Come On

Yun Jingheng overheard their conversation, but the current situation didn't allow him the time to calculate anything about six times or not.

Numbers are meaningless in this context; what matters is that the dark red shadow in front of him disappeared the very instant his gaze focused on it.

It disappeared.

Before Yun Jingheng's pupils could even contract, an extreme sense of pressure came from the left side of the back of his head. It was cold, heavy, and sharp, like a heavy iron weapon smashing down on the back of his skull from above.

He had no time to think; his body reacted before his consciousness could register: his neck muscles tightened abruptly, and his entire upper body lunged forward to the right. The lunge was extremely clumsy, as if he had been pushed from behind and lost his balance, falling forward.

But he lunged forward.

The oppressive feeling brushed past the edge of his left earlobe, and the airflow it generated cut the skin just above his earlobe. A thin line of blood flowed down the curve of his earlobe, dripping onto the fabric of his shoulder and spreading a small patch of dark color.

As he lunged forward, he sharply touched the ground with the toe of his left foot, forcibly twisting the momentum of his forward lunge into a side roll. He rolled over on the dark purple mud, his shoulder blade crushing a blunt stone, causing a sharp pain that made the right side of his body twitch from his latissimus dorsi to his quadratus lumborum.

But the rolling motion allowed him to dodge the second attack that followed, crashing down from above. It was the left palm strike of the first shadow, slashing at the spot where he had just stood. The purplish-black mist was blasted away by the blow, leaving a shallow, palm-shaped crater in the soil, the bottom of which was charred black.

After rolling twice, Yun Jingheng used his elbows to prop himself up.

He knelt on one knee, his right palm resting on his knee, his left shoulder slightly higher than his right shoulder, his entire posture resembling that of a beast that had just gotten up from a fall and adjusted its center of gravity.

"Holy crap! So sneaky?!"

His chest heaved rapidly, each breath accompanied by a fine, stinging sensation as purplish-black mist entered and exited his trachea.

He suppressed the stinging pain and the itch deep in his trachea, biting down on the inside of his lower lip until he could taste the metallic flavor, using that slight pain to pull his attention away from his "difficulty breathing".

Three shadows reappeared in his field of vision.

The first man stood about four steps to his left, his right hand, dark red, with the five fingers of his hand held together like a knife, and the side of his palm still bearing the dark purple marks left from when he had just slashed into the soil.

The second one was further to the right, slowly moving in an arc towards his side and rear, with even strides and a constant rhythm. With each step, the toes landed first, followed by the heels, like a wild beast adjusting its hunting angle.

The third one was the shadow he had sensed from behind earlier.

He had already readjusted his position during that pounce and roll, standing about six steps in front of him, towering more than half a head above the other two, his dark red outline as thick as congealed blood.

Yun Jingheng completed his first emergency internal adjustment while kneeling.

The best way to combat Destruction is to use life, and I happen to have it within me, so...

The dark purple border around Yun Jingheng's dantian did not collapse during the series of violent dodges, but he could feel that its structure had been loosened by the shockwave.

He drew a surge of life energy from the ground, routed it around his right ankle, ascended along the back of his leg, and converged at his perineum into the outer layer of his dantian, precisely injecting it into the gap between the edging and the barrier.

The edging reattached to the barrier surface, trembled slightly, and then stabilized.

This adjustment took him about two beats.

Within two beats, the three shadows moved simultaneously.

The first one rushed in straight from the left, almost twice as fast as before. Its dark red outline stretched into a horizontally elongated afterimage in the purplish-black mist. Its right palm slashed horizontally, targeting the major blood vessel on the left side of his neck.

The second beam circled around to his right and then shot out from a diagonal angle behind him, unleashing three parallel purplish-black beams. The three beams were aimed at the center of his lumbar spine, above his right kidney, and below the left scapula, respectively.

The three positions simultaneously covered his lower back and upper back, almost completely blocking his path to dodge backward.

The third one didn't move forward, but it raised its right hand and made a fist towards Yun Jingheng, its five fingers slowly closing in the air as if it were clenching something.

Yun Jingheng knew he wouldn't have time to deal with both the front and the rear before the first shadow rushed towards him.

"They wouldn't go that far as to kill us, would they?!"

His judgment was made in an instant: he had to defend the front, and he could only take the hits head-on from behind.

