The wind suddenly howled across the docks.
That layer of blood-red light was like an uncrossable chasm, stretching between Lu Chen and Li Changfeng.
Qi and blood boiled around Li Changfeng. His once withered, shrunken body now seemed to swell like an inflated wineskin. His purple robe snapped in the wind, and an oppressive, searing heat radiated wildly in every direction alongside his blood-red protective qi.
"Qi and Blood Manifestation..."
Chen Wanli stared fixedly at the scene, his nails digging deep into his palms. Blood seeped out, but he did not notice. His voice trembled with despair from the depths of his soul. "This is the Viscera Refining Realm's true trump card. Qi and blood refined to the utmost, bursting out through the body and transforming into protective qi. Invulnerable to blades and spears, impervious to water and fire... It's over. It's all over."
The Black Water Gang members around them, whose hopes had been kindled by Lu Chen's earlier dominance, felt those hopes extinguished in an instant, as if a bucket of icy water had been dumped over their heads.
The pressure was overwhelming.
Even from dozens of yards away, they could feel a stinging sensation on their skin, as if the air were filled with tiny steel needles.
Lu Chen, at the very heart of the storm, felt it most acutely.
"So this is the Viscera Refining Realm's 'shell'?"
Lu Chen narrowed his eyes. The Hundred Refinements Steel Saber in his hand trembled faintly. He could clearly feel that when his vaunted Profound Nether Cold Qi touched that layer of blood-red protective qi, it sizzled as if snow had fallen onto a red-hot iron, melting away at an astonishing rate.
The gulf between their realms was laid bare before him.
"Despairing, boy?"
Li Changfeng strode forward. With every step, the stone slabs beneath his feet were scorched black and cracked by the searing force. His voice was hoarse and cruel, tinged with the mockery of a cat toying with a mouse. "Your cold qi is indeed unusual. If you reached the Viscera Refining Realm, this old man might have to fear you a little. But right now... your cold qi can't even break through my protective qi. What are you going to fight me with?"
"Boom!"
Before his words had even faded, Li Changfeng sprang into motion.
This time, he no longer stayed on the defensive.
His fist, wrapped in blood-red protective qi, plunged toward Lu Chen's face like a falling star, with enough force to destroy the heavens and earth.
Too fast!
After achieving Qi and Blood Manifestation, Li Changfeng was a full thirty percent faster than before!
Lu Chen's pupils contracted. There was no time to dodge, so he could only raise his saber to block.
"Clang—!"
The deafening crash was enough to shatter eardrums.
Lu Chen felt as if he'd been struck head-on by a charging primeval behemoth.
The Hundred Refinements Steel Saber instantly bent into a terrifying arc. Then an overwhelmingly powerful, searing force pierced through the blade and bore savagely into his body.
"Pfft!"
Lu Chen spat out a stream of blood and flew backward like a kite with its string cut, crashing heavily into the piles of cargo behind him.
Wood splintered through the air. Dust billowed everywhere.
"Hall Master Lu!"
Zhao Tieshan's eyes bulged with rage. He roared and tried to charge forward, but Chen Wanli grabbed him and held him back.
"Don't go! A fight at this level will get you killed!" Chen Wanli gritted his teeth, his eyes full of anguish. "Now we can only rely on him..."
Amid the dust, Lu Chen staggered to his feet.
His clothes were in tatters, and his exposed skin was covered in charred marks from the protective qi. Blood stained the corner of his mouth, and the web of his hand around the saber's hilt had split, blood dripping down the handle.
The pain bored into his bones.
His internal organs seemed to have shifted out of place, and the searing force that had invaded his body was still wreaking havoc on his meridians.
"So this is the Viscera Refining Realm at full strength..."
Lu Chen wiped the blood from his mouth. His fighting spirit did not fade; instead, it burned even more fiercely.
Rather than retreat, he grinned, baring teeth stained red with blood. The sight was especially savage.
"Is that all you've got, old fossil? Was that supposed to tickle?"
"Courting death!"
Li Changfeng was thoroughly enraged by Lu Chen's utterly unbothered attitude. He was a mighty Viscera Refining Realm expert, and he had already revealed all his trump cards, yet he still hadn't killed this ant with a single blow?
