Deep inside the underground cavern, smoke billowed and shattered rocks flew everywhere.
Two figures collided again and again in the cramped space like two primordial beasts.
"Die! Die! Die!"
Zhao Wuji had completely lost his reason. The negative emotions from the Corpse Pill and his rage at failing to break through had turned him into a beast that knew only how to kill.
The fleshy wings on his back beat wildly as he darted around Yan Kui in a blur, swooping up and down. His razor-sharp claws, coated in black corpse poison, left gashes across Yan Kui's body that sparked with every strike.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
Yan Kui's Iron Cloth Shirt had broken through its limits and granted him a Mysterious Iron Body, but even so, attacks at the Half-Step Foundation Establishment level tore his skin and flesh open.
But he didn't care.
For someone whose physique had reached 6.0, these minor flesh wounds would stop bleeding in the time it took to draw a breath.
He was waiting.
Waiting for an opening.
"Is that all you've got, old bat?"
Yan Kui swung the Bone Shattering Hammer. Though it looked unwieldy, every blow cut off Zhao Wuji's attack route and forced him to change direction.
"You sharp-tongued brat! I'll drain you dry!"
Zhao Wuji's repeated attacks had failed, and frustration gnawed at him.
He suddenly opened his jaws and spewed a stream of black corpse fire, swallowing Yan Kui in an instant.
"Ssssss..."
The corpse fire was vicious. It corroded not only flesh, but Blood Qi as well. The moment it touched the rocks around them, they turned into foul-smelling black sludge.
An ordinary warrior, even one who had reached the Blood Change Realm, would turn to a pool of blood and pus from the slightest touch of this fire.
But Yan Kui, standing at the heart of the flames, closed his eyes.
As he felt the sting against his skin, the smile at the corner of his mouth grew wider and wider.
"Fire?"
"Let me show you what the real—Life Fire looks like!"
RUMBLE!
Like a great river bursting its banks, like a volcano erupting.
The Blood Qi inside Yan Kui erupted without restraint.
[Qi and Blood Furnace! Fully activated!]
His Mysterious Iron Body, black just moments ago, turned red as a branding iron.
"Roar..."
The sound of blood rushing through his veins at blinding speed was like the roar of the Yangtze, surging through the land!
Waves of scorching heat swept outward from him.
When the sinister corpse fire met his pure, blazing Blood Qi, it was like snow beneath the midday sun. With a shrill hiss, it was swept away in an instant!
"What?!"
Zhao Wuji's pupils contracted.
A wave of scorching heat hit him head-on, even burning his Corpse Demon body. How could a mere mortal's Blood Qi be this powerful?!
He was like a tiny sun in human form!
At that very instant, while Zhao Wuji was stunned—
Yan Kui moved.
This was the opening he had created by enduring the burns, even at the cost of injuring himself!
[Savage Charge!]
The ground beneath his feet exploded.
Yan Kui became a red shooting star, tearing through the corpse fire. He crossed the distance in an instant and slammed into Zhao Wuji's chest.
"Got you."
Yan Kui dropped the Bone Shattering Hammer and thrust out both hands like iron pincers, clamping down on the roots of Zhao Wuji's fleshy wings.
His fingers sank deep into flesh and locked around the bones!
"Want to fly? Did you ask me first?!"
"Get... down!"
His arms strained with power, Brute Bull Strength boosting him by 50%! The muscles across his back coiled and twisted like monstrous serpents!
"Rrrrip!"
A teeth-on-edge, cloth-tearing sound rang through the cavern.
Along with Zhao Wuji's shrill scream came a rain of black blood—and his two fleshy wings, torn off by brute force!
"AAAH!!!"
Without his wings, Zhao Wuji lost his balance and crashed heavily to the ground.
Before he could get back up, a massive foot came down on his chest.
Crack!
His breastbone shattered, and broken ribs drove into his lungs.
Yan Kui looked down at him, his eyes cold as ice.
"Now, who's the bug?"
Black blood filled Zhao Wuji's mouth. At last, terror showed in his eyes.
