Summon the Sacred Banyan. Along with Connecting Heaven and Earth and Greenbody Training, it was one of the three core techniques of the set he’d learned. The value of a good Qi Cultivation Art and a Body Tempering Art were obvious. Summon the Sacred Banyan on the other hand seemed somewhat useless on its own. The only purpose of the technique was to rapidly grow a Banyan tree. While marvelous from the standpoint of a normal person, what was the point of a Cultivator growing a tree in the middle of combat?

On its own, the technique may seem like nothing special, but it was the enabler of many other abilities. The Sacred Banyan on its own had only two abilities. Expanding infinitely, and feeding upon the energy around it. If Sage had to grow the tree completely out of his own Qi he would be completely drained, let alone growing more than one tree. Instead, the Sacred Banyan gathered in all the energy around it, siphoning from plants, insects, the ground, the skies, animals, and even the air around it. With time, the area the Sacred Banyan covered could become a dead zone. Cultivator’s in the area would find it difficult to draw on the energy of the world to replenish their own or to use special techniques. It was similar to trying to breathe at high altitude in the thin air. The more energy there was, the faster the Sacred Banyan could grow and spread.

Unfortunately, the purple crystal forest was not a normal form of plant life and this Hidden Realm was very strange in composition. The Sacred Banyan expanded slowly, but even so it was like a time lapse video. After just a few minutes there was already a dozen tree trunks of the Banyan, forming a small grove all on their own.

Let’s see how the Spiders like this new forest.

Sage had been killing many spiders and moving quickly towards the depths of the forest before they started this encirclement. The high speed meant that the initial size of the cage they made for him was quite large. It took them nearly half an hour to tighten the cage to a point where they were easily visible. The many trees and plants obscured his sight so by the time he could see the cage closing in they were only about thirty yards away. Sage actually whistled with appreciation.

So many of them. To think that a little Snake like me would get the attention of a hundred Crystal Spiders.

Smiling inwardly, the Sacred Banyan had already extended past the range of the tightening cage. Within fifty yards, every bit of the crystal forest had turned to dust, replaced by the Sacred Banyan which was even now being used as the anchor points for new layers of the web cage. Holding himself back from striking he let the Spiders move even closer. It was only when the unconfined area was down to a twenty yard radius that he finally acted.

Sage gathered a large amount of Qi and placed his hand onto a trunk of the Sacred Banyan next to him. Pouring in the energy in a special pattern, the tree responded. The outer Banyan trunks at the outskirts rapidly expanded, tens of thousands of vines suddenly growing from them. Falling from the air to form new tree trunks, intertwining between the new trunks to form a tightly packed fence, the vines turned the tables. Building a wall of wood between layers of the web cage.

In the air, the branches and leaves multiplied by a dozen times, reaching up into the sky and getting rapidly interwoven with more vines. Soon there was a semi solid ceiling of branches, leaves and vines, creating a living dome over the fifty yard area. The Crystal Spiders seemed confused, chittering this way and that, trying to find a gap between the foreign plant life. Sage chuckled to himself and sent another pattern of energy into the tree. The ground suddenly burst apart beneath one of the Spiders and a sharp point of wood darted upwards. Like a wooden spear it stabbed against the Spider’s underside.

The first spear clinked against its glass body, but the second and third formed an ‘X’ as they found the joint where the Spider’s thorax and abdomen met. Piercing through, the Spider was nearly chopped completely in half, the wooden spears staying where they were, the spider lifted a few feet into the air by the force of the stabbing attacks and impaled upon two of them. A half dozen other Spiders that were trying hard to escape were killed in similar ways before the Spider’s fled from away from the wall of trees that had locked them in.

Root Wall. It bent and maneuvered plant life into different shapes. It was used to make the roots of a tree form into a wall or cage. A defensive maneuver that took a moment to activate, but could be quite strong. The downside was that it only worked on existing plant life.

Crown Cover allowed a Cultivator to rapidly grow plants and leaves. It was a good defensive and support technique. Sprouting a new branch and growing a thick cover of leaves to create shelter or obscure vision. A Cultivator could grow branches between the trees and fill them with leaves to make a covered walkway. Hiding them from view and easing their travel or hiding them from enemies.

Root Lance is an evolution of plant growing techniques focused entirely on speed. By growing a tree branch or root at rapid speed they could be used like a lance or spear to pierce an enemy. Even so, it wasn’t all that fast, unsuitable for direct combat, but it was quite useful as a sneak attack or in great numbers. It also needed a living plant and didn’t control direction.

By combining the three techniques, Sage could almost completely control trees and plants to grow as he wished. He could reshape plants, guide new growth, and accelerate the growth speed. Each of the techniques needed a plant to operate on and had limitations of their own, but when they were used in combination with Summon the Sacred Banyan, Sage had become the master of the battlefield.

Sage stood atop a huge Formation Plate with a hand against the original trunk of the Sacred Banyan. The Crystal Spiders were wary of the barrier that had entrapped them, but after a few moments they realized their target must be the source and the tens of spiders started to rush towards the center of the Banyan Grove. The many Crystalline bodies clinked and clanked together, sounding like a toast at the biggest wine party ever. As they approached the center they crowded together in some places, the glass like bodies rubbing together made Sage wince. The sound somewhere between nails on a chalkboard and that of a glass harp. Like a finger on a water filled wine glass, but with hard pointy nails that keep getting in the way and scratching the glass.

Channeling more energy, Sage willed another line of tree trunks to spring up. This time forming a wall around the Formation Plate in the center and extending upwards to form another ceiling. He didn’t have enough time to keep them out completely, but he sealed off all but a few paths of entry. After a few spiders burst into the center area, he ordered some vines to seal across the entrances, buying him some time as they chewed through. The area enclosed by the smaller ring of trees was about twenty feet across, which still gave him a bit of breathing room around the Formation Plate, plenty enough for combat.

Sage readied his Twin Soul and some insects for backup before letting out a warcry and dashing towards the Spiders that had breached the wall.