Chapter 466: Main Course

The torrent of neon‑green resentment souls, numbering two hundred and thirteen, slammed into Lu Yu at that instant, and every remaining light source in the courtroom dimmed by half a beat.

It didn't go out; it was simply obscured by the overwhelming tide of resentment.

Each resentment soul was no longer a translucent phantom. Under Zhang Yuanqing's Karma‑catalyzed infusion, they solidified—interlocking, splicing, and warping the wreckage of miners crushed in the mining disaster, sprouting extra arms and joints that were not human.

Some dragged half‑broken mine carts, some still clutched rusted rail fragments in their mouths, and some simply ripped out their own spines to use as spears, the tips blazing with neon‑green resentment fire.

Hundreds to thousands.

That number, compressed between the courtroom's bone walls, was terrifyingly dense. The visual impact rivaled standing downstream of a breached dam— you see the wave crest, but you have no time to flee.

Su Ming's barrel was still raised beside his temple, not yet lowered. From his close viewpoint, he could clearly see the faces of the composite horror beings at the forefront.

Those faces had no features, only uneven outlines formed from slag and broken bones, and two clusters of ghostly green phosphor fire sunk deep into the skulls.

Their speed was so fast it seemed inhuman.

Su Ming's pupils caught the first row of horrors within less than three meters of Lu Yu—two meters—one meter—

He opened his mouth to shout something.

But nothing came out.

Because Lu Yu laughed.

Not the polite, courteous smile of a model student from Qiu Ce Yuan. It was the predator's grin that involuntarily twitches at the corner of the mouth once the prey has walked right to it.

Cruel. Pure. Even with a hint of pleasure.

Lu Yu's chest lit up.

No, it didn't light up. It collapsed.

The fabric over his school‑uniform chest, without any external force, indented inward in a fist‑sized curve. The center of the dent emitted a dim dark‑red glow, which then swelled, inhaled, exhaled, and quivered—like a heart sealed for ages finally beating again at this moment.

Then came a suction.

Everyone felt it simultaneously.

It wasn't wind. Wind has direction, blowing from A to B. This was different. The force radiated outward from the center of Lu Yu's chest, yet pulled everything toward him—ground‑level broken bones, airborne slag, floating Karma dust, even the peeled law‑script fragments from the courtroom's bone walls—all drifting toward Lu Yu.

Like a black hole.

Su Ming's hair was sucked flat against his forehead; he instinctively tightened his grip on the pistol and drew his body back half a step.

Jiang Yuan lay amid the broken bones, feeling the empty Card Bag at his waist being pulled forward, his trouser belt tightening.

And the horror at the front collided.

The first composite horror that touched Lu Yu's aura was a four‑armed grotesque formed from three miners' remains. Its two broken spines served as spears, with enough penetration to pierce steel, thrusting straight at Lu Yu's throat.

When the spear tip reached the air three centimeters beyond Lu Yu's skin—

It vanished.

The spear tip disappeared. Then the shaft vanished. Then the arm holding it vanished. Then the entire composite—head to toe, bone to soul, substance to rule—fell like a snowflake into a scalding oil pan.

It wasn't shattering. It wasn't exploding. It wasn't any demise with a violent aesthetic.

It was decomposition.

A microscopic, thorough, irreversible decomposition. Every component of that composite—fragments of the resentment souls' consciousness, Karma's energy lattice, the material carriers of slag and bone—upon touching the suction, was broken down into fundamental particles, which traveled through an invisible conduit into the dark‑red dent in Lu Yu's chest.

Not even a scream.

From existence to non‑existence, there was no transition, no struggle, no dignified farewell.

A single breath's span. The second, third, fourth—each of the dozen‑plus composite horrors in the front row sequentially brushed Lu Yu's aura edge, decomposed, and were devoured in turn.

The speed kept increasing.

The courtroom's temperature had risen to a scorching level due to Zhang Yuanqing's outburst, but after Lu Yu began devouring, it plummeted. It didn't become cold; heat was being drawn away, energy siphoned. Even the lingering burnt and sulfuric smells faded—as the thermal kinetic energy of odor molecules also converged onto Lu Yu.

Jiang Yuan stared dumbfounded.

He knelt amid the broken bones, mouth agape, a drop of blood from his bitten lip hanging on his chin.

His Shadow Legion also grew by devouring Weirdness. He knew the process well—each time he consumed a Weird, he had to suppress it with will, temper it, integrate it into a sequence before it could become his soldier. The whole procedure took seconds at best, or half a day at worst.

But Lu Yu's side—

No suppression. No tempering. No digestive stage.

Just eating.

Stuffing it into his mouth, not chewing, just swallowing.

And the faster he ate, the faster it went.

The twentieth. The fiftieth. The eightieth.

Lu Yu didn't even stand still waiting for them to come; he stepped forward.

His pace was unhurried, walking casually, the hem of his school uniform rustling in the gust. His left hand was in his trouser pocket, his right hand hung at his side, fingers slightly spread.

With each step, the floor tiles within a two‑meter radius beneath his soles collapsed into spider‑web cracks. Not shattered by pressure, but the Karma infused in the tiles was drawn out through his soles, leaving the bone‑like tiles energy‑deprived and crumbling into powder.

The hundredth horror vanished into nothing.

The number of resentment souls sharply dwindled at a visible rate.

Su Ming finally moved the barrel away from his temple. He stared at Lu Yu's silhouette, countless thoughts flashing through his mind like a revolving lantern, finally condensing into a single curse.

...... Fuck.

