Stealing Heavenly Secrets from Cover the Heavens Section 43

Li Xiaoman looked around and said, "Let's leave this place first."

The group continued forward. After crossing a small hill, they saw the toxic water area again, along with the battlefield left behind after Li Zhi ambushed that five-eyed black water buffalo.

By now, they were certain Li Zhi was not far ahead of them.

"Let's go. It's not safe to stay here," Ye Fan said to everyone.

But before they had even gone two kilometers, just as they stepped onto a small hilltop, everyone suddenly felt their bodies begin to heat up.

The aftereffects of their intrusion into the Forbidden Ancient Land had finally manifested.

Meanwhile, Li Zhi, who had already ventured more than fifty li deep into the Ancient Wasteland Forest, had run into trouble—he was being stalked by a pack of Nether Wolves.

The Ancient Wasteland Forest, being close to the Forbidden Zone of Life, was rarely visited by humans.

This, in turn, gave certain primordial beasts rare room to grow.

While it wouldn't give birth to terrifyingly powerful great demons, beasts comparable to cultivators in the Wheel Sea Secret Realm were everywhere.

As for those even stronger beasts that had already awakened intelligence and transformed into demonic beasts, their wisdom was naturally high. They could sense the terrifying aura from the Forbidden Zone of Life and would often take the initiative to leave this part of the Ancient Wasteland Forest near the forbidden zone.

Even so, the Ancient Wasteland Forest was not a place just anyone could casually cross.

There were simply too many primordial beasts inside.

And Li Zhi, unaware of this taboo, had become that reckless fool who dared to cross the Ancient Wasteland Forest right after opening his bitter sea.

As the saying goes: Two fists can't beat four hands, and even a fierce tiger fears a pack of wolves.

In a relatively flat area of the Ancient Wasteland Forest where the trees weren't too dense, the remains of hundreds of large trees lay scattered in disarray.

It seemed a fierce beast had fought here, destroying that patch of forest.

And just as Li Zhi arrived in this area, he was spotted by a pack of Nether Wolves—each two meters long, with eyes glowing green and fur faintly shimmering with a cyan-purple light.

After spotting Li Zhi, the wolf pack split into two groups, swiftly moving through the woods on the left and right, gradually forming an encirclement.

It seemed they intended to hunt Li Zhi in that open space.

Hearing the commotion, Li Zhi stopped, looked around, bent his knees and arms, and gripped a foot-long bone spike in each hand, ready to fight at any moment.

The bone spikes in his hands came from the nine sharp horns on the five-eyed black water buffalo's head, which Li Zhi had earlier chopped off with his Luoyang shovel.

Without any polishing, they could be used as the sharpest triangular spikes.

Compared to the Luoyang shovel—a tool of production—Li Zhi was actually more adept at using these bone spikes shaped like triangular blades.

Though both killing weapons and production tools had lethal power, weapons were more efficient when it came to killing.

"Whew—woo—"

After pinpointing the exact positions of the Nether Wolf pack, Li Zhi suddenly let out a provocative whistle toward the three Nether Wolves encircling him from the front.

But those Nether Wolves were far smarter than he had imagined.

They weren't provoked into anger by his whistle.

Instead, they continued to slowly tighten the encirclement at their own pace.

Seeing this, Li Zhi knew these Nether Wolves were different from ordinary wolves and couldn't be dealt with using the same methods.

Before they could truly close the encirclement, Li Zhi immediately sprinted toward the dense forest ahead.

"Ooo-wooo—"

As Li Zhi began to move quickly, a rhythmic howl suddenly rang out from the outer edge of the encirclement.

There was even a wolf king commanding from the periphery.

Li Zhi hadn't noticed the wolf king's presence earlier.

Seeing Li Zhi about to flee, the dozen or so Nether Wolves immediately charged.

"Swish!"

"Swish!"

"Swish, swish, swish!" Li Zhi, who was running swiftly, suddenly turned around and hurled six bone spikes at the six Nether Wolves chasing him relentlessly.

Those six Nether Wolves, accelerating in a straight line, couldn't even dodge in time and were struck squarely by the flying spikes.

"Boom—" A violent crashing sound came from behind.

Seeing this, Li Zhi immediately stopped and then turned back to run the other way.

The other Nether Wolves seemed enraged by Li Zhi's actions, howling as they leaped toward him.

