The Sorceress: Blossoming Power

Meirga winced, grossing out at the blood on her lovely face and hair but her ego told her not to shame Nianshi and her title as spirit guardian. She had to stand on her ground and accomplish the task given to her. 

Lengshui was clean as his water washed the splurging blood flying at him in an instant.

No blood went to Ah Lam's body as her white circle shield, made from her steel web, covered her. River weeds engulfed Shengkai, keeping her clean within it. Kaosmandu cared less that his body turned red, fully covered with blood.

For a time, Xinyi could heal up to five beasts snapping their mouth or tail at her but grew wary of it. Her gut instinct told her she had to heal and wake the river spirit first so the beast' insanity would stop. 

"Nianshi, bring Guang here to heal the beasts but keep her with you. I need to focus all of my essence to the river spirit." 

Without further delay, Nianshi flew and grabbed Guang with his claw wrapped around Guang's body. He brought her above Xinyi.

With her two palms, Guang healed two beasts with her streaming beams of healing light at a time. More spirit and ordinary beasts alike were healed as Guang went on about her task. 

Under the hundreds of meter deep river, the gigantic eel coiled around the shell, angrily snarled at the incoming red ink. Its two long black whiskers twitched, knowing where this anomaly came from. The giant crimson squid-crab. Although this being was also a river protector, the imbalance essence still affected its sanity in him. 

The eel knew its ink's fatality when it hit its prey. It will paralyze the target and shred it to pieces with its giant snapper claws. These claws could mince any flesh, including a wandering giant eagle flying above the river before. And its target today was the river spirit being.

Somehow, the eel knew his friend was not aware of its actions, and that made him waver. Just like what happened to him earlier, the pure and strong essence in the recovering body of the river spirit attracted the insane spirit beasts. He expected more would come for it.

The insane spirit beasts didn't put the eel's recovering essence in their eyes, for it was not as strong as those in Xinyi and the river spirit. This was an advantage on its own, giving a bit of slack to protect his sleeping master in the shell.

Would he attack his fellow protector? He might kill it accidentally. But if he let the ink touch even a portion of his skin, he would be paralyzed forever. That was if he could escape its deadly snapper claws, otherwise he would be ground fish meat.

He had no other choice but carelessly zapped the giant squid-crab with his lightning, clearing a huge portion of ink from the water. As the water cleared, he was thankful to see other beasts were on their way to the shell, and some who swam up toward Xinyi fell back right down the river bed as rendered paralyzed by the red ink.

This time, the eel made two more careful zappings of his lightning at the squid-crab with a thought of completely making it scurry away in fear as he used to do before when they sparred. Yet, unexpectedly, the opposite happened.

The squid-crab went berserk and its intact body bulked up from the tip of its tentacles to the tips of its feet became black. A carapace armor surrounded its squid's flesh. It now looked like a giant walking upside-down cone-shaped seashell with tentacles waving at the top and its weak body hidden inside the hard shell.

The squid-crab's four feet scurried as fast as a galloping horse toward the eel with its mouth squirting black ink and its two snappers opened wide, ready to snap the eel's head from its long body.

"Darn, this is bad. Just go away." The eel shouted, zapping the squid crab again and again but only sending a not-so-fatal lightning or else he would turn his friend into a roasted squid-crab. However, his efforts were futile. 

The squid-crab's body armor was as strong and as thick as the eel's skin. It lived up to its title as one of the river protectors and river spirit being's guard. This squid-crab was also considered as a legendary being too, so how could the giant eel easily stop it from its tracks?

The outcome of his attacks shocked the black eel to the core and suddenly recalled the hidden strength of this squid-crab and the reason his master chose it to become a protector.

The fact was within this river, legendary water spirit beings dwell. This lived up to its name as a Sacred River, fully guarded by great and fearsome beings in Chiji. This also manifested the importance of its existence.

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Xinyi knew what took place below as the water totally melted and only blocks of ice floated on the water surface. She and the slab under her kneeling legs stayed afloat on the water with her water power circling under the stone slab. Strong winds surrounded her to repel any beasts from jumping at her and from distracting her concentration.

She focused all her healing to the river spirit being. She had to trust the eel to handle the squid-crab for now. 

