Benton wasn’t all that worried about dying, and that lack of concern wasn’t because he’d been there, done that, either. No, it was simply because Nascent Souls were quite difficult to kill, and him more than most.

As far as he could tell, the whole process of death was different than it had been back on Earth. There, one was declared dead when the body stopped working. On his new planet, death wasn’t final until the soul had actually departed.

Actually, despite having died back on Earth, his knowledge of the metaphysics was quite lacking. For all he knew, the soul leaving the body was the trigger there as well. It was just that Earth had no technology to detect souls. The combination of his high Soul Cultivation and enhanced spiritual sense absolutely could do that, though. In fact, he sensed six of them hanging around outside the bodies of the enemies who had ceased functioning.

Even a normal person took a while to finish dying, including a good five minutes or more for all their systems to stop working even after the brain or heart stopped. After that, the soul would be ejected and would slowly drift away. Only once it was too far away to be called back was death final.

Nascent Souls were even sturdier for two reasons. One, the souls persisted a lot longer, hanging around for hours before giving up and proceeding to whatever awaited them next. And, two, their bodies would continue to heal even after the souls left. If the body became habitable again soon enough, the soul would simply slip back in and, in the process, restart the body.

A normal cultivator at that realm had two big weaknesses—they really couldn’t do anything in soul form to affect the world, and they were reliant on their bodies reconstituting in order to survive. Destroy the body, and the soul would have no place to go.

The five enemies that Benton killed were very unlikely to heal enough before that departure time because Void erased a lot of flesh and bone and muscle and blood. Their healing thus had to completely regrow all that material, a much more qi and time intensive task than simply fixing damage.

As for the one Yuan Yaozu attacked… Well, if Benton’s side won, someone would need to do a bit more damage to keep that one from reviving. He’d not be back until well after the battle was over, but he hadn’t yet been permanently removed from the land of the living.

He was sturdy.

Benton was even sturdier still. Not only could his soul persist for literal days instead of only a couple of hours, but if his body were destroyed, he could use his Soul Material Manipulation and Soul Transference techniques to create a brand new body and slip his soul inside it, bringing him back to life.

Unless someone had a way to destroy his soul—which was unlikely considering that he couldn’t even do that at his maxed Soul Cultivation level—death would not be permanent for him.

His biggest concern, therefore, was that restoring himself would take time. Hours at least. Maybe even a full day. And during that time, he’d have no way to interact with the world. There would be no one to protect the kids from the overwhelming force of the remaining Nascent Souls.

Thus, he’d much, much prefer not to die.

Currently, though, nine Nascent Souls all focused their Auras on Benton, and frankly, he couldn’t do anything with his qi. He was completely suppressed. Not even his automatic shield would protect him.

His best hope was that his Body Cultivation would make him hard enough to finish off that reinforcements would arrive in time to protect the kids. Even with them arriving, they’d be fighting five against nine.

It didn’t look good for the home team, and he had reason to fear that there would be no joy in Mudville that evening.

Qian Liqin had been slightly worried for a moment. For one thing, Chao Su had shown himself capable of launching devastating Void attacks from an ambush created by his short range Teleports, Invisibility, and being completely opaque to spiritual sense.

All that intelligence had been presented to her in advance, obviously, but frankly, neither she nor the others had believed it. She’d assumed that he’d had people exaggerate his capabilities as a lot of cultivators were wont to do.

In reality, he turned out to be as formidable a foe as she’d been told, one even she wouldn’t be comfortable facing alone. And that was a significant admission. She’d never met her equal in anyone even close to her in realm.

That realization had occurred to her before he sprang two impossible surprises. The first was that, somehow, he could completely suppress an opposing Nascent Soul with his Aura. From the strength she detected, she suspected he could even do so to her in a one-on-one match.

If someone had told her about a cultivator below the Nihility realm with that ability, she wouldn’t have believed it. Even a trash mercenary fighting alongside her would require two or three Auras to completely suppress.

The second impossibility was that he possessed four Auras and could use each of them simultaneously.

What nonsense was that!

Qian Liqin couldn’t fathom the advantage of wielding four Auras and having each of them suppress an opponent on its own. Chao Su outnumbered four Nascent Souls by himself.

Nonsense!

And actually, those two impossibilities weren’t the first he’d demonstrated. No, the very first was in destroying Esteemed Formation Master Lei Bohai’s masterwork so easily. That should have kept Chao Su immobilized even to the point of restricting him and anyone else from Teleporting.

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Instead, he’d nonchalantly tossed some metal spheres and caused a cascading failure.

Complete nonsense!

It was honestly a shame that she had to kill him. Imagine if she could convince him to aid her sect the next time true power was needed…

Such wasn’t possible, however. As nice as it would be to have him on her side, having the Order construct an Enlightenment Array for her sect was even more valuable. Priceless.

Which meant she still needed to kill him.

Luckily, he didn’t seem to have access to a fourth impossibility. He couldn’t hide the build up of qi as he prepared his attack, and he’d had to hold his Auras on his targets in order to pull off his ambush.

His minor victory—if one could term killing four Nascent Souls in the span of a heartbeat minor—would cost him. At her yell, she and her two colleagues from the Da Qing continent turned their Auras on him.

Those, however, would not have been enough to fully stop him. Surprisingly, half the mercenaries were quick enough on the uptake to add theirs, locking him down until everyone could join.

They just had to finish him off.

“Everyone,” she yelled. “Release your strongest attacks. Everything you have. Don’t hold back!”

Before leaving the Rising Tide Sect main grounds on a mission, Zou Tian had asked Senior Brother Yuan Yaozu a lot of questions about how Nascent Souls fought, learning a lot in the process. And unfortunately, the battle between Master and the enemy alliance had played out about as well as Zou Tian had expected. That was to say, poorly.