He raised his left arm to meet the horizontal palm strike, simultaneously channeling nearly 70% of his life energy from his dantian into the meridians of his left arm. The aura of life surged from his shoulder to his fingertips, condensing into a nearly tangible, transparent carapace on the outside of his forearm.

The moment the palm strike came down, a short, sharp sound, like the shattering of a porcelain vase, erupted from the point where the two forces collided.

The blade of the palm cut a deep slit into his carapace, exposing the bone. The purplish-black blade energy seeped in through the slit, scraping along the surface of his ulna from his elbow to his wrist.

A straight, purplish-black line appeared on the outside of his left forearm, from his elbow to his wrist, as if branded by a red-hot wire. The pain caused his biceps and triceps to spasm for a moment.

However, the tendons and bones in his left arm were not severed.

Although the shell shattered, it absorbed more than 70% of the force of the palm strike before shattering. The remaining 30% scraped his bones painfully, but it wasn't enough to break them.

The three beams of light from behind struck his lower back and latissimus dorsi muscles simultaneously.

When the pain from the three points of impact simultaneously reached his cerebral cortex, his vision darkened by one degree; it wasn't that his vision went completely black, but rather that the color saturation was reduced by one level overall.

The penetrating wound in the middle of his lumbar spine caused a low, resonant sound to emanate from the entire spine between the third and fifth lumbar vertebrae. When that resonance reached his hip joint and sciatic nerve, it turned into a throbbing, heavy pressure that made him want to kneel down and give up resisting.

But as he was struck in the back by three beams of light, he took a half-step to the side and back with his right foot, using that half-step to right himself as he was about to fall.

He tightened his waist and abdomen, his core muscles trembling as they straightened his spine amidst the burning and dull pain caused by the three beams of light.

The third shadow's hand was still loosely clenched.

Yun Jingheng suddenly realized something. The shadow hadn't moved during those two moments; it had only raised its hand to grasp him. And now he felt the Destruction power within him, which was enveloped by a barrier, being pulled outwards by something.

Under that continuous stretching, the edging structure began to show subtle deformations. The dark purple arc that was originally close to the outer layer of the barrier was gradually thinning and thinning, like a piece of ice being slowly melted on the surface of warm water.

The shadow was disrupting the balance within his body from afar.

This realization made the hairs on the back of his head stand on end.

"What kind of crazy mechanism is this?!"

The first two shadows attacked him in close combat and suppressed his evasive space from a distance, while the third shadow simultaneously pulled at his internal structure from the outside. The coordination between the three shadows was so perfect that it left him no breathing room between defense and counterattack.

His left arm still ached, the three burns on his lower back were still consuming his Life Origin to repair, the ligaments in his right ankle were protesting with soreness after the series of violent changes of direction, and now the distal traction of the third shadow was dismantling the edging structure he had painstakingly built.

The second wave of attacks from the three shadowy figures was approaching.

The shadowy palm strike didn't stop after landing; it withdrew its right hand and slashed out a second time, this time even faster than the first. The target changed from the left carotid artery to the jugular vein triangle above the right clavicle.

That area has no bone protection; being hit there will cause massive blood loss and pneumothorax in a short time, which is fatal in normal combat.

Yun Jingheng used his right hand to block, his right palm flipping up from his side and positioned horizontally in front of his collarbone, his five fingers spread out like a shield made of flesh.

When the palm strike landed on his palm, he felt a faint cracking sound from the second to the fourth metacarpal bones simultaneously. However, the gaps in the bone surface were filled with Life Origin within a fraction of a second, barely managing to hold on.

A second beam of light shot out from his side and rear.

This time there were five beams, covering an area from the upper outer side of his right hip all the way to the outer edge of his left scapula, almost the entire diagonal area was covered by the beams.

With no room to hide, he could only channel the last remaining portion of his life energy from his dantian to the surface of his back skin, where it condensed into a thin film of light that adhered to the latissimus dorsi and erector spinae muscles just before the beam of light arrived.

When the five beams struck the light membrane, the membrane shattered, but the power of the beams was reduced by about half, with the remaining half being absorbed by his back muscles.

Five burns covered almost his entire back. Every inch of muscle from above the sacrum to the lower angle of the scapula was simultaneously sending out high-temperature burning pain signals. Those signals overlapped to form a continuous white noise-like pain, making his whole body, from his back to his chest, feel as taut as a wrung-out cloth.

"My attack method relies too much on Soul Power; this situation where I can't use Soul Power is still too difficult!"

