187: Fighting to support war

Night is the best hunting ground.

Outside Qingzhou City, a three-person squad of mutated fanatics was patrolling the abandoned official road with blank expressions. They retained their human forms, but pale, arthropod-like bone spurs had grown from their backs, making teeth-grinding friction sounds as they moved.

In the shadows, a figure approached silently.

There was no Killing Intent, no fluctuations of Qi, just like a rolling stone.

When the lead fanatic turned its head and swept its gaze with those eyes that looked like whirlpools of flesh, a hand had already gently pressed onto the top of its head.

The [Spiritual Domain] quietly unfolded.

There was no earth-shattering lightning, nor any holy aura that purified all things. It was an ultimate, cold "erasure." The chaotic divinity power within the fanatic was like an ice cube thrown into a raging fire, instantly evaporating and dissolving.

Along with its physical body, it turned into dust.

The other two fanatics didn't even have time to react; the same process occurred in a flash.

Three clouds of dust scattered with the wind, leaving behind only three fingernail-sized divinity fragments on the spot, emitting a faint golden light.

Li Dong reached out, and the fragments automatically flew into his palm, immediately merging into his body.

The [Perfect Dao Body], like an insatiable furnace, instantly digested these fragments completely. A stream of pure energy surged into his Dantian, and on his Golden Core, which was covered in cracks, a tiny, imperceptible crack was slowly repaired.

"Still too little."

Li Dong felt the negligible growth within his body and muttered to himself.

For him, these small fries weren't even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth.

He was preparing to leave, but his gaze was drawn to something left on the ground. It wasn't divinity fragments, but some grayish, crystalline powder. This powder came from the bone spurs mutated by those fanatics.

He squatted down and picked up a pinch.

A peculiar aura mixed with divinity, resentment, and local eerie power wafted up.

"This is... a byproduct of Divine Power pollution?"

With a thought, he took out the "divinity core" seized from the capital.

As soon as the core appeared, the gray powder on the ground seemed to be drawn by some force, turning into tiny streams of light, all of which were absorbed by the core.

Hum—

The "divinity core" vibrated slightly, and the internal process of parsing the divinity Law seemed to have a negligible acceleration.

"Interesting," Li Dong became interested. "Is this reverse-parsing the mutation process? By relying on these 'pollutants', it can actually accelerate the decryption of the genuine Divine Power?"

This was truly an unexpected joy.

The Lord of Gods tried to use the local eerie power to catalyze his followers, but instead, he sent Li Dong a new key to crack it.

"This deal is worth it."

Over the next few hours, Li Dong transformed into the most efficient cleaner outside Qingzhou City.

He wouldn't make a move unless necessary, but when he did, it was with thunderous force, leaving no survivors. Squad after squad of fanatic patrols disappeared silently into the night.

He was like a farmer harvesting crops on his own farm, his movements skillful and calm.

The Golden Core in his Dantian was slowly repairing, and the "divinity core" was also constantly absorbing the mutation residues, becoming increasingly active.

This feeling of nourishing war through war made the [Perfect Dao Body] within Li Dong emit waves of excited rhythms.

City Lord's Mansion, above the flesh altar.

The gloomy figure sitting cross-legged under the pulsating crystal suddenly opened his eyes.

"Why has the speed at which the 'nutrients' outside the city disappear increased?"

His Divine Sense at the Middle Stage of the Golden Core swept across the entire city like a tide, then spread outside the city. However, apart from a few residual energy ripples, he found nothing.

"Hmph, a rat hiding its head and showing its tail."

He snorted coldly, and an order was transmitted through the altar.

Soon, more and stronger patrols poured out of the city, starting a carpet search outside the city.

Li Dong had long since restrained all his aura, hiding in a pile of rocks in a mountain col. He could clearly sense that Divine Sense sweeping over his head, but it did not stop.

"Casting a net? Pity, you cannot see my fishing hook."

He was planning to find another place to continue "jungling," but a burst of urgent fighting sounds and desperate roars came from not far away.

