Just as the old man from the Wa faction was treating the ground like clay because of his great strength, the Chong Clan Matriarch was doing the same but for a different reason. She reached up and grabbed the curved hook of the giant scorpion’s stinger and it flicked her into the air. The earth flew into the air and wrapped around her as she flew, forming into a perfect sphere of stone and colliding against the incoming peak Nascent Soul of the Fu Clan. The old woman with a bat avatar made of wind and Qi easily dodged the living projectile, but it also broke up her charge towards the giant scorpion. The huge pincers of the mighty arachnid continued towards the two Fu Clan cultivators that it had already caused injuries upon while Xie Bian engaged in battle with the bat-woman.

Xie Bian waved her hands and the ground shot into the air, growing stalagmites so quickly they shot into the air like spears. She darted to the left and right, weaving through the tall spires and forming an obstacle course that the Fu Clan woman had to navigate in order to attack her. The comparison of wind versus earth put the Fu Clan woman at a great disadvantage. Her winds were somewhat solidified with her Qi, and took the form of a giant bat avatar, but they couldn’t really compare to the solid stone that Xie Bian was manipulating to flow and reshape itself like water. It might be a different story if only one of them had access to laws that empowered their techniques, but both of them were using Major Elemental Laws with an equivalent degree of comprehension.

Before the battle the greater quantity of cultivators made it seem like the Chong Clan had the upper hand. Then surprisingly, after the battle started the disparity in airborne cultivators made it seem like the bats, the Fu Clan, were actually the ones with the biggest advantage. The battle moved so quickly that the lower rank cultivators from either Clan had a hard time following what was going on. Blood was spilled and the landscape was reshaped so very drastically by just the clash of a few hands. The destruction that these people caused was greater than what the two armies of cultivators had done previously.

At this moment, it was Sage’s guess that the Chong Clan had the upper hand again because of the pairings. For the majority of the fights that were taking place he felt the Chong Clan was at an advantage. Of the two peak Nascent Souls of the Fu Clan, one was at a severe elemental disadvantage, while the other was focusing on killing one of the toughest Chong Clan cultivators. When the Wa were wearing their toads as armor, they were extremely hard to kill. Even though the Fu Patriarch on the Flying Tool injured and possibly poisoned the Wa Elder, Sage had the feeling the old man was far from being finished. The third strongest of the Fu, the man with the bandana and flying around in a Sandstorm was heavily restrained by the Xie Triplets. Their scorpions weren’t causing much damage, but they were also applying pressure and avoiding retaliation. The fourth strongest was the most effective, Fu Chiying, the man with the three red feathers on his mask, was tearing the giant winged centipede apart. The Wu Elder who owned the centipede was trying to fight him off, but it was only a matter of time until that huge centipede breathed its last.

The only problem is that even when that centipede died, the Elder who owned it would still be able to fight. The next two matches were where the Chong Clan had the upper hand. Fu Xiaolong, the man with the green fanged mask, had a vicious looking poisoned whip sword, but he was facing off against two physical powerhouses of the Wa and he had already taken a few terrible hits. There was also Ancestor Scorpion, the Matriarch’s partner, that was now free to smash the two level 61s of the Fu Clan. None of the Fu were free to save them so they had to face off against the giant monster on their own.

Oh, right. There’s also Fu Zedong and Wu Yun.

The last fight was pretty evenly matched. Fu Zedong and his solidified smoke versus Wu Yun surfing on solidified water vapor. Wu Yun was a level higher so he had the upper hand, but the two were pretty evenly matched. If they didn’t make a change, then Sage felt the Fu Clan was going to lose. The Fu Patriarch was inflicting more wounds upon the Wa Elder with his secret weapons, and the sight of blood must have made him overconfident as he didn’t realize how bad things were going on the rest of the field.

Earlier the Fu Matriarch, the woman with the bat avatar, had tried to change the matchups more in their favor, but at the moment the two Matriarch’s were attacking with such ferocity that she wasn’t able to direct the others. The giant earth spires were branching into multiple spikes in mid-air and cutting off her escape routes. The Fu Matriarch twirled, rolling rapidly and releasing a barrage of wind blades in every direction. She cleared a large area around her but it wasn’t quite enough to pull away from the stone forest the Chong Matriarch kept building up around her.

The worst fight for the Chong Clan was the Wa Elder stabbed through with spikes and starting to feel poison coursing through his system. He stabilized his fall by using his tongue to swing on a wind disc, but the Fu Clan Patriarch didn’t let him go. He skipped across the ground, smashing through a thick tree trunk and then rolling across a patch of tall grass. The Fu Patriarch on his flying disc followed in his wake, ready to finish the old man off with more of his hidden weapons. The armor the patriarch wore was far thicker and well armored than the usual in this world and it was also loaded with secret weapons. Sage could feel the man’s law carried a feeling of surprise or ambush to it and it reminded him of his own tactics in the past.

Sage thought about intervening in what might turn into the first kill of the fight, but he held himself back because he wasn’t the only person that hadn’t shown themselves on the field yet. When the Fu Patriarch flew through the tall grass on his way to finish off the Wa Elder he suddenly tilted to the side and intercepted an incoming attack with his Flying Tool. The disc was smashed apart by the attack and the Fu Matriarch flipped sideways. The armored man’s boots dug into the soil, cutting narrow ditches into the ground as he slid backwards. While sliding he pivoted to the side to face his attacker and held up an armored forearm. He braced his wrists with his other hand and blocked the teeth of the large lizard that had charged towards him. His bracing hand ripped downwards and pulled the teeth of the beast off of him before they clamped down on his arm. He threw himself backwards to escape the follow up snap of those large teeth and then turned that back bend into a full flip, pushing off the ground with his hands, narrowly avoiding a giant puddle of sizzling liquid that landed where he was just standing.

The Xiyi Elder had been hiding among the tall grasses, waiting to intercept the Fu Patriarch that had come down to finish off the Wa Elder. The Fu Patriarch’s bloodlust had caused him to overlook the ambush lying in wait for him, but the man’s ambush type law meant he felt it coming at the last moment and suffered only the loss of his magical device. The Xiyi Elder rode upon a horse sized lizard that Sage always compared to a velociraptor, and had a tiny and more colorful version of the same lizard species riding behind his saddle. The attack that destroyed the Fu Patriarch’s flying disc came from the huge spiked chain covered with greenish water that the Xiyi Elder was twirling over his head. In that moment, the Wa Elder picked himself up from the ground, with large spikes still lodged in his forearms. The frog headed figure didn’t seem pained or discouraged. He merely opened his mouth and started spitting out the spinning wind vortexes he’d used earlier, leaving them in the air behind the Fu Patriarch like a floating mine-field. The vortexes looked somewhat like flattened tornados with a somewhat solid surface on their flattened tops and vicious cutting winds carried by their rotated bodies.