Chương 45: 112 Seconds Left (1/3)

Ignite.

Using sheer willpower, he forcefully restricted the blood vessels in his lower extremities. The sensation was immediate and brutal—a crushing internal pressure that made his femoral arteries bulge visibly beneath rain-slicked skin. The immense biological density of his 110 Agility and 110 Might coiled within his calves like tightly wound steel cables, hyper-pressurizing his circulatory system like a compressed industrial spring. His muscles trembled with the contained force, every fiber screaming for release.

When he mentally released the biological lock, the super-pressurized blood rushed into his muscles with explosive, concussive force. The sound was visceral—a wet, organic detonation buried beneath flesh and sinew.

Using the thick, greasy smoke of the exploding panther corpse as total visual cover—the acrid stench of charred meat and boiling spiritual blood filling the air like a funeral shroud—Shi Yan detonated his physical momentum.

Another sonic boom ripped through the marsh, instantly displacing the falling rain into a localized vacuum tunnel. Water droplets hung suspended for a fraction of a heartbeat before the pressure wave blasted them outward in a perfect expanding ring. The swamp itself recoiled, black muck cratering inward where he'd stood, putrid water splashing violently against the elevated stone road.

Above the water, on the elevated stone road, the disciples had entirely dropped their guard.

"We got him! The beast dragged him into the mire, and the talismans reduced him to ashes!" one of the younger disciples shouted, his face flushed with excitement. His hands trembled as he wiped rainwater from his eyes, still clutching the empty talisman paper that crumbled to ash between his fingers.

"The Elder has been avenged!" another cried, his voice cracking with relief.

He watched the charred remnants of the demonic panther fall into the swamp below—chunks of blackened fur and sizzling flesh hitting the water with wet, meaty slaps—confidence filling his voice.

"Not even a Peak Tier 2 cultivator could survive the Crimson Lotus Bombardment at such close range!" His breath came quick and shallow, fog puffing from his lips in the freezing storm.

Because the disciples had broken their synchronized focus to throw their talismans and revel in their supposed victory, the golden barrier of the Heavenly Celestial Formation flickered, the ancient Daoist symbols along its surface dimming as its structural integrity momentarily dropped. The luminous characters wavered like candle flames in wind, their celestial radiance bleeding into the fog.

Yet...

Hidden within the sonic boom, Shi Yan saw that they had completely relaxed. Shoulders sagging. Weapons lowered. Defensive stances dissolving into careless celebration. That microsecond of instability was all he needed.

He didn't hit the wall. Moving faster than mortal eyes could track, he slipped through the faltering golden barrier—the destabilized Qi parting like smoke before him—appearing instantaneously inside the perimeter of the group's Daoist formation before the smoke of their own explosions had even cleared. His boots landed silently on slick stone, not even disturbing the shallow puddles beneath his feet.

The trembling young disciple stationed at the rear-left anchor blinked, wiping the cold rain from his eyes with the back of his sleeve. His triumphant smile—wide and boyish, full of naive relief—instantly curdled into an expression of absolute, paralyzing horror. The color drained from his cheeks as if someone had opened a vein.

Standing mere inches from his face was not the familiar fellow Daoist he knew, but a stranger: a man dripping with black swamp mud that ran in thick rivulets down his jaw and neck, wearing only a sodden, dark tunic that clung to his frame like a second skin.

His pale skin was red-hot, radiating heat so intense the raindrops hissed and evaporated before touching his flesh. Thick white steam rose from his body in great coils, wreathing him like a vengeful ghost emerging from the Yellow Springs. Jagged black veins spread beneath his skin like roots of corrupted spiritual energy, the visible consequence of his body art being pushed beyond its limits. They pulsed with each hammering heartbeat, bulging grotesquely along his forearms and throat.

"D-Demon!" the boy whimpered, his voice breaking into a pitiful squeak. His bladder failed him instantly—warm urine soaking down his inner thigh, darkening the white fabric of his pristine robes.

