Chương 55: Chapter 54 — Wide Pipe, Pouring Faucet

An hour later, a group of vans were camped outside of the entrance to the holy land, each filled with various bits of equipment ready to extract from the site the second it was fully open. The site supervisor, Jianfeng, was writing down orders from Elder Mao to coordinate and manage the extraction team's shift. The extraction team consisted of six people, all of whom had called in sick at school to be ready for the big day.

Despite Lin Che telling the Shen Clan that the cultivation level restrictions would be lifted, he had insisted on having the same team enter after him to gather resources, citing that there would be no need to spend time and resources to deviate from an already solid plan. Lin Che stood outside of the portal entrance, and the air warped around the hand he stretched outwards into the portal. It disappeared from view, but the remainder of Lin Che's body was still on Earth.

"Wish me luck!" shouted Lin Che, as he closed his eyes and stepped in.

The holy land looked the same as before, which is to say that the map Lin Che had memorised and brought back to this life was still the correct route. He started down the stone corridors and took a deep breath in. Time for a speedrun. Lin Che rolled his shoulders and put an ear to each shoulder. He began the Hollow Bell Resonance, pushing it as far as he could until it pressed against the very extremes of his reach. Everything in range was within his domain.

He tightened the muscles in his lower limbs and allowed whichever energy remained in his system to flow downwards. And then, he ran. It wasn't a movement technique, which was obvious from its semi-clumsy execution, but Lin Che now sprinting down the corridor at an inhuman speed. Occasionally, he had to slow down to prevent tripping over his own feet. The first creature was around the second junction, and, as the Hollow Bell Resonance broadcasted his Qi into the entire area, it had long sensed Lin Che.

This time, however, the gap between sensing and acting was an unreachable hurdle for the brown, dog-like creature. It swerved to dodge, but— Lin Che kept running. Through the creature. Once he got close enough, Lin Che launched a powerful, short-range burst of sound Qi through his mouth, which caused the creature to erupt in a violent bubble of guts and fall downwards. He jumped over the creature before it even had a chance to hit the floor.

Lin Che scanned the area using his sound arts like a radar and pivoted to the right before breaking into a sprint once again. The two creatures ahead of him jumped upwards towards him, but Lin Che came in low and drew the heel of his palm upward into the base of one wolf's jaw with full force and momentum. It slammed into the other wolf, but both were still alive. Before they could get up and react, he kicked each skull until he heard a crack. He moved onto the next set of wolves.

By the time Lin Che dealt with the sixth pack of wolves, his joints, particularly at his ankles and knees, gave him jolts of pain whenever he placed his weight onto them. Moreover, his calves and glutes were strained — despite his increased endurance and physical strength. Apparently muscles were still important. But muscles didn't carry over in each loop. Only the increased strength from body refinement did.

Instead, he swore to do the next best thing in this life and the next few: invest time into a martial technique, or combat technique, or whatever the equivalent was in terms of cultivation, and spend time training a movement technique, too. He had been putting it off, as, despite having essentially infinite time to train these, Lin Che was ultimately a rather lazy person.

When it came to cultivation, he could abuse his power to exponentially raise the levels of his cultivated Qi, and he could come to reasonable conclusions known as breakthroughs for sudden surges in power. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. There was no alternative for martial arts. Those had to be engraved into the muscle. But, at least then he'd be able to throw a punch without almost dislocating his wrists or risking a boxer's fracture.

The final chamber was now ahead. Lin Che slowed to walk at the entrance, partly because his legs were sending increasingly wearier signals, but also because he was afraid the Hollow Bell Resonance would alert the final boss and provide it with enough time to attack him. Of course, Lin Che could easily defeat an injured opponent, after all he'd already defeated this wolf before, but he didn't wish to wake it as doing so would just prolong its conscious awareness of its suffering.

The chamber's Qi density hit him immediately, which was particularly striking as the entire holy land itself already possessed a great density. He had surely noticed this before in his past life, but his sensitivity was much greater now, and it took him a concerningly large amount of restraint to not immediately invoke the Boundless Intake Sutra. He brought all of his Qi inwards and concentrated it into a small point, hiding it away within the depths of his body so as to not wake the wolf.

Lin Che crouched in front of it as it slept and placed his hand on its neck, right where the carotid artery would be. The small ball of Qi from within traced through Lin Che's core directly out of one fingertip and concentrated into a sharp point. Five seconds later, the wolf had stopped breathing. Lin Che stayed crouched for a moment longer, before he stood up and moved to the centre of the chamber. He sat, closed his eyes, and began using the Boundless Intake Sutra.

Now that the pipe had a tap to match, the intake began. Every pore simultaneously opened up, flooding with Qi. Within the first few seconds, he had absorbed more than any single incense session had provided. Within the first five minutes, more than all the farmhouse sessions combined. His meridians, which had expanded under the sessions in the farmhouse, were now handling a load far greater than their capacity.

The circuits dragged Qi at a great rate with resistance equally as strong, causing friction within Lin Che's pathways, which tore through Lin Che's body like nerve damage. Moreover, the circuits were all leading to one place: towards the massive lump of grain kept within his cultivation base. It was being compressed like sediment as the new intake piled in behind it, and the compression felt like fists attacking internally. Lin Che kept on going. More came in.

The heat in his core became pressure, and it turned into the dominant sensation he could feel. He shed all other senses — eyes were already closed, so vision was gone, but now so was his hearing. Soon, he lost all proprioception, losing all sense of where he stood in space. He needed all this focus to prevent his body from passing out and to maintain the intake. Soon, the pressure reached its final blockade, and ripped straight through it, causing a qualitative shift in the Qi within Lin Che.

His reserves had expanded even further and his cracked meridians reformed to fill in the gaps of its new housing. The grain was still there and remained unresolved, except it splintered off into smaller segments throughout his vast internal ocean and no longer left a tight feeling within his chest. He would still have to shed himself of this grain, but this temporary fix would be fine for the foreseeable future. He kept absorbing. Lin Che's senses returned, no longer having to resist any pain.

He noticed now, however, that the rate of absorption slowed down. Logistically speaking, this should make no sense. There was more empty space within him — increased negative pressure should suggest that Qi should flow at a greater rate into his body, and, in fact, the ambient Qi around him still moved as though that were the case, rushing towards his body. But it hit a barrier. Or, more precisely, a very slightly permeable barrier — like a colander with one tiny hole.

Something was artificially preventing him from gaining anything further. So Lin Che channeled the Hollow Bell alongside the Boundless Intake Sutra, emitting resonant Qi into his surroundings to increase the speed at which the ambient Qi would move towards his body. It wasn't enough. The resistance grew stronger, so he fought harder. It worked, for about half a second, before Lin Che felt a distinct change in his surroundings and the Qi density decreased significantly.

He didn't need to open his eyes to realise where he was now.

"He's back! Group A, prepare to enter in five!" shouted Jianfeng. Lin Che opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of the field of wheat he'd been in just ten minutes prior. He willed his legs to move to stand up, but his body was completely frozen in place. Stormclouds gathered above and thunder clapped in the surroundings.

"EVERYBODY, GET OUT NOW!" came a familiar voice. Yang Zichen was here. Which meant that Shen Bowen was almost certainly here too. Just in time to view Lin Che's Heavenly Tribulation.