Three and a half feet.

I raised my hands, qi already flowing through my meridians for a desperate strike, when Wei Lin suddenly pressed his palms against the contracting walls.

"Everyone hold your breath," he commanded, his voice tight with concentration.

Before I could ask why, intense heat erupted from his hands. Fire qi, raw and uncontrolled, poured into the compressed sand around us. The sand began to glow cherry red, then white-hot, as the intense temperature fused the individual grains together.

The crushing motion stopped abruptly as our prison transformed from flowing sand into solid glass. Through the now-transparent walls, I could see our captor clearly for the first time: a humanoid figure composed entirely of shifting sand, standing about eight feet tall with proportions that were almost human but slightly wrong, as if someone had tried to sculpt a person from memory and gotten the details slightly off.

"Now would be good," Wei Lin gasped, sweat beading on his forehead from the exertion of channeling raw fire qi without a proper technique to guide it.

I didn't need to be told twice. Channeling qi into my fist, I drove a Phantom Strike directly into the glass wall in front of me.

The superheated material, already stressed from its rapid transformation, shattered like an egg shell. Glass fragments sprayed outward in a glittering cascade, and we stumbled free of our makeshift prison.

The sand creature tilted its head, observing our escape with what might have been curiosity. Its features were vague and constantly shifting, but I could make out the rough approximation of eyes, a nose, and a mouth carved into the sandy surface of its face. When it moved, grains of sand fell away from its body like water drops, immediately replaced by new material drawn from the desert floor.

"Peak Ninth Stage Qi Condensation," I confirmed, a frown creased my brow as I considered the implications.

The sect wouldn't have placed Elemental Realm creatures in a testing ground meant for Qi Condensation disciples. The risk would be too great, even with the protection of the marks we carried. So, the strongest entities we should encounter would be Peak Ninth Stage or perhaps half-step into the Elemental Realm.

But our luck seemed particularly cursed. First the wraith, now this sand creature. Both at the ninth stage, both appearing as if drawn to us specifically.

"Azure," I thought silently, "is it possible that ninth stage entities are specifically targeting me and Wei Lin because of our cultivation level?"

"It's likely," Azure replied. "Your ninth stage aura, even while suppressed, might be acting like a beacon to the strongest inhabitants of this realm."

That was troubling.

If every ninth stage entity in the Fallen Realm was drawn to me, we'd face a constant stream of deadly encounters. Most other participants, being at lower cultivation stages, would attract weaker opponents and have an easier time reaching the exit.

"Of course," I sighed out loud. "The one time being strong is actually a disadvantage."

"What was that?" Lin Mei asked, positioning herself behind Wei Lin and me as we formed a defensive line.

"Nothing important," I replied, studying our opponent. "Wei Lin, can you turn this thing into glass like you did with the prison?"

Wei Lin shook his head, his breathing still slightly labored from his earlier exertion. "I can manipulate fire qi, but I don't actually know any fire techniques. What I just did was pure qi manipulation without a proper technique to guide it. It's extremely inefficient and drains my reserves much faster than my normal abilities."

He gestured toward the sand creature, which was now beginning to circle us. "Against a stationary prison, I could take my time and apply steady heat. But fighting a Peak Ninth Stage opponent? The same trick won't work. It would adapt to my attacks before I could generate enough heat to matter."

I nodded, understanding the limitation.

Most cultivators specialized in one element or cultivation method for good reason, mastering multiple approaches required enormous time and resources. Wei Lin's Merchant's Path gave him versatility in absorbing and converting different energy types, but that didn't automatically grant him mastery over fire techniques.

The sand creature seemed to grow tired of waiting.

Without warning, it raised both arms, and pillars of sand erupted from the ground beneath our feet. I quickly reached into my storage ring and scattered a handful of seeds in a wide arc around us, infusing each with a trace of my qi as they hit the sand.

The pillar beneath me shot upward with bone-crushing force. I activated Verduring Step, dissolving into green light just as the compressed sand column punched through the space I'd occupied, flowing instantly to one of the seeds I'd scattered twenty feet away.

I rematerialized in a crouch, but the creature was already adapting. Sand swirled around its hands, forming into long whips that lashed out toward Wei Lin and Lin Mei with incredible speed.

Unlawfully taken from NovelBin, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Wei Lin dove to one side, the sandy whip cracking through the air where his head had been a moment before.

Lin Mei wasn't as quick.

The second whip caught her across the shoulder, the impact sending her tumbling across the sand. She rolled with the blow, coming up in a crouch with one hand pressed to her shoulder where the attack had torn through her robe and drawn blood.

"Stay back," I called to her, sprinting toward the creature. I hated having to say it, the last thing I wanted was to make her feel useless. "Leave this one to us."

I could see the frustration flash across Lin Mei's face, but she was intelligent enough to recognize the truth. Ninth stage combat operated on a completely different level from what she could handle. Even with her recent breakthrough and clever tactics, the raw power difference was too great. A single solid hit from this creature could cripple or kill her, regardless of how well she fought.

The sand creature turned toward me as I approached. I launched a series of vines from my sleeves, the green tendrils shooting forward to entangle its arms and legs. But sand simply flowed through the gaps between the plant fibers, making grappling impossible.