Liang Wen poked half a head out from the ruins, his eyeballs nearly popping out of their sockets. He had seen every known Yujue combat style at the Investigation Bureau—Jiang Yuan's Shadow Legion was a swarm‑type flow, Qin Zhixia's Wu Ming was a life‑burning burst flow, Chen Shao's Demon Eye was a mental‑control flow.

Lu Yu's what?

What kind of school is this?

All‑you‑can‑eat flow?

The one‑hundred‑fiftieth. The neon‑green tide of resentment souls that had once spread across the ground like an ocean had receded into a few pitiful puddles.

As Lu Yu passed a six‑armed giant composite rushing toward him, he didn't even glance at it. He casually lifted his right hand from beside his pocket, palm facing forward, and gave a push.

The six‑armed giant composite shattered into fine powder mid‑air. The fragments whirled half a circle around Lu Yu's fingertip, then were sucked into his palm, leaving no residue.

The side effect of this punch: the seventeen medium‑small weird entities arranged behind the giant composite were hit by the aftershock, twelve disintegrated on the spot, and the remaining five, like plastic dolls scorched by a steam iron, twisted and collapsed silently.

Chen Shao lay in the mudwater, his Demon Eye trembling violently.

He was scanning.

Using his almost‑splintering scarlet eyeball, he frantically scanned Lu Yu's energy readings.

The data were rising.

It was not linear growth. It was exponential. Each time a batch of weird entities was devoured, the energy density inside Lu Yu jumped a notch. Starting from the Quasi‑S threshold, it climbed—110%—140%—200%—

Chen Shao's Demon Eye reading got completely stuck at the number 237. It wasn't a ceiling; his Demon Eye's processing power couldn't keep up.

This kid......

Chen Shao's fingers gouged five deep marks in the mudwater.

He had seen Lu Yu in the B-09 Weird Domain block his way in front of Chen Yao, seen him grit his teeth to endure rule attacks, seen him covered in blood yet still crawling forward.

Back then he thought the youth was very combative, but ultimately he was just a brute‑type player who filled his role with his life.

So what was the result?

At that time Lu Yu was a toy with its lid closed.

The lid was lifted. What kind of thing was hidden underneath?

Chen Shao suddenly recalled Lu Yu's hollow eyes, not belonging to a youth, when he was carried out of the B-09 Weird Domain.

He had then thought it was the dispersal of consciousness after near death.

Now looking back—

At that time Lu Yu was restraining himself, holding that thing back.

The two‑hundredth.

There was not a single standing weird entity on the courtroom floor.

The remaining fragments of grievance spirits were still making a final struggle, trying to retreat into underground fissures, trying to reintegrate into the bone walls, trying to withdraw toward Zhang Yuanqing—

To no avail.

Lu Yu stood in the cleared courtroom center, tilting his head slightly, as if listening to a sound.

Then he hiccuped.

The sound was faint, yet in a courtroom so silent one could hear a heartbeat, it was especially clear.

Hic.

Su Ming: "......"

Jiang Yuan: "......"

Qin Zhixia's right eye squeezed out of the blood‑smeared mess and met Liang Wen's half‑emerged face from the ruins. The two expressions synchronized in a weird way.

Lu Yu pinched his own wrist, turned his neck, and the joints cracked twice.

The changes on his body were evident. His school uniform stretched a notch tighter than before, not due to muscle swelling—but density shifting. Bones, tendons, cellular structures were being reshaped by the surging energy. The dark‑red glow deep in his pupils had gone from faintly visible to continuously burning, like two lamps that the wind could not extinguish.

Occasionally a dark ripple ran across his skin, rolling from fingertip to shoulder before vanishing—an external sign of the devoured Weird energy circulating inside his body.

Su Ming's mind was racing. He had seen the abilities of various trick‑defiers. Jiang Yuan was parasitic‑fusion type. Chen Shao was Symbiosis‑modification type.

Lu Yu this—

Purely predatory type.

Devouring equals growth. No selectivity. No exclusion. No limit.

Theoretically, as long as there is enough Weird for him to consume, this youth can become stronger without limit.

Su Ming's hand gripping the gun grip trembled slightly. It was not fear.

It was post‑fear.

If the bone saw Zhang Yuanqing dropped earlier had fallen not two meters but zero—

If this youth had not come—

He and everyone present, including the Federation's strongest few cards, would have all been accounted for today.

Above the courtroom dome.

Zhang Yuanqing hovered mid‑air, the two curved bone horns dragging ghost‑flame tails that no longer fluttered. They were fixed, as if frozen in the air.

His face—the twisted visage, half covered by law bone armor, between human and deity—showed something beyond cracks for the first time in history.

Confusion.

And deeper within that confusion, something he stubbornly refused to admit.

Shock.

213 grievance spirits.

All gone.

Cleaned spotless. The floor shone brighter than any morgue he had ever tidied.

Zhang Yuanqing's 2.3‑meter‑tall body shrank imperceptibly by half a centimeter. The dense law characters on the bone armor flickered—not the previously steady scarlet, but with intermittent spasms, like an irregular Electrocardiogram.

The courtroom trembled.

It was not a physical collapse. It was conceptual.

The courtroom's foundation was grievance spirits. With the spirits devoured, the courtroom became a sky‑palace without a base.

Zhang Yuanqing felt it—the floating sensation rising from his soles.

He lowered his head, looking at Lu Yu standing in the courtroom center.

The youth tilted his head at him, slipped both hands back into his pockets. His school uniform was wrinkled, pant legs soaked, his face still dotted with a few luminous green fragments from the disintegrated weird entities.

Were it not for those eyes burning with dark‑red glow, this appearance on the street would be just a high‑schooler drenched in sweat after a basketball game.

And then this high‑schooler spoke.

"I ate until I was half-full."

Lu Yu licked his lips.

"Time to try the main dish."