Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Moving to dodge the branches extending out towards him with the Drifting Cloud Steps again, Xuan Hao found that different from before, there were no restrictions in place. Allowing him to freely dodge the withering branches trying to catch him.

The problem was, while he could easily dodge the branches trying to catch him, he couldn’t attack, as the second he reappeared, the withered branches would be at his side. Forcing him to once again dodge with the Drifting Cloud Steps.

He did attempt to move farther away, but soon enough discovered that the roots of the withered tree towering above the desert stretched across an area close to a hundred kilometers around the tree itself.

Although he could utilize the Dao of Space and launch an attack from outside the domain of the withered tree, he found it close to impossible to do so even with his current comprehension of the Dao of Space. The reason for this being that the withered tree protected itself with countless spatial suppression or interference formations.

Breaking through a dozen of those formations might be possible, but in the face of potentially hundreds of layered formations interfering with the space around the withered tree, Xuan Hao found himself helpless in launching a long-distance attack on the withered tree. The only way for him to land an attack would be to get close to the towering tree, but within the hundred-kilometer range of the tree, it could essentially launch an attack the second he appeared.

Worse yet, if he tried to circumvent this protective barrier that the withered tree had formed around itself by trying to attack from above, the withered tree would just burrow underground.

And underground, the withered tree had a far greater advantage compared to above ground, as it was able to fully utilize its vast root network with far more precision and power compared to above ground, something he personally experienced when he attempted to move underground to dodge an attack.

Altogether, the withered tree was powerful and difficult to deal with even with his current strength and comprehension of the Dao of Space. Leaving him with a feeling danger he hadn’t felt in a long time, as he wasn’t able to come up with any way to kill the withered tree.

Spatial collapse was of course still an option, but the qi required to utilize it on a wide enough scale to affect the withering tree standing more than a thousand meters tall wasn’t exactly small and that was not to mention it would take some time to cause a spatial collapse. More than enough time for the withering tree that clearly had some comprehension of the Dao of Space to move out of the way.

In other words, in the short term, he couldn’t really figure out any way to deal with the withering tree and could only continue attempting different attack methods to see if anything would work, while at the same time trying to test its limits.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

And so, Xuan Hao continued clashing with both the roots and branches of the withered tree that had originally managed to disguise itself as the spiral staircase. The original spiral staircase, having reemerged a short time after the battle began a few hundred meters from where the withered tree was standing, though Xuan Hao didn’t even bother to even glance its way and instead remained entirely focused on his battle with the withered tree.

Making full use of the opportunity to further his understanding of the Void Sword Art that he hadn’t had any real opportunity to utilize for more than a few short slashes in the past.

Even if the Void Sword Art itself was just an incomplete sword art that only ranked at the Low Heaven Rank and was of lower rank compared to the similarly incomplete Heaven Splitting Sword Art, the Void Sword Art’s utilization of both the Dao of the Sword and the Dao of Space made it easier for him to understand it and also allowed him to use it with far more ease.

Not to mention, the Heaven Splitting Sword Art wasn’t exactly designed for a long, drawn-out battle and was more focused on delivering a single powerful attack, something he had given up on after realizing just how terrifying the defensive power of the withered tree was.

From the original clash that centered around trying to look for any potential weaknesses in the defenses of the withered tree, Xuan Hao shifted his attention towards testing the limits of the withered tree. Planning to try and get through by brute force. Knowing that the strength he used for attacking was far less compared to what the withered tree should be using on defense.

Even if the withered tree had reached the Peak of the Sea Formation Realm and had a far large spiritual sea than he had to tap into for power, it also had to defend a far larger area and had to supply qi to the countless formations that prevented him from attacking it from afar through the Dao of Space.

Putting everything together, though the spiritual sea of the withered tree was far larger than Xuan Hao’s, the sheer quantity of spiritual qi it had to burn through to keep itself save from any potential attacks would make it dry up far faster than Xuan Hao’s spiritual sea, as all he had to do was continue his attack using the Void Sword Art supported by the Drifting Cloud Steps.

In the end, after the first hour since their clash, Xuan Hao had already managed to place himself in a superior position, as the initiative no longer rested with him, but instead the withered tree that was rapidly burning through its qi reserves.

Even worse for the withered tree, escape wasn’t an option, as Xuan Hao would be able to easily chase it down with his comprehension of the Dao of Space. Maybe retreating underground could work, but if it remained underground for too long, the formations that relied on the vast empty space above ground to manifest would be destroyed by Xuan Hao without any protection. Allowing him to attack from afar without having to take a single step underground.