Heart-Boring Poison

Chu Hengkong shrugged off his coat and sprang into the forest like a swift black falcon. The noise of the crowd behind him faded away. As he raced at full speed, even the wind became emerald green, the same color as the trees. He lightly gripped the Pendant of Perception and felt a gaze thick with malice coming from deep within Torchlight Corpse Heap's face, like a vulture pecking at carrion.

Leaves soared through the forest as the corpse heap swung both fists. The rotting mud coating its body erupted like bombs, and countless Relic weapons were hurled into the air by the blast, turning into a rain of blades.

Chu Hengkong never slowed. He charged headlong through flashing swords and blades, like an arrow shot into a sudden downpour of weapons! As he ran, his arms swept through graceful arcs. Long weapons were knocked aside by his tentacles' lashes, while short weapons were scattered by the forceful wind of his punches. Silently, an invisible ring appeared. It had no form and no substance, yet it could not be crossed. Not a single weapon could enter within three inches of Chu Hengkong.

Dragon Village Boxing: Ring Wind Hand. A defensive technique born from rapid-fire strikes, capable of shutting out incoming arrows, blades, and swords like a whirlwind. When the assault began to weaken, Chu Hengkong raised a hand and seized a black staff amid the rain of weapons. He swung it to clear the path ahead, accelerated beneath his feet, escaped the curtain of blades, and plunged into the forest.

The weapons he knocked down sank into the Marsh. Their tips still carried glowing mud, causing clusters of luminous specks to float up behind Chu Hengkong like duckweed. Forty seconds passed, and the distance between the two sides closed to a hundred meters. Torchlight Corpse Heap seemed to realize that long-range tactics were meaningless. It let out a bizarre howl from its huge mouth, a sound heavy yet piercing, like someone striking a rusted bronze bell.

A glowing withered hand burst from the mud and grabbed for Chu Hengkong's ankle!

The gleaming tip of the staff slammed into its palm, destroying the withered hand with one vicious thrust. The strike was astonishingly powerful, directly smashing the Glowing Corpse lying in ambush beneath the ground out into the open. Chu Hengkong spun the staff and brought it crashing down on the corpse's head, knocking it unconscious with precise force. Light flared behind him. As he swung, he stepped forward to evade an attack, then pulled one arm back and drove the butt of the staff straight backward. Like a battering ram, it smashed into a Glowing Corpse. The second ambusher was sent flying and hung from the treetops like a rag.

Chu Hengkong drew back his staff to guard himself. Ripples rose across the swamp, and the Glowing Corpses buried beneath the mud burst out one after another, launching suicidal attacks with the force of jade and stone shattering together. Yet every attack merely brushed past Chu Hengkong. The staff in his hands swept into arcs even brighter than Ring Wind Hand. The Glowing Corpses could not enter the circle; they would be blown over by the gale of force before they could even approach.

Chu Hengkong effortlessly broke through the encirclement, his agile figure racing straight toward the corpse heap. Adali could observe the battlefield and control so many Glowing Corpses. Given that Relics always had a range of effect, he was probably hiding inside the corpse heap's belly. This man was a "Cornerstone" who fought through Relics and the environment. The longer the battle dragged on, the easier it would be to fall into traps. Right now, he had to use strength against weakness—dig out his true body and take him down in one stroke!

Seeing that its encirclement tactic was useless, Torchlight Corpse Heap raised its enormous hand and smashed it down. Chu Hengkong lightly tapped the mud with his staff tip, borrowing the force to leap upward. With that jump, he evaded the giant hand's slap and landed on the corpse heap's hand. He raced up the giant's arm. As he ran, his tentacles contracted and Charged power, then thrust a silver spear toward that hideous giant face!

The silver spear struck from the side. The force concentrated at its tip erupted, blasting a massive hole clean through the corpse heap. The strike nearly split Torchlight Corpse Heap in two, sending clumps of mud wrapped in glowing specks flying everywhere. Yet at that same instant, a deep-purple shadow swept past the silver gleam. It was so fast that it seemed like an illusion flashing through his vision. In an instant, it arrived before Chu Hengkong and stabbed straight for his heart!

It was a hand blade formed by pressing all five fingers together. The deep-purple flesh was several times sharper than metal. It came swift as the wind, yet it only barely grazed his clothes. At the same time, Chu Hengkong had fallen backward, evading with a one-handed back bridge. His body rotated ninety degrees around his waist, and his toes curled up dangerously like a scorpion's tail... then stabbed down at the purple shadow's back! Evasion and counterattack merged perfectly. This was the kicking technique from Three Thousand Sets: Tail Needle Kick!

