Kalina silently looked at Aksai.

The poisonous fog drifted between them while the damaged Vine Barrier creaked intermittently as it started the self-healing process. With enough time, the barrier would completely heal itself.

However, this complete healing of the barrier through self healing in a short time depended upon it not being attacked by a cultivator anywhere else. And from the looks of it, Kalina didn’t seem like she would wait for her previous efforts to go completely in vain.

Neither Aksai nor Kalina rushed to attack.

A faint smile slowly appeared on the bewitching beauty’s face. There was no trace of panic left in her eyes. Instead, her confidence returned. She looked at Aksai as though she had finally figured him out.

"If you have any other tricks up your sleeves, now’s the time to show them," she said calmly. "One shouldn’t die with too many regrets."

As soon as she finished speaking, she casually waved her right hand.

A faint fluctuation spread from her shoulder.

The next moment, another invisible talisman revealed itself.

Unlike the previous life-saving talisman, this one was extremely thin. It looked like a strip of silver paper covered with countless tiny Essence Equation Runes that glowed with a cold white light.

The talisman detached itself from her right shoulder and floated gently into her waiting hand.

Aksai narrowed his eyes.

Another hidden talisman.

He had already robbed Kalina of everything inside her storage ring before the battle had even begun. Yet she still carried these hidden trump cards on her body. His expression became slightly more serious. There was also a bit of grievance on his face. It was the grievance of a thief who couldn’t completely clean his target’s house of all their belongings.

For a second, Kalina looked at the talisman with a complicated expression. She didn’t know if she should be happy that these talismans were on her person and not in her storage ring or cry for the fact that she was forced to use them. That too on someone like Aksai.

Normally, this late-stage 3rd Order talisman would never be used in a battle like this. It had been prepared for an entirely different enemy.

It was called the Sharp Slash Talisman.

Within the Shinayin Empire, it was commonly paired with a cultivator’s Natal Sword.

Once activated, it temporarily amplified the sharpness and offensive power of the Natal Artifact, allowing it to unleash nearly one hundred and thirty percent of its normal might. It could go even higher provided the user had a suitable intent-based technique.

The effect only lasted for a quarter of an hour. Sometimes even less if the battle was especially intense.

Naturally, such a precious talisman was consumed after a single use.

Kalina herself was not a true sword cultivator. However, she knew exactly how terrifying real sword cultivators could be.

Those people were battle maniacs. They chased dangerous battles the same way hungry sharks chased blood in the sea.

More frightening than their swords was their Sword Intent. Even an ordinary sword became terrifying once it was empowered by genuine Sword Intent.

As long as there was no overwhelming difference in cultivation, true sword cultivators held an enormous advantage over cultivators who followed ordinary paths.

There was a reason why sword cultivators were often compared to bloodhounds. Their entire existence revolved around challenging opponents stronger than the last one they had defeated. That was the only way for them to grow.

Ordinary cultivators usually practiced ordinary techniques. They could also pursue secondary professions such as talisman crafting, alchemy, artifact refinement, beast taming, and many others.

A true sword cultivator, however, was only a sword cultivator. They rarely mastered any other profession because almost all of their cultivation time was devoted to tempering their sword and refining their Sword Intent.

The path of a sword cultivator was also extremely expensive. They had to spend countless rare and valuable resources to nurture their sword. A true sword cultivator would begin cultivating a single sword from the Spirit Gathering Realm and keep it throughout their entire journey.

Unlike ordinary cultivators, who could simply replace their weapons with better ones after each breakthrough, sword cultivators had to raise the grade of their sword alongside their own cultivation.

Under normal circumstances, upgrading a First-Order artifact into a Second-Order artifact was far more expensive and time-consuming than simply purchasing a new Second-Order artifact. The same process repeated itself when an Expert advanced into the Lord Realm, except the cost increased exponentially.

Because of this, many sword cultivators were little better than robbers. They were constantly searching for "fat sheep" to plunder so they could gather enough resources to strengthen their swords little by little as they advanced.

It was almost impossible to reason with true sword cultivators. Once they were outside the protection of rules and laws, they did not care whether their target came from the same faction or even the same homeland.

Kalina knew she was already on the hit list of at least five late-stage sword cultivators from the Shinayin Empire because of the wealth and resources she carried. That was one of the reasons she had prepared this talisman before entering the Dadangar Subcontinent.

Of course, it had never been meant for the natives. There were no true sword cultivators on this isolated land. She had prepared it in case another imperial faction entered the subcontinent.

Some imperial factions specialized in sword cultivation.

If she encountered them during her mission, this talisman would allow her Natal Sword to temporarily contend against Sword Intent users on relatively equal footing, provided her opponent did not possess a higher cultivation realm.

Unfortunately, her Natal Sword had already been stolen by Aksai. She would have chosen to summon it back from Aksai’s storage ring using a secret technique that would burn her Essence Blood. But that provided Aksai had stored the stolen goods in his storage ring.

Usually, the cultivators would have multiple ways to summon their weapons from any type of shackles placed on them as long as the connection wasn’t severed and the weapon wasn’t destroyed.

However, Kalina couldn’t even maintain a vague sense of connection with her sword. It was as if it was sent to another world altogether. Thus, using the talisman without the sword was a bitter compromise she willed herself to make.

Indeed, the Sharp Slash Talisman could still be used. Its true potential could not be displayed without a Natal Sword. But it was far from useless.

Kalina slowly raised her right hand. She clenched it into a fist. Then she released only her index finger and middle finger.

The two fingers pointed straight ahead like the edge of a sword. Without the slightest hesitation, she pressed the talisman onto them.

Buzz.

The talisman immediately dissolved into countless white streams of light. The light rapidly wrapped around her two fingers.

A long blade of translucent white light extended outward. It grew nearly a meter long in the blink of an eye.

Although one could partially see through it, the blade possessed a metallic sheen that immediately gave off an overwhelming sense of sharpness. The blade looked as fragile as a glass but felt even sharper than a regular artifact.

It looked less like condensed Spirit Essence and more like an actual sword forged from white crystal.

The surrounding poisonous mist was quietly sliced apart merely by the blade’s existence. Thin cracks even appeared across the nearby vines without Kalina making a single movement.

The talisman-manifested blade was that sharp.

Aksai quietly observed everything. His Spirit Sense carefully studied the strange weapon.

Although he hid it well, a part of him couldn’t help but feel helpless. Another part felt discouraged by the difference in their origins that had been laid bare before him. There was even a small part of him that felt inferior for having been born on this subcontinent.

Aksai had always been proud of his humble origins. He had never believed he needed to compensate for being born into a poor Spirit farmer’s family.

But this was no ordinary day.

From a mortal’s perspective, the feeling was similar to that of a proud citizen from a poor country suddenly being forced to witness how far behind their homeland was compared to a wealthy nation.

This was yet another technique completely different from anything he had ever encountered within the Dadangar Subcontinent.

He had always known that, in front of cultivators from the Shinayin Empire, he would appear like a frog at the bottom of a well.

But now, he realized he might not even qualify as that. Perhaps he was merely a bug.

Aksai often took pride in his grandmaster-level mastery of talisman creation and many other cultivation arts. However, those standards belonged only to the Dadangar Subcontinent.

Compared to the standards of the Shinayin Empire, he was merely a beginner in every field.

Aksai instinctively felt that there was only one way to get rid of this feeling of inferiority.

And that was to eliminate Kalina using his own hands.