Path Of The Dragon (A Dark Fantasy Cultivation Wuxia Xianxia Progression Series)

Chapter 78 Grove Lord

Ithilix was the first of Jie's friends to rise above the water's surface and take in a gasping breath before a secondary wave swallowed her. She rose out again and Pan Tian broke through second. Jie didn't see Xue, but the massive plant monster was stirring and there was no time.

Jie swung herself from her branch with incredible force, stepped on the air using her lightning step, and launched herself like a cannonball at the enormous turquoise bulb itself.

Taking out your vines doesn't seem to stop you, so let's see if you survive this. Jie thought as she gathered power for a dragonfist around her right hand.

She hurtled toward the monster as it stirred and its tentacles retracted close to its body... then it shot downward, vanishing into the water with a tremendous splash. Jie felt it race away as the water above it bulged. She growled as she landed in the mucky swamp water where it'd just been and chased after it.

The massive, fleshy bulb burst out of the water a hundred or so meters away and its snake vines rose up into the air once again. Jie glanced back at her friends and saw all of them alive and fighting the horde of plant monsters. For a moment she hesitated, unsure whether she should return to their side and try to defend them against attacks from the incredibly long vines that could come from any direction or if she should continue pursuing the monster to finish it once and for all.

But she remembered how close it'd been last time she'd focused on defense. Jie didn't know if she could repeat the miracle she'd just performed a second time when it was still so new to her... there was really only one option.

Jie felt a snake vine slithering under the water, racing toward her, and leaped toward it. It exploded out of the water and snapped its jaws shut on empty air as Jie landed on its thorny vine for a body and ran along it at full speed, using lightning step to act as a platform when there was no safe area to place her foot upon it.

The snake vines roared, countless numbers of them racing toward her. Two of them stopped just short of her and exhaled a cloud of purple acid that boiled the water and dissolved the smaller plant monsters in an instant. But, using her incredible speed, Jie leaped over the cloud, kicked off another vine, and plummeted toward the base of the glowing bulb where the snake vines seemed to be coming from as two dragonfists formed around her hands.

An instant before she hit it, a shimmering field of turquoise energy surrounded the plant monster.

Jie's dragonfists slammed into the turquoise qi and held pressed up against it for a heart-stopping moment as the two conflicting energies screamed against one another.

Dragon lightning qi snarled, crackled, and roared against the thick layer of turquoise qi and exploded. A huge spray of murky water erupted around Jie as the force of the explosion sent her flying backward. The bulb shifted back slightly with the sound of snapping roots but already its snake-like tentacles readied themselves to strike.

Jie formed a lightning step platform under her feet, sideways in mid-air, tensed her legs, and launched herself back at the base of the monster as she cycled a dragonfist on each hand.

Jie's dragonfists slammed into it again and its qi armor shattered like glass as she blew a deep hole into its body. The snake vines spasmed and screeched in unison and Jie hammered the same spot with her dragonfists again and again. She blasted her way through the creature and continued to dig through it with her deadly attacks as it roared, shrieked, and flailed. Sap and green plant matter sprayed her from head to toe, crackling against her qi armor as she hit it again and again and again.

"You will not hurt my friends! You will never hurt them!" Jie roared as she slammed her dragonfists into the plant monster's insides even after it had stopped moving except for the way it shook with every powerful blow.