A single misstep could lead to immediate danger. The Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast struggled frantically. After all, possessing the strength of a Nascent Soul cultivator, it managed to snap the vines and regain its freedom.
However, the gray mist from the Four Directions Flag had already descended, trapping it in mid-air. Immediately following, a cyan sword light slashed over.
Knowing the danger, the beast roared, its body flashing with purple light as it desperately pushed open the gray mist restriction. A black-purple light flashed in its mouth, and its tongue shot out again.
With a clang, the tongue actually managed to deflect the incoming sword light, causing it to deviate from its target. The cyan sword light grazed the beast's body, tearing a huge gash in the nearby stone wall.
Immediately afterward, the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast shook its body, shedding the purple dust formed from the earth and stone power that covered it.
Strangely, this purple dust swirled without wind, forming a giant purple light sphere, protecting its entire body like a tangible light screen. The remaining attacks were all blocked.
Fortunately, the beast was still trapped within the range of the gray mist, greatly limiting its movements.
Zhang Ling frowned. With a thought, the sword light that had crashed into the side instantly split into seven flying swords, quickly gathering together again in the air, intending to unleash another full-force attack.
However, the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast let out a low roar, shaking off all the purple dust from its body, transforming it into a giant purple whirlwind that charged downwards.
The wind sphere diminished with each segment of distance covered, but it forcefully broke through the confinement of the Four Directions Flag. Although it didn't recover its full speed, it regained about seventy to eighty percent of its original pace.
Zhang Ling hurriedly mobilized his spiritual power, rapidly waving the Four Directions Flag, releasing another wave of gray mist, but it was already too late.
In an instant, the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast broke through the gray mist and rushed out. This beast didn't unleash any further attacks. Instead, it flew towards the nearby rock wall. As it approached the rock wall, the purple light on its body flickered a few times, turning into a bright ochre light, and its size rapidly decreased.
This clearly indicated its intention to escape using earth遁术.
Zhang Ling smiled mysteriously, making no further response. He merely controlled the gray mist and the sword light, which had already reformed, to attack.
The Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast crashed headfirst into the rock wall, its entire body burrowing in more than halfway, but then it couldn't go any further, as if it were stuck, frozen in place. Its body glowed brightly with yellow light, and the surrounding earth and stone were being separated like mud, indicating that it was using an earth escape technique.
However, behind the foot-thick layer of earth and stone, a layer of ice-blue light shone. Upon closer inspection, it was a thick layer of ice crystals. A chillingly cold aura emanated, and a layer of frost formed on the surrounding stone walls.
The Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast also sensed something was amiss. With a flash, it charged towards the other rock wall, intending to escape from the other side.
But at this moment, a black shadow squeezed out of the ice wall. It was the Black Tortoise, now transformed into a human figure, his arm quickly flicking. A crescent-shaped silver-black light flashed out, with a soft whooshing sound. It instantly severed the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast's tail.
The Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast twitched from the attack and fell downwards. A sharp pain came from its tail, causing it to scream miserably.
Zhang Ling's face lit up with joy, and he released the gray mist to envelop the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast.
However, this beast's strength was indeed not weak. After falling a dozen feet, it stabilized its body, transforming into a streak of light and charging madly.
Having suffered a serious injury, the beast's ferocity was instead ignited, and its attack power and speed increased greatly. It was like a purple ball of light bouncing back and forth.
Fortunately, this space was now covered with a layer of frost. Thick layers of ice had formed in all directions, up, down, left, and right. No matter how fast its escape was, it was difficult to find a way out.
Rumbling sounds continued incessantly as the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast constantly attacked the surrounding ice walls, trying to find a breakthrough.
Its attacks were not weak. Each time, many cracks would appear on a section of the ice wall. If it were allowed to attack only one spot, it would be able to break out quickly.
But Zhang Ling naturally wouldn't give it the chance.
Flying swords, Heavenly Star Sand, and gray mist, although they couldn't catch the beast for a while, were constantly compressing its space for movement and interfering with its actions.
The Black Tortoise also assisted from the side, releasing attacks. At the same time, he was commanding a hexagonal blue array disk in his hand.
This was the formation sealing this space, the Profound Ice Array. Although the name was ordinary, it was a set of ice-attribute formations with decent power.
Actually, this type of area wasn't suitable for setting up the Profound Ice Array, but this array was simple and quick to set up, so he chose to set up the Profound Ice Array, temporarily sealing the nearby hundred-foot area.