The moment Zou Tian had feared finally arrived.

When he’d Teleported to the square the first time and had seen the forces arrayed, two thoughts had impressed themselves on him. The first was that Master wasn’t likely to flee unless it became absolutely necessary. He wanted to finish the sect war before it started, before any of the juniors could get hurt.

The second thought was that even Master couldn’t battle sixteen Nascent Souls, and there were only five reinforcements available. There would likely arise a critical moment in the fight when a distraction was required, and there was no one else but Zou Tian and his fellow juniors who could provide that interference.

Master had killed four more of the enemy, bringing their numbers down to nine, but he was being suppressed by all of those remaining. According to Senior Brother Yuan Yaozu, no Nascent Soul could stand alone against so many.

It was time.

“On three,” he yelled.

Everyone not already holding a talisman grabbed one.

“Three. Two. One. Go!”

Thirty-four cultivators tore thirty-four talismans, talismans created by a peak Nascent Soul realm crafter whose mastered technique allowed him to imbue his powerful attacks onto paper with little, if any, loss of effectiveness. Thus, thirty-four powerful attacks launched from the roof and proceeded toward the enemy Nascent Souls.

“Again!” Zou Tian yelled.

Just as Qian Liqin was about to unleash her most powerful attack on Chao Su, she sensed something behind her. An attack. No. Multiple attacks.

In fact, she’d never felt anything like the sheer scale of what targeted her and her group. For a moment, she feared that an army of Nascent Souls had landed behind her, all somehow concealed as well as Chao Su could.

For the first time in centuries, she feared her death was imminent.

Something was off, though. The power was there but not the intent. And no Aura accompanied it.

Talismans.

She glanced behind her. The attacks were coming from the Rising Tide Sect brats. Chao Su must have supplied them for that particular eventuality.

He was even craftier than she had imagined.

She had a choice to make—drop their suppression of Chao Su to defend against the attacks, ignore the attacks and maintain the suppression, or try to do both at once. Those attacks were powerful. Ignoring them completely would be a mistake. But so too would letting up the pressure on Chao Su.

Six Nascent Souls should be more than enough to keep him under control. They would, though, have to delay their own offensive against him in order to concentrate on their defense. That would be no issue, though. It wouldn’t take long before the talismans were no longer an issue.

“You three,” she said, indicating half the mercenaries with her hands, “defend us. Then, take care of the juniors.”

Three of them couldn’t stop thirty-four attacks, of course, not even ones originating from talismans. But they didn’t need to. They just had to deflect enough of them so that the six keeping Chao Su contained weren’t hit so hard as to have their Auras disrupted.

Even three trash mercenaries could manage that much.

An Earth Shot and a Water attack hit Qian Liqin’s shield from the back, but that wasn’t enough to disrupt her. Barely before the blows had faded, however, she sensed thirty-four more attacks heading their way.

“Intercept them on the way!” she yelled. “Kill the brats!”

She needed that array, and if that meant killing Chao Su and everyone allied with him, she’d do so, whatever it took.

Yuan Yaozu had been incredibly skeptical when Zou Tian had presented his grand plan. Having juniors anywhere near a battle between Nascent Souls sounded like a disaster in the making. Not to mention the fact that the sect leader would have absolutely refused to allow such a proposal.

The kid had been well prepared, however. He’d first stated that the plan would only be enacted after Zou Tian scouted the battle and determined that it was needed. Second, the juniors would retreat via Teleportation at the first sign of being attacked. Third, they would all possess the special countermeasures that the sect leader prepared to break through any possible Teleportation jamming.

In Yaun Yaozu’s opinion, the plan seemed reasonable. Besides, it was not the job of sect seniors to keep their juniors completely safe. It was to guide those juniors and mitigate risk where possible.

Cultivation was the act of defying the heavens, after all. Anyone unwilling to accept risk might as well give up. He was living proof of that. Without the Trials Pagoda, he would never have advanced.

So, with some reluctance, he agreed to support Zou Tian.

When the sect leader killed the four enemy Nascent Souls and was in turn suppressed, Yuan Yaozu was immediately thankful that he’d agreed to provide his support because there was absolutely nothing he could do to rescue the sect leader from nine Nascent Souls.

Once the juniors started using the talismans, however, and three of the suppressing force peeled off, the calculations changed.

Yuan Yaozu knew more than anyone how strong the sect leader was. He could still perform at half power while restricted by four. Surely, he could still function enough to strike back if there were only five, right?

Was that theory likely enough for Yuan Yaozu to risk his life, though?

Honestly, he didn’t have a choice. Due to his vow, not risking his life risked his cultivation, which was essentially the same thing.

His last attack had worked well, and he seriously doubted anyone was preparing countermeasures for him. Besides, other than using a different talisman, he didn’t have a better idea.

Knowing he might be committing suicide if it didn’t work, he separated out the two talismans he needed and one for contingency. The next step was charging Venomous Strike, which would signal his intent to attack.

Thankfully, with so many qi techniques flying, no one was paying any attention to him. It was nice to be underestimated as a lowly newly ascended Nascent Soul.

He tore a talisman, Teleporting onto the roof right next to the furthest of the mercenaries suppressing the sect leader.

Yuan Yaozu tore another one immediately, letting loose one of the sect leader’s Wind Slashes. The target had already been hit a couple of times by the juniors, weakening his shield, and the new attack finished it off.

Venomous Strike finished him off.

Only five Nascent Souls were left to continue their Aura attacks. Yuan Yaozu’s very life depended on whether the sect leader could defeat suppression by that many.