To him, this was a humiliation beyond compare!
"Since you want to die in agony, this old man will grant your wish!"
Li Changfeng roared and unleashed a rapid succession of palm strikes.
"Primordial Unity—Blazing Sun Collapse!"
A storm of palm shadows, carrying blood-red protective qi, engulfed Lu Chen like a torrential downpour.
Every palm strike had the power to Split Stone and Crack Stele!
Lu Chen was plunged into the fiercest struggle of his life.
He was like a lone boat in a vast sea, struggling to survive amid raging winds and towering waves.
He couldn't block it!
He couldn't block it at all!
Every clash exacted a terrible price. Even with the Force Dissipation of Iron Cloth Shirt and his Thick Skin, even with bones as hard as iron, he remained pitifully fragile before that unstoppable protective qi.
The wounds on his body multiplied, and his breathing grew weaker.
"It's over."
Someone in the crowd watching from afar sighed.
"He's still too young. If he'd had a few more years..."
"Too bad the world doesn't deal in 'ifs.' This is what happens when you cross the Li Family."
Even Wang Xiaoliu, who had always believed in Lu Chen, closed his eyes in despair, unable to watch any longer.
Yet at the brink of death, Lu Chen's mind raced, frighteningly calm.
He was calculating.
Calculating the frequency of Li Changfeng's attacks, the fluctuations in the strength of his protective qi, and... his one and only chance to turn the tables.
Ordinary methods were useless now.
Profound Nether Hand was a Spirit Tier technique, but he had only just begun to learn it. Neither the quantity nor the quality of his cold qi could match the protective qi of a Viscera Refining Realm expert.
To break the deadlock, he needed an unconventional method!
He had to break through the whole with a single point!
Suddenly, a fragment of memory surfaced: the remnant copy of the Ice Soul Art he had seen in the Dragon Palace's secret chamber.
He hadn't had time to practice the manual, but a few lines from its general principles and one desperate Forbidden Art had been etched deep into his mind.
[Ice Soul Spirit Piercing Stab].
It was an extremely insidious and dangerous killing move recorded in the Ice Soul Art.
It concentrated all the cold qi in the body, even drawing on one's vital qi and blood, and forcibly compressed it into a single point, turning it into an invisible spike of ice that could pierce through internal protective qi and strike directly at the soul!
But the price was steep.
Once unleashed, it could freeze the meridians—or kill him on the spot.
And he had to get close!
He had to pierce Li Changfeng between the brows at the instant when this Viscera Refining Realm expert's defenses were at their strongest—and his guard at its lowest!
It was a desperate gamble.
Win, and he lived.
Lose, and he died.
"Phew..."
Lu Chen drew a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the surging qi and blood in his body.
His gaze changed.
The frenzied fighting spirit vanished at once, replaced by a deathly, icy calm.
Like the deepest shade of blue in the heart of a glacier that had never thawed in ten thousand years.
"What's he doing? Has he given up resisting?"
Li Changfeng keenly noticed the change in Lu Chen's aura, but paid it no mind. To him, this was nothing more than a dying man's last flicker of life.
"Break for this old man!"
Li Changfeng seized his chance and darted forward, closing to within three feet of Lu Chen in an instant.
He raised his right palm high. Blood-red protective qi pooled in his palm, so thick it seemed ready to drip like blood, and he slammed it down toward Lu Chen's crown.
With this strike, he would smash Lu Chen's head like a watermelon!
Now!
This was the chance Lu Chen had been waiting for!
Faced with a killing blow, Lu Chen did something no one could have anticipated.
He surged forward instead of retreating!
He abandoned every defense, even deliberately dispersing the Iron Cloth Shirt force protecting his chest. All his strength, all his qi and blood, all his Profound Nether Cold Qi, converged furiously at the tip of his right index finger!
"Pfft!"
Li Changfeng's palm force swept into Lu Chen's shoulder first.
The sound of cracking bones rang out clearly.
Lu Chen's left shoulder caved in at once, and blood drenched half his body.
But he didn't even furrow his brow, as if that body weren't his.
Riding the force of the blow, Lu Chen darted forward, closing the distance between them in an instant.
One foot!