"Hold! Hold the Formation! Buy time for Old Zhang!"

"Captain, it's no good, there are too many of these monsters!"

Li Dong looked in the direction of the sound. Under the moonlight, a team of seven or eight people was surrounded by thirty or forty fanatics in a depression.

They were poorly equipped, and the one with the highest cultivation was only at the Late Stage of Qi Refining, currently desperately maintaining a crumbling defensive Formation.

Li Dong originally didn't want to meddle in other people's business; whether these people lived or died had nothing to do with him.

But he saw the fanatic surrounded in the very center at a glance.

That guy was a circle taller than its peers, the bone spurs on its back unfolded like a peacock's tail, emitting Qi fluctuations comparable to a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

"Oh? A slightly bigger one has arrived."

Li Dong changed his mind.

His figure flickered, cutting into the battle circle like a ghost.

The members of the resistance team only felt their vision blur, and a dark shadow swept past their precarious defensive Formation.

"Who is it?" the captain shouted out.

No one answered him.

The next moment, they saw a scene they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

That monster at the Foundation Establishment Stage that had driven them into a desperate situation seemed to have its throat gripped by an invisible giant hand, its entire body stiffening in place. Immediately after, a barely perceptible dark golden lightning flashed through its body.

There was no explosion, no loud noise.

The monster was like a punctured sandbag, disintegrating and dissipating inch by inch from the inside out, turning into dust on the ground.

Along with all the surrounding fanatics, they followed in its footsteps in just a few breaths.

In the depression, there was dead silence.

The members of the resistance team stared blankly at the empty surroundings, then looked at Li Dong, who was standing in the field without even a corner of his clothes ruffled, collectively speechless.

"Se...Senior..."

The captain was a bearded man; he trembled his lips and bowed deeply to Li Dong, "Many thanks to Senior for saving our lives!"

Li Dong didn't speak, just walked to the place where the Foundation Establishment monster disappeared, and collected the divinity fragment and mutation residues that were clearly brighter and larger than the other fragments.

After doing all this, he turned and prepared to leave.

"Senior, please stay!" the bearded man shouted hurriedly, taking out a tanned animal hide from his arms and offering it with both hands, "Senior has vast Divine Ability and is definitely not an ordinary person! We have nothing to repay you with. This map is the underground waterways inside the city that we spent months exploring. Perhaps... perhaps it might be useful to Senior!"

Li Dong's footsteps paused.

He took the animal hide map and unfolded it to look.

On it, crooked lines were drawn with charcoal, but one of them was highlighted with a red mark, and the end point pointed directly to the underground of the City Lord's Mansion.

He looked up at the man with a sincere face.

"We... we just want to survive, we want to avenge our dead family members." The man had tears in his eyes, "If Senior is going to deal with those beasts in the city, please be careful of the main passage under the altar, there..."

Li Dong put away the map, nodded imperceptibly at him, and flashed away, disappearing into the night.

"Captain, he... he just left like that?"

"Otherwise? You still want to keep the expert for a meal?" The bearded man let out a long sigh of relief, a trace of fanatical hope appearing on his face, "Heaven has eyes! This is a True God sent to save us!"

...

In a hidden cave, Li Dong finished digesting the energy he had just obtained, feeling that the Bottleneck of the Late Stage of the Golden Core had loosened a bit more.

The "hunger" within the [Perfect Dao Body] in his body became increasingly intense.

It not only craved Divine Power, but also seemed to have developed a craving for a higher level of... "life force."

The Middle Stage Golden Core agent on the altar, in his perception, was no longer just an enemy, but a feast emitting an alluring aroma.

The ancient stone slab in the Sea of Consciousness also vibrated in a timely manner, conveying urgency.

[Devour]

"Got it, got it."

Li Dong responded helplessly in his heart, as if comforting a temperamental child.

He spread out the animal hide map, his fingertips gently brushing over the red line leading to the underground of the City Lord's Mansion.

"The cleaning work is almost done, it's time to go and see the real master."

"The noise of knocking on the front door is too loud, it's more polite to use the back door."