Chapter 541: Encountering a Tiger, I Do a Sliding Tackle...

After a difficult battle, the one-armed Huixin managed to defeat his enemy, Wang Xuan from Zhu Huan Academy, but was left grievously wounded himself.

Fortunately, he hadn’t died, but had only fallen unconscious.

By the time he awoke, the battle between the three great Daoist Lineages was already over.

Zhu Huan Academy and Pear Blossom Temple were completely wiped out. And though Xingdu Temple had emerged victorious, it had suffered devastating losses.

The Abbot, Huiyun, was dead. Among the upper echelons, the twelve Third Realm monks were either dead or wounded.

Not to mention the rest. Without Guiyun City, they no longer even had a foothold.

Their only option now was to seek refuge with other temples of the Buddhist Family to ensure their own survival.

Otherwise, how could this wasteland possibly meet the resource demands of an Extraordinary Temple?

“In the end, we still lost.” Huixin sighed. The Buddhist Family may have won a small victory for their Daoist Lineage, but for Xingdu Temple, it was a crushing defeat.

They had been living comfortable lives, but now they were forced to become strays.

“Brother Qi, are you planning to come with me to Zan Tie City?” Huixin asked.

Qi Suian had been the one to look after him while he was unconscious.

“I… don’t think I’ll go. It’s too chaotic. I want to go see things for myself,” Qi Suian replied, turning him down flat.

He had no intention of sticking with the monks from Xingdu Temple. There was little point in it for him.

In fact, it would only hold him back.

When a fight broke out, the gap in power was so great he couldn’t even get involved.

“That’s true. Even if you came with me, the struggle between Daoist Lineages would still be there. Who knows, we might be the next ones to be wiped out.”

“If you’re not coming, you could go to Liu Xing City. As I recall, there aren’t any Daoist Lineage powers there.”

“Life might be a little harder, but at least you won’t be in mortal danger.” Huixin offered Qi Suian a clear path forward, even explaining the route to get there.

The reason he didn’t insist on Qi Suian staying was, of course, because the battle during the night had completely destroyed Guiyun City.

Qi Suian was just an ordinary person. The conflict between the Daoist Lineages was growing increasingly grim. Once the three factions started fighting, they’d lose their heads, and it was easy to imagine what would happen after that.

“With the great drought, there’s bound to be some corruption in the Court’s relief efforts, but if you can bear it, you should be able to survive.”

“When things have stabilized, I’ll come find you.” Huixin knew these words were nothing but empty comfort.

Given his situation, his chances of survival were slim.

If he were a Sixth-Realm Bodhisattva, his words would carry more weight. But he was only a Third Realm Mage; in a real fight, he had no advantage.

At best, he was just high-grade cannon fodder.

“Alright.” Qi Suian gave Huixin a long, meaningful look.

When not caught up in the struggles between Daoist Lineages, the disciples of the three great teachings were actually quite good to ordinary people.

“Go on, don’t linger here,” Huixin said softly. “I have to get back and find a place for our battered survivors.”

“Otherwise, even staying alive will be a struggle.”

It was a good thing they’d won. They could use their grain reserves as a pledge of loyalty when they joined another temple of the Buddhist Family, which would save them from a life of bitter toil.

With the drought, grain had naturally become a form of hard currency.

Just how “hard” depended on the severity of the drought.

The more severe it was, the more valuable grain became.

They had originally planned to open their granaries and provide relief to the refugees after their victory, but that was completely impossible now.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to; they simply lacked the means.

Every single one of them was wounded, maimed, and utterly exhausted. There was even a chance they’d be ambushed by rival Daoist Lineages from other cities.

They couldn’t even protect themselves, let alone help anyone else.

So they had no choice but to give up on the idea.

If people wanted grain, they could go get it themselves; the monks of Xingdu Temple hadn’t taken the food reserves from Zhu Huan Academy or Pear Blossom Temple.

Besides, they wouldn’t be taking all of Xingdu Temple’s grain either. With their current numbers and condition, they could only carry what they could manage.

Qi Suian nodded. “Alright. Take care, and I wish you a safe journey.”

Huixin nodded, then turned and left without a hint of hesitation.

What needed to be said had been said, and what needed to be done was done. The world was what it was; he had no power to change it.

‘In the end, it all comes down to a lack of strength,’ Qi Suian thought. ‘If I were strong enough to slap a Buddha, a god, and a Saint face-first into the mud, what struggle between Daoist Lineages could there possibly be?’

‘I’d just take down the whole world by myself.’

Qi Suian considered this. His survivor avatar couldn’t accomplish such a feat.

His main body could, but then he’d have to *literally* take down the entire world.

But that was only if he waited until he finished ‘digesting.’ Otherwise, in his current bloated state, he’d be lucky if the Daoist World didn’t pin him down and beat him to death, let alone him taking down the world.

Following the directions and route Huixin had given him, Qi Suian set out for Liu Xing City.

Along the way, he encountered numerous refugees, most of them commoners from Guiyun City who could no longer survive there.

The cause was not just the drought, but also the conflict between the Daoist Lineages.

‘Natural disasters, man-made calamities… I guess this counts as an apocalypse,’ Qi Suian suddenly thought.

He suspected the reason the “Apocalypse Game” had targeted the Daoist World in the first place was likely because it had observed these internal conflicts and its near-apocalyptic state.