The purple shadow raised an arm to defend. When the kick struck, a sharp clang rang from his arm, as though metal had struck metal. A subtle pain ran through Chu Hengkong's leg. The enemy's body was remarkably tough. Judging from the impact, it could rival a tank's outer armor. A direct assault would not be wise.

After one exchange, Chu Hengkong made his judgment. In the flash of lightning and spark, his tentacles had already retracted. He spun with the motion and lashed out with them, while the purple shadow countered with an experienced high kick. His leg joints bent backward like an insect's, possessing terrifying explosive force. Their strikes were evenly matched, and the aftershock sent the surrounding rotten mud flying.

After one round, both men retreated at once, staring at each other with gazes sharpened to the utmost limit. The purple shadow was as composed as the lord of the Marsh. "You actually dodged my poison hand. You've got the lucky fortune of a survivor." Chu Hengkong pointed his staff at the strange enemy's brow. "Just as I thought." He narrowed his eyes.

The purple shadow's true form was a bald man with a gloomy face. He wore a white robe resembling a cassock, yet had malformed lower limbs and deep-purple skin. This bizarre, demon-like creature was none other than the great shaman Adali!

"You're not very surprised." Adali sneered. "Looks like the Doom Knight has already sensed my capabilities."

Actually, she always thought you were a weakling. Chu Hengkong swallowed the truth that had reached his lips. There was no point in wasting words at a time like this.

It was really only a simple judgment based on experience. In a place like the swamp, where demons and monsters roamed everywhere, some worthless fool capable only of controlling others could never become the leader of a faction. Even if Adali was a Cornerstone who relied on external objects, he would not be easy to deal with. To face an old cult leader who had become a demon with age, he had to be prepared in every respect.

"Hah!" Chu Hengkong suddenly exhaled with a shout and smashed his staff toward Adali's head. The Relic staff shattered against that bald head, and Adali's flesh was even harder than steel. Adali's palm emerged from the fragments, once again launching a knife-sharp piercing hand. Borrowing the force of his strike, Chu Hengkong leaped high and fired a chain of kicks at Adali's face. Adali answered with a chain of punches, meeting attack with attack. The two appeared evenly matched, but Chu Hengkong still had one tentacle.

The tentacle lashed out amid the chaos, coiling around Adali's neck like a rope. Chu Hengkong dropped down with the weight of a thousand catties, then flashed behind Adali with one step. He discarded the ruined staff, tightened his tentacle muscles, and drove his right palm toward the back of Adali's head, using his tentacles to unleash a lethal strangling technique.

The tentacles were already as tough as ropes, and their adhesive grip was nearly impossible to escape. They were the perfect medium for strangulation. Direct attacks could hardly produce immediate results against an enemy of steel sinews and iron bones, so he changed tactics, using softness to overcome hardness. No matter how strong an enemy was, he could not survive after his head had been twisted off.

Adali also realized the danger he was in. He drew in a deep breath, puffing out his chest, and retaliated with battering-ram elbow strikes. Once, twice, three times. Three consecutive elbow strikes landed. An ordinary Skillful Hands would have been vomiting blood from broken bones by now, but Chu Hengkong did not budge. Beneath his feet, the rotten mud formed the outline of a vortex. The secret technique of Vortex Ukemi redirected most of the force into the ground.

Chu Hengkong tightened his tentacles with all his strength. A choking rattle came from Adali's throat. In just a few more breaths, he would die of suffocation... but Chu Hengkong suddenly released him and retreated with an acrobat's back handspring. Almost at the same moment, Adali unleashed a vicious heel kick! He had come within a hair's breadth of suffering grave injury.

"What's wrong, assassin?" Adali's voice sounded like retching. "You were about to succeed, weren't you? Why did you shrink back at the last moment?"

"Or perhaps..." He smiled sinisterly. "Even someone as stupid as you has finally noticed?"

A subtle pain came from his tentacles. It appeared irregularly, one prick after another, irritating as mosquito bites. The moment he felt it, Chu Hengkong immediately pulled away, because the last time he had touched the enemy's body—when that first kick landed—he had felt a similar pain.

This time, he had been very close to his enemy, so he discovered the true nature of that sting. Black protrusions pierced out from beneath the skin of Adali's neck. They were insect mandibles!

Adali let out an ugly laugh. Beneath the flesh stretched to its limit by the tentacles' strangulation, countless fine, writhing outlines surfaced. Like an ant colony building nests in sand and gravel, like earthworms passing through wet mud, innumerable venomous insects crawled through his flesh. This man was a genuine madman. He had turned his own body into a nest for poisonous insects, and any enemy who dared touch him would receive the insects' retaliation.

The stinging in his tentacles and toes intensified, and Chu Hengkong's vision suddenly grew dim. He immediately swallowed the antidote prepared before the mission. The pill dissolved in his mouth, tasteless as water. Much better. He told himself again and again. Much better. But Adali's speed had become strangely faster. He stepped forward with the force of thunder and struck Chu Hengkong in the chest with the heel of his palm.

