However, just as the move of the fire god move took effect and the spears of fire began to fall on her, she dived back into the ground and disappeared from sight. She didn’t block the attack at all and instead sought refuge in the safety of the ground.
The fire god thought that she was only delaying the inevitable, which made it laugh in mockery. Then it turned into lava and pursued her through the ground. Unfortunately for it, things weren’t so simple.
Just as it transformed into its lava form and entered the ground, she left the ground and flew away into the sky. So the fire god had to transform back into its giant physical form to pursue her.
However, after it was done transforming, the fire god discovered that she had run into the ground again. The fire god also discovered that the distance between them had become wider.
At this point, the fire god couldn’t mock her anymore. After all, it now had two unpalatable choices. It could transform and continue to chase her on the ground, only for her to widen the distance between them by jumping out of the ground soon after, or it could give up and let her escape.
The fire god decided to give up on her. Instead of wasting its time dealing with someone it was ill-equipped to handle, it decided to spend its time doing something worthwhile.
It was actually needed somewhere else to deal with someone more important and the will of the world was urging it to go now, so it glared at her before turning away. But it promised to come with another world guardian the next time it came to hunt her.
The pill refiner immediately took the chance to run to meet up with the other rank 5 cultivators from her sect. There were no manifestations of their Life Abilities, but she knew where they were and how to get to them.
In fact, there were no manifestations of Life Abilities at all. Not one manifestation of a Life Ability, real or fake, was high up in the sky this time around. At this point, no one was wondering why this was the case. Everyone knew why everyone was keeping a low profile.
However, not everyone was doing poorly. Some were even doing better than escaping with their lives.
One person in particular was strong enough to fight a world guardian to a standstill. This person was a swordsman from the Sword Way Sect.
This swordsman had appeared above a sea. Even though he didn’t kill anyone, he was still attacked by the sea god because he had appeared too close to the sea god.
The sea god was a giant octopus. The head of the octopus was so large that it appeared to be an island when the swordsman first saw it.
A moment later, the swordsman was sure that it wasn’t an island, because the island grew large tentacles that it threw at him. The sea god also riled up the surrounding sea area and caused pillars of water to strike him.
The swordsman had used the Sword Step Metac to dodge the pillar of water. But the pillars didn’t fall back into the water after they missed him. Instead, they spread out at the top and combined to form a canopy above him.
In just a few seconds, the canopy had come down to meet the sea, thereby turning into a dome. The dome of water sealed the escape of the swordsman, while blades of water fell from the dome to strike the swordsman.
The sea god also attacked with its 88 tentacles. So there was a barrage of attacks from below and above. Anyone else would have been easily overwhelmed by this, but not this swordsman.
The swordsman used the Sword Dance Metac and the Sword Step Metac to weave through the attacks. Then he used his Life Ability, the Sword Counter, to attack the sea god.
The Sword Counter Life Ability is an advanced form of the Sword Deflect Metac. It is similar to the Sword Deflect Metac in that it only needs to produce up to half of the power of an attack to take effect. But when it takes effect, it will redirect the attack back to its source, not just block it.
So the swordsman was able to use the power of the sea god against it. This is how he was able to fight the sea god to stand still.
Until something changes, like the swordsman growing tired or running out of energy, the two of them will continue to be in a stalemate.
The swordsman knew that he couldn’t continue to hold back the sea god, so he wanted to escape. But the sea god refused to let him escape. The sea god was always attacking him, so he had to block the attacks and didn’t have the time to escape.
This made the swordsman say in despair, "It seems this is how I will die."
Then he smiled and said, "If I can die, then the others will not have a good time either."
He can only take consolation in the fact that he is not the only one who will die. While this is not helpful to their situation, it is true that many people are dying.
The rank 4 cultivators are dying in droves. A single passing of the storm god could kill all five hundred rank 4 cultivators.
But the world guardians mostly ignored the rank 4 cultivators. The world guardians didn’t actively hunt them because they didn’t need to.
The world guardians were all busy hunting rank 5 cultivators. They actively sought out the rank 5 cultivators to kill them instead of hiding and hoping to keep their symbol of authority safe for one month.
However, even though the world guardians weren’t hunting the rank 4 cultivators, the rank 4 cultivators weren’t having things easy either. This was because they were being hunted by the world and the descendants of the world guardians.