My Arts Evolve When Perfected

"Watch out, everyone! We’re under attack by an Ancestral Great Demon!"

A thunderous roar echoed from the cockpit, followed by an intense surge of Spirit Charm from within the Hundred Machines Giant Kite.

Jiang Qiu frowned, his gaze fixed out the window. The wings of the other Hundred Machines Giant Kite sliced through the air. Its body, enveloped in a cyan Gale Spirit Charm shield, bucked and swayed like a paper airplane caught in a gale.

’How could we be attacked by an Ancestral Great Demon in mid-air?’

’What kind of attack is this?!’

"Fuck! The flight to the rookie tournament has been safe every single year. Why is our year the one to get hit?"

"The key is, why would an Ancestral Great Demon go out of its way to ambush us! And how would it know our flight path and movements?!"

The cabin erupted in a clamor of voices.

"Everyone, stop shouting! Both of our Hundred Machines Giant Kites have extremely strong defenses, and we have a tutor on board each one. There’s no need to worr—"

An older student at the Bright Soul Realm had just raised his voice to shout when a flash of cyan light from outside the window cut him off. Everyone in the cabin twisted their heads to look outside.

BOOM—

That Hundred Machines Giant Kite was like a bird flying at high speed into a steel wire. The defensive shield formed by the Gale Spirit Charm was sliced in half, and all the students from the Body Tempering Academy and the Spirit Control Academy plummeted from the sky with the wreckage.

’We’re five thousand meters up!’

Jiang Qiu’s pupils contracted violently. In an instant, his heart rate spiked.

’They say a Hundred Machines Giant Kite can withstand a casual strike from a Dharma Martial Artist, but this one was just sliced apart with ease. That Ancestral Great Demon must be incredibly powerful!’

"Dammit, it’s the Ancestral Great Demon Feng Li! Everyone, take out your [Wind Summoning Ball] or anything similar! Prepare for a crash!"

The resonant, angry roar from the cockpit had barely faded when a flash of cyan daylight engulfed everyone’s vision. The increasingly blinding cyan light outside the window swallowed all their screams of terror.

BOOM—

A line of light from the sky sliced through the aisle between the seats and the ceiling. The resulting gale flattened Jiang Qiu’s cheeks and jowls. He clenched his fists as he, along with countless other "small fry" and debris, plummeted diagonally from the sky.

Falling on his back amidst the tempest, he saw a great, eagle-like bird with wings spread wide, hovering in the sky far above. The cyan light streaming from its talons dissipated into motes of firefly light.

Its sharp gaze swept over them, disdainful, like a rooster spotting corn kernels scattered in the air.

"That son of a bitch Feng Li!"

Jiang Qiu glared back in fury, his lips flapping against his teeth, his eyes bloodshot and red.

’How could I run into something like this right after setting out? An ambush by an Ancestral Great Demon?’

’How did it know our itinerary so clearly...’

Suddenly, Jiang Qiu’s pupils, which had narrowed into vertical slits, froze as if nailed in place. In the gray-and-white world of his vision, amidst the two tutors fighting their way up against the wind to intercept Feng Li and his classmates tumbling through the sky, a tiny, dust-like speck of fire flickered!

’A spider?!’

The immense wind pressure crushed the spider hidden in the folds of a student’s clothes, and its fragile life vanished in an instant.

’It didn’t seem to be anything unusual, just an ordinary insect.’

’But we’re on our way to the Northern Wilderness for the rookie tournament. Who would bring a so-called "pet"!’

Jiang Qiu gritted his teeth, his clenched left fist creaking. Countless speculations flashed through his mind, his heart, pushed into his throat by the wind pressure, pounded against his larynx.

’The Red Flame Spider Mother is already dead. Could it be that the Demon King [Chen] inherited her abilities and can now control her special egg-insects?’

’And they even managed to infiltrate Northwest Martial University with them!’

His chaotic thoughts seemed to press down on his eyelids. His mouth and cheeks twitched in the wind, his head like a shuttle cleaving the air, as he and the other students became a black meteor shower streaking diagonally across the sky.

WHOOSH—

When he was only a thousand meters from the snowy ground, Jiang Qiu took out a [Wind Summoning Ball], snapped his eyes open, and infused it with Spirit Charm.

’Wind, come!’

