Chapter 501: Climactic Showdown

Lin Fan moved.

No charge, no wind‑up, the Black Water beneath him surged back, and all the spreading resentment rushed back into the blade within a fraction of a second.

He turned into a vertical line and vanished from Lu Yu's sight.

Lu Yu's pupils contracted sharply—fast.

Faster by an order of magnitude than before.

Lin Fan was still a person when he drew the blade, but by the time the blade left his hand only his outline remained. The Blue Flame of the Nether burst along the blade's spine into an arc, wrapping thick Black Water of resentment, illuminating the shattered ceiling of the experimental chamber.

The blade cut in.

Lu Yu instinctively extended his right palm, and a voracious vortex at his chest spun out three Devouring chains that bit at the blade from different angles.

He had used this move countless times.

He used it in the apocalypse. He used it in Qiu Ce Yuan. He also used it in Zhang Yuanqing's trial court.

When the chains hit a target, the target becomes trapped or is directly drained to death by him.

No exceptions.

Yet this time, the moment the chain clamped the blue blade, the surface of the chain links sparked a layer of blue flame.

The fire was small.

Yet it drilled inward along the chain.

The Devouring Rule consumes from the outside inward.

Hellfire is the opposite—it burns from the inside outward.

The two logics collided, and the conceptual structure of the chain was ignited from within.

Lu Yu's right arm went numb.

The three Devouring chains exploded simultaneously; the fragments, before they could be reclaimed, were burned by the blue flame into ash.

"......!"

Lu Yu stepped back half a pace.

Half a pace.

It was his first retreat since confronting Zhang Yuanqing.

Lin Fan gave him no time to recover. The blade's motion never ceased, delivering a second slash that included both man and sword. Black Water, following the blade's wind, formed an arcing wave wall that lifted the alloy plates on the experimental chamber floor, twisting the fragments into a metallic rain curtain.

Lu Yu gritted his teeth.

The outer shell of the Fumo·Xingtian domain had already shattered more than half during the earlier stalemate with Lin Fan. Maintaining the domain further would only create more gaps for the opponent to exploit.

He decisively withdrew the domain.

Darkness receded into his body like the tide going out, revealing the experimental chamber's original, scar‑filled state. Half the light tubes had exploded; the remaining few hung in mid‑air, swaying, the light flickering intermittently.

Lu Yu's figure sank.

The Devouring Rule of his right palm no longer radiated outward; instead it compressed into a thin layer covering his skin. His fingertips turned black. His five fingers clenched together.

He chose close combat.

This was his capital for surviving to the end in the apocalypse.

Not Weird power.

It was his fists.

Lin Fan's second blade came down. Lu Yu sidestepped the blade, his left hand gripping Lin Fan's sword‑holding wrist, his right palm sliding along the blade's outer edge, his five fingers thrusting toward Lin Fan's rib cage.

The Devouring membrane on his fingertips met the Black Water shield—did not shatter.

But it tore a slit.

Lin Fan let out a muffled grunt. A scorching tearing sensation rose from beneath his ribs; a small piece of Black Water was ripped out forcibly. That piece struggled in Lu Yu's palm for half a second before being completely devoured.

"Your Black Water isn't a steel plate," Lu Yu said softly.

The answer was an elbow strike.

Lin Fan abandoned the blade.

To be precise, the blade wasn't thrown; it transformed back into Black Water that coiled around his left arm, freeing his right hand, which delivered a punch to the hand that Lu Yu had holding his wrist.

Bone struck bone.

Lu Yu's thenar area went numb; he released his grip and stepped back, Lin Fan advanced half a step, sweeping a Black Water blade across his left arm. Lu Yu crouched to evade, his knee thrust toward Lin Fan's abdomen, blocked by Lin Fan's raised knee.

The two exchanged seven or eight moves within less than three meters.

The alloy floor was scored with spider‑web cracks by their steps.

Every reverberation from each fist‑foot clash shattered the surrounding containment‑chamber glass.

Su Ming stood at the passageway entrance, his brows twitching.

This didn't look like a duel.

It was more like two combat machines dismantling each other's parts.

Lu Yu's body technique, honed in the apocalypse, was clean and decisive, each strike targeting vital points. Lin Fan's tactics were wilder, lacking form, relying purely on instinct and the reflex speed granted by his Symbiosis.

