333: Chapter 334 With a shovel in hand, how will you respond?

Outside the perimeter of the D-3 Region.

The sacrificial ritual of the Eye of the Abyss was already halfway through.

Among the two hundred cultists, more than forty had already fallen to the ground, motionless. Their bodies had shriveled up as if all their moisture had been drained, leaving only a layer of skin wrapped around bone.

Their life force flowed along the blood-colored magic circle on the ground, converging at the feet of the Eye of the Abyss.

He was entirely enveloped in a layer of dark red light. The two points of red light peeking from behind his cloth blindfold had turned a bright crimson, standing out starkly in the night.

Ashes stood to the side, arms crossed, staring at the invisible barrier ahead.

"Is it enough?"

"Wait a little longer." The voice of the Eye of the Abyss became muffled, as if he had something in his mouth. "It requires the Soul of at least eighty people to pry open a Law lock of this Rank."

"Eighty?" Bone Crown, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke up.

His voice was dull and rough, like two pieces of sandpaper grinding against each other. He was wrapped in a black robe three times thicker than those of the other cultists, and the creaking sound of bones rubbing together constantly emanated from beneath it.

"The Church allocated two hundred and ten pieces of firewood to us this time. Do you intend to burn them all?"

"If necessary." The tone of the Eye of the Abyss held no warmth. "The glory of 'My Lord' must not be desecrated. Exchanging a few hundred lives for the downfall of a false god is a bargain."

Bone Crown said nothing more.

It wasn't that he was soft-hearted. He simply felt that using so many human lives to attack a wall whose nature could not even be discerned was not very wise.

But the Eye of the Abyss was the commander of this operation.

He was only responsible for taking action.

Just as the fifty-third cultist fell, something moved inside the barrier.

It was not a change in the barrier itself.

It was someone—stepping out from inside the barrier.

The figure was neither tall nor short, wearing a casual jacket that could not be more ordinary. His left hand was tucked in his pocket, and his right hand carried an entrenching tool with a design so archaic it was almost tacky.

His posture as he walked out of the barrier was very casual, just like someone stepping out of their own courtyard to take out the trash.

The barrier did not fluctuate at all as he passed through.

He stood brazenly on the outside of the barrier—on the boundary line between the D-3 Region and the wilderness.

The three deacons sensed him simultaneously.

The Eye of the Abyss interrupted the sacrificial ritual. The two points of red light locked directly onto the young man.

The Law perception of the "Throat of Devouring Heaven" told him that there was no attribute fluctuation within the body of the person in front of him.

There was nothing in the System panel.

Everything was 5.

A standard Blank Slate loser.

But the Eye of the Abyss dared not move.

Because his Law perception also told him something else—the moment the young man appeared, the breathing rhythm of the earth beneath his feet had changed.

The ley lines of the entire D-3 Region seemed to be bowing to this person.

"So you are the Power Thief?" The Eye of the Abyss spoke, his voice spreading through the Law to reach Lin Qi's ears. "You look like nothing more than a greenhorn."

Lin Qi tilted his head.

"How old are you?"

"...What?"

"I asked how old you are." Lin Qi repeated. "According to your Church's rules, if the time spent kneeling and chanting counts as work experience, you must be quite old."

The Eye of the Abyss did not answer the question.

He raised his hand and pointed at Lin Qi.

"The will of 'My Lord' cannot be defied. The Law pit you reconstructed was originally the seed for 'My Lord' to descend into this world. By destroying it, you are obstructing the arrival of the End."

"The End?" Lin Qi smiled upon hearing the word.

This smile was not very clear in the night, but all three deacons felt something that was hard to describe.

"You call the destruction of the world the End, and you actually think that's a good thing?"

He switched the entrenching tool from his right hand to his left, and then back to his right.

"I've lived two lifetimes and seen all sorts of madmen."

"But those who worship the apocalypse—they definitely Rank in the top three."

"Enough chatter." Ashes could no longer hold back.

