Chapter 167: Where

Jia Ji staggered and knelt in the center of the circular crater, his right arm hanging limp at his side, knees buckling like a puppet with severed strings, his face slamming straight into the ground hardened by their battle, agonizingly painful.

The previous clash had drained every ounce of his strength, emptied all his battle qi; his body felt like a leaky box, no matter how he tried to regulate his breathing, it did no good.

Now that the adrenaline had faded, every part of his body screamed under unbearable strain—except his right arm… he felt nothing, no sensation, no pain, as if it had vanished.

This pitiful state of utter exhaustion was, perhaps, his first.

Snow Plum and Peony flew in from either side, hastily lifting him up, yet dared not apply even a fraction more force; Jia Ji now resembled a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering, his entire body riddled with cracks, as if one more movement would reduce him to fragments like Huyu Ludi.

He spat out two dark chunks and blood to the side, then painfully twisted his neck to survey his surroundings.

The dojo, mockingly called "Spirit Light Wave Youth Palace," had been almost entirely destroyed, as if swept away by a tsunami, avalanche, and ten thousand charging troops all at once.

Then came the collapsed mountain peak, the few remaining plants and trees, the small animals that had failed to escape, now reduced to bleached bones by demonic energy… finally settling on the space before him.

He stared at the fading afterimage of demonic energy, his vision blurring, sinking into darkness as memories slowly surfaced…

Suddenly, he noticed that without his sunglasses, Huyu Ludi's eyes were startlingly clear.

These were not the eyes of a demon, but of a human—a man's eyes, the eyes of one who died for battle.

Perhaps that was why he wore sunglasses.

This one-on-one duel ended with Huyu Ludi's death.

…………

Faint, intermittent sounds drifted into his ears, now distant, now close, preventing him from sinking deeper into sleep.

His eyelashes trembled, bringing a faint itch, like a butterfly struggling to spread its wings inside a cocoon; his eyelids felt heavy as lead, and when he forced them open, fractured light seeped in, but his retinas saw no clear shapes—only blurred masses.

Rough fabric pressed against his skin everywhere, the wrinkles of the sheet digging into his flesh, each tiny sensation now excruciatingly sharp.

"So damn noisy, can't a man sleep… cough cough."

Jia Ji opened his mouth to curse, but halfway through, a metallic taste surged in his throat; his cracked lips split open as he moved, and he felt a searing burn in his trachea.

"He's awake! He's awake!"

Peony cried out in delight and rushed out to summon everyone.

As Beidou -born, their vitality was tougher than Martian aliens; unless struck in some "die within three days" or "explode within seven seconds" peculiar acupoint, or cut into pieces on the spot, no matter how severe the injury, as long as the camera cut and two bandages were applied, they'd be fine.

For the first time in a long while, upon regaining consciousness, Jia Ji once again found himself wrapped head to toe in bandages like a rice dumpling—but before anyone could say "Oh, nothing much," he had one thing to do…

"I need to sit up and look."

Jia Ji opened his panel and checked—sure enough, his rating had changed to "Fierce Upper."

Without doubt, he and Huyu Ludi had both shattered their limits at the end, simultaneously reaching this world's A-Class tier—only he remained alive.

"Awesome!"

It felt as clean as changing into fresh underwear on New Year's morning; he didn't act like a wounded man at all—he leapt straight off the bed and punched the ceiling…

"Wait, where's my right arm?!!"

When Zang Ma and Snow Plum entered and saw him, they found the man who had just awakened now slumped lifelessly in a corner of the room, as if burned to ash and turned to pale snow—where his right arm should have been, there was now only emptiness.

"Given the circumstances at the time, amputation was the only option," Zang Ma said, turning his head away, unable to bear looking.

He knew how devastating the loss of an arm would be—for any man, especially a martial artist who fought with his fists.

Combat power drastically reduced.

But it was an unavoidable choice: the shattered bone fragments embedded in his muscles, the tangled mess of meridians, the sludge-like flesh—everything had completely blocked treatment; even forced reattachment was impossible.

He couldn't imagine how he'd ever summoned such terrifying power from that arm.

Jia Ji wasn't a demon; though his formidable recovery could heal wounds, it couldn't regrow severed limbs. His rapid awakening was thanks only to Huan Hai and Snow Plum's alternating rescue efforts.

Snow Plum handed him a block of frozen arm ice—finally stirring a reaction from the despondent Jia Ji…

"Take it away, take it away!"

But his reaction was overly violent.

She dared to hold it—he dared not even look, frantically swinging his other arm… and accidentally shattered his own remaining arm.

"Ugh…"

Everyone fell silent.

Now, even reattaching his original arm was impossible.

"I need to find a new arm…"

Jia Ji pondered, weighed down by the thought.

There were many ways—he instantly thought of several.

He could steal Najehtia's arm, have it modified into a cannon, train the Nan Dou Human Cannonball, then find a Dragon-Slaying Sword and cosplay Gazi or Yang Guo.

He could go to the Black Bullet world and have a prosthetic arm forged from Zhen Metal—no, three or five would be fine too.

He could just switch straight to a cyber-martial arts aesthetic—Armor Demon, Ghost Wailing Street, all of it could be brought to life.

"But no matter what, it'll never be as good as the original."

Whether cyber-limbs could be used to perform acupoint techniques or project battle qi was uncertain—but these steel constructs could never match the hardness of his thousand-times-forged muscles; in higher-level battles, how could they possibly endure?

Moreover, prosthetics are always prime targets for enemies; a couple of punches and they'd be destroyed, disrupting every movement and balance, creating new weaknesses for free.

"So… after Huyu Ludi died, didn't he leave behind anything like a Shark Arm or Flame Arm I could attach?"

Though he knew Huyu Ludi had been reduced to fragments, Jia Ji still couldn't help asking—he received a simultaneous shake of the head from both of them.

"Don't worry."

Snow Plum, who should have been more distressed than Zang Ma, suddenly spoke to comfort him:

"Sister Zi says she has a way."

(End of Chapter)