He gritted his teeth and muttered a curse. Amidst the pincer attack from the two shadows, he momentarily pulled his gaze away from the close-quarters combat and glanced at the third shadow standing in front of him, its hand clenched in a fist.

The shadowy grasping motion continued.

The dark purple-edged structure around his dantian had been stretched so much that a noticeable gap had appeared. The edges of the gap were jagged, like torn strips of cloth, and several wisps of purplish-black mist were seeping from the gap toward the outer wall of the barrier.

If that gap continues to widen, the filter layer he painstakingly built will completely collapse. At that time, all the Destruction power poured in from the outside will directly impact the barrier itself. Given that the barrier is already more than half thin, it will shatter after only three impacts.

He recalled the adjustment he had made while kneeling, drawing life energy up from the soles of his feet, around his right ankle, up the back of his leg, and into the outer layer of his dantian at his perineum.

He had walked that path once before, and the transmission speed of life energy was faster than if it were directly channeled from the front. This was because the meridians on the back of his legs had been shaken into a relatively active state by the impact of the battle during the intense movement just now, and the resistance to the flow of energy in those meridians was less than usual.

Before that gap is completely torn apart, a sufficiently thick stream of life energy needs to be drawn from the ground and channeled into the dantian through the path behind the legs. This will rebuild a new edging structure at the gap, while simultaneously using the rebuilding process to counteract the far-end pulling force of that shadow.

It will take time.

But the first shadow in front of them showed no intention of giving them time.

The third strike of the first shadow has arrived.

The palm strike slashed upwards, the edge of the blade gathering a layer of purplish-black light that was even denser than the previous two times, like a poisoned blade drawing a distinct arc in the air, slashing towards the space between his jaw and Adam's apple.

If that blow had landed, his laryngeal cartilage would have been shattered.

Yun Jingheng took a half step back, but only half a step, because his back was already blocked by the beam of light from the second shadow.

During that half-step backward movement, he shifted his weight from supporting himself on both feet to supporting himself on one foot with his right foot as the pivot, and lifted his left foot off the ground to kick forward.

The force of that kick came entirely from his hip flexors and quadriceps. He drew the last trace of life energy from his dantian and stored it on the contact surface of his left toes. The sole of his boot, enveloped in light, collided with the side of the palm strike.

The moment the two forces met, his left toes felt a violent shock transmitted from the sole of his boot along the metatarsal bone to his ankle joint.

The blade of the palm cut into the surface of the light layer, penetrating to a depth of about two centimeters, before being stopped by the resistance inside the light layer.

The moment it got stuck, a sound was generated at the point of contact between the purplish-black blade energy of the palm and the life energy. The sound traveled from Yun Jingheng's toes to his ankle, then to his knee and finally to his hip, with the bones of his entire left leg resonating at that frequency.

But the trajectory of the palm strike was deflected.

It grazed the outside of Yun Jingheng's collarbone, leaving a shallow cut on the outer side of the middle section of his collarbone. The cut was about two fingers wide and half an inch deep. The blood didn't flow out quickly, but a thin layer of purplish-black lines quickly appeared on the crimson background.

Yun Jingheng ignored the wound.

He used the reaction force generated by the kick with his left leg to shift his center of gravity from his right foot to his left foot, while slightly bending his right knee, completing a second shift of his center of gravity in that instant.

As he switched positions, he suddenly drew energy upwards from the soles of his feet, the life energy following the path he had just predicted in his mind.

It ascends along the deep fascia between the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles on the lateral side of the right ankle and the back of the leg, along the medial side of the popliteal fossa, along the tendon of the biceps femoris to the vicinity of the ischial tuberosity, passes through the gap between the piriformis and obturator internus muscles behind the hip joint, enters the abdominal cavity in front of the sacroiliac joint, and ascends along the lateral side of the psoas major muscle.

It goes directly below the gap on the outer edge of the dantian.

The life energy was stronger than he had expected, because he instinctively increased the force when he drew it out.

When it flowed into the outer layer of the dantian, it was like a stream of warm water rushing into the cracked mud wall, filling from the bottom of the gap upwards, covering the uneven edges layer by layer, and spreading outwards as it filled the gap, weaving a new layer along the original dark purple edging.

The newly woven edging is thinner than the previous one, but its surface has a faint sheen, interwoven with the dark purple background, like a piece of fabric that has been re-stitched.

That distal traction was severed the moment the edging reconstruction was completed.

The third shadow's hand was still loosely clenched, but Yun Jingheng could clearly feel that the grip was no longer able to grasp anything.