The creature retaliated by shooting dense projectiles of hardened sand from its hands.

I twisted aside, feeling one projectile whistle past my ear close enough to stir my hair. The second caught me in the ribs before I could counter or teleport away, the impact strong enough to crack bone despite my qi-enhanced defenses.

I stumbled backward, gasping as pain flared through my side.

Wei Lin seized the opening, rushing forward with fire qi crackling around his fists. He drove a punch into the creature's torso, the fire energy searing into the sand and fusing some of it into glass.

The creature recoiled, a section of its chest now solid and inflexible.

But the victory was short-lived.

The creature simply expelled the damaged section, letting the glass chunks fall away while fresh sand flowed in to replace the lost material.

Within seconds, it was whole again.

"It can regenerate indefinitely," Wei Lin observed grimly, dancing backward as sandy tendrils tried to wrap around his ankles. "As long as it has access to the desert, we can't wear it down through attrition."

I grimaced, pressing one hand to my bruised ribs while keeping my eyes on the creature.

My Primordial Woods Arts were proving frustratingly ineffective. Plants needed something solid to grip, but sand simply flowed away from any attempt to grasp or pierce it. It was like trying to strangle or impale water.

Ideally, I'd want to lure it away from its natural habitat, fight it somewhere with solid ground where my techniques would be more effective and where it couldn’t use the terrain against us.

But scanning the horizon in every direction, all I could see was more endless white sand stretching to meet the sickly sky. There was nowhere to run, and even if there were, this creature could probably manipulate sand faster than we could retreat.

The creature raised both arms again, and this time the entire section of desert around us began to respond. Sand swirled upward in a miniature tornado, creating a whirlwind that trapped us in its center while pelting us with stinging particles.

I closed my eyes and extended my spiritual sense, tracking the creature's position through the obscuring storm. There! It was moving to our left, positioning itself for an attack while we were blinded.

"Wei Lin, three o'clock!" I shouted over the howling wind.

He responded immediately, sending a stream of fire qi in that direction. I heard the creature's angry hiss as the flames connected, but the sound was followed by the whisper of sand reforming.

Lin Mei, still positioned at the edge of our makeshift battlefield, tried to help by sending pressurized water needles toward the creature's general location.

The attacks were accurate given her limited visibility, but they simply passed harmlessly through the creature's sandy form without causing any real damage.

The sandstorm suddenly collapsed, leaving us standing in the open once again. The creature had used the cover to position itself directly behind Wei Lin, who spun around just in time to see massive sandy fists descending toward his head.

I activated Verduring Step, teleporting to a seed directly between them. My hands came up in a defensive position, vines flowing out of my sleeves to reinforce my arms as I intercepted the attack. The impact drove me to my knees, but I managed to deflect the worst of it.

"Thanks," Wei Lin gasped, stumbling backward.

The creature pressed its advantage, sand flowing around its arms to form massive hammers. It brought them down in alternating strikes, forcing me to dodge desperately across the uneven terrain. Each missed attack left crater-sized dents in the sand.

I tried to counter with my own techniques, sending vines erupting from the sand beneath the creature's feet. But again, the plants found no purchase. Sand simply flowed around them like water, making any kind of root-based attack useless.

"This isn't working," I muttered, rolling aside as another hammer-blow left a crater where I'd been standing. "Azure, any suggestions?"

"Fire is clearly the most effective approach," Azure replied. "The creature's regeneration relies on its ability to maintain structural coherence. Heat disrupts that coherence by fusing sand into glass."

That confirmed what I'd already observed, but it didn't solve our fundamental problem.

Wei Lin could generate fire qi, but without proper techniques, he couldn't sustain the kind of intense, focused heat needed to overcome a Peak Ninth Stage opponent.

The creature seemed to sense our frustration. It began to grow larger, drawing sand from the surrounding desert to increase its mass. What had been an eight-foot humanoid figure was now approaching twelve feet in height, its proportions becoming more monstrous as it gained bulk.

Worse, it was learning from our attacks. When Wei Lin sent another stream of fire qi toward its center mass, the creature simply dispersed that section of its body, letting the flames pass harmlessly through empty air before reforming.

"We need a new approach," I said, circling wide to avoid another crushing blow.

The creature's increased size made it more powerful, but also potentially slower and less coordinated.

I began to form a plan. If fire was the key, then I needed to create an opportunity for Wei Lin to deliver a concentrated, devastating attack. Something the creature couldn't disperse away from or regenerate through.

The solution came to me as I watched the creature reform after Wei Lin's latest fire attack. It needed to maintain structural integrity to function effectively. If I could force it to concentrate its mass, to solidify itself, then Wei Lin's fire qi might be able to inflict lasting damage.

I reached into my storage ring and withdrew several coils of spirit vine, the strongest plant material I possessed. These wouldn't be used for grappling, that had already proven ineffective. Instead, I had something else in mind.

"Wei Lin," I called, dodging another crushing blow. "I'm going to create an opening. When I do, hit it with everything you've got."

He nodded, understanding that whatever I was planning would be a one-shot opportunity.

I scattered the vines in a wide circle around the creature, each one infused with my qi but not yet activated. The creature seemed puzzled by this tactic, tilting its sandy head as it watched me work.

Then I began to run directly at it.