Yet Lin Fan gained a huge advantage.

He wasn't afraid of blood exchange.

Lu Yu's Devouring Rule tore a small piece of Black Water from him; his Hellfire could then burn back along the wound. In both directions, Lu Yu expended more than he ingested.

Lu Yu also noticed.

After seven moves, his breathing quickened by half a beat.

The Devouring membrane on his fingertips began to show blue scorch marks. The marks were shallow, but each additional one caused the rule's operation to stutter for an instant.

He took two steps back, widening the distance.

Lin Fan didn't pursue.

The two stared at each other across four meters.

The fragments on the ground kept clinking and falling down.

Lu Yu lowered his head and glanced at his right hand. Between his fingers, three eerie‑blue scorch marks were spreading toward the palm, burning very slowly, yet they would not be extinguished.

He tried to use the Devouring Rule to consume those scorch marks.

He couldn't eat them.

Hellfire, once it clung, would not leave. Like taffy. Like a curse that cannot be shaken off.

"Your fire isn't ordinary resentment," Lu Yu lifted his gaze.

Lin Fan gave no reply. He lowered his head and glanced at Ling Xinyu beside him.

Ling Xinyu was crouching beside Lin Zhi, her ten fingers flying, dense eerie‑blue flame threads stitching into Lin Zhi's shattered Fierce Ghost Core. Her spirit, having output too much resentment, had become semi‑transparent, and the tips of her hair drifted gently in the windless test chamber.

A fragment of Lin Zhi's red garment gathered together again.

Just a little.

But Ji Bai, lying a few steps away, when he saw that dark red flare up again, his ten fingers gouged deep blood marks into the ground.

It wasn't pain.

It was the fear of blinking.

Afraid that a blink would make that red vanish.

Lu Yu also saw Ling Xinyu's movement.

His gaze deepened.

Then—he moved.

It wasn't a charge at Lin Fan.

He braced against the lingering blade aura residue that Lin Fan had slashed half a second earlier, compressing the black core in his chest to the size of a fist. His body recoiled explosively, his toe tapping the shattered alloy plates twice, the trajectory tracing a weird arc.

He circled around Lin Fan.

Target: Ling Xinyu.

And at Ling Xinyu's feet, Lin Zhi's core had only one strand of integrity left.

Lin Fan reacted instantly; as his body turned, the Black Water blade had already surged forward. But Lu Yu's change of direction was too sudden, and the maximally compressed black core streaked like a black lightning, skimming the ground over the debris heap, lunging straight at Ling Xinyu's back.

Ling Xinyu didn't look back.

She felt it. The devouring suction behind her made the edges of her semi‑transparent spirit tingle, and her entire being was being pulled backward.

But her fingers didn't stop.

The final three threads, still three short, would let Lin Zhi's core stabilize.

Su Xiaoya screamed and lunged forward, trying to use her shattered resentful body to block the black core. She spread her arms, and a canopy cloth fell out of her chest.

It couldn't block.

The gap was too great.

Su Xiaoya's resentful body touched the edge of the black core, and was rolled up and torn like paper.

Ji Bai stared intently at the black core, blood vessels filling his eyes. His legs were ruined, his left arm also ruined, but his right hand could still move.

He pressed his right hand to the ground and, with the still functional hand, clutched Ling Xinyu's skirt hem tightly.

It was useless.

His strength was almost zero.

That grab was pure instinct.

Ling Xinyu lowered her head and gave him a glance.

Ji Bai's lips twitched, but no sound came out.

Ling Xinyu turned back, thrusting the final three eerie‑blue flame threads into Lin Zhi's core simultaneously, and then—let go.

She didn't run.

She didn't dodge.

She only turned around, facing the incoming black core.

Quasi‑S resentment exploded around her. It wasn't an attack form, but a shield. She slammed all her remaining strength forward, hard‑blocking.

The black core slammed into the resentment shield.

Ling Xinyu's spirit had its entire left arm devoured by the devouring force.

She didn't scream. A strand of blood bled from the corner of her mouth—no, ghosts have no blood. It was a red line of condensed resentment seeping from her lip.

At the same time.