Another important reason was that half of the spiritual power activated by the Profound Ice Array at this moment came from the Black Tortoise's own spiritual power. With an eighth-order demon cultivator acting as the array core, it was naturally more difficult to destroy.
At the same time, Zhang Ling also threw out three Iron Lion puppets and three Giant Tortoise puppets, releasing fireballs and ice cones to further besiege the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast.
A trapped beast still fights. He wasn't willing to be desperately counterattacked by this ancient beast, and possibly even get injured. Continuing to wear it down like this could also grind the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast to death.
In the blink of an eye, a quarter of an hour had passed, and the Earth Spirit Beast's range of activity had been compressed to the ground. It could only move in the nearby thirty-foot area.
Zhang Ling fully mobilized the Four Directions Flag to release all the gray mist, further compressing its range of activity.
Although the gray mist in the Four Directions Flag had the effect of sealing space, the amount of gray mist that could be released wasn't much, at most covering a twenty-foot space. Of course, it could also spread the gray mist, but the more it spread, the worse the sealing effect would be.
This could be considered a disadvantage.
Of course, compressing the gray mist in a small area would greatly enhance the sealing power.
Before long, the gray mist from the Four Directions Flag completely covered the area where the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast was active, greatly restricting the beast's speed.
Then, more than a dozen pitch-black vines were thrown out, constantly pulling and entangling. As for the flying swords, they were only used for auxiliary attacks, and the silver-black claws condensed by the Black Tortoise, a powerful means of destruction, were no longer released.
Because he didn't know what the three treasures on the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast's body were, whether it was the demon core, or scales, or something else. If he used too strong an attack and destroyed most of the beast's body, that wouldn't be good.
Throughout this battle, Zhang Ling didn't use the Black Bone Giant Claw, his strongest attack, for this very reason.
After tangling for a little longer, the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast was finally entangled in mid-air by the gray mist and more than a dozen thick vines.
A flash of green light was seen, heading straight for its head.
Sensing the danger of death, the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast frantically swayed its body, breaking a few vines, but it didn't change anything.
The green light pierced through one of its eyes, frantically shuttling back and forth in its head. The Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast screamed a few times, its body twitching, and with a thud, it fell to the ground, killed.
"Success."
Only then did Zhang Ling reveal a smile, and he quickly waved his hand, summoning the Soul Banner. A magic seal was cast, and a cloud of Yin energy wrapped a small black monkey that appeared in the air, which was the Ghost Monkey that had just been tamed not long ago.
This ghost beast shrieked at him, its eyes lighting up as it stared at the dead Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast.
With a thought, Zhang Ling turned the Ghost Monkey into a cloud of Yin wind, covering the Earth Spirit Beast's corpse. In the blink of an eye, it pulled out a vague beast soul. Naturally, it was the spirit of the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast.
The Ghost Monkey drifted over, dragging the spirit, squeaking greedily.
Zhang Ling nodded slightly, and the Ghost Monkey let out a loud roar, transforming into a giant ghost face, and swallowed the ancient beast's spirit in one gulp, chewing silently, revealing a satisfied strange smile.
The ancient beast's Nascent Soul-level spirit was naturally a great tonic for the Ghost Monkey. This kind of spirit was rare. If he hadn't deliberately controlled it, it might not have been possible to keep this beast's spirit during the fierce battle.
If he was dealing with a demon beast, it would be difficult to have such an opportunity. After all, demon beasts at the eighth level mostly had great intelligence and were more difficult to kill.
Zhang Ling smiled and put away many magical treasures, and came to the side of the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast's corpse, carefully examining it.
Ancient beasts generally had huge bodies, but this Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast, including its tail, was only seven or eight feet long in total. It could be said to be extremely small, but it was called Three Treasures, and it must have some special materials on its body.
Zhang Ling looked at it with great interest, first finding the tail of the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast that had been cut off before. It looked like a lizard's tail, but it had many purple-black threads on it, which seemed to be the beast's fur. After the beast died, the purple-shining threads turned purple-black and became a little dim.
He also took out the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast's inner core, which was also a yellow-purple inner core, the size of a fist, with many purple-yellow spiritual patterns on it. It was much more transparent than ordinary demon cores, like a crystal.
While he was dealing with the ancient beast's corpse, Mu Xiaoyan's side was not peaceful.
Mu Xiaoyan had already flown out of the cave and was waiting for Zhang Ling nearby. At the same time, she was checking on the condition of her friend Wu Yun.