Its rope was cut, and the end of the rope floated empty in the void, no longer able to pull on any part of its structure.

The outline of the third shadow flickered slightly for a moment.

Although it had no facial features, its body showed a very brief, visible "relaxation" in the purplish-black mist.

The shadow's originally thick, almost solidified dark red outline now showed several fine, flowing lines, like fine sand sliding down from a height, as it regrouped its energy to compensate for the loss after the attack was interrupted.

Yun Jingheng captured that moment.

He didn't miss the two-beat window that the shadow needed to regroup its energy.

He crossed his left arm in front of him, using the purplish-black line on the outside of his forearm, still throbbing with pain, as a shield to deflect the remaining force of the first shadow's fourth palm strike, while simultaneously sending his right fist out from his side.

The thin layer of golden light that had just returned to the surface of his right fist enveloped the back of his knuckles as he slammed it towards the chest of the third shadow.

He hit it.

The second and third knuckles of his right fist made contact with the surface of the dark red outline. The interface where the golden halo and the dark red Destruction power met emitted a "hiss" sound again, louder, crisper, and more decisive than ever before.

The third shadow's chest was punched so hard that a fist-sized dent appeared in the center. Several spiderweb-like cracks extended from the dent, spreading outwards in all directions. The dark red mist at the edges was being burned and evaporated by the halo of light, rising into fine gray dust that dissipated into the air.

The shadow took half a step back.

That half-step it took back was the first time Yun Jingheng had truly broken free from the suppression he had been under since he stepped into this valley.

Although it was only one step, although the crack in the shadow's indentation was slowly repairing itself, and although it only took half a step back before regaining its footing, that half step was real.

That half-step means that his series of actions, from rebuilding the edging to cutting off the pull to a frontal counterattack, were correct.

Attacking the shadow's physical body can effectively deplete its energy structure, and provided it maintains its own balance, its life energy reserves are sufficient to support it in continuously carrying out this damage exchange.

He withdrew his right fist.

The halo on his knuckles had shattered, and the few remaining golden threads were slowly fading between his fingers.

The impact tore three parallel cuts into the skin of his fist, and blood seeped from the wounds, flowing down the back of his fingers and pooling between them into a single drop. The drop hovered at his fingertip for a moment before falling into the dark purple soil beneath his feet.

The three figures readjusted their formation within the purplish-black mist.

The third shadow's chest dent has mostly healed, and the impact of that half-step retreat is being gradually offset by its own recovery mechanism.

The first and second shadows each took half a step back to its sides, and the three of them changed from their previous encirclement formation to a more compact triangle. The distance between the three shadows decreased, and they were connected by fine, dark red energy threads.

Yun Jingheng looked at the new formation, then flicked his right hand behind his back, shaking off the remaining blood droplets on his knuckles onto the soil.

The barrier inside his body was still humming, and the adhesion between the edging and the barrier was stronger than before.

His left arm still hurt, and the five burns on his back were still emitting fine purplish-black smoke. The ligaments in his right wrist joint were also pulled by the impact of that punch and were now feeling sore and weak.

The formation between the three shadows has been successfully reformed.

The third shadow raised its right hand, palm up, fingers slightly bent, with a dark red orb of light, slightly smaller than a fist, gathering above its fingertips.

The energy threads of the first and second shadows were converging towards the sphere of light. The colors of the three shadows faded by one degree at the same time, as if they were transferring and converging the energy within their bodies in the same direction.

The sphere of light is getting bigger.

Yun Jingheng saw the ball of light, and saw the dark red patterns flowing on its surface rotating, contracting, and expanding at an increasingly faster speed.

He turned his gaze away from the sphere of light and looked down at the deep purple soil beneath his feet, where life energy was slowly surging beneath the soil.

He took a breath.

He choked on the purplish-black mist remaining in his lungs halfway through his inhalation, gritted his teeth to suppress the choking sensation, and then exhaled.

The exhaled breath carried a faint wisp of dark smoke.

"...Come on, again," he said.

He clenched his right fist again, and the three cuts on his knuckles were further widened by the clenching motion, and beads of blood seeped out from between his fingers, covering the few remaining strands of blood on his fist.

The contact surface between the newly woven edging around the dantian and the golden barrier changed from sticky to a more stable state.

He looked up at the ball of light that was gathering energy, his feet sinking into the soil, his knees slightly bent, his back straight.