unaware that aster had completely stopped paying any kind of attention to them, the many pairs of cultivators from the different forces that suffered loses at aster''s hands, or more accurately his swords, spread throughout the sky and targeted the people that aster was seen with earlier.

    that''s right, since the green robed elder realized that targeting aster directly wasn''t working, he secretly ordered the disciples of the supreme elemental sect and the forces affiliated to it, to go after alice and the others.

    the difference between what happened earlier is that he set some rules up, for starters they couldn''t attack in large groups, at most it should be one pair per target, this way aster wouldn''t have a justification to interfere in the name of "evening" things out.

    and second, he only sent said orders to the strongest members of the group, so each pair consisted in at least one peak star tribulation cultivator and either a peak star axys or an early stage second star tribulation.

    as to why the green robed elder decided to sent a pair against a single of the girls, it was because he saw some of the girls from the black sword faction fighting against two or even three enemies without aster interfering, so to not lose face the same should apply to the members of his own group.

    what he didn''t know is that if aster wanted to, he would have cut them all down regardless of anything, but there was no need for him to act, in fact he even pitied the poor bastards for aiming at some specific members of his team.

    speaking of which, the first four sets of pairs of enemies arrived at the location they were assigned to, just in time for the nearby distortion that their targets were guarding, to activate and let out a strange looking multicolored fruit of some kind.

    seeing their two targets flash towards the previously mentioned fruit, the four temporary sets of allies exchanged gazes and nodded at each other before rushing towards their respective targets according to what they discussed beforehand.

    all the peak star axys cultivators blocked the path to the multicolored fruit, while the peak star tribulation ones appeared in front of the targets to directly attack them, the idea was to both wound them while stealing the resource they were targeting.

    "hi missy, your boyfriend really pulled a fast one on us so don''t blame us for being ...", the one leading the star tribulation cultivators, a tall bulky guy from the iron hall of the supreme elemental sect punched towards a red honey brown haired girl with red eyes, only for his sentence to be interrupted midway by an elegant and pretty looking fist that casually blew his whole arm and shoulder, alongside his clothes defensive formation and everything.

    what''s more, that wasn''t alice''s aim, for her it was as if she squatted an annoying fly out of the way.

    "get lost trash", with unadulterated disdain, alice''s fists then exploded in a red light with black borders which turned into a violent meteor that was shot frontwards, devouring also the other star tribulation enemy that was supposed to attack her but was frost due to the shock caused by the previous scene.

    at the other side, the two star tribulation cultivators were burning in yellow flames as they observed their target, a platinum blue haired girl who for some reason they found extremely alluring, despite she not wearing anything revealing nor doing anything remotely close to appealing, of course we are talking about aria.

    the previous is normal, even when her yin is at its minimum thanks to aster absorbing all the excess her body constitution produces, aria is naturally alluring for the opposite sex, her natural attraction is usually nullified by aster''s overwhelming yang, which is the reason as to why she hasn''t been specially targeted by others so far.

    but the effect is reduced whenever she isn''t near him, like right now, of course it doesn''t instantly disappear, but the other party are dual cultivators, meaning they are rather sensitive to anything rich in yin energy and they are only a few meters away from aria on top of it.

    "you are in the way", aria''s cold voice woke the two guys who felt anger due to the clear indifference towards them, just as they prepared to use their yang flames to burn that arrogant ice-cold girl, they saw a light blue flash and the next thing they knew was that their bodies froze into ice blocks, their yang flames included.

    aria whose body was radiating a pretty blue haze due to the low temperature caused by her spirit energy, bypassed those two to then thrust her rapier frontwards releasing a large freezing stream... in other words she didn''t even target those two they were frozen simply by being grazed by the spirit energy that overflowed out of aria''s body.

    ''why are they fighting between themselves'', was the last thought that both those frozen guys and the ones that were dragged into alice''s attack, before that red meteor clashed against the ice stream, those guys who were trapped in between were turned into shards or consumed by the red meteor until there was nothing left of them.

    "booooom!", both energy attacks fiercely clashed in the air between alice and aria, causing a loud explosion and a shockwave before actually cancelling each other.

    "tsk", both alice and aria clicked their tongues after seeing that none of them had gained the upper hand in the previous clash.

    "as i thought it would take forever for one of us to come out on top even in a simple exchange of attacks", mumbled aria.

    "i didn''t use a spirit weapon though, so i would say it''s my win~", happily said alice only for aria answer.

    "humph, in case you forgot i''m a soul cultivator, you might trick others but i can see the armor covering your fists, you used your star but i didn''t", don''t try to cheat lewd princess", said aria, she avoided using the word "dragon" in public to not cause any troubles, alice was more of a lewd princess than dragon princess in aria''s eyes any way.

    alice mischievously giggled, she had never, ever, used the invisible mode of the golden armor, since she loved being a pair with her beloved brother, so she thought she could trick aria by doing so, unfortunately it didn''t work.

    "heh, you make it sound as if that would have made a difference, let me tell you but in "stealth" mode the increase in strength is not even half of what i normally get", dangerously said alice to which aria casually added.

