Sea of Unceasing Blood

Time shifted back to one minute earlier.

This was also when Peak Perfection had already begun to take effect.

"Su Weiyu, run!" Xia Shou roared as he charged forward.

Su Weiyu froze for a moment, then immediately turned and ran toward the exit on the other side without hesitation.

She did not understand why, but she knew staying here probably would not help. Besides, this man knew her name even though she had never introduced herself!

That meant he had some special way of gathering information. In this situation, she was better off listening to him!

"You in the black cloak, get up top before you cast, or the Blood Demon will impale you!" Xia Shou kept his words brief, sparing not a shred of attention.

As he moved, he punched the Blood Demon in the waist, instantly leaving a massive dent.

Just as before, the Tamer exclaimed, "Impossible!" But he immediately recovered and reached for the contracted spirit beside him. "Maybe this guy has a chance. Little Black, let's fight side by side one last time!"

Xia Shou twisted aside to evade the Blood Demon's lightning-fast claw. His concentration had never been sharper. Physique Enhancement had not only strengthened his body, but also pushed his reflexes beyond human limits. His reactions were now faster than a cat's!

The Blood Demon swung its arm far back, and Xia Shou seized the opening to jump.

Under the reversed gravity, shattered stones flew skyward from beneath his feet, crashing toward the chapel overhead like a rain of rocks falling from earth to sky.

Xia Shou dodged the collapsing stones as though he could see the future. He even used the rising rocks as footholds in midair, drawing on his exquisite control of his superhuman body to move at high speed while airborne, adjusting his position for a better angle of attack.

Meanwhile, the Tamer clinging overhead drew away every sharp crystal, sparing him the need to dodge them.

Air parted smoothly around Xia Shou's body. He could barely feel its resistance or interference, as though a transparent film covered him and eliminated all friction. He could go even faster now!

His figure flashed several times, leaving only dusty afterimages in the air. He bounded off the rocks like lightning, his path bending through six impossible angles before he finally landed on the Blood Demon's arm.

He punched!

Under Xia Shou's mountain-shattering strength, the Blood Demon's long, blood-red arm burst into flying droplets.

It roared in fury, and an entirely new, identical arm sprouted from its shoulder!

"It can't heal its wounds, but it can create new limbs out of nothing?" Xia Shou's eyes widened as he watched every detail. "But making new limbs seems to consume its total volume of blood."

He noticed that after the Blood Demon grew a new arm, its severed limb remained where it was, while its torso had shrunk considerably.

In an instant, Xia Shou understood the connection.

[Everlasting Wound] could completely nullify the Blood Demon's ability to heal itself.

And [Spirit Body Strike] limited how much the Blood Demon could reshape its own body!

The monster was now like a lump of modeling clay. Any limb he punched off became a piece separated from the whole.

The clay could keep changing shape, but its total volume kept decreasing!

In that case-I can win!

The newly grown scarlet arm rose high. A slam was coming next.

Xia Shou did not leap backward to dodge. He knew the sweep following the slam would send anything airborne flying. That mistake in the previous battle had nearly destroyed his waist. Without [Physical Body Fixation], he probably would not have been able to keep fighting at all.

The dome shook violently, and huge chunks of rock fell toward the chapel. Xia Shou stepped between stones in midair, evading the Blood Demon's supposedly unavoidable follow-up attack, then plunged from above and kicked its head to pieces.

Once severed from its head, the hairlike blood filaments filling the entire space became ordinary liquid and pattered down in a rain of blood.

This rain of blood was no longer being drawn away...

Even without looking back, Xia Shou knew the Tamer who had once tried to kill him now lay in eternal sleep alongside his pet.

The Tamer's final support had lasted less than a minute.

But it had been enough!

Xia Shou's feet touched the ground again.

Three strikes in an instant broke one of the Blood Demon's legs and one of its arms, throwing the monster off balance.

Xia Shou knew the Blood Demon was about to create new limbs again, but he would never give it the chance!

Fifty-three seconds!

Xia Shou looked up at the faceless demon of blood, and corpse after corpse flashed through his mind.

Time seemed to slow at that moment. An indescribably complex emotion suddenly arose within Xia Shou. It did not belong to him, but to those remnants.

Through the remnants he had absorbed, the final wishes and regrets of the dead seeped into the cracks in his heart like rainwater penetrating fissures in stone.

It was an indescribable weight of sorrow and defiance, a fury dimmed amid roaring, and a final thread of hope buried in silence.

Countless people far stronger than him had come here to challenge this monster, yet all of them had failed.

Those with powerful bodies...

Those with unmatched speed...

Those with unyielding wills, who clung to life at death's door and could slay spirits.

And the one who had attained Peak Perfection where no one could see, only to become a charred corpse among the ruins.

Perhaps they had once saved many people and defeated many terrifying monsters, yet all of them had perished in this room, along with their little-known pasts.

Xia Shou did not consider himself stronger than those fallen predecessors. But he knew that many great achievements came from the right combination of factors. Those who had sacrificed their lives had missed victory for want of just one or two crucial elements.

Some could leave everlasting wounds on the Blood Demon, but could not bridge the gap in levels. Others had crossed that gap, but one minute had still been too short.

And he had come here as an empty shell... a Ghoul who survived by devouring the strength of others.

Xia Shou was grateful he was a Ghoul, a hollow shell with nothing inside, so he could hold all their final wishes in one place.

One final punch! Squeeze every last ounce of strength from this body!

This punch will overturn the outcome of two deaths!

His fist struck,

and half the Blood Demon's body shattered completely!

At that moment, every suppressed emotion found release!

That unceasing, bone-chilling

howl finally faded from his ears.

The remaining half of the Blood Demon rolled and thrashed on the ground, constantly changing shape, but it no longer had the strength to form a new body.

The numbers on the gauge in Xia Shou's left eye were dropping rapidly. He did not know how deep he had sunk, but he knew that unless he killed the Blood Demon within the next few seconds, he would die, and it would regain its ability to heal. All his efforts would have been for nothing!

"Aaaaaah!"

Xia Shou kept pummeling the mutilated Blood Demon, sending blood spraying wildly.

One second... two seconds...

He did not know how much time had passed, or how much he had left.

Only when the blood-red light faded from the air and the liquid creature beneath him dissolved into a flowing pool of blood did Xia Shou finally stop punching.

Drenched in blood, he stood beneath the center of the church's shattered dome, panting as he felt that incredible power gradually drain from his body. Death Road went on cooldown.

"I survived?"

Xia Shou looked at the gauge in his eye. The numbers had stopped changing. The final reading was 1,301 meters!

Damn it!

I still went too far!

In an instant, the words he had failed to make out in the sea suddenly became clear.

The scene beneath the seawater surfaced in his mind again. This time, he could read the words he had missed before-[Sea of Unceasing Blood].