Lin Fan's left eye widened sharply.

From that human eye burst something entirely different from the right eye. It wasn't resentment, it wasn't Hellfire.

It was anger.

Pure, scorching, living‑human anger.

Black Water went mad at that moment.

It wasn't an attack; it was a tsunami.

All the Black Water on the floor of the test chamber surged up at once, coalescing into a three‑meter‑high heavy shield, its surface covered with dense, malicious resentment characters. Those characters had no logic, no pattern, merely spontaneous condensations of resentment—hate, kill, return, owe, repay.

The heavy shield slammed toward the black core.

Boom—

It wasn't an explosive boom. It was the moan of space itself as two rules crushed each other.

The black core was flattened by the Black Water heavy shield.

The Devouring Rule, polluted by blue flame, lost its stable structure, like a broken heart that beat twice before shattering.

Lin Fan used the rebound force of the heavy shield, twisted his waist and turned, raised his left‑arm Black Water Knife high, and slashed down from above, body and knife together.

Lu Yu didn't have time to retract the black core he had released.

The blade edge grazed his left shoulder.

A charred smell rose from his scapula. Blue Flame of the Nether seeped along the wound inward, and Lu Yu's entire left arm instantly went numb and drooped.

The flesh peeled back.

Blue smoke billowed from the edge of the wound.

It does not heal.

The Devouring Rule tried to close the wound, but the Hellfire lodged in the flesh burned each attempt at repair back.

Lu Yu stepped back five paces.

His back hit the only remaining intact wall of the test chamber.

He lowered his head to stare at the still‑burning wound on his left shoulder, his eyes a terrifying depth.

Does it hurt?

It hurts.

But it wasn't the pain that changed his expression.

It was the meaning of that wound.

Since his rebirth, no one had ever left an incurable wound on him.

Jiang Yuan didn't.

Chen Shao didn't.

The blue‑eyed boy before him did.

Ling Xinyu, after losing the spirit of her left arm, collapsed beside Lin Zhi, her left arm slowly regrew, but half of her body became faintly transparent. Lin Zhi's Core steadied. The few blue‑flame threads were tightly sewn over the fissure, and the dark‑red spirit no longer dissipated.

Ji Bai heard it.

He heard Lin Zhi's Core start beating again.

The sound was faint.

So faint it was almost drowned by the aftershocks in the ruins.

But he heard it.

Ji Bai buried his face in his arm, his shoulders trembling violently.

He made no sound.

His jaw clenched to the point of breaking.

Su Xiaoya crawled back to his side, clutching the piece of canvas; tears fell from his shattered face into the pool of blood, emitting a faint blue glow.

Lin Fan stood where he was, the tip of his blade hanging down. Black Water wound slowly around his ankle, and the blue‑flame hue cast his profile half in light, half in shadow.

He was waiting.

Waiting for Lu Yu's next move.

Lu Yu leaned against the wall, his left arm ruined, his right hand pressed against the edge of the vortex on his chest.

The vortex was still rotating.

And it spun deeper and deeper.

That was the second‑stage omen of the Taotie Core.

Once released, the entire underground facility would be drawn in.

Lu Yu's lips moved, as if performing a calculation. The blue flame of the wound burned his forehead into sweat, yet his eyes cooled again.

He intended to unleash the Taotie completely.

But he didn't have time.

The passage direction, the air exploded.

A sharp, tearing sound ripped through the ruins, metal shards propelled by the shockwave hurled in all directions.

Su Ming's figure flashed out from the debris; the temporal turbulence field released by the Time Marrow Worm spread along the ground, temporarily halting the flow of Black Water beneath Lin Fan's feet.

Immediately after, Liang Wen's Black Flame Knife sliced a arc from the side, cutting the line of sight between Lin Fan and Lu Yu.

Two Core Captains arrived at the same time.

Su Ming landed in front of Lu Yu, back to him, facing Lin Fan.

Liang Wen guarded the flank, his Black Flame Knife held horizontally before his chest, the flame pressed low, not a single flippant remark escaped.

Su Ming's Communicator was still ringing.

Lord Wei's voice came from within, steady and deep, like a stone slab pressing a coffin lid.

"Protect Lu Yu. Alive."

He paused.

"At any cost."