He darted out from beside the Eye of the Abyss, pushed his hands forward, and a grayish-white heat flow surged out from between his ten fingers again.

This time it was different.

The power of the Law, strengthened by the sacrifice, increased the density of Ashes' attack several times over. The grayish-white heat flow no longer attempted to rewrite the Law of temperature but instead condensed directly into a massive gray spear of light.

The spear of light was over two meters in diameter, with rippling, scorching air dancing on its tip.

With a low roar from Ashes, the spear of light pierced through the air, heading straight for Lin Qi's face.

The speed was so fast that an ordinary person would not have been able to react at all.

Lin Qi stood still in place.

He didn't even raise his entrenching tool.

When the spear of light was less than three meters away from him, it suddenly veered off course.

It wasn't deflected.

It changed direction on its own.

The spear of light flew past Lin Qi's shoulder, plunged into the wilderness behind him, and blasted a bowl-sized crater.

Ashes' expression changed.

"How is this possible—was my attack trajectory altered?"

"It wasn't altered." Lin Qi looked down at his unscathed jacket.

"It's that your spear didn't want to touch me."

He was telling the truth.

The Law rules of the D-3 Region had already covered a fifty-meter radius around where he stood. Within this range, all incoming Law attacks would be automatically downgraded—just like an operating System with the highest administrator privileges, which would automatically throw unauthorized programs into the recycle bin.

Ashes' spear of light was essentially a Law attack. After entering Lin Qi's Domain, its underlying code had already been rewritten.

The attack attribute had become "harmless substance," so naturally, it couldn't hit him.

"You—"

Before Ashes could say anything else, Bone Crown had already rushed out from behind him.

This taciturn deacon had finally moved.

He was much simpler and more brutal than Ashes.

His body beneath the black robe expanded rapidly, bones protruding outward, and a layer of white bone armor covered his entire body. His height skyrocketed from 1.8 meters to nearly three meters, and his arms turned into two thick bone spikes.

No Law skills, no flashy special effects.

He was purely charging at Lin Qi.

The speed was very fast. For a three-meter-tall melee monster, this explosive power was already quite astonishing.

Lin Qi finally raised his entrenching tool.

It wasn't a combat stance.

It was propped on the ground, like a crutch.

When Bone Crown lunged in front of him, Lin Qi stepped aside.

A very small step.

Bone Crown's fist grazed his ear, bringing with it a gust of fishy wind.

Then Lin Qi raised his foot and kicked Bone Crown.

He kicked him in the knee.

A very light kick.

Crack.

Bone Crown's three-meter-tall body stumbled forward, his left knee bending directly into an abnormal angle.

He looked down at his knee.

The protruding bone armor shattered under the impact of that kick, revealing the bloody muscles inside.

"You—"

Lin Qi had already withdrawn his foot.

"What is your Church's standard for cultivating talent?" He asked.

No one answered.

"I'm serious." Lin Qi hoisted the entrenching tool onto his shoulder.

"You went to so much trouble, mobilized three deacons and two hundred cannon fodder, and traveled thousands of miles to my doorstep, just for this?"

Bone Crown knelt on one knee, and his bone armor began to repair itself automatically.

But the repair speed was much slower than the shattering speed. That kick was not a simple physical attack—the moment Lin Qi kicked, he sent a wisp of extremely fine Dao Source into Bone Crown's body.

The manifestation of that wisp of Dao Source inside Bone Crown's body was to block the Law circuit of his bone regeneration.

That was why the bone armor couldn't be repaired.

A low exhale came from beneath the cloth blindfold of the Eye of the Abyss.

"As expected, not an ordinary human."

He raised his hands again. This time, no light appeared on his fingertips.

But Lin Qi noticed a subtle change in the air.

Karma lines.

Someone had manipulated the Law of Causality.

Lin Qi narrowed his eyes.

The entrenching tool in his hand was lowered from his shoulder for the first time.