Someone at the fifth stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm was fighting a second-stage Origin Master. The weaker party was blind. This was incredible, no matter how you looked at it.
But Mais knew he had done even more incredible things.
Looking straight and unfocused at Jong with a frown, he knew he was no match for her. Why was that? It wasn't because he was weak. It was only because he was blind. Had he not been blind, Jong would already be regretting getting involved with him. Mais would have gone to a city and started gathering an army.
Or maybe none of this would have happened, and Jong would have been sent to the other world at the flick of a sage's wrist. All this was pointless to think about, and Mais did not dwell on it.
It was all darkness for Mais. He could not find Jong as he had during the fight. Jong wouldn't make a sound. Could Mais have a chance to win in such a situation?
"Kasuur, run!"
The only solution was to buy time for Kasuur to escape. Kasuur would escape, and so would he.
He had fled from that huge imperial war. How could he not escape from a simple Origin Master?
The cold mist around Mais rushed toward Jong's last position. Kasuur made a continuous sound so that Mais could sense where he was and retreat. Still, Jong's fierce attacks with her origin weapon blocked Kasuur's path, preventing him from escaping. At the same time, she could not run towards Mais to prevent Kasuur from escaping. The two were protecting each other's lives in vague harmony.
Kasuur looked around. Mais was trying to build walls of ice around Jong. The Holy Ice weapon was now back in his hands. However, his shots were too random, leaving too many openings in the wall he was trying to create. Jong wasn't trying to avoid the gaps; she was waiting. Kasuur soon realized why.
The gaps were dangerous. If Mais could see and Jong tried to pass through them, the walls would exert a terrible force on her from both sides, badly injuring her.
Of course, Mais could not see, but Jong could not rule out the possibility that he could sense it. Moreover, Mais had no effect on the ice after it had formed. Mais' attacks with the cold mist had caused the young girl to misjudge his ability.
At that moment, Mais knew that they would be the ones who would end up in a bad situation. Kasuur looked around and realized the same thing. He would end up trapped alone in the ice with Jong.
'I must escape!'
Kasuur knew that if he managed to escape, Mais would somehow escape too. He might not be good at attacking, but he could escape through these trees.
'Right?'
He took one step, but no more. At that moment, he wasn't sure if Mais could escape on his own. He realized in a few weeks that Mais' power could not be measured in realms, even though Mais seemed to have abandoned him last time. However, since he was blind, he could be defeated by someone from a lower realm. It was complicated. At the time, fear clouded his judgment.
He was afraid. What was different?
This time, he did not leave Mais. He didn't have the courage to do so.
"Mais, attack!"
At that moment, he thrust the sword into the ice with all his might. With a howl, the sword headed straight for Jong. At that moment, Mais would have detected the direction in which Jong was standing.
But Jong knew that, too. The beautiful, black-haired woman grabbed the sword by the hilt the moment it emerged from the ice, twisted it, and sent it back to Kasuur. The sword gained momentum and lost some of its hum.
As soon as Mais realized that the hum had changed direction, he directed all the surrounding cold ice in that direction. He had received much higher-level training than Jong. He understood what the sudden change in sound meant.
Kasuur, who had dodged the returning sword at the last moment, could now see Jong clearly.
"It's not that easy!"
Jong still held an origin weapon in her hand.
Suddenly, the energy waves in the weapon strengthened, and Jong leapt forward, swinging her sword at Kasuur.
The fog of ice splitting towards Jong.
There was even the sound of it breaking. The origin energy's power destroyed some of the concentrated fragments. Jong suffered a few cuts from the shards but ignored them, slowing down only briefly before swinging her sword at Kasuur.
Kasuur could only pull his sword out of the tree and strike back.
CRACK!
Before Kasuur's eyes, the sword he had received from the barbarian swordsman was completely destroyed. Only the hilt that he was holding remained. His lips trembled, and he put all his strength into his feet, trying to run away.
'Why? Why can't I see!?
This seemed to be the only question that mattered to Mais as he stood in the middle of the forest with his staff in hand. Even if he was strong, how strong could he be if he couldn't see? How much could he hear? He knew he couldn't hear everything. Someone flying, someone who understood silence, and so on. One thing he was sure of was that the stronger he became, the more techniques he would be unable to resist. Even now, survival was uncertain.
'So, are you going to give up?'
He gritted his teeth. He could hear Kasuur trying to escape by putting trees between himself and Jong. His lips pressed together.
"I am a cultivator. How can I give up just because it's been hard?"
Those were the only words his father had ever spoken to him about cultivation. He could never give something up just because it was hard.
He turned his head and looked into the forest. That's where the sound came from. He pressed his ears against the forest. He denied everything. He erased his existence. He forgot the mouth with which he spoke.
"Can you help me, please?" he asked.
He ignored Kasuur's screams, which sounded like those of a chicken being slaughtered, completely.
He heard a voice in the forest chuckle. Was it a woman?
'When you realize how ridiculous your words are... then of course you will realize that I will help you. No matter what.'
Mais did not understand these words. In fact, he wasn't even aware that he was looking at the forest at that moment. He felt a connection with the forest that he could only experience through his senses. It was a delicate and thin connection, but it was there. He didn't know who he was communicating with. However, when he took a few steps and banged his head against a tree, he began to understand what was happening.
"Forest Tao... Is that Forest Tao?"
He heard another chuckle from the forest, but this one was louder. It echoed harder in Mais' ears. It was not an illusion.
'Of course not. The Tao of anything is not something you can talk about. I am the remnant of the interaction between the Tao and the consciousness of the woman who created this forest. I am a bridge between the forest and the grower. But you cannot comprehend the Tao, of which I am the bridge.'
"How will you help me?"
That was all that mattered to Mais.
He knew that no matter how hard he tried, he could never understand the Tao of the Forest. There was a simple reason for this: The Forest Tao was a higher-level Tao. You needed to be able to see traces of another Tao to learn it.
Logos had not entered the Sage Realm in a long time because he was trying to understand a higher Tao. Even the first Tao he had to learn was difficult for him to grasp.
"I will use the forest to open your eyes for a short time and remove the seal your father placed on the Cold Tao. Your body can handle it now."
The opening of his eyes. No one was more excited than Mais at that moment. He didn't know the Tao of the Forest was so powerful.
But it already wasn't.