Their faces were nearly touching, their breaths mingling.
Lu Chen looked at Li Changfeng's old face, twisted slightly with shock, and the corner of his mouth curled into a frenzied, icy smile.
"Got you."
Li Changfeng's heart lurched. A sense of mortal danger unlike anything he had ever known engulfed him.
He instinctively tried to retreat, to bring his defenses back up.
But it was already too late.
Lu Chen's right hand, like a venomous snake that had lain in wait for ages, bared its deadliest fangs.
His index finger shot out!
There was no earth-shattering force.
No dazzling light.
Only an extreme, pure glimmer of deep blue, as if it could freeze the soul!
"Ice Soul—Spirit Piercing Stab!"
"Psst!"
The blood-red protective qi, said to be impervious to blades and spears and immune to water and fire, was as fragile as paper before this finger. It was pierced effortlessly!
Before such extreme compression and concentration, every defense became a joke.
Lu Chen's finger struck Li Changfeng precisely between the brows.
Time seemed to freeze in that instant.
The wind stopped on the docks. The waves fell still.
Everyone's eyes widened as they stared at the two figures, frozen together.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
"Crack..."
A faint snap broke the silence.
The boiling blood-red protective qi around Li Changfeng suddenly froze in place, as if someone had pressed a pause button.
Then a layer of frost, visible to the naked eye, spread wildly from the point between his brows to the rest of his body.
His brows, eyelashes, hair, skin...
In the blink of an eye, the Viscera Refining Realm expert who had been so arrogant just moments ago had become a lifelike ice statue!
His eyes remained wide open, terror, confusion, and despair lingering in them.
But he could no longer move.
It wasn't only his body. Even his soul had been completely frozen by that Spirit Piercing Stab!
"Boom!"
The moment Li Changfeng froze, Lu Chen suffered a terrifying backlash.
That strike had drained all his vitality and spirit, while the residual protective qi inside Li Changfeng rebounded through his finger.
Lu Chen was struck head-on by a battering ram. He spewed blood as he flew backward more than fifty yards, hit the ground hard, and rolled several times before coming to a stop.
"Lu Chen!"
"Chief!"
Zhao Tieshan, Wang Xiaoliu, and the others rushed over like madmen.
Lu Chen lay on the ground, his chest heaving violently. Every breath brought up a mass of bloody froth. His right index finger had turned completely purplish black and was twisted into a grotesque shape. It was clearly ruined.
Yet he was laughing.
Laughing as he coughed up blood.
The laugh was faint, but it brimmed with a startling sense of release.
"Cough, cough... The Viscera Refining Realm... is nothing special..."
He struggled to get up, but Zhao Tieshan caught him.
"Don't move! Brother, don't move! You're too badly hurt!" Zhao Tieshan, a man seven feet tall, had red-rimmed eyes, and even his voice trembled.
"Help me... up..."
Lu Chen's voice was weak, but his tone was unyielding.
"It's not... over yet..."
Zhao Tieshan froze. He looked into Lu Chen's eyes, still burning with fire, and finally gritted his teeth and helped him to his feet.
Lu Chen pushed Zhao Tieshan away and staggered forward.
Every step he took was agonizing, dragging a long trail of blood across the ground.
But he never stopped.
His goal was the ice statue standing motionless in place.
On the dock, thousands of pairs of eyes silently watched the blood-soaked man step by step toward the god they had once looked up to.
No one spoke.
No one even dared to breathe loudly.
An emotion called "awe" sprouted wildly in every heart.
At last.
Lu Chen reached Li Changfeng.
He looked at the frozen old man, at those eyes brimming with terror.
"Next life..."
Lu Chen slowly raised the Hundred Refinements Steel Saber in his left hand.
Though his right hand was ruined, he still had his left.
Though gravely wounded and on the brink of death, he still had the strength to kill.
"Remember to keep your eyes sharp."
A flash of blade-light.
"Pfft!"
A head, frozen stiff as a rock, rolled to the ground with a dull thud.
Only then—
The two Li Family guards who had been standing behind them, already stunned with terror, finally came to their senses.
"E-Elder... is dead?"
"The elder's been killed!"
A piercing scream split the sky.
Before you continue