46: Your teacher has nothing to give you but this body...

His eyelids twitched from the pain; the sensation was sharp and real, a reminder that he wasn't dead yet.

The formation of the Inner Core meant he had reached what his grandfather called the Golden Core Realm for martial artists.

The pain gradually subsided, and a sense of immense power began to surge through his entire body.

Su Chen couldn't help but feel waves of comfort and strength.

"Pure Yang Divine Body, Second Layer Great Completion! Golden Core Realm!"

Coming back to his senses, Su Chen couldn't hide his joy.

He had actually broken through in strength first after compressing and merging the power of the two women!

With his current strength, dealing with ordinary zombies or mutant dogs would be effortless!

He remembered his old man saying that once a martial artist reached a certain stage, they could condense a Golden Core, and their strength would be extraordinary!

His vision slowly began to focus.

The first thing he saw was the cracked windshield on the dashboard.

Outside wasn't the expected wasteland highway, but a thick, impenetrable blue-gray mist.

The steering wheel, moving on its own, was making a piercing metallic grinding sound, as if a pair of invisible giant hands were forcing it to the left.

"It's turning around."

Zhao Wanting's voice drifted from behind him.

Su Chen turned his head with effort and saw her translucent phantom pressed against the car window.

Her ten fingernails were dug deep into the hard plastic dashboard, leaving several startling white gouges.

"The road is wrong."

Su Chen's voice was hoarse as he glanced at the navigation screen.

The green arrow that originally marked the "Yang Meridian Node" had vanished, replaced by a never-before-seen blood-red icon shaped like a distorted beast's head.

"Of course it's wrong."

Zhao Wanting turned her face, black blood streaming from her empty eye sockets.

"The Lin Family is summoning souls. Ahead is Bronze Mountain, the 'birthplace' of this bus."

"Su Chen, look at what's carved on that mountain."

Su Chen squinted, and through the rolling mist, he saw a metallic mountain rising ahead.

The mountain walls were densely carved with the Lin Family crest—a type of intertwining lotus with fangs.

"There are three hundred empty coffins there, all prepared for new Furnace Cores."

Zhao Wanting's fingers trembled neurotically.

"Once the bus enters, you will become the 'medicine' to be harvested."

Fuck, before I even got the chance to flip the table, those old geezers are planning to harvest me first?

Su Chen cursed inwardly.

Just as he was about to force himself up to retake control of the driving, a cold but trembling hand suddenly pressed down on his shoulder.

"Since this main seat wants the Lin Family's 'loyalty', then let's give it something with enough kick!"

Lin Mengyao had stood by the driver's seat at some point.

Her usually cold and proud face was now filled with madness, and her right hand violently snatched the jade pendant from her neck.

It was the token of the Lin Family head, but now she threw it like trash, slamming it hard against the bronze gears exposed through the cracks in the driver's seat leather.

"Shatter!"

She screamed, a mist of blood exploding from her fingertips.

*Crack*

With a crisp sound, the jade pendant crumbled into powder.

Su Chen clearly heard a shrill roar coming from deep beneath the bus.

It wasn't the cry of a living creature, but the instantaneous release of some resentment that had been suppressed for hundreds of years.

Plumes of black gas billowed out from the shattered jade pendant.

Like a living swamp, it crawled through the gaps and into the bus's frame.

The originally golden base was entwined by this black gas, instantly becoming mottled and dim.

"Lin Mengyao, you..."

Su Chen was stunned for a moment.

He saw a resolution to perish together in her eyes.

This woman was using the resentment of the Lin Family's ancestors to poison the bus's control center.

This was fighting poison with poison.

"Not enough... it's still not stable enough."

Qin Ya's weak voice sounded.

She had already unbuttoned the third button of her shirt at some point, and her chest was emitting an eerie glimmer.

She didn't look at Su Chen; instead, she caressed the incessantly vibrating base with a dazed expression.

Her expression didn't look like she was facing a killing machine, but rather like she was soothing a frightened child.

"Teacher has nothing to give you, but this body... can at least help block the fire for you."

As she whispered, Qin Ya's body actually began to turn transparent.

Like a thin cicada wing, she tried to envelop the violent bronze base.

Su Chen watched that intellectual and gentle face gradually fade, and the egoistic indifference in his heart felt as if it had been seared by a branding iron.

Dammit, does everyone want to be a martyr?

Did anyone ask for my opinion?

"Everyone, get the hell away from me!"

Su Chen suddenly erupted.

The small purple-gold bead in his Dantian spun wildly, and a surge of unprecedented violent power rushed straight up his spine to his head.

He grabbed the iron sheet of the ventilation duct and exerted force with one hand. With a "creak," he ripped the exhaust grille off the roof.

"You want to be a furnace wall? You want to be a sacrifice? In your dreams!"

He let out a beast-like low growl and poured all of his newly condensed Sacred Yang True Qi into the exhaust system.

Boom—!

The golden True Qi collided with the black gas of resentment, triggering a chain of explosions in the narrow pipes.

Thick smoke billowed from the rear of the bus like a giant wave.

Su Chen reached out into the air, and the golden mist actually condensed into a giant palm shadow.

Before Qin Ya could completely merge into the bus, he forcibly plucked her translucent phantom out from the metal gaps.

"Su Chen, you're crazy..."

Qin Ya fell back onto the rear seat, her face pale to the point of being nearly transparent.

"Shut up and just be a teacher."

Su Chen wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes fierce.

Before he could catch his breath, a fragrant breeze suddenly crashed into his arms.

Lin Mengyao's blood-stained hands firmly cupped his face, and under Su Chen's stunned gaze, her blood-scented red lips pressed directly onto his.

It was a mouthful of extremely pure Vital Yang Energy. Like rain after a long drought, it surged down Su Chen's throat and exploded back into his Dantian.

"This time, I'm the one snatching you."

Lin Mengyao panted in his ear, her eyes filled with unprecedented provocation.

The bus let out an overburdened screech, and under the intertwining of the golden and black auras, it actually forced a change in direction.

*Bang!*

The front of the bus seemed to smash through an invisible glass wall, and the heavy bronze mist vanished in an instant.

Su Chen's vision brightened, and the dizziness almost made him collapse.

He gripped the steering wheel tightly and looked out the window.

The sky was full of stars.

This wasn't the usual starry sky; those stars were absurdly large and were constantly falling.

At the end of his vision, countless powerful beams from car headlights pierced the darkness.

Those were survival buses just like theirs, converging from all directions like a swarm of moths frantically racing toward a flame.

Zhao Wanting's figure appeared on the windshield.

"Su Chen, that's the 'Divine Marriage Altar'. All the surviving buses nearby... have to go there for the sacrificial rite."

Su Chen looked down and found that the Concentric Knot made from Lin Mengyao's and Qin Ya's hair was now oozing tiny beads of blood.

A burning sting came, and the hair actually seeped directly into his flesh, searing a twisted and eerie third mark into his palm.

At the center of the altar where the light of those thousands of stars converged, something seemed to be coldly looking down at this battered bus.