Kill!

Slash!

A shower of sparks burst from the scales. The insect ball took a heavy blow and veered off course, flying sideways and snapping a tall, stout tree in two.

Zhou You looked at Feidian in surprise. The little creature usually kept its abilities hidden, but the force it had suddenly displayed was astonishing.

Even so, he noticed that there wasn't a mark on the surface of the insect ball.

That meant Feidian had done zero actual damage to the Soul Beast, making it all the more agitated.

Although the strength Feidian had displayed was somewhat unexpected, Zhou You knew that its deadliest weapon was actually its poison.

Zhou You had seen Feidian use its speed to toy with fierce beasts several times its size. Once it tired of playing, it would kill them in a single strike with its poisoned claws. Its venom could seal a throat the moment it drew blood.

But that ability was utterly useless against the Soul Beast before them.

It couldn't even break through its defense!

Seeing that Feidian was about to charge forward again, Zhou You stopped it at once.

"Hold on. Haven't you had enough of a lesson just now?"

Feidian seemed to listen and actually stopped.

It tilted its little head and called out to Zhou You several times.

"You want me to help you hunt it down?"

Feidian called out a few more times, its voice a little coy. Though Zhou You couldn't understand what it was saying, its meaning was perfectly clear.

Master, pwease!

Zhou You thought it over. It was worth a try.

He took a few steps forward and approached the strange insect. With no windup at all, he swung the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella down hard on its scales with a move called Forcefully Splitting Mount Hua.

Boom!

A crater over a meter across appeared in the ground.

That wasn't because Zhou You himself was particularly strong, but because the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella weighed a full 65 kilograms, yet felt as light as nothing in his hands.

The weapon's own weight, combined with the speed of his swing, gave the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella an impact force exceeding a ton. That was far from the umbrella's limit, but it was all the recoil Zhou You could withstand. Any more, and he would injure himself.

Even that was thanks to his strong physique and extensive experience, which had taught him how to dissipate force.

An ordinary person taking that heavy blow would have been reduced to a bloody pulp, their bones shattered!

Yet the strange insect remained completely unharmed, its scales as smooth as ever.

Seeing this, Feidian leaped up and down in agitation.

Zhou You clicked his tongue inwardly. It's that tough? How many years old is this thing?

He thought it over again and again. Since his Martial Soul's attacks had done so little, he could only try an extraordinary person's methods.

He stepped forward and struck the insect ball embedded in the ground with his palm.

A surge of Qi rushed from his Lower Dantian into the Penetrating Vessel, traveled along the Three Yin Channels of the Hand, and gathered at the Laogong Point in his palm. After a brief compression, it was released in an instant.

Air-Splitting Palm!

Because Zhou You was close enough to his target, the Air-Splitting Palm suffered almost no loss of force and struck the insect ball in full.

The Qi force pierced through layer after layer of scales in an instant, penetrated directly into the target's body, and exploded with a roar!

The strange insect, which had been motionless, suddenly went rigid all over, then began to tremble.

It worked!

Zhou You's eyes lit up.

"Penetrating force" was a principle of internal martial arts. Its force specifically injured the internal organs of an object without damaging its surface, and it was also known as "hidden force" or "yin force."

Qi was a kind of energy naturally suited to carrying all sorts of force.

The power behind techniques such as Wang Ye's Wudang Taiji Fist, Zhuge Qing's Eight Extremes Fist, Xiao Zizai's Great Compassion Hand, and the Lü Family's Ruyi Force all lay in the "force" contained within their Qi-infused palms.

"Force" was the true essence of every school of internal martial arts, the so-called "true transmission."

This Soul Beast's outer defense was nearly flawless, and Zhou You could do nothing about it, but he didn't believe even the insect's internal organs were made of iron!

Still, the amount of Qi in that last palm strike had been a little too small to kill the Soul Beast outright.

The strange insect shook like a sieve for quite a while before suddenly stopping. But gaps had quietly appeared between its once tightly fitted scales, showing that it was badly injured.

Zhou You was preparing to strike again, but the strange insect had clearly sensed the danger too and suddenly sprang into action!

Zhou You was still gathering power for his next palm strike when his heart tightened. It was a warning from his Primordial Spirit.

Without hesitation, he immediately leaned backward into an iron bridge.

The next instant, the insect ball shot diagonally out of the crater like lightning, brushing past Zhou You.

If he hadn't leaned back in time, it would have struck him head-on!

Bang!

Zhou You did a backflip and steadied himself. Turning around, he saw that the insect ball had snapped another thick tree trunk.

Good grief. Given his current physical toughness, if he had taken that attack head-on, he probably wouldn't have ended up much better than that tree.

Seeing that Zhou You had escaped, the insect ball quickly rallied and spun toward him again, rolling across the ground like a gourd.

Feidian didn't just stand by and watch. It leaped over like lightning and struck the insect ball from the side with a claw, hoping to knock it off course.

But its luck was terrible. By then, the insect ball had stored up enough external force. A second blast erupted, and the powerful shock wave sent Feidian flying again!

Zhou You watched and had a guess about the Soul Beast's ability.

"Does it absorb and store the blows dealt to it, then release them all at once when it needs to?"

The mechanism behind that defensive counterattack was simple, but its effect was powerful!

This time, Feidian didn't get up so quickly. It lay on the ground whimpering; it needed to rest for a while.

The insect ball, however, had no intention of letting it go. It immediately changed targets and rolled fiercely toward Feidian!

Zhou You frowned and rushed forward. Dropping into a slide, he skimmed feet-first across the ground to Feidian's side, then opened the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella to cover them both.

Thud!

The impact struck the umbrella's canopy and pushed Zhou You and Feidian back several meters.

Zhou You quickly calculated his Internal Qi consumption. The result surprised him somewhat: it was lower than he had expected.

He immediately realized that the strange insect's active attacks weren't enough to break through the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella's defense. The two of them were turtle shells pitted against a turtle shell.

But the strange insect could still unleash that blast, so he couldn't let it keep storing external force!

With that in mind, Zhou You snapped the umbrella shut as the insect ball came at him again. Gripping the handle with both hands, he drove with his waist and abdomen, turned his body, and swung for a baseball home run.

With the full force of his swing, the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella's impact produced a shock wave against the insect ball's surface. With a tremendous bang, the ball was knocked high into the sky!

That powerful blow filled the strange insect with external force almost instantly.

Zhou You once again saw a faint light shining through the gaps in its scales. Knowing the creature had reached its limit, he pointed the umbrella's tip at the insect ball and used the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella's hidden skill.

A slender Qi needle formed at the umbrella's tip and shot out, striking the insect ball in the blink of an eye.

It was the last straw that broke the camel's back!

A spherical shock wave exploded in midair. The recoil pushed the insect ball a short distance higher, preventing it from landing in time.

With nothing to push off against, the strange insect couldn't launch an attack of its own.

That bought Zhou You a little time.

He dashed forward and leaped toward it. Just as he was about to reach the strange insect, he willed the Heaven- and Earth-Harmonizing Umbrella to suddenly disassemble, and a tenth of his Internal Qi returned to him in an instant.

Without the slightest hesitation, he thrust out a palm. Eight-tenths of the Qi in his Dantian swiftly gathered at the Laogong Point in his palm, then erupted in a penetrating Air-Splitting Palm far more powerful than the one before!

The insect ball happened to fall directly in front of his palm and took the full force of the blow!

The palm force penetrated the scales and exploded inside the strange insect for the second time. This time, Zhou You heard something shatter.

The next moment, the strange insect's corpse fell to the ground.

A yellow Soul Ring floated out of the insect's corpse.