The main issue was that Tianming couldn't tell the extent of injuries he could realistically recover from. As far as he was concerned, he definitely shouldn’t consider himself immortal. So, how well he could leverage the power of the Greenspark Tower would depend on him.
With Feiling attached to him, it was as if he had more than one pair of eyes. Whenever he wasn't able to make an evasive maneuver in time, she would manipulate the Celestial Wings to move him out of harm's way.
Currently, the only things that really threatened Tianming and his lifebound beasts were tribulation artifacts. Abilities from enemy beasts were hardly effective enough to kill the conjoined pair.
The battle continued intensifying even more.
The five wraiths saw Tianming as a complete monster that couldn't be killed no matter what. Even Goldspirit Ghoulmount, who had the protection of his sisters, had lost an arm in the fight and suffered a sword stab near his abdomen that almost punctured his saint palace. Now, the Grand-Orient Sword's Imperial Sword Prison was tearing away at his flesh. With his saint palace exposed, he had suffered a huge blow! Now paler than his dead sibling, Houndgod Palewhite, he scrambled and crawled to escape in Si Ling's direction.
"Ask the ghoul king to send the nightmare soulworm to help!" Timber Woodchild cried to him. The five of them had begun the fight filled with confidence, but now they were utterly terrified.
"Alright!"
Even though they could still fight, calling for help was no longer something they could afford to delay. While the nightmare soulworm was a part of the process of making corpse puppets, since its nightmare bugs were in a confused state, it could probably come help them out. Now, Ghoul King Si Ling and her other three lifebound beasts were trapped in an immobile state while executing the Necromantic Metamorphosis. After the technique began, most of their life and death tribulation force would be converted into necromantic energy. Only after reabsorbing the energy and converting it back would they be able to stop the technique.
However, Tianming wasn't aware of such a detail. The only thing he knew was that he would run if the ghoul king came to help. Before that, he would do his best to disrupt the whole proceedings as much as he could.
As Goldspirit Ghoulmount was running off, he heard a cry of pain. Turning back, he saw that his elder brother's long tongue had been cut off by a little bird. Next, the bird used its feathers to put thousands of holes into him, immediately killing the tenth-level life phase samsaran.
"This little tower is amazing!" Ying Huo chuckled and stroked its own head, causing the ethereal form of the tower to blink in and out of existence. "Dammit, there's something green on my head! That's a bad omen! Oh wait, I don't have a wife. Hahahaha! I'm single, so I'm safe!"
After dealing with Green Longtongue, Ying Huo immediately turned to the hell ghosthound and gave chase. The little chicken used Imperial Radiance and went berserk with the Hexapath Samsara Sword, immediately pinning the hound on the ground and splattering its three remaining heads. That made the ghosthound the third fighter to be killed in the battle.
However, Ying Huo didn't calm down even the slightest bit and immediately turned back. Lan Huang was still fending off two opponents by itself, after all, and was taking quite the beating. It seemed that neither the cloudsky fiendtoad or the kilosword titanrhino had had any opportunities to finish Lan Huang off, causing the battle to last so long. But the moment Ying Huo joined the fray, the scales completely tipped in their favor. Tianming's current situation was much improved from before.
But in the next instant, he heard a large, earthshaking cry. Looking up, he saw a kilometer-long worm smashing apart many surrounding buildings like a rampaging cobra as it tried to make its way to him, causing many civilian casualties in the process. "So it finally decided it needs to come."
It didn't seem like Si Ling had followed it, however.
"The fact that she didn't come even after all this means she's unable to stop the Necromantic Metamorphosis as she pleases!"
Even so, the nightmare soulworm was an eleventh-level death phase tribulation beast in its own right, which put it three phases above Timber Woodchild and the rest. Tianming felt the terrifying power contained in the insect.
"Big Brother, do we run now?" Feiling asked. Their main purpose was to disrupt the ghoul king from making corpse puppets; they couldn't afford to keep fighting once the ghoul king actually joined in. The lovers were already being kept busy enough with the five wraiths, so they would be done in for sure if the ghoul king decided to fight.
"Let's wait a little bit and see." He glared at the incoming worm, feeling his heart rate increase. That beast was the root of all evil. If it died, he would no longer have to worry about the corpse puppets. While Si Ling was unable to engage Tianming, thanks to the technique, there was no doubt she would come join in the battle as soon as she could.
"After this disruption, they'll definitely have many more people on guard the next time they try making corpse puppets. I'll no longer have a chance to deal with this worm in the future! Let's give it one last best effort!"
