up. If I had picked up the two girls and started using wind boots, we would have had a chance to escape, but like this, we could only slightly delay our demise. I was already considering doing so when a small cave appeared ahead. It was too small for a four-meter tiger to enter, but large enough for a human.
"To the cave! Hide there, I'll deal with the tiger!" I shouted, sending Zhou Min and Jiaxing Er there.
"Are you an idiot?! We can all hide in the cave. Why fight this tiger!" Zhou Min objected, out of breath.
"You're the idiot! Look at the entrance to this cave!" I shouted back at her. Directly above the cave entrance, a pile of stones was stacked, held by other stones, almost blocking the entrance. "If this tiger tries to break into the cave, it will definitely collapse the entrance, and how will we get out?"
"Understood, brother!" Jiaxing Er replied, grabbing Zhou Min and pulling her towards the cave by the wrist. I helped them with a powerful gust of wind, so they almost flew into the cave. Great, now I just needed to disappear from their sight.
At that moment, the tiger managed to catch up to me because I had slowed down to help the girls hide. I felt its massive paw trying to crush me from behind, so using a wind step, I urgently dodged the blow, finding myself in the air at its head level. Deciding to seize this moment, I used the wrath of lightning and directed it straight into the tiger's eyes. From the unexpectedness of what happened, it missed the blow and lost an eye, but this strike couldn't do anything else. Meanwhile, the tiger, fueled by new rage from losing an eye, swung its paw again, trying to knock me out of the air, but that wasn't going to happen. Using a wind rush, I flew about forty meters away from it.
Landing on my feet, I immediately rushed towards the nearest hills, among which I could hide, and also find the disgusting observers, because of whom I was forced to fight this beast. Although I wouldn't deny the pleasure of it. The tiger had forgotten all about the girls, chasing right after me. In just half a minute, we had disappeared behind the hills, and the observers continued to watch only my battle, also forgetting about the girls. This was an excellent outcome.
"Now let's put the games aside, little tiger," I said with a cold smile, stopping abruptly and turning to face the enraged tiger, which was running at me fifty meters away. In my hand was the Asura mask, which I quickly put on for greater moral pleasure, and I also summoned the spiky turtle and released all my aura. Seeing my changes, even the frenzied beast slowed down and stopped, studying all the changes about twenty meters from me. It slowed down quite rapidly, so even I was surprised.
Under the mask, I smiled like a madman, anticipating a great battle with the elder pack leader, the sand tiger, the terror of the local beasts. Although this wasn't part of the original plan, I wanted to test my strength before fighting the swift lightning wolf, which was a very inconvenient opponent for me due to its high speed and immunity to lightning. The tiger clearly sensed a threat from me. I was no longer a small, annoying human who dared to wound it severely; I was an enemy that needed to be treated with all seriousness. One mistake could cost me my life.
We broke from our positions almost simultaneously. I used a wind rush to rise above the tiger; it, in turn, used a rush to move to where I had just stood, but it was slightly falling behind. Three daggers from the spiky turtle immediately flew towards its head. Breaking it was, as always, the easiest way to win. All three reached their target, embedding themselves in its head and pinning its head to the ground.
However, it didn't lose its balance from such a powerful blow. Instead, it used the momentum to duck and leap towards me as I fell. Fortunately, with another wind rush, I flew to the side, then using a step and wind boots, I found myself more than a hundred meters away from it, deciding to test a spell I had been training for a month, secretly from everyone. The tiger landed and instantly found me, charging at me headlong. I was constructing two star maps simultaneously! This required about ten seconds of complete concentration, but the effect should be worth it. About a month ago, before coming to Shanghai, I was in Nanjing to test my abilities and used it for the first time. The power seemed terrifying even to me, but it required too much time and also exhausted me greatly, both magically and mentally.
The tiger had already leaped, aiming to sweep me away in one jump and was already looming over me when I finally managed to finish all the preparations and felt an incredible power surging to fight. Waving my hands, I sent a mid-level combined wind and lightning magic towards the tiger in the form of a gust of lightning blades. They concentrated as a single mass on the perfectly positioned tiger, knocking it back and inflicting immense damage, literally tearing its abdomen and paws, piercing its entire body with electrical discharges. It flew back about fifty meters and couldn't stay on its feet, falling like a tossed kitten.
This move was accompanied by a thunderous sound and the electrical crackle of many lightning bolts that literally tore at your eardrums. In terms of pure power, this move, combining two mid-level first-stage spells, would be equivalent to third-stage magic! But I had a naturally large spiritual seed, almost reaching the soul level, which further increased the power of the spells by almost four times, taking them beyond the mid-level! Unfortunately, the effect of the seeds didn't multiply. I think if the seed was only in one element, it would have amplified the spell by only half of the standard amplification, meaning almost twice.
However, as I said, this trick is still too difficult for me. My head split into pieces afterward, but fortunately, this should pass soon. I think if my control over the stars hadn't increased several times after the raid on the headquarters of the Khabarovsk guardians in Guangzhou, I wouldn't have been able to use this spell now. I leaned my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath quickly and recover. I also took a bottle of water from my spatial bracelet, poured it over myself, and drank my fill after pushing the mask aside. After that, the headache passed, and I returned to the battle. If not for the power of the spell, I wouldn't have dared to use something like this against such an enemy.
Meanwhile, the tiger was also slowly recovering, standing on trembling paws, bleeding, and its internal organs were protruding from its belly. Its head had also taken a severe blow, and it was clear that it was a bit dizzy. Ha, the spell had paid off after all. Now for the easy part. I hadn't returned the first three daggers yet, nor did I intend to. I had three more in reserve. Taking advantage of the moment of confusion and disorientation of my opponent, I sent three more daggers into its head, propelling them with energy from the wind rush spell.
Three blades again pierced the head of the once ferocious beast unimpeded, causing it to take a couple of steps back. One of them even hit its eye, completely blinding it, while the other two plunged into its skull. However, I didn't stop my attack there. A few seconds later, using a built-in command in the spiky turtle, I recalled all the daggers at once, simultaneously sending a lightning strike to the tiger's head. By then, it had already started to recover somewhat, but the sharp pain from the pulled daggers didn't allow it to dodge the lightning, and the resulting holes exposed its brain to the electrical discharge, making its defeat almost a foregone conclusion.