Chapter 124: A Breath of Spiritual Energy

Su Xing landed and turned around. Before he could make any move or attack, a massive palm slapped down from the air.

A tremendous wind pressure descended from above. In that instant, the entire world went still once more, and those endless scenes replayed in his mind.

Dodge—not enough speed...

Brace—would be smashed to pieces...

Go down—would be crushed into the ground...

The immense force, the incomparable speed, and a force field invisible to the naked eye but undeniably present, prevented the ground from being easily destroyed like a fluid upon impact. For Su Xing to withstand this slap was equivalent to contending with an intangible force field.

A hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times...

Then, time flowed, and the world returned to normal. Su Xing stood his ground, raising his great blade high. At the same time, he tensed his limbs against his body, stretching himself as thin and long as possible, and as the palm descended, he thrust the blade upward.

The palm was also made of bone, devoid of any flesh or blood. As Su Xing’s great blade thrust upward, it happened to wedge into a joint. With a crisp crack, a piece of bone on the palm shattered, and bone shards and splinters fell to the ground, grazing Su Xing’s front and back.

In an instant, Su Xing’s entire body was lacerated, blood spraying out from dense cuts. But he had no time to care. His muscles rippled, contracting to close the wounds, and with a stomp of his feet, he charged up the skeletal arm, rushing toward the creature’s body.

But the next second, halfway up, Su Xing leaped away. Two more palms slapped down like lightning, striking the spot where he had just been standing. The shockwaves surged and expanded, the massive roar echoing throughout the entire plaza.

Su Xing jumped away at the last possible second. As he leaped, his hands reached up, grabbing the lower end of the arm bone. The moment the other two arms finished their strike, he exploded with strength, his body flipping upward to land exactly between the two palms as they clapped together. He stood upon them, crouched, and erupted—not to jump, but to channel all his power into his great blade.

A white rainbow cut through the air, piercing exactly into the bone Vajra pestle held in the skeleton’s fourth arm.

Initially, the skeleton had only revealed two arms—one holding the bone Vajra pestle and one holding a giant bone sword. By now, it had discarded the sword, with only one hand holding the pestle while the other three were busy slapping at Su Xing. Just as it prepared to raise the pestle again, Su Xing’s great blade was thrown.

A white light flashed. The blade pierced the very center of the Vajra pestle. From that point, the pestle began to crumble inch by inch. In the blink of an eye, the bone Vajra pestle turned into a pile of white bone fragments on the ground.

This scene seemed to shock the skeleton. It tilted, its head turning toward the spot where the pestle had shattered. Seizing this opportunity, Su Xing sprang from the two bone palms, charging toward the skeleton’s head once more. Thirty meters, twenty meters, ten meters...

Seeing Su Xing about to rush along its arm toward its head, the skeleton’s head remained looking down at the ground. This sight filled Su Xing with wild joy.

But the next instant, another head emerged from beside the first. This descendant of the Peacock King skeleton was actually two-headed and four-armed!?

This head stared at Su Xing. Just then, Su Xing leaped from the arm, lunging toward the head with no leverage in mid-air. The next instant, the arm that had been holding the Vajra pestle moved from stillness to motion, slapping down with a *thwack* onto Su Xing.

One palm pressed Su Xing straight from mid-air into the ground!

A thunderous explosion shook the earth. Countless stone fragments were blasted outward. A crater over thirty meters deep and nearly two hundred meters wide appeared on the ground, and Su Xing’s broken body was pinned firmly in the center, embedded in the surface of a giant rock.

With this single strike, almost all his bones were shattered, and his internal organs were nearly destroyed. His intestines and liver were squeezed out from the side of his body. Except for his head, which had been shielded by his two arms crossed above it, barely retaining a human shape, Su Xing now looked no different from a meat patty.

Mental negative backlash rate: 21%, 22%, 23%...

At the same time, the skeleton knelt up, supporting itself with its broken thigh bone. Both heads looked down at the meat patty in the crater. Seeing the muscles still weakly twitching, all four arms raised simultaneously. A faint light gathered on the four palms, and the faint golden-green color on the skeleton seemed to be converging toward them. The next second, the four palms descended from the sky, slamming fiercely toward Su Xing.

Just as the four palms were four or five meters away from Su Xing, just as Su Xing’s eyes were turning from crimson to pitch black, just as his muscles and bones were gradually becoming life-like...

The Peacock King descendant skeleton stopped all movement. The light in the pupils of its two heads gradually dissipated, and the skeleton, the giant bone sword, and the shattered bone Vajra pestle all turned into fly ash and vanished.

One minute... time was up!

In Su Xing’s sea of consciousness, the already extremely faint Sleepless Spiritual Light suddenly burned brilliantly once more, suppressing the wildly surging negative mental backlash, causing Su Xing’s eyes to turn from pitch black back to blood red, then slowly return to calm.