"Alright!"
The worm didn't move very quickly, giving Tianming ample time to react. "Ling'er, Temporal Lock!"
"On it!" With how well synchronized they were, Feiling didn't really need to hear him say it to know who to use Temporal Lock and Millennium Fort on.
Meanwhile, Crimson Bloodfiend was still firing arrows away, each one stronger than the last and all aimed at Tianming's head and heart. They had almost hit him many times, so Tianming gave chase. His wings flapped; while the wings' maximum speed couldn't compare to Meow Meow's, they were better when it came to initial acceleration and it only took a moment for him to reach her. It was now her turn to be temporally locked.
"Trying to chase me?" She smirked and turned into a bloody blur as she charged higher up into the skies, ramming through fifty-one Spatial Walls in the process and ending up quite hurt. The key was that Feiling’s Temporal Lock made the speed she was so confident in useless.
"That's right, I'm chasing you alright!" Tianming slapped his chest and caused the Dragonhide to manifest. The armor's most potent effect wasn't the defense it offered him, but rather the boost to his capability he got while wearing it. Coupled with Spiritual Attachment, it was even more potent. He executed Animacorpus Eradication, his sword basically unblockable.
"Die!" Crimson Bloodfiend shot arrows rapidly, knowing that evasion wasn’t an option. Within an instant, a thousand bloody arrows rained down on Tianming. However, he cleared a path with the sword of hungry ghosts, striking away the arrows that would have been fatal while ignoring the others.
"Who's the one dying now?" Tianming's black sword came slashing wildly as the light the Dragonhide gave off intensified. His sword was pushed through her chest by boundless sword ki.
"You—" Before she could finish, her head was lopped off. Crimson Bloodfiend was dead for good.
"Farewell."
Tianming pulled out the three arrows that had struck his shoulder and charged down. The armor that shimmered in the sunlight made him look like Great Emperor Xuanyuan's reincarnation. He turned to his last remaining foe, Timber Woodchild, who couldn't keep up with him when he was chasing Crimson Bloodfiend down. By the time she could react to the rapid change, Feiling used Temporal Lock on her and sealed off her paths with Millennium Fort to force her apart from Crimson Bloodfiend. By the time she finally made her way close to Tianming, her sister was already killed, joining the other three.
Lifebound beasts aside, three of the five wraiths had already been killed, leaving only Timber Woodchild and the injured Goldspirit Ghoulmount behind. That fact completely infuriated her. She opened her arms wide and glared at Tianming, causing the ten thousand corpse puppets on her tree to stop attacking Xian Xian and surround her. All the female corpse puppets stared daggers at Tianming.
"They were all geniuses who were at the most beautiful age of their lives. After meeting me, I made them part of me. They’re now part of who I am," she said with a devious smile.
"So? What’re you trying to say?" Tianming raised his swords and went on a rampage. He had been ramping up the pace of battle since the nightmare soulworm started making its move.
"I've seen far too many so-called geniuses. I don't believe that people around your age can actually singlehandedly shake the world!" By now, Timber Woodchild’s ego had already collapsed. Her title of genius had been taken over by Li Caiwei, but she didn't really mind it back then. However, she definitely wouldn't tolerate a youth in his twenties surpassing her!
"I don't care if you believe it or not. Face the facts," Tianming said with a smirk. He came charging down from the skies with swords raised high. The armor glowed as if there were five dragons nosediving like meteors. All of a sudden, everything changed. Tianming didn't need to look to know that the nightmare soulworm was finally here.
"Big Brother…." Tianming felt a little numb, but Feiling’s head hurt badly.
"Hold on, Ling'er!" Tianming glanced at the worm using his peripheral vision and saw it coiling up into a spiral. The countless eyes on its body gathered together into a single large composite eye, causing a grey mist to manifest.
Tianming then recalled seeing the Archaionfiend Eye in Xian Xian's dream. Even though it was on a different level, this one was just as terrifying. This was the nightmare worm's ability, Hell's Eye, also known as Hell's Gate.
The skies darkened as grey mist filled the surroundings. Now, the eye looked like it was hanging from the skies as if the heavens were looking down on them.
"What a terrifying ability that confuses the soul!" Tianming wasn't that badly affected by it, but Feiling seemed to have been knocked out cold. Apart from Spiritual Attachment's effect still remaining, the Celestial Wings, Temporal Field, and Spatial Walls all stopped working. She was in a confused state within his body, her consciousness slowly waning.
