Unlike Bin Yong, Shi Zuo or even Luo Bo’s animal cultivation styles that were passed down from previous generations as a part of the family heirlooms, Jia Le’s cultivation style was indeed a relatively modern one. And it was not a pure eastern cultivation per se. The Breathtaking Bellflower was in substance, a fusion between Eastern Cultivation and Western Magic.
Western Magic usually worked best through magic circuits. Nevertheless, it did not necessarily require them nor did its spells need to be rewritten to be used with Eastern Cultivation since the concept of Mana and Chi had a few similarities.
As long as the cultivation style maintained the workings of the Western Magic used, it could provide the cultivator with the means to utilise their chi to cast those spells. With the East employing the five basic elements theory of Fire, Water, Earth, Metal and Wood, it already shared some resemblance to certain aspects of Western Magic.
This made it easy for certain atypical cultivations to adopt the practices of Western Magic. In turn, these eastern cultivation methods lightened up the practitioners’ stress load in casting those spells as compared to pure Western Magic.
The advantages of such practitioners using Eastern Cultivation to cast ‘western spells’ were in the ease of casting and the flexibility of the chi techniques. A particular technique could be executed in dozens of ways as long as the cultivators were familiar with the procedure and had the know-how at the back of their head. (Like shooting a fire blast from the leg, from the hand, or even from the mouth.) Additionally, Eastern Cultivation excelled in the speed for their casting, and with a bit of practice, they could learn to regulate the power output of their spells.
However, this did not mean that it was necessarily superior to Western Magic. They were clearly structured to the point of being described as ‘rigid’ by many mages. Though this rigidity resulted in longer cast times, overall they were guaranteed to be stronger. Fortunately, there were ways to circumvent this limitation.
For Western Magic Practitioners, the preparations of spells before a battle was vital. If done correctly, the Spellcasters could cast their spells almost instantly, and the only limit was the maximum amount of spells which could be stored according to their Magic Level. Nowadays a majority of people also referred to the Magic Levels as Magic Grades, since the public hoped it would be homogenous with Eastern Cultivation.
Jia Le’s parents had decided to embrace Western Magic fully and were Magic Practitioners to break the tradition in their families. However, the young Jia Le was heavily influenced by her grandma, who was her primary caretaker and an Eastern cultivator. Not wishing to choose one side, she eventually adopted both East and West styles and learnt a fusion style to compromise. (Fortunately for her, an uncanny affinity for the Earth Element was prevalent in the family, making it easy for her to use her current cultivation.)
The feral Deep Ones were neither as patient nor as understanding as the ones both Bin Yong and Shi Zuo had fought against. Not waiting for the team to discuss their strategy, the Deep Ones went on the offensive. Jia Le told her teammates that she would take the lead, but the rest readied themselves by enhancing their fists and legs with chi, just in case the shit hits the fan.
They may not have access to their weapons, but learning from the guys’ mistakes from the dinner chat, they had used some advanced defensive inscriptions before they got teleported. The Pandawan group were relieved it was still on them upon verification when they teleported into the Deep Ones dungeon instance.
The grand appearance of the five bellflowers floating above Jia Le turned her into Enemy #1 for every feral Deep Ones. They had their eyes on the pretty, flowery smelling meat which they tried to swarm. Because of the dig site near Jia Le, it enabled her to effortlessly use her earthly cultivation powers without her weapon as a conduit to channel her attacks.
Moreover, her weapons were only secondary as she had grown up training with her parents to use her cultivation powers without the need for any tools. (Although having her weapon with her would definitely increase her offensive capabilities by at least a fold.)
Out from the soil, Jia Le summoned two large thorny vines. Two Deep Ones got pierced through their abdomens and subsequently were used as large projectiles against their brethren. The thorny vines then swiped across the carpark to prevent any Deep Ones from coming too close, even partially destroying a few of the pillars that could potentially be the ones that held the abandoned building intact.
Yet, Jia Le was unable to care at that point of time. It’s either that, which caused the splinter rubbles to kill a few of the incoming Deep Ones, or risked those aggressive fish men to rush towards the group. She’d rather take her chances with the former.
However, some of the Deep Ones managed to dodge the projectiles, demonstrating how agile they could be, as they were driven by the hunger for such strong, healthy prey. That did not mean Jia Le was defenceless. The Deep Ones saw a small little bellflower emerged from the cracks of the concrete in front of Jia Le. They did not bother about it as they continued to charge forward.
Worst (and last) mistake of their life.
That small little bellflower glowed with chi supplied by Jia Le, and within a second, it blasted out an energy beam that took out multiple feral Deep Ones in one shot before the petals of the bellflower got scattered into the air.