BOOM—

A sudden gale surged up at his command, catching his body like a vast, invisible sea of cotton. The collision of air currents produced a tremendous roar.

A group of students still in freefall turned to look, their eyes widening as they saw one student’s velocity suddenly plummet, making it seem as if he were flying back up toward the sky.

’He’s holding a Mortal Treasure Level [Wind Summoning Ball]!’

Gritting their teeth, the others also took out their own single-use [Wind Summoning Balls]. They silently chanted ’Wind, come!’ and suddenly felt their descent slow as if yanked up by the elbow.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

A large number of students slammed into the snow and ice like scattered stones. The last burst of wind barely shielded them from a fatal impact. Gritting their teeth, they pushed themselves up from the ground, propping up their trembling legs.

Tap.

Jiang Qiu landed lightly on both feet. The hem of his black shirt, which had billowed up, slowly settled, and his wind-tousled hair fell back into place. ’The Hundred Machines Giant Kites have been destroyed. Can the two tutors defeat Feng Li?’

He raised his head and looked up. Above the gray-white cloud layer, three points of light in different colors could be seen faintly flickering. The two tutors were fighting the Ancestral Great Demon Feng Li.

Gale, Vast Thunder, Flame...

"Holy shit, are those members of the Demon Race flying toward us?!"

A sudden cry of alarm rang out. Jiang Qiu’s eyes widened as he stared at the sky ten thousand meters away. A black speck seemed to be streaking through the clouds, emanating an exceptionally dense demonic aura.

At least a thousand members of the Demon Race, with over two hundred Spiritual Great Demons among them. A fighting force of this scale is already nearly ten times that of the battle at Dongqi Lake.

And there were only about a hundred Bright Soul Realm students heading to the rookie tournament, many of whom are likely severely injured from the fall!

A chill ran down Jiang Qiu’s spine, but his chest burned with fighting spirit. With a SWISH, he drew his [Chuyuan] spear, its level blade pointing directly at the approaching Demon Race. "I didn’t expect the rookie tournament to start with a bloody battle before it even officially began."

This place is at least three hundred kilometers from the Xia Country border, and it’s another hundred kilometers from here to North Border City. This is truly the Northern Wilderness Territory.

’If we don’t fight, who knows how many days and nights we’d have to run to reach North Border City.’

’The key is that so many of the Demon Race have come to intercept us, and they even mobilized the Ancestral Great Demon Feng Li. If no one holds them back, there’s no escape!’

Jiang Qiu stepped into the ankle-deep white snow, walking toward the Demon Race one step at a time. The surviving students within a several-kilometer radius pulled their feet from the snow pits and materialized their respective weapons.

"Son of a bitch, we really got played. That Demon King [Chen] is even more treacherous than the Red Flame Spider Mother! Our Hundred Machines Giant Kites took a winding route, and he still managed to dispatch the Ancestral Great Demon Feng Li from the Northern Wilderness border to assassinate us!"

"The key is how they knew our route! Even the old Red Flame Spider Mother didn’t have methods like this!"

Many students from the Soldier Cultivation Academy gathered together, their curses echoing across the snowy plains. Seeing the Demon Race army pressing down on them from the sky, a student skilled in the Archery Dao had already nocked an arrow to their Qi Blood Bow.

RUMBLE—

Suddenly, a clap of thunder exploded overhead. The students looked up to see a figure plummeting from the dense, thunder-laced clouds, his furious roar scattering the winds: "Run! Flee north to North Border City! Keep the casualties to an absolute minimum!"

At that moment, above the dense clouds, purple lightning formed shackles that bound a section of the sky. A deafening rumble, as if threatening to tear the heavens apart, was accompanied by a ferocious avian shriek.

Meanwhile, the tutor from the Soldier Cultivation Academy plummeted toward the path of the thousand-strong Demon Race army. The Fiery Flame Spirit Charm within him ignited like leaking gasoline, his rapidly descending body pulling forth a thirty-zhang-tall Flaming Ape Dharma Aspect.

A staff of flame materialized in the ape’s hands and descended from the heavens. The shockwave tore through the dense clouds above as the staff smashed down toward the thousand members of the Flying Demon Clan, who had long since gathered their own Spirit Charm.

It was a single column of flame, crashing into a great tempest formed from a thousand gales...