The smell of rust drilled into his nostrils.
It was the fishy stench of blood vaporized by intense heat.
Chu Qing stood atop a shattered floating stone slab, his black spear angled downward. The spearhead trembled, and a drop of dark red liquid fell into a crack in the stone with a faint impact.
Chu Qing did not move.
His breathing remained at four breaths per minute. This was the frequency of his Turtle Breath after Simplification, allowing him to lock in the heat and Spiritual Energy within his body to the greatest extent possible.
Even though no living thing remained before him, he habitually swept his gaze around. On his retina, the system panel's frantically scrolling lines of "+Experience Points" and "+Karma Points" were gradually slowing.
The system panel on his retina flickered wildly.
[Experience Points +1.2 million] [Karma Points +500,000]
As the Golden Light faded, Chu Qing's brow twitched slightly.
Something was wrong.
The clouds had stopped. The once-churning Sea of Clouds now seemed frozen to death in midair, bearing a gray, decayed shade of death.
A viscous, all-encompassing pressure poured down from above. Chu Qing's shoulders abruptly sank half an inch, and several cracks burst across the stone slab beneath his feet.
Every hair on his back stood on end.
It felt as though a giant were crouched at the crack in the sky, breathing upon him, an ant.
"Can't sit still already?"
The corner of Chu Qing's mouth curled, and a low laugh spilled from his throat. He raised his head, his gaze cutting through the clouds and crashing straight into that void.
When he had been a lackey in Stone Rock County, he had knelt and begged. To survive, he would have smashed his head bloody against the ground. But now, he had