The members of the three great Daoist Lineages lost all reason when they fought. That alone was apocalyptic enough.

After all, they weren’t ordinary people; they were Extraordinary Beings wielding Extraordinary powers.

As for the drought, Qi Suian guessed that it was probably linked to the very source of the three great Daoist Lineages.

This drought had acted as a catalyst, causing the conflict between the Daoist Lineages to escalate drastically.

However, it wasn’t without its upsides. The three great Daoist Lineages were being reshuffled, and the pie of benefits was being re-divided.

This culled a large number of Extraordinary Beings, freeing up a significant amount of resources.

For the surviving high-realm members of the Daoist Lineages, it was nothing short of a gluttonous feast.

Aside from the risk of death, it was all upside.

This so-called conflict between Daoist Lineages was most likely a means to control their numbers and harvest the benefits.

Taking it a step further, it was possible that the Jade Dragon Dynasty no longer served the interests of the three great Daoist Lineages, so they were planning to orchestrate a change in dynasties.

This wasn’t an impossibility; there were already signs pointing to it.

This was especially evident in the Jade Dragon Dynasty’s control over public opinion, as they constantly blamed all sorts of problems on the conflict between the three great Daoist Lineages, even resorting to scapegoating and slander.

If the paths to becoming Extraordinary weren’t all controlled by the three great Daoist Lineages, the Jade Dragon Dynasty might have truly been able to overthrow them.

Thus, the Jade Dragon Dynasty lacked an opportunity—one the three great Daoist Lineages were unwilling to provide.

The fact that Qi Suian could create his own Daoist Lineage implied that the Jade Dragon Dynasty could as well. After all, the Daoist Lineages of the Confucians, Buddhists, and Daoists weren’t created in a day; they had been established and perfected over time by their three sources—Saints, Buddhas, and gods.

‘Looks like a lot of people are heading for Liu Xing City,’ Qi Suian muttered to himself. The information Huixin had given him wasn’t exactly top secret, so it made sense that so many people were heading in the same direction.

It was only natural. Xingdu Temple, Zhu Huan Academy, and Pear Blossom Temple had wrecked Guiyun City. Who could possibly have a favorable impression of the three great Daoist Lineages after that?

Naturally, everyone wanted to get as far away from them as possible.

Liu Xing City, having no presence from the three great Daoist Lineages, was the perfect destination.

A tougher life was better than no life at all.

A large crowd had its pros and cons. Especially with so many commoners, the slightest disturbance could easily trigger chaos without a leader to guide them.

Just like right now… some jerk had actually gone and poked a hornets’ nest.

A dense swarm of hornets came rushing toward them.

Qi Suian was fairly far away, so he was mostly unaffected. The people on the fringes, however, were truly unlucky.

“ROAR!”

The incident with the hornets wasn’t even over when it was followed by the roar of a fierce tiger.

Qi Suian scanned the area and realized the chaos had startled a fierce tiger.

Ordinarily, the tiger wouldn’t have dared to approach such a large crowd; in fact, it would have been more worried about being eaten by them.

So it had remained hidden and extremely wary.

But the chaos from the hornets had triggered its stress response, and it had leaped right into the crowd and started attacking.

Instantly, the chaos escalated.

Seeing this, Qi Suian knew it was time for him to make his move.

The breakthrough from Commoner to Ranger would happen in this very moment.

“You mutt, you dare act so brazenly!” Qi Suian shouted without hesitation, pushing his way to the front of the crowd.

The shout was loud, immediately drawing the tiger’s attention.

The tiger was massive. A single swipe of its paw would be fatal.

But Qi Suian wasn’t afraid. He now possessed the power of the First Realm—the kind that could even take down higher-level opponents.

It was a good thing that in the Daoist World, Extraordinary power was limited to humans. Animals and plants lacked the conditions to become spirits; otherwise, he might be facing a Tiger Demon right now.

As the tiger pounced, Qi Suian slid underneath it.

It was a shame he didn’t have a knife, or he could have pulled off that legendary slide-and-stab tiger kill.

Still, he was unharmed and managed to grab the tiger’s tail on his way through.

In the next instant, he was sent flying.

A tiger’s strength was no joke; a single swipe of its paw could shatter a steel gate.

The strength of Qi Suian’s survivor avatar was not yet enough to rival a tiger.

But the resilience of the Commoner class was impressive. He recovered without any serious issues and, with a flip, landed right on the tiger’s back.

Qi Suian immediately tried to put it in a chokehold.

This, of course, only enraged the tiger.

‘Damn it, I can’t win! The first two realms are seriously pathetic…’ Qi Suian cursed internally.

‘What damn good is a chokehold? It’s not like a tiger doesn’t have claws, and it can still roll over.’

‘Looks like I’ll have to rely on some outside interference.’

‘Life without plot armor is seriously tough.’ Qi Suian was used to things going his way. He really wasn’t accustomed to his survivor avatar lacking a protagonist’s halo.

Even when he was a “violator,” his enemies had been Mutated Zombies, not ordinary creatures like this.

The “outside help” arrived quickly. The tiger died on the spot.

You could say he choked it to death… it’s just that the data in the middle was a little fudged.

The process was wrong, but the result was right.

As he killed the tiger, he could feel the power within him beginning to rise, heading toward the Second Realm he had designated: Ranger.

At the same time, a new Divine Technique began to form within him.

He had successfully broken through to the Second Realm. Now, it just needed some time to solidify.