346: Chapter 347 You cultivated for thirty years, I cultivated for a lifetime

At the bottom of the mine.

Lin Qi's foot landed on the Earth Erosion. His Dao Source automatically spread, and the dark red ground within a five-meter radius beneath his feet instantly reverted to a grayish-brown color.

Thirty meters in front of him was the core of the faith channel—a purple beam of light about three meters in diameter.

Beside the beam of light, the High Priest stood there.

Wearing a gray robe with a hood obscuring his face, one hand pressed against a bronze mirror, while the other hung by his side.

The two of them stared at each other from thirty meters apart.

"Faster than I expected," the High Priest said. His voice was neither high nor low, completely flat. "The signal I gave Shi Gu was to stall you for at least five minutes. You didn't even give him one."

"My fault, is it?" Lin Qi slammed his entrenching tool into the ground.

"It is not your fault. It is my fault for overestimating him."

The High Priest put the bronze mirror away, tucking it into his robe.

His other hand was also revealed.

Both pale hands were covered in purple Law markings. Those markings were the same color as the faith channel's beam of light, clearly the result of long-term close contact with the channel.

"You are Lin Qi," the High Priest said, "That Blank Slate from Tianhai City."

"Has my reputation spread that far already?"

"Three days ago, you severed the 'My Lord' observation channel. The entire church knows your name now."

"I'm going to need more money."

The High Priest slightly lifted his hood, revealing his entire face.

It was a face whose age was impossible to tell. The skin was pale to the point of being bloodless, his features were regular, and his eyes were light gray, with a miniature purple magic array slowly rotating deep within his pupils.

"I know clearly why you have come here," the High Priest said. "The faith channel and the law seed."

"Correct."

"I can tell you one piece of information."

"What is it?"

"You cannot destroy it."

The High Priest stepped aside, fully exposing the purple light beam behind him to Lin Qi.

"The Foundation of this faith channel is not in this world. Its other end is connected to the Origin of 'My Lord'. You were able to sever the observation connection three days ago because it was merely a thin line set up temporarily. But this one—"

He pointed at the beam of light.

"This is a thick cable. From the moment I took over this stronghold, I spent thirty years bit by bit reinforcing, widening, and deepening it. Its roots have already pierced into the deepest essence vein beneath this world, merging with the energy cycle of the entire vein."

There was no fanaticism or arrogance in the High Priest's tone.

He was stating a fact.

"You can kill me. But after you kill me, the channel will not disappear. It will only lose its maintainer. A channel that loses maintenance will gradually decay—but that requires at least half a year."

"Half a year. There are only forty days left until the Sowing Ceremony."

The meaning was clear: even killing the High Priest would be too late.

After listening, Lin Qi was silent for a few seconds.

Then, he tilted his head.

"You think I came here just to kill you?"

The High Priest's expression changed.

It wasn't fear—it was a kind of caught-off-guard confusion.

"Your thirty years of reinforcement," Lin Qi pulled the entrenching tool from the ground and slung it over his shoulder, "I have seen it."

"Your roots that pierced into the depths of the vein," he took a step forward, "I have seen that too."

"You tied the channel's energy cycle to the vein," he took another step, "making the channel a part of the earth vein. Theoretically, as long as the essence of the vein does not dry up, the channel will never break."

He took another step. He was only fifteen meters from the High Priest now.

"Not a bad move," Lin Qi commented. "Much more reliable than those deacons of yours."

The High Priest took a step back. The purple light beam was right behind him; there was nowhere left to retreat.

"What exactly are you trying to do?"

"You said you spent thirty years embedding the channel into the vein."

Lin Qi's tone suddenly became very flat.

"Guess how long it will take me to rip your thirty years of hard work out of the vein by the roots?"

Within the High Priest's pupils, that miniature purple magic array began to rotate at an accelerated speed.

"You cannot do it." His voice fluctuated for the first time. "The channel and the vein are already one. To rip out the channel, you would have to format the entire vein—that is equivalent to destroying the underground structure within a radius of fifty kilometers. No matter how strong your power is, it is impossible—"

"Format the entire vein?"

Lin Qi took the entrenching tool off his shoulder, blade facing down, and aimed it at the Earth Erosion beneath his feet.

"That's a good suggestion."

The High Priest's expression finally changed.

"Wait—"

Lin Qi did not wait.

The blade entered the soil.

Dao Source poured down from the blade, along the edge of the entrenching tool, and directly flooded into the essence vein deep underground.

This was not an attack.

This was formatting.

It was exactly the same thing he had done in the D-3 Region—using Dao Source to overwrite the underlying code, clearing away all "foreign data," and leaving only the most primitive structure of the earth vein.

The difference was that in the D-3 Region, he had spent several days doing it slowly.

This time—

He did not intend to take it slow.

The Dao Source reserves of the Tongshen Realm far exceeded what ordinary people could imagine. When Lin Qi decided to output at full power, the Dao Source within him was like a reservoir opening its floodgates.

Dark golden energy spread crazily along the vein.

Everywhere it passed—

The thirty-year-old roots of the faith channel were burned off section by section.

The dark red of the Earth Erosion began to fade from the ground.

The entire mine was shaking.

The High Priest's face was as white as paper.

He could feel it—the network he had spent thirty years weaving was being dismantled at an irreversible speed.

It was not destruction.

It was replacement.

Lin Qi's Dao Source was replacing all the Law code he had implanted into the vein. The old was cleared, the new was written. Thirty years of hard work, in the hands of this young man—

It would take less than thirty minutes.

"You spent thirty years building it."

Lin Qi lowered his head, gripping the handle of the entrenching tool with both hands, his voice very flat.

"I have spent my whole life cultivating."

At the bottom of the mine, the purple beam of light began to flicker.

It was struggling.

But the magnitude of its struggle was becoming smaller and smaller.