The surviving Deep Ones who managed to avoid the beam turned berserk at the loss of their comrades. In retaliation, they screamed an annoying tone of a tortured goat which staggered the human cultivators by forcing them to close their ears. They thought they finally had gotten an opportunity to attack their meaty preys, but the bellflowers petals in the air remained afloat in the air.
Jia Le was still controlling them and merely waiting for the Deep Ones to take action by coming nearer. As soon as they did, the scattered petals created links with beams of energy towards each other in order to form a sort of energy net. The feral Deep Ones had been too late to stop or change their course, causing them to be turned into Sashimi by the energised net.
“Intermediate Bellflower Technique #57 and #32, Bellflower Petal Beam and Scattered Bellflower Petal Beam Net.” Jia Le turned towards the group with a V-sign. They could see that she was already sweating from expanding such a large amount of chi to kill off that many feral Deep Ones in less than the span of thirty seconds.
“Do you think we are all in the clear?” Bin Yong asked and Luo Bo immediately turned on her Dark Sight to check if there were any more lurking at the dark.
“I don’t seem to spot anything else aside from dead bodies. High chance we are on the clear.” Luo Bo answered as she patted Jia Le on the back for a good job. Jia Le pushed her hair sideways and sat down to take a breather.
“I don’t mean to make you any more tired but would you mind putting up one of those Flower Beams on standby? I don’t want to find out those feral Deep Ones pretend to be dead, just to come and pounce on us when we let our guards down.” Shi Zuo requested which Jia Le happily obliged.
She quickly summoned a Bellfower out of the cracked ground once more and later when into cultivation stance so that she could recover some chi while the others took their time to examine the box.
“Nope, other than that USB wire, I don’t see anything that can be used to pick that fragment up safely.” Shi Zuo sighed and then Bin Yong had a crazy idea.
“Erm…what about using the Dead One’s flesh while we protect our hands with chi? That way it would corrupt the Dead One if it is a menace. That way, we can safely and quickly let go, knowing that there’s still a chi barrier protecting us. Therefore, we can prevent anything from happening to us if there is any reaction.” Bin Yong suggested, and the other two believed it was a decent crazy idea.
“Good pun there.” Shi Zuo chuckled a little while agreeing to Bin Yong’s idea.
“Who would like to do the honours?” Luo Bo asked. It was clear from her tone that she was not going anywhere near those Deep Ones.
“I volunteer as a leader. My Mad Monkey Style allows me to dodge quickly and can make my bare hands grow some chi claws as a reactionary defence if the Deep One turns out to be playing dead. Meanwhile, check if we have any WiFi reception in this place, I want to find out if the Pandamonium Map app would be able to differentiate a fake Grand Central Terminal and a real one.” Shi Zuo told the rest as he went closer to the Deep One.
To ensure that it was really, truly dead, Shi Zuo plunged his chi formed hand claw into the Deep One’s body and grabbed at what seemed to be the heart. He then pulled it out and threw it far away from the Deep One before dragging his entire body away from the other corpses and from the car too in case something freaky happened to him. (Like a corpse explosion, who knows?)
By distancing himself a bit from the group, he could make sure that if anything happened, it would not affect the rest of the team members. The constant need to play it safe was starting to get to them. They had no idea if they were just over analysing things or if they needed to expect anything as bad as a sudden explosion from the box too. Following Bin Yong suggestion, Shi Zuo first threw the fragment out of the trashcan and observed it a little. He noticed that its form did seem to suggest that it would be the perfect match to the lockbox.
Hence, he carefully enhanced his hand with a chi barrier to protect himself and then used the dead Deep One’s webbed hand to hold it. It was quite tricky since the webbed hand was somewhat slimy, making it slippery for Shi Zuo to make delicate movements with it. Eventually, he managed to grab hold of the fragment using the deadweight’s hand and pushed it into the lockbox.
Within an instant, a specific whirling noise was produced from the lockbox and it automatically unlocked itself, showing off a bountiful miracle in it. Even the spectators were at the edge of their seats when they saw the lockbox slowly open. In the end, they cheered loudly for the miraculous treasure within that small little metal can.
“Holy shit, we did it!!! This was totally worth it.” Shi Zuo cheered as he let go of the deadweight’s arm and took a breather.
“What did you find in there? Anything useful?” Luo Bo asked across the carpark as she told him that Bin Yong found the coordinates to what should be the real Grand Central Terminal.
“I found hope.” Shi Zuo smiled at them peacefully as he shook the lockbox up high, but both Luo Bo and Bin Yong’s face turned blue upon seeing his expression. He was not the only one to move.
His shadow changed form. It started to become longer and wider, before becoming corporeal and taking on the silhouette of that large snake shadow which Bin Yong had seen on top of the Empire State Building.
Right behind Shi Zuo, the creature’s eyes in the darkest of shadows were glowing brightly and literally grinning from ear to ear.