    "so, what, without rigel''s flames my spirit energy is not even a third part as cold as it can get".

    "the formation in my weapon is not the origin of that attack, but a simple "guide" to help me use my own power", she casually said as she slashed her glaive towards the enemy, who finally understood why his teammates stood no chance when attacked by tiana. explore stories at empire

    that thread of light landed a fraction of a second before the physical attack and he could feel the metal attributed spirit energy which he used to protect himself and reinforce his tower shield, being stripped away.

    it was like wearing a thick coat with a missing part of the warming material, in a winter day, the difference was clear as day, but only for the one wearing said coat, the worst part was that the window between the "weakening" effect and the actual attack was too small, so he couldn''t reform his defense before he was cut by the blade of the glaive.

    "crack!", without spirit energy powering the already weakened defensive formation engraved on the shield, as tiana repelled it with her innate ability, the purely physical defense of the shield was slashed by the glaive that did have the reinforcement created by tiana''s spirit energy as well as the physical impact caused by its materials.

    needless to say, but the result was that tiana''s glaive slashed the shield like fruit, what a joke, the blade of her glaive was created with metal that was imbued with aster''s blood, causing its golden tone, though it had a much darker tone compared to aster''s swords, since it had to be adjusted for tiana''s light attribute.

    "blegh!", the enemy saw his shield and defensive spirit technique being cut apart as a whole and he vomited blood, the slash reached his flesh and though unlike his teammates he wasn''t split into two, a large wound opened all over his frontal body, causing his eyes to roll backwards before he fell from the sky, his fate unknown.

    tiana didn''t bother to check on the enemy, though she didn''t externalize it, she was actually worried about the teammate assigned to him, after all she had never seen her participating in a battle before, what''s more the faction to which she belonged wasn''t really battle oriented.

    "i got a bit too engrossed in this thing''s compatibility with my fighting style...", mumbled tiana as she gazed at the glaive that aster gifted her, she couldn''t help but admit that she was actually better with the glaive than with a traditional spear, despite the years of training in difference.

    ''i should thank him... no tiana, don''t fall for such an obvious trick, he is a pervert who likes to tease others... but he did it to help me and properly respected the limits, ughh, i''ll thank him just a little bit'', inwardly cursed tiana.

    she couldn''t bring herself to not enjoy the benefits of her first "real" date with aster, which weren''t only her changing her spear to a much more fitting glaive, but her parallel thinking and reaction time getting way better, she got used to consider "fast" the speed used by aster, meaning that unless she fought a genesis manifestation, it would be really hard for someone to escape her reaction time.

    leaving aside the poor tiana whose hair returned to its normal black color as she was inwardly argued with herself, while she flashed towards her teammate''s area, said teammate found herself surrounded by metal cladded enemies.

    "don''t waste time, attack her at the same time", the one leading the two pairs of enemies, ordered the rest of the group to all attack dahlia in a group.

    the three metal cladded figures nodded and turned into gray flashes that jumped at dahlia in different directions.

    the light brown-haired girl from the green lotus faction, reacted by reaching her right hand towards her neck and grabbing a silver pendant she always wore.

    "clang!", continuous metallic colliding sounds echoed through the area as dahlia used the object, she grabbed with her right hand to block the punches of the three enemies, she was forced backwards with each attack, but she managed to parry all of them.

    "what was that?", mumbled one of the attackers, he felt a slight numbing sensation lingering on his fist, his eyes then followed the origin of said sensation, it was a regular sized silver colored metal hammer.

    "star tribulation or not, how did a single path energy cultivator block our attacks head on without suffering any wounds", exclaimed one of the star axys enemies.

    dahlia was a rather unique case within aster''s team, she was a single path cultivator and had reached as high of a realm as the middle stage of the star tribulation realm and had yet to let alone start but even choose her secondary path.

    the reason is quite simple though, she didn''t enter the sect with battle-oriented objectives, as she joined the green lotus faction, her original aim was to become an herbalist specialized alchemist like her aunt.

    but then she realized that while she enjoyed growing, taking care and classifying spirit herbs and other natural resources, she had a certain interest in exploring, in other words she had the love for nature that her aunt had, but there was a little spark of desire for adventure added to the mix.

    the problem was that to leave the sect for the missions of the green lotus faction, one had to either be at least an early-stage star axys with a secondary path within the earthly realms as well, or a star tribulation in a single path.

    which gave birth to her current situation, in which she was seen as "weak" by others for being a single path cultivator.

    however, one thing that many ignore is that she has adventured outside of the sect quite a few times already, with and without higher ranked cultivators escorting her, in other words despite she not being a veteran, like iris or nerissa, she has quite a bit of experience.

    also, while being an inner disciple as of current, she is only an early earthly realm secondary path away from being a core disciple, something that hasn''t really piqued her interest... until a couple of months ago.

    "toughness around four, endurance around three, nothing special for a peak sky grade or even half stellar grade material", mumbled dahlia, her green eyes shinning with a calculative light in them as she observed her opponents.

    "crack!", the next second, cracks appeared on the metal clad that covered the three guys that attacked her, making them nearly freeze in shock.