You Said Gate, Right?

Boom!

Just as Wu Zhong absorbed the third one, the pit before him exploded.

Arborvitae and Feipeng burst from the earth and leaped high into the air.

"Mm mm mm... Hmph!"

The former was drenched in blood, his hair streaked with gray. His once-powerful muscles were gone, leaving him with a withered, shriveled body. Yet dense blood energy swirled around him as arcs of electricity flashed.

He must have sacrificed his life and lifespan to repay the Multiversal Force.

"Ha!" Arborvitae raised his leg high and stomped down hard.

Fortunately, Wu Zhong had already absorbed three waves of mental patients. His physical abilities had reached six times normal, his senses were sharp, and his reactions swift. He yanked Yang Chunsha back and kicked off the ground, throwing his whole body backward.

The two shot several meters away together, narrowly avoiding the stomp.

Boom!

Shattered stones flew everywhere, and the paving slabs were crushed to powder beneath that foot.

The stones scraped against the two of them, but neither was injured.

The old granny, however, was caught in the aftermath. Stones grazed her body, and with two startled cries, she fell out of her chair and could not get back up.

"Ah?"

The old granny groaned softly, her gaze blank, as though asking: I was just watching a TV drama. How did I get hurt?

"She has dementia... I need to get over there."

Wu Zhong had long noticed that the old granny had dementia. She had been watching the battle with relish because she thought she was watching television.

He realized he could absorb from the old granny too, and save her while he was at it.

"Die for me, hahahaha..." Feipeng and Arborvitae charged at the same time.

Wu Zhong did not dare use Yang Chunsha to farm anymore. He hurriedly passed the insomnia he had previously absorbed from Arborvitae onto Yang Chunsha.

Then he shoved her. "Debiao! Help me stall them for a while!"

"Me?" Yang Chunsha was stunned.

She had only just become a Madblood Clan member, with twice the physique of an ordinary person, and now he wanted her to fight these two top mercenaries?

But when she saw Wu Zhong rush toward the old granny, she immediately understood. Picking up her book, she kicked off the ground and shot forward. At the same time, a blazing light erupted from her chest as the pages flipped wildly.

Arborvitae's body trembled, blood pumping from his chest. One of his arms was reduced to only half a stump.

Half a boulder was still lodged in his lower body, and blood poured from his abdomen.

Even so, his presence remained terrifying, radiating an oppressive aura.

Feipeng, on the other hand, was in a far sorrier state. Even his breathing was uneven. Amid his wild laughter, he said with difficulty, "So you're Madblood Clan members..."

"Idiots. You don't even know dementia isn't a mental illness? Hahaha..."

Wu Zhong, holding the old granny's hand, froze.

Huh? It wasn't a mental illness?

Yang Chunsha also paused. "That's right. Dementia doesn't work. I saw it on the forum."

Wu Zhong curled his lip. So what if it didn't?

He was a first-generation Madblood Clan member with an added Mental Bastion. He could absorb from anyone!

He landed beside the old granny and was about to lean down and lightly bite the spot on her arm that had been scraped by stones.

But at that same moment, Feipeng lunged at Wu Zhong while Arborvitae charged toward Yang Chunsha.

The four split off into pairs and began fighting fiercely.

Feipeng's laughter was filled with hatred. He no longer showed Wu Zhong any mercy. On one hand, he knew there was no room left for reconciliation; mutual trust between them was impossible.

On the other hand, he had come to the same conclusion as Arborvitae. Wu Zhong's incurability was likely a side effect of the Ghost-God Mark. If they killed Wu Zhong and inherited this calamity artifact, they might be able to cure themselves!

"Kid, die!" Feipeng struck with a sword-palm that tore through the air.

"You..." Worried that the old granny might be harmed, Wu Zhong could only turn around and take it head-on.

Neither of his hands had healed yet. He barely managed to shove the old granny away before raising his leg in a flying kick.

Boom! He was blasted two meters back, but thanks to his vastly improved physique, he landed steadily.

Feipeng was also knocked back by his tremendous strength. Coughing and laughing wildly, he took a moment to recover before attacking again.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The air boomed again and again as fists and legs flew.

