(Brendan POV)
I bit back a curse when I saw the last part of our plan fail to even faze Master Lin.
I wasn't even sure if the first part of the plan would work since Master Lin might just have something on him that negates blinding attacks. But seeing the slight delay in his dodging of Sylphy's attack gave me all the information I needed to know that he had blinded himself.
Despite knowing that our trick had succeeded, I knew Master Lin would not go down so easily and prepared even more traps to follow up on it.
But even with his handicap, he had effortlessly deflected and avoided everything we had thrown at him.
Even the last blast of wind that Sylphy summoned to shift his balance had been blocked by a wall of earth.
I have no doubts that Master Lin is already aware of our plans by now and the only reason why we are still standing is because of his no retaliation rule he set on himself.
Since his head was still bowed down, he probably thinks that Kris still has his light ball prepared to blind him at any time and is keeping his sight blocked to deny us the possibility of stunning him.
I signaled to the rest to initiate plan B which was made in case Plan A fails.
All of them nodded their heads.
Chris raised his hand to materialise another ball of fire above his head.
I noted that Master Lin's head turned slightly in that direction.
I raised my own hand to summon a ball of water and Master Lin's head twitched again.
Kris summoned his ball of light, letting it float in the air just in front of him. Once more, Master Lin's head turned slightly towards his direction.
The others looked at me and I nodded to them, indicating the next phase of the plan is good to go.
Chris pulled back his hand before tossing the fireball forward, the projectile missing Master Lin when he took a step backwards.
Sylphy followed up the attack with a wind blade, the invisible blade slicing straight towards Master Lin's midsection.
At the same time, I threw my ball of water at the ground, the ball exploding outwards to create a small wave that rushed towards Master Lin's feet.
He lifted his right arm and chopped downwards in a slicing motion, deflecting the wind blade effortlessly towards the ground.
The wind blade crashed against my wave, causing it to split in the middle and pass by Master Lin's sides without even wetting his shoes.
While that was going on, Chris had switched positions with Kris, the latter leaving his ball of light floating at where he had been.
Once they were in position, Kris made the ball of light fly in front of Master Lin, waiting for us to shield our eyes before letting the light burst out in a brilliant flash.
I peeked out to see Master Lin standing at the exact same spot, not even showing any signs of having reacted to the burst of light.
With less than two minutes on the clock, we have to make the next phase of the plan succeed no matter what.
Both Chris and Kris called forth their own elements at the side while I placed my hands on the ground.
I would need some time to move the underground water beneath Master Lin's feet and that would be the time Sylphy would start her barrage of attacks.
Raising her arms, multiple blades made of air appeared all around her, all of them pointing themselves at our teacher in front of us.
Sylphy threw each and every one of them at Master Lin without mercy, the blades throwing up clouds of dust as they shaved across the ground towards him.
In response to that barrage of attacks, Master Lin summoned his own mass of wind blades and accurately countered each one of the attacks thrown at him, not even allowing any of the blades to reach half the distance between us.
If we weren't trying to land a hit on him right now, I would have taken the time to admire the display of absolute skill and power right in front of me.
The clash of wind blades was so fierce that a miniature tornado had formed in between, blowing a fierce gale throughout the courtyard.
I highly doubt that any other Practitioner could do what he was doing with or without the use of their sight.
I signaled to the twins with a jerk of my head, prompting them to start their attack as well.
Kris threw his ball of light towards the side of Master Lin's head while Kris let his own ball of fire float slowly towards Master Lin's front.
If this goes to plan, Master Lin will still be under the assumption that the twins still remained where they were and the speeding ball was a fireball while the gently floating one was a ball of light.
To further spread his concentration, I manipulated the water to burst out from the ground at almost the exact same moment.
Master Lin stomped his foot on the ground, a layer of frost spreading around him as my water was instantly frozen right as they were appearing from the cracks in the ground.
He then threw his right hand up to point his palm at Kris, a wall of earth appearing in between them to block the ball of light from reaching him.
He made no move to stop the slow moving fireball that was still on its way towards him. Once it reaches a near enough distance, Chris will have the ball explode and that should at least singe the edge of Master Lin's clothing, securing our victory.
Meanwhile, Sylphy still kept him occupied with her barrage of wind blades, their attacks and defense equally matched to the point of a stalemate.
I had no doubts that should Master Lin wanted to, he could've easily overwhelmed Sylphy without breaking a sweat. Thankfully, we're only relying on this to distract him.
The seconds continued counting down as the fireball floated even closer to Master Lin. We only had less than a minute on the clock now and the ball needed a few more seconds to get into position.
Kris had tried to throw another ball of light at him, which served no purpose other than to direct his attention away from our real attack since it could not break the earthen wall in front of him anyway.
I tried to break my water out of the ice but Master Lin's ice held strong, not even allowing me to unfreeze them.
There was just a single metre to go before Chris would detonate it.
The rest of us were holding our breaths as we watched on with anticipation, expecting the blast to happen any time soon.
Just as we thought we would actually succeed with this plan, Master Lin thrusted out his left palm, causing the fireball to explode prematurely just a few inches short of its destination.
"Time's up." He grinned, turning towards me and blinking.
He… He hadn't blinded himself?
We were tricked!
He had already released his blindness after the first engagement! Pretending to react to our materialisation of elements to make us think he was still blind!
When Kris sent his light ball forward, he had already known the twins had switched places and temporarily blinded himself before undoing it again! The plan was a failure from the start!
"Now, let's see how you deal with this."
He let out a low growl before his body suddenly contorted and shifted, quickly expanding in size to transform into the exact same shape of the Wendigo that Tekiteh had transformed into.
All of us could only stand frozen to the spot as the monster of our nightmares reappeared before us, this time even more intimidating than ever.
It let out a soft growl before turning its head to me, the darkness in its eye sockets boring straight into my very soul.
The fear I felt there was much more than the first time I saw the Wendigo.
Judging by the look on everyone else's faces, I was not alone in that regard.