"No... don't kill me... I'm a Foundation Establishment cultivator... I can give you wealth and glory... I can take you as my disciple..."
"Foundation Establishment?"
Yan Kui sneered and picked up the Bone Shattering Hammer from the ground.
"Next life, remember not to practice such an inhuman, monstrous Cultivation Technique."
"And as for your wealth and glory, I'll take it myself."
The eight-hundred-jin hammer rose high overhead.
Yan Kui's muscles tensed to their limit.
This blow carried the weight of ten thousand jun!
"Die!"
BOOM!!!
The hammer fell.
A thunderous crash rang out, like a clap of thunder on a clear day.
Zhao Wuji's desperate claws, his protective corpse Qi, even his Corpse Demon body—said to be impervious to blades and spears—all crumpled before that blow like fragile tofu.
Nothing stood in its way.
In the span of a heartbeat—
Zhao Wuji's upper body exploded into nothingness!
The terrifying impact punched straight through him and slammed into the ground.
RUMBLE!
The entire underground cavern shuddered violently. A bottomless pit three meters across opened in the floor!
The might of a single hammer blow was truly terrifying!
Only the black Corpse Pill, hard as stone, rolled free of the flesh and continued to glow faintly.
[You killed the Zhao Family Ancestor (Half-Step Foundation Establishment/Corpse Demon). Life Essence plundered.] [Origin Power: +7.5]
"7.5 points?!"
Yan Kui felt a jolt of surprise.
He had killed countless bandits before, and each had given him only 0.1 or 0.2 points. Even a powerhouse at the mortal limit like Zhao Rong had given him only 0.8.
Yet Zhao Wuji, a half-baked cultivator, had provided eight times the Origin Power of a warrior at the mortal limit!
"So that's how it is..."
Yan Kui understood.
Mortal Warriors cultivated Blood Qi, a low-density energy, like dry-cell batteries. Cultivators practiced spiritual power, and their bodies were tempered by Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi—they were high-capacity batteries.
"Killing cultivators is the shortcut to getting rich."
Yan Kui looked at the scraps of flesh on the ground, his eyes burning even brighter.
[High-energy core detected: Corpse Pill (Second-Turn). Consume?]
The system's prompt chimed at just the right moment.
Yan Kui let out a long breath. The red glow around him slowly faded, and his skin returned to its original black hue.
He bent down and picked up the Corpse Pill.
It was ice-cold to the touch, as though he were holding a ten-thousand-year-old block of ice.
"7.1 Origin Power... plus this Corpse Pill..."
Yan Kui's heart burned with excitement.
"Consume!"
He didn't hesitate for a moment.
Something this sinister would only be a menace if he left it lying around. He might as well turn it into his own strength.
Crack.
The hard Corpse Pill crumbled to dust in his hand.
A terrifying surge of energy rushed into his body.
[Corpse Pill consumed. Origin Power: +8.0]
Eight points of Origin Power!
Yan Kui's pupils widened slightly.
A fortune!
This was a fortune beyond all doubt!
Added to the Origin Power from killing Zhao Rong and the seven protectors—around 0.8 from Zhao Rong, and about 0.7 × 6 = 4.2 from the protectors, for a total of 5—
Current Origin Power: 0.2 + 5 + 7.1 + 8.0 = 20.3!
Yan Kui could feel his breathing growing unsteady.
20.3 points of Origin Power!
That was enough to make him invincible in the Mortal Realm, put Qi Cultivation practitioners beyond any hope of threatening him, and even let him... touch the threshold of the true "Immortal Dao"!
But this wasn't the time to spend his points.
The cavern had begun to teeter on the verge of collapse after their battle. Rocks kept falling from the ceiling.
"Time to go."
Yan Kui looked around.
His gaze fell on Lin Xiaowan, who was still hanging in midair.
By now, Lin Xiaowan had fainted from blood loss, her face as pale as paper.
You got lucky.
Yan Kui picked up a pebble and snapped the rope with it, then reached out and caught Lin Xiaowan as she fell.