Shi Yan did not speak. His eyes remained utterly dead—pale and cold as winter ice, pupils contracted to pinpoints of predatory focus—as he swept his recovered, mud-slicked dagger directly toward the boy's exposed throat, aiming to sever the carotid artery in a single, frictionless motion. The rusted blade cut through rain and mist without sound, a whisper of lethal intent.

But as the rusted steel touched the disciple's pristine white collar—just barely kissing the fine silk—a piece of flawless, mutton-fat jade tied beneath the boy's robes suddenly grew burning hot. The spiritual talisman seared against his chest, making him gasp.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. A life-saving jade shattered into powder with a sharp crystalline crack, forcefully drawing upon the ambient Heaven and Earth Qi in the immediate vicinity. It detonated in a burst of emerald light so bright it cast harsh shadows across the rain-swept road.

Instead of a simple barrier, the stored Qi in the jade manifested as a brilliant, spinning emerald mandala—the phantom image of an ancient tortoise shell etched with glowing Daoist sutras that rotated in concentric rings, each character flaring with defensive power.

The construct instinctively pushed back against the incoming threat with the crushing physical mass of a falling boulder, a wave of spiritual pressure that made the air itself groan.

Clang!

The extreme recoil of the emerald shield met the unstoppable, 110-Might kinetic force of Shi Yan's forward thrust.

Caught between two overwhelming pressures—one spiritual, one brutally physical—Shi Yan's weapon gave out.

The cheap, grave-robbed dagger shattered entirely at the hilt, its rusted blade exploding into a dozen harmless pieces that pinged uselessly off the glowing emerald tortoise shell. Fragments of corroded metal tinkled across wet stone, spinning away into puddles.

Tsk. Shi Yan clicked his tongue in annoyance, his brow furrowing slightly—the only visible crack in his expressionless mask.

His face didn't contort in pain, but... A variable upon a variable, and today is the third.

"His weapon broke! The Heavens favor me! He's defenseless!" the boy shrieked in hysterical relief, his voice climbing two full octaves.

"Die, you filthy mortal!" the boy screamed, his fear entirely replaced by arrogant rage that twisted his youthful features into something ugly and vicious.

"Cloud-Piercing Thrust!"

Drawing upon his own Dantian—the spiritual energy flooding through his meridians in a desperate, unrefined surge—the disciple immediately thrust his jian directly at Shi Yan's chest. His form was sloppy, arm overextended, weight thrown too far forward in his panic.

The weapon was not a standard piece of steel. As it cut through the air, it emitted a high, clear spiritual resonance that actively repelled the raindrops before they could even touch the metal—each drop deflecting away in perfect geometric spirals. The blade radiated a frosty, unnatural sharpness, its edge shimmering with concentrated Qi that left frost crystals forming in its wake.

Shi Yan's expression did not change. He merely tilted his torso a fraction of an inch—vertebrae shifting with practiced precision—pivoting perfectly on the ball of his foot and letting the thrusting blade slide harmlessly past his ribs. The frost-wreathed steel passed so close it shaved a thin line through his sodden tunic, the frozen edge leaving a pale line across his skin that didn't even bleed.

As the blade passed, Shi Yan casually brought his heavy black-iron vambrace down against the flat of the disciple's sword with brutal, methodical force.

He didn't use a flowery martial technique. He didn't channel defensive Qi—eh… well, he didn't have Qi at all.

Thus, he just parried it with the horrific, unadulterated physical weight of his enhanced physique.

CRACK!

"Aaaaaagh! My hand!" the boy shrieked in pure agony, the sound raw and animal.

The sheer impact of Shi Yan's parry completely pulverized the bones in the disciple's wrist—radius and ulna splintering into fragments—violently snapping the delicate meridians in his forearm like overstretched silk threads and forcing him to drop the glowing weapon. His fingers spasmed uselessly, tendons severed, spiritual pathways ruptured. Blood began seeping through his sleeve in dark, spreading blotches.

Before the sword could even hit the ground, Shi Yan stepped effortlessly inside the boy's useless guard, closing the distance with the smooth, predatory economy of a born killer.

He drove his open palm upward in a brutal, casual tiger-strike palm technique—a lethal close-quarters combat maneuver perfected through a thousand repetitions on flesh and sandbag alike.

