Rise of the Wang Clan: Starting with a Portable Farm

Chapter 169: Subduing the Spirit Fire

Wang Hao reached into his storage bag for more talismans, but his gaze settled on two puppets.

They were second-tier ape puppets he had taken from Huang Youcheng. He could not yet make such puppets himself.

With spirit stones installed, they could follow his commands. Without sustained divine-sense control they would be much weaker, but they could still help. Wang Hao smiled ruefully at having forgotten this option.

He brought them out. Mechanisms clicked as two ape puppets, each more than one zhang tall, appeared before him. One carried a bow, the other a long spear.

The archer puppet drew its bow and shot a spiritual arrow at Si Zhiheng.

The spear puppet rushed forward. At the sight of a middle-grade second-tier puppet, Si Zhiheng looked uneasy.

How could a single Foundation Establishment cultivator possess so many expensive weapons?

Si Zhiheng had always overwhelmed opponents with his many trump cards. Now he had fewer than Wang Hao, even though two of Wang Hao’s spirit beasts had gone after the family’s Qi Refining cultivators.

Si Zhiheng took out a small yellow flag, a low-grade spirit weapon. When he waved it, yellow sand poured out and trapped both puppets. The flag could not damage the middle-grade puppet, however; it could only hold them.

Wang Hao kept throwing talismans.

High-grade first-tier talismans were mixed with low-grade second-tier ones. Fireballs, ice blades, sword shadows, wooden thorns, and earthen spikes rained down on Si Zhiheng.

Si Zhiheng had no other defensive spirit weapon. He had to use the yellow flag to protect himself.

That freed the puppets to join the attack again.

The combined assault scattered much of the yellow sand.

The damaged flag fell from the smoke. Several holes had burned through its fabric, its glow was dim, and it was no longer usable.

Wang Hao took advantage of Si Zhiheng’s disarray and ordered the Phantom Moon Butterfly and the puppets to strike together.

Si Zhiheng hurriedly used his last two second-tier talismans.

A freezing talisman trapped the spear puppet in ice. A Golden Sword Talisman collided with the archer puppet’s spiritual arrow.

The two puppet attacks were stopped.

But the Phantom Moon Butterfly’s hallucinatory light touched the hem of his clothes, leaving him dazed for a moment.

Wang Hao activated another Hundred Blades Talisman. Spiritual blades appeared and struck Si Zhiheng from all sides.

Si Zhiheng raised a high-grade first-tier shield.

The blades struck it with a series of dull impacts.

After a short time, many cracks spread across the shield.

A vine burst from the ground and wrapped around Si Zhiheng’s legs. His two protective barriers kept it from hurting him, and he cut it away with his spirit sword.

Wang Hao’s next attack came at once.

Wang Hao’s green light sword swept in and shattered the shield in Si Zhiheng’s hands.

Si Zhiheng tried to add another barrier, but his spiritual energy faltered. The prolonged fight had nearly drained it.

The Child-Mother Green Light Sword struck again and broke through his remaining defenses. Si Zhiheng shifted just enough to avoid a fatal blow, but suffered a wound down to the bone in his left arm.

Breathing hard, Si Zhiheng swallowed a pill to recover spiritual energy.

The air before him rippled faintly.

An almost invisible flying needle sped toward him.

It was Wang Hao’s final trump card: the White Hair Divine Needle.

By the time Si Zhiheng noticed it, it was too late.

The needle passed through his chest. He looked down at the hole where his heart had been.

He coughed and spat blood. His eyes lost focus, and he fell backward.

Wang Hao ordered a puppet to strike the corpse again. Only then did he sit down and catch his breath.

He had not expected Si Zhiheng to possess a heaven-and-earth spirit fire. Without it, Wang Hao thought his many talismans could have killed even a middle-stage Foundation Establishment opponent.

Wang Hao looked toward the True Sun Flame.

With Si Zhiheng’s divine-sense control gone, the flame had stopped struggling and hovered quietly in the air.

Wang Hao guessed that its intelligence had only begun to form. If it had fully awakened, Si Zhiheng could never have subdued it.

Wang Hao would not leave it behind. His Red Lotus True Fire could consume other spirit fires.

He told the puppets to stand guard, searched Si Zhiheng’s body, and burned it.

Li Derong and the others were far away. Wang Hao chose not to join them. He sat to recover from his injuries while examining Si Zhiheng’s storage bag.

The True Scripture of Red Lotus and Phantom Wood explained how to consume a heaven-and-earth spirit fire, but Wang Hao could not do so in his current condition. He first needed a way to take it away and consume it after recovering.

He soon found a jade slip with methods for subduing spirit fires.

The slip described dozens of heaven-and-earth spirit fires and places where they might form. Wang Hao suspected Si Zhiheng had found the True Sun Flame with its help.

It described several approaches: suppression, enticement, communication, and confinement.

Enticement suited Wang Hao’s situation best.

He took out a Flame Stone, a second-tier material containing fire energy and useful for forging fire-aligned spirit weapons.

He slowly set it beside the True Sun Flame.

The flame had a trace of responsiveness despite lacking full intelligence. It drifted to the Flame Stone and began to consume it.

The fist-sized stone was gone after a short while. The flame looked unchanged, perhaps because the stone held too little fire energy to make a visible difference.

Wang Hao offered more Flame Stones, coaxing the flame closer to him.

When it was very close, he contained his excitement.

He cautiously reached out with a thread of divine sense while producing a fire-aligned spirit weapon for the flame to cling to.

The True Sun Flame struggled for a moment.

Seeing the many Flame Stones in Wang Hao’s hand, it yielded to the temptation.

It established a divine-sense connection with him and attached itself to the spirit weapon.

“Ha! Even a heaven-and-earth spirit fire likes to eat,” Wang Hao said with a smile.

What Wang Hao did not know was that the True Sun Flame had not finished forming and hungered for fire-aligned materials. Without that hunger it would not have submitted so easily; Si Zhiheng lacked the materials to satisfy it, which was why it abandoned him.