Wu Yun didn't have any major injuries on her body, only some minor bumps, but her soul seemed to have been severely damaged, and she had been in a coma, not waking up.
She fed her friend a few pills to recover from her injuries, but it didn't get better, and Mu Xiaoyan's face was a little anxious.
Suddenly, a loud noise came from the ground. The ground under her feet instantly cracked open several crisscrossing deep gullies. Mu Xiaoyan grabbed her friend and quickly flew into the air.
The loud noise from the ground became more intense, and the area within a few miles was the same, especially the Black Stone Cliff that had just come down, which collapsed in an instant, half of it falling down with countless earth and stones, stirring up a layer of dust, as if there was an earthquake.
But when she scanned with her divine sense, there was no such phenomenon in other areas, and Mu Xiaoyan guessed that this might be Zhang Ling fighting with the ancient beast.
As expected, it was Zhang Ling who had just trapped the Three Treasures Earth Spirit Beast with the Profound Ice Array, causing the destruction by frantically hitting the surroundings.
Although it didn't break the formation, part of the impact was scattered around. Therefore, the nearby three bodies were shaken and caused a commotion.
Even now, Mu Xiaoyan's expression was still a little dazed, not believing that Zhang Ling had become a Nascent Soul cultivator.
A strange roar entered her ears, and Mu Xiaoyan also noticed that many low-level demon beasts had appeared on the ground, running wildly. There were as many as a thousand of them, fleeing in panic and spreading in all directions.
Among them were many Rock Shell Centipedes found in the cave, as well as some giant scorpions, sand rats, and other common demon beasts in the nearby area.
Although it looked strange, after a little thought, she could guess the reason why these demon beasts were running, fearing that they had also sensed that a terrifying battle was taking place in the mountain. Avoiding danger was also the instinct of demon beasts.
Suddenly, Mu Xiaoyan's expression froze, and she turned her head to look in the direction behind her. Her divine sense noticed that several escape lights were approaching quickly, and they seemed to be high-level cultivators as well.
It seemed that the movement here had attracted the attention of some cultivators.
However, few high-level cultivators came to the Bewildering Forest. How could several high-level cultivators come at once? Mu Xiaoyan's brows furrowed slightly.
In a moment, those cultivators approached and also discovered Mu Xiaoyan. Mu Xiaoyan hesitated for a moment and did not leave, but stood in place and waited.
There were six cultivators who came, all of them were Golden Core experts. The one with the highest cultivation was a bearded man wearing armor and carrying a large sword on his back, with the strength of the late Golden Core stage.
This person stared at Mu Xiaoyan with a fierce look and asked unceremoniously, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"Who are you and what qualifications do you have to question me?" Mu Xiaoyan snorted with an ugly face when she heard the unceremonious question.
Anger appeared on the bearded man's face, wanting to say something more. A woman in red behind him chuckled. "Brother Hu, let the little sister do it."
The woman in red came out, chuckled, and said to Mu Xiaoyan with a smile. "This sister, please forgive me. I am not a bad person. I am a guard of Yanhai City, performing tasks in the nearby area, and patrolling routinely. The movement here is a bit unusual. If you know anything, please tell me the truth, otherwise it will be difficult for me to explain."
This woman's face was ordinary, but her figure was extremely good, and she also wore many beautiful accessories, looking a bit rich.
Mu Xiaoyan breathed a sigh of relief when she heard this. Yanhai Immortal City had been a bit uneasy recently. The Nascent Soul elders in the city had issued an order for some high-level cultivators to patrol the nearby area from time to time.
It was said to be to prevent the alien demons from attacking again. This team of cultivators might be such a patrol team.
"It turns out that you are the guards of Yanhai City. I also hold a position in the trip and can be considered a colleague. This is my identity card, you can check it." Mu Xiaoyan did not directly say the reason for the movement below, but threw out a jade card.
"Eh, the inner elder token of the Immortal City." The woman in red did not immediately take the jade card, but cast a ray of spiritual light to fix the jade card in the air, checked it, and nodded to the people beside her.
The inner elder tokens generally hold rather important positions, and also symbolize a certain identity.
The bearded man and the others looked at each other and did not entangle on the identity. Instead, they asked about the reason for the vibration of the mountain below.
Mu Xiaoyan naturally did not reveal anything, only saying that she had just arrived here and saw a group of low-level demon beasts running wildly, so she was attracted over.
After all, the identities of these people were still questionable, so it was not good to reveal too much.