Vicious force erupted within a tiny space. Chu Hengkong was sent flying nearly ten meters. He barely steadied himself in the mud, but then his throat suddenly burned, and he spat out a huge mouthful of purple blood. An astonishing pain came from where he had been struck, as if a thousand bees were stinging him.

Poisonous insect stingers had visibly emerged from Adali's palm. He was using the toxins in his body to attack. But why could Chu Hengkong see them so clearly? Hadn't he been knocked several meters away? It was because Adali had already reached him. Chu Hengkong raised an arm to defend. Another burst of agonizing pain.

The enemy should not have been this fast. He had become slower...!

"What color is the light in your eyes?" He heard the great shaman's sinister laugh.

The light was green. Emerald green, like leaves. But the leaves were bright yellow, twisting like maggots in fire. The swamp was slowly rotating, and the great shaman seemed to be walking along the side of the world. His vision was blurred yet terrifyingly bright. The limbs in his mind melted and twisted, while ice seemed to flow through his veins.

His senses were dulling, and his strength was draining away at tremendous speed. The most vicious poison had entered his blood. He had been poisoned by Adali's deadly venom!

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Something's fucking wrong!" Jie An sprang to his feet in panic. "There's no way Chu Hengkong should be fighting that badly... He's been poisoned! Reinforce him, now!"

Jie An could not help panicking. He knew every herb and every creature in the Marsh. Precisely because of that, he understood how terrifying the plagues and lethal poisons hidden in rotten mud and dense forests could be. The worst of them could turn a beast into a nest of maggots in minutes. Even a Skillful Hands' physique could not withstand them. He slammed the seat hard, signaling Ji Huaishu to move, but she did nothing, looking around as though she had not heard him.

"Stop fucking worrying about plans and saving face, girl. Go already! Someone's going to die if you're late!" Jie An was nearly losing his mind.

"I know," Ji Huaishu said. "I'll leave it to you!"

She suddenly flew up and kicked Jie An out of the vehicle. Before the shock in his eyes could fade, blazing cyan swallowed him. A pillar of fire had erupted from underground, like blue-green lava. The vehicle in the flames was completely carbonized before it even had time to explode. Even five meters away, Jie An felt as though he would be roasted by the inferno.

He stretched out a hand blankly and touched a glowing "wall." It was Ji Huaishu's light shield. At the last moment, she had sent out the shield that could save a life and placed herself within the flames.

"JI HUAISHU!!" he screamed madly.

A thread of black appeared within the flames, and Jie An immediately held his breath. He saw a massive, solemn sword split the pillar of fire, and the knight holding it stood amid the ashes.

Ji Huaishu looked back and saw the panic and helplessness in the man's eyes. He was clearly over thirty, yet he looked like a powerless child. It was pathetic to watch. There was nothing to be done about it. Jie An was someone without combat power. He had no talent for fighting at all; being able to make food and medicine was already his greatest help. Yet Ji Huaishu still looked deeply at him, seeing a warrior rather than a cook.

"Jie An, you're an Ascender too, aren't you?" she said. "Then get up and run forward! Go to your battlefield!"

Two team members hurried over and pulled Jie An up from the ground. Jie An was completely stunned, his mouth open but no words coming out. Ji Huaishu hoisted her greatsword and sprinted away, no longer paying attention to anyone or anything behind her. She could not afford to be distracted again. Even a moment's delay would mean everyone's death.

In the distance, blue-green fireballs flew toward the dense forest, aimed at the direction where Chu Hengkong was fighting. She hurled her greatsword and cut them apart, then continued her charge without giving her opponent another chance to strike.

Ji Huaishu's path was a straight line. Every obstacle in her way was smashed aside. Whenever she encountered a house, she crashed through it along with its walls. After several breaths, Ji Huaishu reached the edge of Deeproot Settlement, where countless tree roots tangled together into a brown "basin." She swung her greatsword like an iron fan, and the wind of the blade blew up a white top hat.

"What a pity," the man said carelessly. "I was so close to succeeding."

He caught the top hat and put it back on. His pure-white formal wear made him look like a gentleman attending a funeral. Ji Huaishu gripped her greatsword firmly and took her stance, watching the man before her warily. She had never seen this person, just as she had never seen formal wear as white as paper. That fact alone was unbelievable, because she knew Dragon's Return City's criminals better than anyone.

"Who are you?"

"I'm a merchant, here to provide some after-sales service." The man raised one finger. "My customer rather likes this product... Could I ask you not to disturb him?"