In an instant, infinite pain and negativity surged in, nearly causing Su Xing to pass out immediately. This was pain beyond a normal person’s imagination—not just physical pain, but mental and spiritual agony.

(Can't pass out, can't pass out, Jiu Jiu is still in danger...)

Su Xing’s upper and lower jaws were shattered, and all his teeth had fallen out. At this moment, he couldn't even grit his teeth to persevere; he could only use every ounce of his spirit and energy to fight and endure this pain.

But just then, an inexplicable chill emerged from where the skeleton had vanished. It was intangible and formless, yet the moment it touched Su Xing, it triggered a reaction. The pain in his body immediately dissipated significantly, and a cool sensation coursed through him, giving his rapidly dying body a surge of energy. There were even signs of healing between his flesh, and his bone marrow was producing blood at an unimaginable speed.

What shocked Su Xing the most was that his internal energy reserves hadn't decreased in the slightest, yet his flesh was healing, and his blood was being replenished!?

Mass and energy were being created out of thin air!?

It wasn't just Su Xing; Jiu Jiu and Daphne in the distance also recovered from their dehydrated, dying state. This invisible chill allowed both of them to regain their senses within seconds, even despite severe dehydration, and their bodies could move freely without hindrance. At this moment, the two women struggled to their feet and looked toward the distant battlefield ruins and the massive crater.

They had just been trapped in a state of extreme dehydration, but they roughly knew what had happened and knew Su Xing was at the bottom of that crater. Neither of them cared about anything else now, and they ran rapidly toward the crater.

But they were at least ten thousand meters away from the crater. Before they could even run a thousand meters, everything around them began to blur. Thick fog appeared out of nowhere, obscuring the massive plaza and the giant skeletons around it...

Su Xing, unable to move at the bottom of the crater, knew this chill was definitely a good thing. It was very likely the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy that the demon race pursued.

He immediately began to use all his strength to heal his lungs. He would use whatever he healed to breathe, using every ounce of energy to gasp for air. Secondly, he followed the cultivation method of the *Iron Refining Record*. However, since he couldn't move his body and couldn't assume a cultivation posture, he couldn't circulate his qi and blood. The only thing he could do was visualize in his mind and adjust his breathing, using the *Iron Refining Record*’s method.

During this process, in just a few seconds, the images and inscriptions in his visualization began to emit light in his sea of consciousness. At the same time, as the breathing technique progressed, Su Xing suddenly felt a trace of "sharpness" in the air he was breathing.

But that was all he could manage, as the surroundings gradually blurred and thick fog covered everything.

He didn't know how much time had passed. When Su Xing came to his senses, what appeared before him was the scene of the sewer. The entrance to the graveyard area was behind him, and Jiu Jiu and Daphne had also appeared beside him.

"We left the graveyard area!?" Daphne looked around in surprise and shouted.

Jiu Jiu didn't care about anything else and rushed to Su Xing’s side, but she didn't dare to reach out and hug him because Su Xing was now completely falling apart. His limbs were gone, his torso was a pulp of meat, and except for his head, which was slightly intact, he looked more like a corpse than a corpse!

!

Just then, Jiu Jiu’s body tightened, and she began to shrink. A second or two later, she transformed back into a small emerald-green bird. Daphne, watching from the side, found it strange and squatted down, saying, "You really can transform into your original form?"

Jiu Jiu ignored her and just hopped beside Su Xing, chirping incessantly.

Su Xing opened his eyes, and the voice of the Main Brain echoed in his mind.

"You have completed the guarding mission. The Nightmare will be unable to detect the location of your shelter for thirty days."

"You have established a Level 2 shelter."

"You may carry life (non-human, non-Nightmare) back and forth between this shelter and the real world."

"You have received a reward of one personal attribute increase by one level (non-limit-breaking)."

"You have received a reward of waking five sleeping maintenance personnel."

"You must return to the world where this shelter is located every thirty days and stay for seven days."

"Return now?"

Su Xing was silent for a moment, then said to Daphne in an extremely weak and hoarse voice, "Turn into a dog."

Daphne immediately said angrily, "What dog!? I am a princess of the White Wolf tribe!!"

Su Xing’s eyes were calm and waveless as he said again, "Last time I'll say it: turn into a Samoyed."

Daphne originally wanted to retort, but inexplicably, her beastly intuition urged her to transform immediately.

The next second, a snow-white Samoyed appeared beside Su Xing.

"Return now? Carry the Samoyed (Alien) back?"

Su Xing whispered, "Main Brain, return to Gaia."

The next instant, Su Xing, Jiu Jiu, and the Samoyed vanished from the spot.