Half of Shali's head was instantly pulverized by Yu Lian's fist, reduced to dust too fine for the naked eye to make out. The shockwave also blasted half her body into wreckage.
The rest of her body rolled head over heels into the smoke like a rag doll being repeatedly run over by a dump truck. By the time she hit the fungal mat, less than a third of her limbs remained. But even such a terrible price wasn't enough to dissipate all the momentum.
Her shattered body scraped across the fungal mat, leaving a skid mark thirty meters long and more than two meters wide and deep. The violent friction even sent sparks flying from the grayish mycelium.
Only then did Shali twitch twice, like a salted fish dragged ashore, before going completely still.
It wasn't that she had actually been beaten to death.
In the real world, damage of this degree might not have been enough to kill a Swarm Overlord, but it should have been enough to put one into hibernation. But this was a dream world made up of mind and will, where losing consciousness wasn't so easy.
Or rather, in the real world, as a Swarm Overlord—or one of its candidates—she had countless ways to block out pain. It was only in this mental space that Shali could experience such intense, immediate agony so clearly.
She could even feel her brain boiling and splattering into her mouth at the instant her head was blown apart... Mm, and damn, it even tasted salty.
Of course, in theory, she no longer had a brain, so all those sensations were naturally produced subconsciously.
So, am I still human after all? Does it really mean something to keep holding on?
The instant the thought crossed her mind, the fungal