Wu Zhong held his ground in front of the old granny to protect her. Relying on his legs, he clashed head-on with Feipeng over and over, using his arms only occasionally.

"This won't work. I can't farm mental illnesses like this."

Wu Zhong frowned deeply and panted heavily. Although his physique had improved enormously, both his hands were crippled, and his chest was still caved in.

"And... the arm guard actually cracked?"

With a sharp tearing sound, Feipeng used his palm as a sword. Under the frenzied barrage of sword energy, the arm guard split apart.

Wu Zhong's heart pounded. That sword energy was this powerful? It could even cut through material ten times stronger than special alloy steel?

Fortunately, the arm guard soon healed itself. Purple fluid filled the cracks.

Right. Xia Heng's arm guard had done the same when he fought Zhang Qinglang.

The arm guard could repair itself rapidly, but his severed arm could not. After so many direct clashes, the barely reconnected stump tore apart again.

"Argh!"

"Eat this cannon blast!"

Wu Zhong raised his leg high, braced his right arm against one knee, and light shone from his palm.

Feipeng instinctively dodged, twisting sideways through the air. He had gotten used to dodging by now.

But Wu Zhong had not actually been able to fire anything. He had only shouted to scare him.

Screech! Screech! Screech!

Wu Zhong seized the chance to retreat and turn. With a flick of his arm guard, he stabbed lightning-fast into a large tree nearby.

It was a banyan tree in the old granny's yard. Who knew how long it had been growing there? Its trunk was quite thick.

The fingers of his bio-armament arm came together like a blade, its sharp fingertips cutting and grinding through the trunk.

In just a few strikes, he hacked the thick tree apart. It looked like he was making a shield.

"Hm?" Feipeng did not understand. A makeshift shield? And made of wood?

"Die!"

The other man moved like lightning, launching another attack in the next instant.

Wu Zhong was frantic, yet he did not dodge. He kept chopping at the tree.

Clang!

At the critical moment, Wu Zhong ducked behind the rough, thick wooden shield.

Feipeng's sword energy could not advance even an inch.

"What?" Feipeng's exposed eyes were filled with shock.

It looked like a door panel, a shield carved from local materials right in front of him. Yet it had blocked his full-force strike without shattering?

"Come on!"

Wu Zhong gripped something like a door handle and raised the huge shield. The force drove him two steps back before he steadied himself, but he was uninjured.

It was as though he had merely been forced to take a step backward.

"What is that..." Feipeng laughed wildly, his expression uncertain.

Wu Zhong poked his head out from behind the shield and spouted nonsense. "My wood is indestructible!"

"Haha? You call this indestructible?" Feipeng's gaze sharpened. With one palm strike, he cracked the huge shield, and a surge of force immediately passed through it.

"Urgh!"

Wu Zhong grunted, his arm going numb as though electrocuted.

That surge of energy bored into his body and rampaged wildly.

"You think a broken shield can stop me? Hahaha!"

Feipeng's internal force was deep and powerful, making Wu Zhong's already severely injured chest ache even more.

"Hiss..."

Smoke rose from Wu Zhong's mouth and nose. His entire body burned, and his face flushed crimson.

There was great terror in the face of life and death. As Feipeng's internal force invaded him, Wu Zhong felt as though his very life had been grasped in the other man's hand!

Feipeng poured internal force into Wu Zhong's meridians. In the past, he had possessed nine methods of inflicting internal injuries that could kill a man.

But now, because of his wild laughter, he could not precisely control his internal force. So he could only use the simplest, most brutal method... bombard the Life Gate on the Governing Vessel!

It could be said that this was bullying—bullying an opponent who had no internal force and knew no internal arts. Otherwise, even a third-rate martial artist could have blocked this crude infusion of internal force.

"Hahaha! Watch me shatter your Life Gate with my internal force!"

Wu Zhong rasped through bloody lips, "You said gate... right?"

He felt the invading internal force within him finally converge at the depression beneath the spinous process of the second lumbar vertebra, on the body's rear midline.

A torrent of internal force rushed into that spot, originally meant to rampage through it and destroy everything.

Yet that acupoint endured it by force. Although Wu Zhong was in unbearable pain, his face flushed red, and he could feel agony as though his body were about to split apart, he suffered no actual harm.

