The old woman squeezed through the gap, her body twisting at a sharp, unnatural angle in midair.
Then she slammed into a wall of vines.
The vine wall had already been woven overhead while the walls of fire were still burning.
Ethan had charged through the three walls of fire not to pursue her, but to herd her into this exact position.
The old woman plunged headfirst into the wall of vines.
Dozens of thick vines lashed out simultaneously, wrapping around her wrists, waist, and legs.
The old woman let out a raspy roar.
A ring of incandescent flame erupted around her, burning all the binding vines to ash.
She pointed her cane upward, and a pillar of fire shot into the sky, burning a massive hole through the vine wall.
She burst through the hole.
Only to find another wall of vines above her.
She burned through it again.
Another wall.
She burned it again.
And another.
The vine walls came layer after layer; as soon as she burned through one, another appeared, and ten more followed the first ten.
The old woman had no idea how many layers of vine walls Ethan had prepared. Her mana was draining rapidly under the continuous bursts, and the light at the tip of her cane had begun to flicker unsteadily.
After burning through the fourth layer of vines, she finally saw the sky.
And then she saw Ethan.
Ethan was hovering thirty meters above her, supported by a thick vine.
He raised both hands, palms facing each other, with a fist-sized green light orb floating between them.
This light orb was completely different from the one he had pressed toward her face earlier.
Countless runic patterns flickered in and out of existence inside the orb, sending visible ripples of energy through the air with every pulse.
The color of the orb deepened continuously, shifting from emerald to dark green, then to deep forest green, and finally to an almost pitch-black ink green.
Fine energy particles constantly drifted from the edges of the orb, annihilating the moment they broke away and leaving tiny, distorted black cracks in the air.
Four hundred overlapping Seed Bombs.
Compressed to the size of a fist.
The old woman stared at the light orb, her lips trembling slightly.
The combat experience she had accumulated over four hundred years screamed frantically in her mind, telling her she had to run—she had to run immediately.
The spell unleashed by the Third-Tier Apprentice before her was already more powerful than most First-Tier spells she had ever seen.
But she could not run.
The surrounding vine walls were still closing in, the sand beneath her feet was still churning, and the sky above was mostly blocked by a giant web of woven vines. All her escape routes were sealed.
“You little bastard!”
The old woman let out an incredibly hoarse roar.
She gripped her cane with both hands, and all the runes on its shaft lit up simultaneously.
Dark red flames erupted from the cane, condensing into a three-meter-wide fireball around her.
The flames on the surface of the fireball continuously drew inward, compressing again and again as the color shifted from dark red to crimson, and then to incandescent white.
The fireball hurtled toward the deep green Seed Bomb.
The two forces collided in midair.
Boom!!!!!
The blinding light of the explosion pierced through heaven and earth.
The shockwave rippled outward from the center of the blast, vaporizing all the sand within a three-hundred-meter radius.
A massive crater over a hundred meters in diameter and thirty meters deep was blasted into the ground. The walls of the crater were as smooth as if they had been sliced by a knife, and the sand along the edges had melted into dark green, glass-like crystals under the extreme heat.
The shockwave continued to sweep outward, toppling distant rock piles, uprooting shattered logs half-buried in the sand, and plowing deep trenches into the sandy ground.
Ethan was already retreating the moment the explosion occurred.
Vines erupted from beneath his feet, wrapping around his body to pull him back at high speed.
The shockwave caught up to him, pushing against his back and throwing him even further.
The runic patterns on the surface of his Wood Armor flashed frantically under the tearing force of the shockwave, the wooden plates disintegrating layer by layer only to regrow under the infusion of his mana.
He landed on a boulder three hundred meters away from the edge of the crater.
The shockwave swept past his sides, blowing away all the sand around the boulder and exposing the grayish-white bedrock beneath.
Ethan stood on the boulder, his gaze locked onto the center of the explosion.
The dust and smoke slowly dispersed.
At the center of the blast, the old woman hovered in midair.
Her dusty gray robe was shredded to pieces, exposing her withered torso.
Her left arm was twisted at a bizarre angle, with bone protruding from her elbow. Her right leg was completely gone from the knee down, the flesh at the stump carbonized by the searing heat.
A deep, bone-deep gash split her forehead, dark red blood pouring from the wound and coating half of her face.
Yet, she was still alive.
She raised her only movable right hand; her cane was gone, leaving only a broken half gripped in her palm.
She looked down at her battered body, then looked up at Ethan standing in the distance. Her lips quivered as she squeezed a raspy laugh from her throat.
“Hahaha... In four hundred years, you are the first apprentice to push this old woman to such limits.”
She let go of the broken cane.
Reaching her right hand into her tattered robe, she pulled out a fist-sized, dark purple crystal.
“Kid, this old woman has lived long enough. Come with me!”
Her fingers tightened, and all the runic patterns on the surface of the dark purple crystal lit up at once.
A terrifying, unstable wave of energy rippled outward from within the crystal.
The wave was extremely volatile, surging and waning unpredictably, sending distorted ripples of energy through the air with every pulse.
Ethan's pupils contracted slightly.
Yet, he did not budge a single inch, simply standing there.
A trace of surprise flashed through the old woman's fierce eyes, but she did not dwell on it because the spell had already taken form.
It no longer mattered whether this kid ran or not.
A dark purple ring of light expanded from the old woman's palm.
The ring of light expanded outward, and everywhere it swept, everything began to disintegrate.
The moment the wood pillars touched the edge of the ring, they vanished into nothingness. Vines evaporated silently within the light, and the Flying Leaves disintegrated without even causing a ripple.
The dark purple ring of light expanded outward with the old woman at its center, moving so fast that reaction was impossible.
【Life Energy +398,721. Current Life Energy: 4,430,649.】
The moment his Wood Armor touched the edge of the ring, it began to crumble.
The wooden plates were stripped away layer by layer, and the runic patterns flashed frantically for a brief moment before going completely dark.
The shield conjured by his Wood Shield technique held for less than half a breath before shattering into a flurry of wood splinters.
Ethan felt a terrifying, chaotic energy tearing his body apart.
His skin was disintegrating.
His muscles were peeling away.
His bones were shattering.
His consciousness plunged into darkness amidst intense pain.
【Died. Expended 1 year of longevity. Perfect Resurrection.】
The darkness lasted for only a split second.
Ethan snapped his eyes open.
“Damn.”
He raised his head and looked toward the center of the explosion.
There was absolutely nothing left where the old woman had been hovering.
The dark purple ring of light had completely dissipated, leaving behind only a few distorted spatial rifts in the air.
Tiny spatial fragments constantly drifted from the edges of the rifts, rapidly annihilating after breaking away and leaving persistent black streaks in the air.
A massive crater over two hundred meters in diameter now scarred the ground.
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