336: Chapter 337 One Shovel Cuts the Fiber, Blindfolded Clearance

The black shell on the Eye of the Abyss's body was still expanding.

Its texture was very similar to the Law Pollution units Lin Qi had cleared out in Area S-17 before, but there was one key difference.

Those in Area S-17 were wild and had no master.

This layer on the Eye of the Abyss carried a clear will.

The source of that will was the Throat of Devouring Heaven.

Lin Qi could sense a faint signal pulsing in the deepest part of the black shell.

It belonged to something else.

Some kind of creature existing in a higher dimension had established an observation channel through this shell.

The Throat of Devouring Heaven was watching him.

Using the Eye of the Abyss as a relay station, the game's Ultimate Boss was sizing up Lin Qi.

This piqued Lin Qi's interest instantly.

"Yo."

He stopped and spoke to the thing behind the black shell on the Eye of the Abyss.

"Are you here in person?"

He tilted his head, his tone even carrying a bit of friendliness.

"The projection effect isn't great; the image quality is a bit blurry."

The Eye of the Abyss's mouth was already covered by the black shell; the answer came from the sounds emitted by those writhing protrusions.

It wasn't a human voice.

It was the humming of countless strings being plucked simultaneously.

Within the humming were recognizable syllables.

"...Seed..."

Lin Qi raised an eyebrow.

"Seed?"

"You... are... that... lost... Seed..."

The humming became clearer and clearer.

"Should not... have awakened..."

"Go back... into the soil..."

Lin Qi fell silent for two seconds after hearing this.

Then he laughed.

That smile wasn't the playfulness he showed the cultists, nor the mockery he directed at Ashes.

It was a nostalgic smile, like meeting an old rival.

Like old colleagues who hadn't seen each other in years meeting in the breakroom, and the first thing out of the other's mouth was still the same old catchphrase.

"Seed, huh."

He whispered to himself.

"In my last life, you called me Seed too."

Only he heard these words.

Back then, he was the only Martial Saint who had solo-cleared the Ultimate Dungeon in the game; when the Throat of Devouring Heaven was beaten into its third phase, it had also called him Seed in that condescending tone.

Unfortunately, the outcome was that the Seed sprouted and grew into a massive tree that pulled it out by the roots.

His smile faded.

The entrenching tool spun half a turn in his hand.

"Regardless of what channel you're using to watch this."

"I'll give you a message."

"If you really have the ability to descend, I welcome it."

"But don't send this kind of semi-finished product to annoy me."

"It's a huge loss of Face."

He paused, then added another sentence.

"A proxy cannot defeat the real deal; surely you understand this logic."

After saying that, he raised the shovel.

This time, he didn't use Physical Formatting.

Formatting was a concept-level wide-range purge; there was no need to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

He used a more direct and primitive method.

A thin layer of Chaos-colored light gathered on the shovel's blade—the Dao Source.

It covered the blade, coating the shovel with a film.

A standard-issue entrenching tool used by Federation Infrastructure Corps soldiers to dig trenches was now endowed with the ability to sever dimensional connections.

This was the most ridiculous promotion for the entrenching tool species since its inception.

He swung the shovel down.

There were no flashy special effects, no earth-shattering sounds.

The black shell on the Eye of the Abyss's body—the Law armor reinforced by the Origin power of the Throat of Devouring Heaven—split down the middle.

The cross-section was smooth and neat.

The moment it split, the writhing protrusions struggled collectively as the observation channel established through the shell was cut by this shovel strike.

The connection point between the Throat of Devouring Heaven and this world was severed.

A remote window painstakingly set up by a cross-dimensional Ultimate Boss was snuffed out by an entrenching tool.

The Eye of the Abyss's body fell from mid-air.

Without the support of the Origin power, he was just a cripple whose Law medium had been hollowed out.

Black liquid flowed from his two hollow eye sockets as he curled up on the ground.

"You... you don't know what you're doing..."

His voice had returned to a normal human tone, but it was filled with panic.

"'My Lord'... has already remembered you..."

"It will come..."

"The Moment of the End... is irreversible..."

Lin Qi crouched down and looked at him.

"Remember me? That's great."

"Saves me the trouble of looking for it."

He brushed off the remaining black debris on the entrenching tool, his tone as casual as if he were knocking mud off the sole of his shoe.

"Go back and tell your 'Lord' that it couldn't beat me in my last life, and it'll be the same in this world."

"It's an old script; I know its next move even with my eyes closed."

The Eye of the Abyss opened his mouth but couldn't say anything more.

It wasn't because his mouth was sealed.

It was because he saw a truth in Lin Qi's eyes: every word this young man said was true.

He had fought My Lord.

And he had won.

Lin Qi stood up and turned to look at Ashes.

Ashes was completely stunned, standing in place, unable to move his legs.

His feet were fixed.

The dark-gold earth had condensed into two shackles at his ankles, pinning him to the spot.

"One last question."

Lin Qi shouldered the entrenching tool and walked toward him.

"Where is your Church's headquarters?"

Ashes's lips moved.

"Even if... you kill us... the Church will not stop..."

"I didn't ask if the Church would stop."

Lin Qi walked up to him, less than a step between them.

"I asked for the address."

Ashes shut his mouth.

It wasn't that he didn't want to speak, but that something was blocking his mouth.

Lin Qi's Dao Source had seeped into his oral cavity the moment he opened his mouth, a thin film covering the space between his tongue and palate, preventing him from making any meaningful sound.

"No rush," Lin Qi said.

"I have plenty of time to dig it out slowly."

He shook the entrenching tool in his hand.

"This shovel has cut Law armor and severed dimensional channels today; digging out a mouth should be no problem."

"Let's collect you all first."

He looked back at the cultists still kneeling on the ground.

Over two hundred had set out; now about a hundred and fifty were still alive, those sacrificed and drained having already collapsed.

The remaining hundred and fifty people were all kneeling on the dark-gold earth.

They couldn't run.

From the moment Lin Qi stepped out of the barrier, the entire battlefield was his Domain; the presence of these people was no different from the dirt beneath his feet.

No, the dirt was more useful.

At least dirt can be used as fertilizer.

"Instructor Su Qing."

"Present."

Instructor Su Qing's voice came through the comms.

"Come out and clean up."

"I'll handle the three Deacons myself. You sort out the rest of the small fry. Detain the living in the warehouse and throw the dead into the leylines as fertilizer."

"Understood."

Instructor Su Qing's voice carried a sense of relieved lightness.

She had watched the entire battle on the monitor, from Lin Qi crushing the Karma Threads with his bare hands to cutting the Throat of Devouring Heaven's observation channel with one shovel strike.

To be honest, she felt that the best decision she had ever made in her life was working for this man.

Zhang Wei asked weakly from behind.

"What about me?"

"You're in charge of the books."

"How much is one living person worth again?"

Zhang Wei perked up.

He jumped up from the ground, throwing his fear of heights to the back of his mind, and pulled out the small notebook he always carried.

The light in his eyes was brighter than the Eye of the Abyss's two red crystals.

"Don't worry, Qi-ge. When it comes to finances, I'm much more reliable than that Law of Causality."

"Karma can be severed by you, but the books—the books I, Zhang Wei, keep—not a single cent will escape."