He placed a Healing Pill he had taken from Zhao Rong into Lin Xiaowan's mouth, then carried her over his shoulder.
"And as for all this..."
Yan Kui glanced at the protectors' corpses on the ground and the Storage Bag that had burst out of Zhao Wuji's lump of flesh.
He rummaged through Zhao Wuji's remains and, sure enough, found a gray cloth pouch.
He couldn't open the Storage Bag without Spiritual Sense, but that didn't stop him from taking it along.
"Let's go!"
RUMBLE!
The instant he rushed out through the artificial hill's entrance, the underground cavern collapsed completely, burying all its crimes and bloodshed beneath the earth.
The Zhao Family Mansion blazed with flames.
With the Ancestor dead and the Blood Sacrifice Grand Array suffering a backlash, the earth veins beneath the entire Zhao Family Mansion were destroyed, setting off a chain of explosions and cave-ins.
The half-dead Guard corpses that had been controlled by Corpse Qi lost their source of control. They collapsed and writhed, then became actual corpses.
The matter of Black Water City was over.
This place was too small; it could no longer contain a dragon like him, one who had crossed the river.
"Daganzhou..."
Yan Kui gazed toward the north.
There lay a wider world, stronger opponents, and... more Origin Power.
He put Lin Xiaowan down in an empty house that seemed relatively safe, leaving behind several banknotes and a handwritten copy of the Body Nourishing Technique.
"Whether you live or die is up to your own fate. I used you, but I also saved your life. Our paths have run their course..."
Yan Kui turned and strode toward the city gate. There was no one in this world who could make him stay.
The first rays of dawn fell upon him, stretching his shadow into the distance.
With the heavy Bone Shattering Hammer on his back, a fortune in Origin Power, and the Zhao Family Ancestor's Storage Bag in his possession, he set out on a new journey.
[Volume One: The Trapped Dragon in the Abyss — End]
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[Author's Note: An Explanation of Realms and Combat Strength]
Some readers may be wondering: how could the protagonist, who was only at the Mortal Realm, kill Zhao Wuji, a Half-Step Foundation Establishment cultivator? Here's a simple guide to the cultivation levels:
1. Approximate level equivalents:
* Skin Refining / Meat Refining ≈ third-rate (an ordinary mortal, just physically strong)
* Bone Refining Realm ≈ early Qi Cultivation (tough skin and thick flesh)
* Organ Refining ≈ mid-stage Qi Cultivation (great stamina, with no weak points in the internal organs)
* Blood Change ≈ late-stage Qi Cultivation (immense explosive power in close combat)
* Half-step Innate ≈ Half-Step Foundation Establishment (able to project Inner Force and just beginning to grasp the use of energy)
* Innate Stage ≈ Foundation Establishment Realm (the end of the mortal path, with a leap in Life Level)
2. Why could the protagonist win?
* [Enemy status] Though Zhao Wuji was nominally "Half-Step Foundation Establishment," he lacked the signature abilities of the Foundation Establishment Realm: Spiritual Sense and Liquefied True Essence. And after turning himself into a Corpse Demon, he'd lost every spell cultivators could use, becoming a super minion who could only spam basic attacks.
* [Our advantage] An ordinary martial artist, even one who'd reached the peak of Blood Change, couldn't break through Zhao Wuji's defenses. But the protagonist was an "Extreme Martial Artist"! His "mortal limit" came from the system forcing his stats sky-high (6.0 Strength / 7.0 Constitution), making him a monster whose attributes had already reached the threshold of the Innate Stage / Foundation Establishment Realm—far beyond an ordinary Blood Change cultivator. It was like a level-one alt with a max-level cheat, crushing an elite monster with raw stats alone. As the saying went, everyone else trained their own shaky foundations, while the protagonist's system-boosted stats gave him a solid foundation and an unshakable advantage.
If Zhao Wuji had been a normal Half-Step Foundation Establishment cultivator, able to use Flying Swords and spells to kite his opponent, the protagonist would most likely have had to run. But since you're getting in my face and fighting hand to hand, sorry—Extreme Martial Artists are experts at putting all challengers in their place.
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