Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Rustle~

While Xuan Hao was more than happy with how everything was playing out so far, the withered tree that had already begun tapping into its spiritual qi reserves was becoming increasingly nervous about the state of its opponent, as it hadn’t sensed him weakening in the slightest over the past ten days.

On the other hand, instead of weakening, it had clearly sensed his attacks becoming fiercer and more precise over time. Making it even more costly to defend itself and pushing it towards the limit of its endurance faster than expected.

From being able to hold in the face of Xuan Hao for three or four weeks straight, the time it could hold on had been reduced down to a little over two weeks or another five or so days depending on whether Xuan Hao’s attacks becoming stronger during the upcoming days, something that was very possible from what it had gone through so far.

Because of this, the mentality of the withered tree had shifted away from enduring and lasting longer than Xuan Hao to looking for a chance to escape. After all, it had no intention of staying behind and fight to the death with Xuan Hao. If possible, it would escape and live another day.

The problem it encountered was that it was simply impossible to outrun someone who had not just mastered the Dao of Space, but also a similarly hard to escape Dao like the Dao of Light.

Escaping above ground was impossible, the air even more so, while trying to dig down would render the formations that kept it safe from spatial attacks outside its domain useless. Potentially even making it deadlier to escape underground, as attacks would appear far more frequently with Xuan Hao able to focus entirely on attacking.

Overall, the future looked rather bleak and all the withered tree could do after realizing the current situation, was continue its battle with Xuan Hao and hope he ran out of qi before it…

Craaack-!

And after another four days of clashing with Xuan Hao, it finally happened, as one of the branches that had endured thousands of attacks from Xuan Hao over the past two weeks broke off. The spiritual qi flowing throughout the withered tree unable to supply enough spiritual qi in time. Having exhausted to spiritual qi that would normally have been present.

RUUUMBLE-!

Seeing this as well, Xuan Hao knew his opportunity had come, as he directly used the Heaven Splitting Sword to launch a single powerful slash down towards the withered tree from above-

BOOOOM-!

CRAAAACK- BANG!

The powerful sword attack directly cut through one of the main branches of the withered tree, as Xuan Hao also confirmed, that the earlier loss of a small branch hadn’t been some show of weakness from the withered tree to try and bait him into some kind of trap.

Swish~

Bang! Bang! Bang!

And so, without any delay, he became far more aggressive in his attacks. Seizing the opportunity to press the withered tree from all sides and slowly cut it up before it had a chance to recover.

Rustle~

Unable to mount any real resistance against Xuan Hao after its spiritual qi reserves had run dry, the withered tree could only sway anxiously as it tried to fight back to no avail.

Still, with its massive size, though it had run out of spiritual qi, it still ended up taking Xuan Hao another hour to officially kill the towering spiritual tree.

”Huh? Wha… Nooo! My spiritual wood!”

But just as he landed on the ground and was about to place the dead body of the withered tree into his interspatial ring to bring it out with him, the remains of the withering tree suddenly began decaying rapidly before turning into dust before his eyes. Becoming one with the vast desert.

The massive quantity of spiritual wood that would undoubtedly have been extremely useful for not just himself but also the sect had disappeared into thin air…

[Complete Secret Task: Kill the Withered Lord of the Desert]

[Reward: 1.500.000 Ascension Coins]

Even when a small virtual panel popped up in front of him, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of happiness over the current situation, as the value of a spiritual tree the size of the withering tree was undoubtedly worth far more than those ascension coins. Especially considering that he had already saved up enough to get his hands on the ascension secret realm.

”Maybe if I enter the twenty-fifth floor again in the future, I might be able to find some to preserve the remains…” Quietly muttering this to himself as he stared at the place where the towering withering tree had once stood, Xuan Hao could only shake his head before his attention turned towards his own internal situation.

To be honest, he hadn’t expected the withering tree to last if it had and observing the almost dried up state of his own spiritual sea, he understood that if the battle had ended up dragging on for only a few hours longer, he might have been the one losing.

After all, though he might be able to retreat to recover his strength, the withering tree would also be recovering its strength during this time and any future attack with his current strength wouldn’t change the situation much.

But in the end, he won. Successfully defeating the withering tree. An accomplishment that was by far the most fulfilling from any battle he had won in the past, as the sheer time this battle had taken and how much he had grown during this drawn-out battle far exceeded anything he had gained from any battle in the past.

In a way, it made him look forward to the twenty-sixth floor of the tower, but at the same time he also understood that he was nowhere strong enough to clear the twenty-sixth floor of the tower that would undoubtedly start including demon beasts at the Land Creation Realm.

For this reason, after another quick glance around the desolate desert of the twenty-fifth floor, Xuan Hao made his way towards the spiral staircase. Planning to go back down to the ground floor after confirming the difficulty of the twenty-sixth floor.