Dual Cultivation God Returns-Chapter 980: No hard feelings

In the silence that preceded the start of the fight, filled with tension, the Elder’s Spatial Ring emitted a faint Spiritual Qi fluctuation, and some kind of Demonic Beast’s polished white skull carved with complex patterns and characters, refined into a Spiritual Treasure, appeared next to him in the air, attracting Wu Long’s attention.

"Get it now?", the Elder grinned, "Why, even after seeing your earlier fight, I was confident to step into the fighting pit?"

"I can guess"

"Hehe, I knew you would recognize it was a Source of Flow from a single glance despite how unusual it is. You showed your quick wit in the previous fight, after all. It is a specialty of my Sect, we refine the Skull and Demonic Core of a powerful Demonic Beast into a Source of Flow, and refine its blood into Bloodstain Water for combat"

"Hence, the Blood Skull Sect, makes sense", Wu Long nodded, "But even if Water does suppress Metal giving you advantage, you won’t be using your specialty in this fight, right?"

"Indeed, bloodstain water is powerful, but does have high concentration of heavy metals making it vulnerable to skilled Metal Attribute Cultivators, and although I doubt you reached a level of skill required to make it a problem, I won’t be using it here", the Elder sighed with a wry smile, "But that doesn’t eliminate my advantage even if I can’t use my most powerful tool. After all, every Water Attribute Cultivator knows to carry at the very least, pure distilled water free of metals in their Source of Flow, just in case they have to fight a Metal Attribute Cultivator or the rare Lightning Attribute Cultivator, it’s just basics"

As he spoke, a thin stream of clear water snaked out from the mouth of the skull, and flowed to spiral around the Elder to eventually begin collecting into an orb above his open palm, while Wu Long’s Hearts of Iron once again opened up to release metal around him which began connecting into multiple complex structures.

The two became silent once again, staring each other down, and then the gong signalling the start of the fight rang out.

The Elder didn’t bother releasing his cultivation base pressure, starting out by producing a pressurized jet stream out of the orb of water above his palm which went straight for Wu Long.

The latter deployed the same drill defensive technique from before, scattering the attack.

At the same time, from the three Hearts of Iron, three metal lances formed with chains attached in between the lance and the Heart of Iron.

They shot to the sides and then bent their trajectory to target the Elder, who started putting masses and masses of water around himself that moved in a rapid current while slightly retreating, but still sustaining the water jet which source orb fed by the masses around him he now let go of, letting it float next to him while beginning to form five new such orbs.

The lances plunged into the water defense, but unable to win against the current were forced to change trajectory, while Wu Long separated the drill defense into multiple small ones, managing in time to accurately intercept the new pressurized jet streams.

The battle instantly expanded in volume as they continued to deploy more and more attacks and defenses. Wu Long starting to launch a rain of metal spikes while continuing to manipulate the chained lances, while the Elder was simultaneously trying to direct the flow of his defenses so that the lances could not reach near him or put their chains around him, and redirecting the metal spikes to the ground below, while sustaining and adding more pressurized water jets that Wu Long stopped with more drill defenses.

However, while the chained lances were not under as much pressure, the drill defenses began to chip and rust quickly, indicating that it wasn’t simple distilled water but contained some kind of rust-accelerating liquid, which required Wu Long to focus on repairing and replacing them.

And indeed, Wu Long’s eyes caught sight of the Source of Flaw releasing two separate streams of water from the skull mouth, one going into his defenses, and the other containing the rusting agent going into the orbs sustaining the pressurized water attacks.

The Elder did not bother collecting the water scattered by Wu Long’s defenses as it quickly began flooding the floor of the fighting pit below, since that water rusted Wu Long’s metal and absorbed it, while the water in his defenses was still clean distilled water free of metal risks.

However, the Elder could not relax since the chains swimming around in his defenses now reached alarmingly enormous lengths, which placed a large volume of metal near him, even if he did put effort into pushing them away. It reminded him of parasitic worms that kept growing and growing within his own defensive shield.

Not to mention, he had to keep a circular opening within his defenses for the flow of water feeding his own pressurized water attacks, which required him to manage currents around that opening very carefully so that Wu Long’s lances or sharp spikes don’t exploit the need to sustain it to somehow cut through.

Sweat began covering his face as he clearly started reaching the limits of volume of water he could control at once, most of it in his defenses.

And yet the chains continued to push in more and more while the sharp tips tried to navigate the currents and find a way toward reaching him.

Despite all that, his eyes were full of confidence as he watched this mass of metal grow, as if cheering for it to continue to grow more, his thoughts almost audible from the look in his eyes, ’Just a bit more, just a bit more’

However, before he could enact whatever plan he had, about ten pills impacted his defensive water wall in different places, dissolving instantly, which changed the water properties.

Before he could even react to that rapid change, another hundred pills of a different kind came, likely launched right after the first ten, and in a split moment, his entire water was sucked away somewhere while the hundred pills expanded to the size of a human head and fell down the ground below, impacting the now flooded surface with loud splashes, and the water there disappeared as well.

In a split moment of his shock of suddenly losing all defenses, the lances shot toward him and pierced his torso.

"Khh!", blood flowed from his mouth as he looked on with round eyes at the three metal chains going through him, and the bloodied tips carrying the chains forward now coiling around his limbs, sealing off the flow of Spiritual Qi and thus preventing any ’last trump card’ moves that Evil Path Sects were quite famous for.

The patterns and characters on the Source of Flow gradually stopped glowing as the flow of Spiritual Qi from the Elder was cut, and after wobbling a bit in the air, it began falling, caught by Wu Long on the way to the Elder.

"Khhk...h-how?", the Elder asked after coughing out more blood, slightly mirroring the scene everyone in the arena witnessed not long ago with another Sect Elder.

"You got too greedy", Wu Long explained, "You were going to make a separate new defense barrier from that mass you were readying behind you, while mixing the rusting water into the old defense that held so much of my metal to quickly rust and dissolve it, and then discard the old defense, letting it fall down to the ’waste’ water containing metal below, with that you were going to eliminate a massive chunk of my metal reserves, but you delayed it too much, and the more metal you captured in that trap, the more focused you were on closing the trap, not what I was doing"

"Your second mistake was being too cautious to begin with. You knew I didn’t have skill to control metal dissolved in liquid or powdered into fine dust, and I wasn’t lying - I really could not, but because of our little mind game before the fight, you couldn’t take chances on it. Had you not been worried about it, you could have activated your trap a bit earlier without worry, and from then on defend and attack with rusting water pushing your advantage.

He then took out two slightly large pills holding them in between the fingers of one hand, "Your third and final mistake was in assuming that only Water Attribute Cultivators have precautionary measures against other Elemental Attribute enemies with them. Alchemy is not only something useful in cultivation, but serves many purposes including these Water Reduction Pill and Water Absorption Pill, one dissolves instantly in large quantities, reduces the mass and weakens the structure of water, the other can absorb an entire lake in minutes, but coupled with the first one, in an instant. I bought quite a few at the neighboring Silver Wing City, although a bit expensive, as you can see it was worth the coin"

"Khukh-... kheghe-... khehehe, hehe, indeed... it seems you were the more cunning and prepared one after all... what-..khuk brghuh ...a way to lose... hah! But-... ghuk... but as agreed, no... hard... feeli-...", he continued to cough mouthful after mouthful of blood, but was smiling all the way, even as his eyes lost the light of life in them mid-word.

"Rest", Wu Long reached out to close them, and then lowered his body to the ground, retrieving the chain lances by breaking the links instead of pulling the chains back out.