They exchanged hundreds of moves. The more they fought, the faster they became until their attacks and movement appeared as only blurs in Xie Yang's vision.
Suddenly, the thousands of petals backed off from the Elder Devil Tree and assembled into Xie Ye after drifting several steps away from it.
As a mouth appeared in the middle of the elder tree devil's trunk and opened up to reveal swirling purplish mist to the two brothers, Xie Ye wasted not a moment before crossing his arms before him and creating a spiritual & black lightning shield.
At the same time, Xie Yang covered his entire body in spiritual energy.
Right at that very moment, it sprayed out poisonous gas from its mouth.
The poisonous gas came out of its mouth like rolling waves, and they covered a large area and eroded everything they passed through in mere moments.
The poison mist's main target was Xie Ye.
However, it spread out and reached Xie Yang.
Xie Ye, whose shield protected him from the poison mist, shouted, "Young master, this mist is poisonous! Don't breathe it in or leave yourself unprotected against it! Quickly use your spiritual energy to protect yourself!"
Xie Yang had long done that.
However, his spiritual energy wasn't infinite!
He was bound to run out of it soon.
On top of that, the poisonous gas was corroding his spiritual shroud, meaning he had to repeatedly reinforce it if he didn't want the poison seeping into his body through the pores on his skin.
"Focus on your battle!"
The Elder Devil Tree wasn't a monster that Xie Ye could deal with while worrying about his young master. That was why Xie Yang strictly ordered him to concentrate only on fighting it and forget about everything else as he tried to escape the mist.
"Wait for me! I will be done with it soon!" Xie Ye dissembled into petals again, and this time, each of them was inside an orb of blue that shielded them from the poison in the air.
Xie Ye began plummeting the Elder Tree Devil while Xie Yang rushed out of the poisonous mist.
It was just what it wanted to happen!
The moment Xie Yang stepped out of the poisonous mist, multiple trees extended their branches and brought them down at it.
He did a shameful donkey roll on the ground and skillfully escaped their attacks.
"Damn! I fell for its trap."
Xie Yang cursed under his breath. He was in deep trouble now. Not only did the elder tree devil look ugly and could spray out poisonous gas from its mouth, but it was also a capable schemer and had the skill to split its consciousness into multiple parts and imbue each one into a tree to gain control of it and use it as it liked!
"I expected nothing less from a rank three evil spirit!"
Xie Yang raised his head and revealed eyes burning with battle intent to the tree monsters around him.
"Ha, ha, bring it on!"
He exchanged several moves with the tree monsters, but because his sword wasn't sharp and his cultivation too low, he only left scars on them.
[Regeneration!]
The tree monsters stabbed their branches into nearby trees.
Xie Yang saw the inanimate trees grow old and the monster trees heal rapidly.
Because he had years of experience battling evil spirits, he immediately understood that the wooden branches were sucking the vitality out of the trees they had stabbed into and transmitting it to their owners.
While dodging their attacks, he chopped off their wooden branches and stopped them from acquiring a full recovery.
"There are too many monsters. I need to split them up and deal with them one by one."
Xie Yang planned to retreat to a narrower place where only one of the trees possessed by the Elder Devil Tree's split soul could attack him at a time, but as if they could see through him, they gathered around him in a circle. Xie Yang looked around and saw them surrounding him from all sides. They left him with no path to retreat. Regardless of whether Xie Yang wanted to fight them all simultaneously or not, they launched their branches at him.
He gritted his teeth.
"Since you are so eager to ascend, don't blame me for helping you!"
He slapped two talismans on his legs, and the power they imbued in him increased his speed to beyond the cultivator of a second realm!
He became so fast that he dodged all of their attacks and escaped their imprisonment.
But after that, he didn't run away.
Rather, the evil tree monsters saw him stopping and staring at them with such ill intent that they felt as if he was eye raping them.
His gaze offended them, but what he showed them next gave them a pain in the ass!
No, it wasn't his sword, but a dozen or so fire talismans!
"Ready or not, here I come!"
Boom! Boom! Bam! Bam!
Bad children need a spanking, and Xie Yang gave each of them a spanking of their life.
They turned so red that only the brightest of baboon's butts could compare to their bodies that Xie Yang had set aflame using fire talismans.
Their shell was weak against fire.
After the fire burned their outer layer, he landed a few attacks on their soft inner layer while maneuvering his body like an ancient martial arts expert to dodge their attacks and killed them off one by one.
Once he finished dealing with the evil minions, he left behind the spoils of war and headed into the dimming poisonous mist to aid Xie Ye.
The two brothers teamed up, and dealing with it became far too easier.
Xie Yang attacked it from long range and used his fire and wind talisman combo to create massive waves of fire that enveloped it and set it aflame.
No matter how many times it extinguished the fire, Xie Yang would set it aflame again.
Meanwhile, Xie Ye kept it busy and made it impossible for it to focus its attack on Xie Yang!
The two brothers bullied it badly for a while.
The scene was similar to two adults taking candy from a child's mouth and eating it and then slapping the child for crying aloud!
Xie Ye landed a battle deciding strike on it, and it burst apart; a vast body of darkness surged out of it and clawed at them.
Lightning bursts out of Xie Ye, annihilating its claws.
It lunged towards Xie Yang, and a mouth with sharp knife-like teeth appeared in its body.
"Oh no, you don't." Xie Ye launched doze s of lightning bolts at it, and after eating all of them head-on, it was no more.
The Elder Devil Tree has died for real this time around!