Chapter 52: Enter the Formation

Ten deflections, ten annihilations!

Night battle in eight directions!

Divine abilities and skills activated simultaneously, eighty blade auras shot out instantly; under Chen Shicheng's precise control, they shattered the incoming blade intent, and the remaining blade aura momentum did not diminish, flying farther until it slowly dissipated at the limit distance.

But this attack was like stabbing a hornet's nest; the blade intent in the distance also began to stir, turning in all directions and aiming at Chen Shicheng, who was poised to strike.

"Holy shit! Hui Siye, hurry up and command, I can't hold on!"

Although with the boost of the Enlightened Tiger Claw, he only needed to move a finger to unleash ten times more blade aura than before, but that strike seemed to have invited disaster—ten thousand strands of blade intent were aimed at him; even with six arms, he couldn't possibly block it.

"Retract your strength, don't go all out, bend your waist, take six steps to the left," Hui Siye's urgent voice sounded on his shoulder.

"Got it!"

Chen Shicheng had no hesitation; he moved precisely according to Hui Siye's command.

Sure enough, after he moved to the designated spot, the blade intent seemed to lose its target; the vast majority subsided, but a small fraction remained relentless, continuing to slash at him.

However, this little slip was still within his ability; he merely flicked a finger, and the blade aura easily neutralized the attack.

However, after retracting his strength, while the blade aura's attack range shrank, its power also decreased, so it could not perfectly cancel the blade intent; a thread of blade intent actually entered his body through an invisible connection.

Dozens of blade intents raced wildly through his meridians, like countless knives slicing him internally; the intense pain almost made Chen Shicheng grind his back molars to pieces.

Fortunately, this sensation lasted only an instant.

As the blade intent entered his body, his qi and blood instantly boiled over, surging like moths to a flame to obliterate those intruders.

However, these blade intents originating from the Immortal-Slaying Flying Blade were extraordinarily refined, even surpassing blade aura by one level in quality; erasing just one required a huge amount of qi and blood.

Yet after all the blade intents were worn away, Chen Shicheng's qi and blood had dwindled to only two-thirds.

Fortunately, his dantian still held a Blood Killing Pearl; its reserve of nearly ten thousand True Essence instantly overflowed, replenishing his consumed qi and blood to peak condition, letting him let out a long sigh of relief.

"Master Hui, how far is your corpse from here?"

"It's more than thirty zhang away; hold on a bit longer, we'll be there soon!"

Chen Shicheng mentally converted thirty-plus zhang into distance, then rolled his eyes in speechless disbelief.

In meters, that's about a hundred meters or so; it doesn't sound far—just a few dozen seconds on foot.

But in reality, he had to walk along the formation's nodes, unable to take a straight line.

This multiplied the distance severalfold, and he wasn't sure whether the True Essence stored in the Blood Killing Pearl would hold up; glancing inside, he saw over nine thousand nine hundred True Essence remaining, so Chen Shicheng could only pray that the rest of the journey would go smoothly, otherwise he might truly have to sacrifice his life to fill this path.

Following Hui Siye's command, he moved like a marionette, in an extremely awkward posture, twisting and turning across the flat ground, gradually approaching the corpse's location.

As he pressed forward, his worries became reality.

The blade intents invading his body grew more numerous and powerful, draining his qi and blood ever faster; the True Essence reserve inside the Blood Killing Pearl was also being consumed wildly, dropping from over nine thousand to over seven thousand in no time.

Nevertheless, the replenishment of True Essence still had a delay; gradually, the blade intents within him coalesced into a gleaming blade of light that slowly crept toward his neck.

"Damn, I need to rest!" Bearing the excruciating pain of blades moving inside him, Chen Shicheng stopped at a node, frantically drawing True Essence from the Blood Killing Pearl in an attempt to extinguish the already-formed blade intent.

"Why did you stop? We're almost there."

Seeing the tiny black dot not far away, Hui Siye urged him anxiously.

"If you don't stop, you'll see my body torn apart, blood spraying everywhere." Chen Shicheng complained while flicking his fingers to unleash blade aura.

Anyone who has been killed by the Immortal-Slaying Flying Blade knows the agony of being helplessly watched as one's head is severed by a single blade.

Hui Siye was no exception.

Seeing Chen Shicheng's furrowed brow as he strained to mobilize his qi and blood, Hui Siye ventured, "How about we die once first, go back and prepare, then try again—at least you should reach Qi Refining first."

Looking at Chen Shicheng with his brows tightly furrowed, fully exerting himself to mobilize his qi and blood, Hui Siye said tentatively, "How about we die once first, go back, prepare, then come again; at least you also need to reach Qi Refining first, right?"

"What a joke—death is impossible, I won't die at all in this lifetime." Chen Shicheng rejected the suggestion without a second thought.

He was indifferent to death yet also resisted it.

Even if he could be revived after dying here.

When his parents were in the intensive care unit, Chen Shicheng, as a caregiver, almost daily witnessed family members wailing in anguish as they pushed out corpses covered in white sheets.

As time passed, he seemed to grow accustomed to it, actually developing a hint of indifference toward the concept of death.

But when his parents were declared dead, this indifference gradually turned into an instinctive fear; the clash between instinct and reason created a great contradiction, causing him to be both indifferent to death and fiercely resistant to it.

Thus, at the brothel's entrance, when Yu Wei described the killing process, he would be driven mad by this contradiction—transforming from an ordinary peacetime person who would rush to the hospital at the slightest discomfort into a frenzy who would bite a chunk of flesh from his opponent even if limbless.

In just a moment, he thought of so much.

He shook his head to fling those chaotic thoughts from his mind, and Chen Shicheng began searching for the key to break the deadlock.

"Skills?" No good—even if his current skills were upgraded, they wouldn't help with this predicament at all.

"Cultivation method?"

"No way—even if he had a Qi Refining cultivation method, he couldn't level up without elixir aid, and his experience points were only 5-88, still 12 shy of what's needed for advancement."

"Wait—" Chen Shicheng suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

"Since he can't level up, he can instead comprehend a cultivation method."

"System rewards of the same type are likely identical; if he becomes the first player to self-comprehend a Qi Refining method, then popping an elixir would be even more powerful than leveling up!"

"After his qi attribute increases, his total qi and blood will rise, making it possible to block that blade of light—perhaps he could even erase it in one go."

"Of course, if the system's rewards differ from those of the Body Refining stage, then he'll have to think of other solutions."

"In any case, he would never easily accept death!" (End of chapter)