Utilizing the rigid heel of his palm, Shi Yan bypassed the jawbone entirely, transferring all of his monstrous kinetic force directly into the fragile cartilaginous rings of the throat. The impact was surgical. Devastating. Final.

The boy's scream ended in a wet, sickening gurgle as his windpipe was instantly crushed into his cervical spine—trachea collapsing like wet paper, vertebrae cracking audibly. His eyes bulged in shock and oxygen-starved terror. He collapsed backward into the mud like a string-cut puppet, limbs flopping bonelessly, white robes already soaking crimson at the collar.

[Target Slain. Tier-1 Obsidian-Frame Cultivator (Orthodox Human).] [+300 Dao Embers.] Without breaking his agonizingly fluid momentum, Shi Yan snatched the pristine, silver-tasseled jian straight out of the air before it fell, his fingers closing around the silk-wrapped hilt with practiced ease.

His eyes blinked as his fingers wrapped around the hilt, feeling the quality immediately.

What a perfect sword.

The weight of the weapon was exquisite—its center of gravity rested exactly a millimeter above the guard, balanced with the precision only achievable through master craftsmanship and spiritual refinement.

It somehow vibrated with lethal potential—a subtle hum of contained Qi resonating through the blade—as if perfectly balanced for a cultivator, though slightly too light for someone with his enhanced strength.

He spun on his heel, the blade whistling through the rain in a perfect horizontal arc. Water split cleanly around the edge, droplets sheared in half before they could reform.

Only then did the remaining disciples realize he was inside the dome.

"He's inside! The barrier is breached! Scatter! Scatter!" the Senior disciple screamed, his newly opened third eye snapping wide in belated recognition. The golden iris flared desperately, trying to track the threat that had already materialized among them.

But it was too late.

The sheep were already in the pen with the wolf, and the wolf was on a strict timer.

One hundred and thirty-nine seconds, Shi Yan calculated based on how long he had been moving and how many opponents he had killed, his eyes locking onto the panicking youths like a predator selecting prey from a scattered herd.

Next... Target proximity: two meters.

With his new blade in hand, Shi Yan became a reaper in the rain.

Utilizing his perfectly drilled military footwork—weight shifting smoothly from heel to toe, knees bent, center of gravity low and stable—he slid smoothly between two panicking disciples who were desperately trying to unsheathe their swords. Their hands fumbled at rain-slicked scabbards, fingers slipping on wet leather bindings.

He didn't swing wildly. He didn't waste energy on flashy sword arcs or screaming the names of his attacks.

The disciple to his left managed to break his momentary paralysis. His face was full of terror and desperation—eyes wide and white-rimmed like a startled horse—yet there was also glaring, uncomprehending rage twisting his features.

"You dare slaughter the orthodox?! You are just a mortal! How are you defying the Heavens?!" His voice cracked and wavered, spittle flying from his lips.

Despite the arrogant words, the boy's voice broke into a hysterical tremor. He grabbed the scabbard of his jian with both hands, knuckles white with desperate pressure, violently channeling his Dantian. Spiritual energy flooded his meridians so quickly it scorched—reckless and uncontrolled.

Blue Qi exploded from the youth's body in a violent eruption. Spiraling winds howled around him like a miniature tempest, whipping his white robes into a frenzy and sending rain scattering in wild eddies, forming a raging gale that swept toward Shi Yan with enough force to bend the nearby reeds flat.

"Wind-Strider Gale Barrier!"

The youth roared, voice raw with exertion. Layers of wind gathered before him—compressed air forming visible distortions in the rain—seeking to force Shi Yan back and open the distance between them. Only then would he have the chance to draw his weapon properly, to activate a proper sword technique, to survive.

A kinetic repulsion field based on pressurized air. Shi Yan's calm eyes measured the sudden gale as it tried to alter his center of gravity, the wind clawing at his sodden tunic and pushing against his chest with invisible hands.

Hmm... Quite good, perhaps. Effective against arrows, throwing knives... His weight shifted imperceptibly forward, boots scraping against wet stone as he leaned into the pressure. But... his lips curled into a sneer—cold and utterly devoid of mercy—Can you stop me?