Wu Zhong did not know that it belonged to the Governing Vessel and corresponded directly to a point about three finger-widths below the navel. It was also part of the dantian region. The two lay parallel to one another, complementing each other—one a gate, the other a sea of qi. Together, they were called the Dantian Life Gate.

Traditional Chinese medicine described it as a gathering place for life energies such as essence, qi, and spirit. In the universe where Feipeng's host body came from, that was even more true. It was the root of primordial qi and the wellspring of life.

Wu Zhong did not understand any of that, but it did not stop him from welding shut that conceptual gate of internal force.

He had not known where this gate was, how to open or close it, or how to use it. After all, this universe did not possess laws related to internal arts. Where was he supposed to get something from novels and TV dramas?

But Feipeng's invading internal force traveled through a mystical set of meridians and arrived at the conceptual Dantian Life Gate.

Earthlings first had to possess a Life Gate before it could be destroyed.

This was a law of another universe manifested by the Multiversal Force. It pointed Wu Zhong toward that unseen gate, helping him create the Life Gate within his body so he could feel the agony of nearing death—pain linked to life's primordial qi, pain that could destroy the body's vitality when invaded by foreign internal force!

"Ha!" Wu Zhong took a deep breath. By drawing upon only a trace of the life force within that Dantian Life Gate, he immediately transformed it into an Absolute Gate!

Like the Mind Gate, a new Absolute Life Gate, existing on the conceptual level of the body's life essence and qi, was born.

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

Feipeng poured in torrent after torrent of internal force, but it gradually vanished like mud oxen sinking into the sea.

Wu Zhong pressed against him through the huge shield, enduring the terrifying internal arts bombardment of his Life Gate. Yet he merely looked flushed and twisted in pain.

He refused to die!

"He's still alive? His Life Gate is that tough?"

The more Feipeng attacked, the more wrong it felt. His internal force was nearly exhausted, yet Wu Zhong still would not die.

What the hell? Was this kid's internal force really that deep?

Impossible. He clearly had no internal force! Could he really be enduring it through sheer physical strength and abundant blood qi?

Even an unrivaled master could not withstand such a bombardment of the Life Gate. He should have already died from devastating internal injuries.

That was the Life Gate! Once invaded by external force, it brought mortal danger.

"Have you had enough..." Wu Zhong's face and neck were red, veins bulging.

Having his Life Gate bombarded by internal force was truly agonizing. It gave him the sensation that all thoughts had turned to emptiness and death was closing in.

But after experiencing the feeling of near-death enough times, he had gotten used to it.

The internal force charged into the Life Gate, but the gate could not be destroyed. So all of it accumulated upon the gate, empowering it and becoming the gate's "internal energy."

It could be understood that when the gate had been created, that internal force had also been considered part of the material that made up the gate.

"What? You know internal arts? No, this isn't internal arts."

Feipeng sensed something strange through the pull of their qi. He was utterly stunned. From someone with no internal force, he could feel the pressure of internal arts.

But the location was wrong. How could it be the Life Gate?

Everyone knew internal force had to be stored in the dantian. The Life Gate was the gateway to the dantian, yet Wu Zhong was using the Life Gate to carry internal force.

It was utterly absurd. It was like someone buying a house but refusing to live inside, instead sticking himself to the door and declaring that it was his home.

No... even that comparison was not absurd enough.

Because internal force posed a deadly threat to the Life Gate. It was like pouring molten lava into an ammunition depot—and the ammunition depot somehow did not explode!

Boom!

Wu Zhong shoved fiercely, instinctively drawing on a burst of force from within the Life Gate.

He felt his strength suddenly increase by several degrees.

"Pfft!" Feipeng was blasted away, his tiger's mouth going numb.

He landed on his butt, only to be propped up by a wooden stick... Clang! His body hung in the air and bounced like a spring for an instant before he finally toppled over sideways.

The pain twisted his features.

"Ah! My thirty years of cultivation—you actually captured it..."

Feipeng was exhausted and sensed that things had gone terribly wrong. His internal force was depleted, and he no longer possessed his previous ferocity.