Chapter 370: The Hollow

The bound corpse thrashed violently, slashing at the wooden log with a palm embedded with shark teeth.

Lu Hu's entire body bulged with veins, muscles taut to breaking, countless capillaries crushed and ruptured, turning his skin a strange bluish-black.

The Great Ox Demon Power, at first hearing, sounds like a third-rate martial art such as Taizu Long Fist or Five Tiger Severing Blade, but in truth, it was compiled by the Yong'an Emperor in collaboration with a host of imperial masters, drawing from over a dozen internal and external cultivation secrets.

"Huuu—"

Lu Hu exhaled two white streams from his nostrils; the blue stone beneath his feet shattered in chunks. He gripped the blazing wooden log with both arms and hurled the corpse toward the jagged rock garden.

The sharp-edged, grotesque rocks sliced the corpse into a thousand pieces. The half-burned log, still carrying momentum, slammed into the expressionless Tu Dongcong.

Tap.

Tu Dongcong stepped on the sweeping log, sprinted up its length toward Lu Hu, and thrust his whale-tusk spear straight at the latter's skull.

At the last possible moment, piercing whistles came from both sides; Sikong Lan and Cao Meng stood on opposite sides of the courtyard, shouldering single-man rocket launchers, firing two high-explosive incendiary rounds at Tu Dongcong with a "snap-shot" motion.

The smart guidance heads of the shells contained cameras and computing units that completed detection, identification, and verification in an instant, then auto-detonated.

Time seemed to slow, stretch, and freeze. Tu Dongcong raised his left arm, transformed into a giant clamshell, its metallic surface deflecting most of the blast force—but not the power hammer swung hard by Huiyu.

The clamshell shield exploded instantly. Tu Dongcong was flung backward, his body torn cleanly in two by the shockwave of the power hammer, his skull cracked open, oozing brain matter mixed with green and blue algae.

"Got one!"

Cao Meng exhaled in relief, about to turn and search for rocket ammo, when his peripheral vision caught the corpse of Tu Dongcong—

who, from the back of his right arm, suddenly sprouted several eyeballs, each as if alive, jerking upward to aim the whale-tusk spear directly at him.

In the next instant, the spear shot like an arrow through his skull. Cao Meng's vision went black. His consciousness severed.

"."

Li Cheng, still dueling Song Zhong high above, narrowed his pupils. These six newly risen corpses were biologically closer to marine creatures—

like an octopus with a single brain in the head and eight subsidiary brains in the tentacles, each limb capable of independent operation.

This was not evolution. It was more like devolution.

Thinking this, Li Cheng unleashed 【Leopard Leap: Double Jump】, forcibly altering his trajectory midair, and slashed Song Zhong apart with his flag spear from above.

The black column emerging from beneath the Tu ancestral hall was not solid—it was hollow inside, with countless pipes flowing with thick, pitch-black oil.

Li Cheng stood atop the column, plugged a skill mobility USB drive into himself, aimed at the hollow beneath Song Zhong's corpse, and punched downward.

【Ride the Tide: Whirlwind and Clouds】!

A hurricane roared into the black column; the already violent winds grew fiercer in the confined space, desperately seeking an outlet.

And then—

Hssssss!

Vast quantities of oil mixed with rotting flesh erupted from every corner of the column, like a black rain.

Soaking every inch of the once-opulent Tu family estate.

Li Cheng's expression did not change. In midair, he pulled out a 3D warehouse and dumped countless steel plates, cannon barrels, tracks, fuel tanks, and engines.

The upgrade to his Cannon Master rank granted him the skill 【Instant Assembly】. All parts were suspended in midair by invisible force, assembling themselves slowly yet swiftly into the shape of a war vehicle.

The unpolished, unpainted cannon barrels rotated slowly, aiming deep into the black column.

Then, they fired—launching solidified force-field energy.

On flat ground, this force-field energy could flatten reinforced concrete buildings like a demolition machine.

But now, the force-field energy acted like a blunt blade, slicing open the black column.

Riiip!

The black column shuddered as if struck by lightning; severed limbs and fragments rained down. Among them were the severed heads of earlier guests, their faces frozen in confusion.

Not enough. Li Cheng turned his palm into a fist and unleashed a hundred punches at the war vehicle's engine cover.

As the war vehicle fell under gravity, it carried with it Li Cheng's condensed-energy implosion fist marks, plunging into the interior of the black column.

Finally, it detonated together with the fuel tank and ammunition compartment.

Those still fighting on the surface heard only a rolling thunder explode beside their ears; the vertical raindrops were blasted sideways by the shockwave, turning into a horizontal deluge.

And that black column, towering like a giant tree, shattered into pieces, its form finally collapsing and crumbling apart.

The remaining corpses slowed abruptly, as if struck at their vital points.

Huiyu seized the opportunity. He swung his power hammer, smashing and crushing the corpses flat, then shoveling even their shattered remains into the fire.

Li Cheng, falling freely, fired his bat-hook gun into the ground, slid briefly, then landed steadily. He reversed his grip and plunged the flag spear into the earth, activating Skill Effect Two: 【Flag Plant Moment】, restoring his strength and healing the cracked webbing between his thumb and index finger on his palm.

"."

Lu Hu wore an expression neither quite crying nor laughing, his voice hoarse and rasping like a broken bellows: "Is it over?"

After the great battle, Cao Meng's head had been exploded by the whale-tusk spear; Xi Cai and Wu Ge had been killed—one electrocuted by an eel-like organ of a corpse, the other crushed by a mantis shrimp's fist. Only Lu Hu and Sikong Lan remained of the Brocade Uniform Guard.

The survivors now were only Zhang Fuluang, Ku Yu, Su Konghu, and Wang Biliu.

What was this all for?

Lu Hu desperately wanted to teleport back to Northern Zhili, grab his superior by the collar—the one who ordered him to "investigate the Tu family a bit"—and scream at him.

So many men died. The Brocade Uniform Guard was nearly annihilated. If the Great Ming court had known how grave the situation was, why send so few? Why not dispatch a full army to utterly exterminate the Tu family?

"Over? No. It's only just begun."

Li Cheng wiped rain from his glasses, strode to where the black column had fallen, and casually hurled a gravity energy ball to clear away the debris, revealing the perforated ground of the Tu ancestral hall.

He picked up the iron flag spear and poked the surface.

The already unstable ground could no longer hold. It collapsed instantly.

Beneath the black column lay a vast, gourd-shaped underground chamber. At its very bottom rested a magnificent, colossal bronze warship.

At the center of the ship lay a massive, blood-soaked three-legged frog.

Its body was covered with every man, woman, and child of the Tu family; its extended tongue was the black column above. Its overall form matched the three-legged frog stone statue Li Cheng, Sikong Lan, and Zhang Fuluang had seen in the Shi Shi mural—the symbol of the ancient Cangze Kingdom's origin.

"What the hell is this?!"

Su Konghu's pupils trembled violently. Though he now stood at the cliff's edge, looking down from above, before this colossal being that seemed to have walked straight out of a mythological age, a human was as insignificant as an ant.

"The Frog God, or rather, the ancestor of the Tu family."

(End of this chapter)