She had to wake the river spirit as soon as possible. If she had to swim down to directly heal the river spirit being, she would, but that would mean more attacks coming her way. She had no time to deal with it. Her shield was also thinning out if this would take longer. 

"Come on, river spirit. Wake up," she said, wishing the being could hear her summons. But… the scaled man's eyes remained shut.

Guang didn't stop from healing the wounds and essence of the snarling and jumping beasts toward Xinyi. Xinyi's mark on her strengthened her powers into a hundredfold, and she was thankful for it. She would heal as many as she could to support her mistress.

She also saw the beasts' focus was on Xinyi. They didn't even bother to look at Nianshi, who relentlessly attacked with his claws. The water turned slightly red with the blood mixed in.

The healed beasts either swam below, helping the eel protecting the river spirit against the squid-crab or from the other insane protectors heading to the shell, or swam around Xinyi, making a protective wall of swimming beasts five meters in diameter around her.

"Nianshi, is there a way to wake the river spirit?" Xinyi asked, beads of perspiration covered her forehead. Before Nianshi could process what she said with his busy brain, Xinyi remembered the first Sorceress' writings. It said in her book that the size matters when using the power stones. 

Her eyes lit up. "Why not double the Kreg?"

With a thought, she hurriedly brought out more Kreg stones. It floated beside the two. In that instant, thick black light gushed out from it and arrived at the sleeping river's spirit body.

In a span of two breaths, the man inside the shell unlatched his eyes. He shook his head a bit, and he knelt inside. He looked up and stretched his hands up. His opened palms sent his water essence to meet up with Xinyi's healing essence. 

As the stones' powers and their essences collided in the middle of the river water, his water essence blasted out Xinyi's healing essence and the Kreg's strength and Wag's purifying power all over the river and beyond it, filling the whole peak. 

Every beast it touched instantly stopped its movement and all the flickering runes disappeared from their bodies. 

Nianshi and Guang saw the rippling water spread the healing essence, but astounded to sense the power of the river spirit being. It was no less than Xinyi's surging power.

Their joint power healed the entire mountain peak. Snows stopped falling, but an instant rain shower took over.

The vast snowy land was no longer in sight. Rather, lush greeneries covered the land around the vast tranquil bluish river water. As if the snowy land didn't exist from the start. 

Serenity reigned in the stilled water surface. The rain stopped.

One by one, water beasts swam around Xinyi until the smallest fish swam near the river bank with even rhythm along with the rest. 

The first two circles around Xinyi were legendary beasts as enormous as the mythical behemoths and leviathans in the seas which no one laid eyes on for decades or maybe centuries. 

They slowly emerged from the water while their bodies transformed into humanlike forms. Their feet stood on the water without submerging, as if they hovered on the surface with their soles not touching the water at all. 

One had a man's body but with snapper-clawed hands and squid head and tentacles as hair. Two had black bodies with long whiskers near their cheeks jumped up next. The other two had human heads but had fins behind their ears, ankles, elbows and behind their backs. Rainbow-colored scales covered their neck down the ankles.

All of them had blue hair while they wore golden armors on their chest up to their knees. Amber-colored spears were in their hands. Swords sheathed on their waists.

The rest of the beasts in the outer circles around her transformed into their human forms too, including those at the river banks where most were like little children.

It was a breathtaking sight to behold. There was no one left in their fish or beast-form. It meant all beasts dwelling in this Sacred River were spirit beasts. Not one of them was an ordinary being at all. This was an eye-opener to the foreign guests. 

In front of Xinyi, gurgling water rose. In a blink of an eye, a man with blue hair leapt out from it and as his golden scaled legs landed on the water surface, he knelt at Xinyi's feet. All the spirit beasts in their human form followed suit, kneeling down in unison.

"Welcome to the Sacred River, oh great Chief Guardian. Thank you for saving us all," said the one kneeling at Xinyi's feet.

Those around echoed his words. Their voices filled the mountain peak like thunders booming in the ears of those standing kilometers away at the Illusion Forest below.

Before Xinyi could reply, the blue-haired man in front of her stood and extended his hand toward the cave. They all looked at the hand's direction and gasped in wonder.

Xinyi's eyes widened as she saw Ming's body floated in careful pace toward them until Ming's body was at her reach.

"Allow me to heal your most beloved, Your Honor," said the man, who was none other than the powerful Sacred River spirit being. 

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