Taking advantage of his small stature, Li Zhi cleverly used obstacles on the ground to evade the Nether Wolves' attacks.

And whenever he found an opportunity, he shot a flying spike at a Nether Wolf.

With ten thousand jin of divine strength in a single arm, amplified by the power of his bitter sea, every bone spike Li Zhi shot was like an armor-piercing shell fired from a cannon, carrying immense kinetic energy and unmatched lethality, instantly piercing through those Nether Wolves.

If only he knew the method of refining artifacts, he could have refined those nine hard and sharp bone spikes into magical tools, making dealing with these Nether Wolves much easier.

Even so, Li Zhi displayed extremely high combat proficiency when handling the wolf pack's attacks.

Within a small area, he continuously dodged and weaved, avoiding the sharp fangs of the Nether Wolves.

Then, seizing the opportunity, he used Bone Spikes to finish off a Netherworld Wolf.

By the time all nine Bone Spikes on his body were spent, only five Netherworld Wolves remained in the pack.

And they seemed somewhat fearful, no longer daring to charge at Li Zhi.

Even though Li Zhi now had nothing in his hands.

Seeing the Netherworld Wolves cowed.

With no risk of being surrounded, Li Zhi didn't bother drawing a magic artifact to fight. Instead, he formed his hands into claws, assuming the eagle stance of Xingyi Quan, ready to engage the Netherworld Wolves in close combat.

This was to test the current strength of his physical body.

Power coursed through his hands, his ten fingers instantly turning into steel-reinforced bone.

His gaze was firm, and he let out a loud shout: "Kill!"

Then Li Zhi took the initiative, charging into battle with the five Netherworld Wolves.

"Awooo—"

Every time his iron claws tore through a Netherworld Wolf's flesh, the beast would let out a howl.

Soon, wolf blood splattered all over Li Zhi.

Adding a wild, untamed beauty to his boyish form.

Especially when his tiger-skin robe was stained with wolf blood, it brought out that savagery to the fullest.

As the fight dragged on, a faint mist of blood seemed to rise from his gleaming bald head, vaguely condensing into the shape of an eagle's claw.

"Crack!"

When Li Zhi crushed the spine of the last Netherworld Wolf, the close-quarters brawl ended in his complete victory.

The Wolf King, hidden in the shadows all along, seemed to have gauged Li Zhi's depth. It turned into a streak of dark light and silently appeared twenty meters behind him.

Then, with all four limbs pushing off the ground, it leaped straight at Li Zhi from behind.

But what the Wolf King never expected was that just as its gaping maw was about to sink into Li Zhi's neck, Li Zhi suddenly ducked down.

And right where he had been standing, a massive Black Hole appeared.

"Collect!"

Li Zhi rolled on the ground like a donkey to dodge the Wolf King's attack, then decisively summoned the Snakeskin Cosmos Pouch.

He had no interest in brawling with the Wolf King.

The mouth of the Cosmos Pouch rapidly expanded, emitting a tremendous suction force that directly pulled the three-meter-tall, six-meter-long Wolf King inside.

"Grrr—"

The Wolf King struggled with all its might, even emitting a faint green light from every strand of fur to resist the immense pull of the Cosmos Pouch.

But under Li Zhi's mana, which far surpassed that of a Bitter Sea Cultivator, the suction from the Snakeskin Cosmos Pouch felt like a magic artifact wielded by a Dao Palace Realm cultivator.

The Wolf King's struggle was futile, and it was eventually sucked into the Snakeskin Cosmos Pouch.

Li Zhi then retrieved the pouch and tied its opening shut.

Afterward, the Snakeskin Cosmos Pouch shrank to the size of a palm and flew back into his hand.

"Trying to ambush me? You've got a long way to go." Li Zhi shook the Snakeskin Cosmos Pouch and said with a smile.

If it weren't for testing the practical combat ability of his Xingyi Quan, Li Zhi wouldn't have bothered fighting those Netherworld Wolves to the death.

As he expected, a martial art created by mortals was useless against beasts that had already cultivated demonic power.

The boxing technique couldn't amplify his attack power at all.

It looked like he was using the Eagle Claw Technique, but what really worked was his physical strength and raw power.

Maybe it was time for a full upgrade of this close-combat boxing art.