A tiny cyan flame ignited at his fingertip. It transformed into an eagle-like claw and seized for Ji Huaishu's face. Ji Huaishu cut the fire claw apart with one strike. The man in the top hat gracefully waved his hand, and fireballs the size of heads flew at her in succession at his command. A pillar of fire rose into the sky behind him. Blue flames ignited among the roots of a giant tree, burning toward the settlement beside it.

In the depths of the flames, beyond anyone's sight, those who wielded the elements began their slaughter!

In an instant, the blaze surged up, and the southern side of Deeproot Settlement nearly became a sea of fire. Even Chu Hengkong, trapped by poison, could feel the heat in the air. The situation had changed. Reinforcements would not come. He could only find a way himself. Torchlight Corpse Heap was recovering from its earlier wounds. He had to kill Adali before the poison killed him, or death was certain.

Chu Hengkong barely blocked the next heavy punch. The impact shook his wounds, bringing piercing pain. Yet he had not fallen. A provocative smile appeared on his deathly pale face. Adali chopped down with a blade-like palm, but Chu Hengkong stepped back with the smallest possible movement. The two barely opened some distance between them, and the assassin was still smiling.

What a troublesome brat. Adali frowned. The art he used was Heart-Boring Poison Hand, inherited from Asura Island and further strengthened by the poisonous insects inside his body. It was an ultimate technique effective even in battles across qualitative ranks. A minute had passed since the poisoning. By experience, no matter how robust a Skillful Hands might be, their poison should have flared and killed them by now. Yet this assassin still had fighting power...

A secret medicine? No. After Great Master Jingzang, the half-baked fools of the Resurrection Corps have no way to detoxify poison. Then it must be a method beyond medicine...

Martial arts?

Chu Hengkong desperately suppressed his breathing. In an almost self-torturing manner, he controlled his heartbeat and contracted muscles in specific areas, slowing the flow of his blood and delaying the poison's spread. Turtle Breath Technique from Three Thousand Sets—a secret method that suppressed vital activity to its lowest limit, seeking life amid death.

But merely clinging to life was useless. As the poison spread, the countdown to death continued. He had to defeat his enemy before death arrived. He had to find a way to turn defeat into victory...

Adali in his vision was stretched long and thin like a noodle man. His sight could not be trusted; he had to rely on instinct. A heavy punch came at him. Unable to judge its speed, he stupidly crossed his arms to defend. He barely avoided being knocked down and hooked the enemy's arm with his tentacles. Forcing himself forward, he threw a punch at the heart with a reckless, all-or-nothing momentum.

Chu Hengkong's punch landed, but he failed to inflict damage. At Adali's chest, the skin churned like mud. Black mandibles thrust out from beneath it, biting Chu Hengkong's fist like centipedes lurking within flesh! Chu Hengkong had struck only the insect mandibles. His desperate counterattack had poisoned him again. Seizing the opportunity, Adali used an upward palm-heel strike. A venomous bee's stinger emerged from his palm!

The palm strike and poison stinger landed together. Chu Hengkong's vision swayed violently, but he spun in midair and seized the chance created by his enemy's attack to kick back. Adali was forced one step away. After landing, Chu Hengkong continued punching, throwing attacks as unpredictable as a drunkard's. Fragments of movements flashed through his chaotic mind as he continued searching for flaws in his enemy's fighting style. The assassin could still fight. He had not lost all chance of victory yet.

But his next strike was blocked by slick flesh. It was a Glowing Corpse, one separated from Torchlight Corpse Heap. The luminous corpse inserted itself between the two like a referee playing favorites, announcing the end of the "battle" with the greatest mockery.

Yes, this was not a battle. The treacherous great shaman had never intended to fight the assassin at all. Adali merely answered with a cold, statue-like smile devoid of emotion. He took a cane from another glowing hand. After Torchlight Corpse Heap broke apart, dozens of Glowing Corpses surrounded Chu Hengkong.

A martial artist's tenacity had been overwhelmed by the violence of numbers. No matter how unyielding his will, there could be no chance of victory in such a hopelessly outnumbered situation.

"Don't dare fight a sick man?" Chu Hengkong smiled weakly, unable to stop coughing up blood. "What a weak man."

"Don't be too arrogant, brat," Adali said contemptuously. "Your lowly life isn't worthy of making me act. The enemies suited to you are these filthy, ignorant corpses."

The great shaman raised his cane high. The bell at its head shook.

A clear ring sounded. Chu Hengkong's brain was pierced by pain again, and the mental attack froze his movements in an instant. The Mud Glowing Corpses rapidly closed in on him, the light inside them growing brighter and brighter...

"Corpse Explosion." Adali sneered.

Then all the Glowing Corpses near Chu Hengkong swelled and exploded at once, raising mushroom-cloud-like golden light in the dense forest!