348: Chapter 349 Three at once? Lin Qi wiped them all out in four seconds with one hand!

The mine was shaking.

It wasn't a small tremor—it was the kind of deep, subterranean rumbling that could make one's legs go weak, a vibration of the entire earth.

As Shi Gu rushed down from the third tier of the mine, the Earth Erosion beneath his feet began to fade on a massive scale.

The dark red color peeled away from the surface of the steps like a receding tide, revealing the grey-brown native rock layer underneath.

The dark red patterns on his armor, maintained by the energy of Earth Erosion, were also dimming.

Not good.

That was the only thought in Shi Gu's mind.

Earth Erosion was disappearing.

Once Earth Erosion vanished, all the combat enhancements he drew from it would be gone.

His armor's hardness would revert to its base level, and his strength and speed would both be compromised.

He quickened his pace.

Silence, coming around from the west, was faster than him.

Her method of movement wasn't running—it was floating.

That layer of semi-transparent membrane enveloped her body, gliding along the mine wall like a bubble.

Her speed was extreme, almost soundless.

She arrived at the bottom of the mine first—and then paused in mid-air.

Because she saw it.

Over half of the Earth Erosion at the bottom of the entire mine had already faded.

The area that had receded formed a circular zone centered on Lin Qi, constantly expanding outward.

The ground within this circle was clean, grey-brown rock, without even a trace of dark red.

The purple light beam of the faith channel—that thick cable that had been maintained for thirty years—was thinning.

It was shrinking from three meters in diameter to two.

And it was still thinning.

The High Priest stood beside the light beam, purple blood seeping from cracks in his skin; he looked like a piece of porcelain shattering.

But he was still alive.

His hands were pressed tightly against the surface of the light beam, resisting the purging of the Dao Source.

Ten-plus meters in front of him, Lin Qi had planted his entrenching tool into the ground, holding the handle with both hands, head bowed, outputting Dao Source with all his might.

He didn't look imposing at all right now—there were no dazzling dark gold special effects, no earth-shattering ultimate moves.

He was just a young man standing there, supporting himself with a shovel.

But the earth beneath his feet was being rewritten with him as the center.

Silence hovered in mid-air, exchanging a look with Shi Gu.

Shi Gu's meaning was: "Interrupt him."

Silence's meaning was: "You go first."

Shi Gu rolled his eyes—inside his armor, so it couldn't be seen from the outside—and then jumped down from the steps directly.

The two-and-a-half-meter-tall iron-grey behemoth slammed into the bottom of the mine, kicking up a spray of gravel.

He landed only ten meters away from Lin Qi.

"Hey!" Shi Gu roared. "You with the shovel! Look over here!"

Lin Qi didn't even lift his head.

"I'm busy."

"Busy my—"

Shi Gu charged.

He wasn't good at idle talk.

His combat style was head-on—armor augmentation, Physical Body collision, seeing who was harder.

His iron-grey fist smashed toward the back of Lin Qi's head.

Lin Qi released his left hand from the shovel handle and blocked behind his head with a backhand.

The fist slammed into his palm.

A dull thud.

A shockwave exploded from the point of contact, blowing away all the gravel at their feet.

Shi Gu pressed his fist down—it didn't budge.

That seemingly ordinary palm looked as if it were welded in mid-air, completely motionless.

Shi Gu increased his force.

Dark red light flared at the joints of his armor, maxing out his full-body enhancement.

Lin Qi's palm still didn't move.

"Is that it?" Lin Qi didn't turn back.

Shi Gu gritted his teeth, withdrew his fist, stepped back twice, and switched tactics—a barrage of double-fisted strikes.

Seven consecutive punches, all landing on the palm Lin Qi held behind him.

Each punch could have shattered a Federal military armored wall, but landing in that palm, they only stirred up dull sounds.

After seven punches, Shi Gu's right arm was sore.

Fine cracks appeared at the joints of his armor—not from Lin Qi's strike, but from his own recoil.

It was like hitting an anvil with a hammer—the anvil was fine, but the hammer cracked first.

"That's enough." Lin Qi's right hand was still gripping the shovel handle, never having let go.

He glanced at Shi Gu from the corner of his eye.

"The hardness parameters of this armor of yours are about the same as Bone Crown's.

The structure is more complex, but the core concept hasn't changed—relying on external force augmentation to compensate for a weak Physical Body."

"Are all the close-combat inner deacons of your church cut from the same mold?"

Shi Gu didn't answer.

He already knew that head-on confrontation wouldn't work.

But he didn't need it to work.

He was just a meat shield.

The real attacker—

Was overhead.

Silence's semi-transparent membrane split silently above the mine.

Dark purple liquid flowed out from within the membrane, condensing in the air into hundreds of sharp purple ice cones.

Each ice cone carried a special Law effect—"Annihilation."

The areas pierced by these ice cones wouldn't bleed or feel pain.

That area would lose all physical properties—turning into "nothingness."

It was equivalent to being locally deleted from existence.

Hundreds of ice cones fired simultaneously.

They covered the entire area where Lin Qi was located.

There were no blind spots.

At the same time, underground—

Rift's amorphous body drilled out from the rock layer beneath Lin Qi's feet.

Its body was wrapped in a layer of deep purple spatial fissures, each fissure being a miniature spatial cutting plane.

It burst out directly from beneath Lin Qi, attempting to tear apart his lower body with the spatial fissures.

Ice cones above, fissures below, and a meat shield in iron armor in front.

Three attacks of different natures arrived simultaneously, making it impossible for the target to attend to everything.

But Lin Qi did three things at once.

The first—he flipped his left hand and pushed his palm out toward Shi Gu's chest.

Not a fist, but a palm.

A variation of the Baji Iron Mountain Lean.

It was only an inch of distance, but Shi Gu felt like he had been hit by a train.

The chest area of his iron-grey armor caved in completely, and his body flew over ten meters away, slamming into the mine wall.

The second—he kept his right hand on the shovel handle, lifted the entrenching tool from the ground, and raised it upward.

Those purple ice cones touched the dark gold aura around the shovel blade and—dissolved.

They weren't broken.

That layer of dark gold aura directly negated the Law attributes of the ice cones.

The concept of "Annihilation" lost its effectiveness in front of the Dao Source.

This was the practical application of ancient martial arts Protective Aura.

The film formed by Dao Source covering the body surface could isolate the intrusion of external elements and Laws.

The physical hardness of those ice cones wasn't worth mentioning; their true lethality lay entirely in their Law attributes—once the Laws were isolated, the ice cones were just a pile of melting ice slush.

The third—he stomped his foot on the ground.

Dao Source erupted from the soles of his feet, directly pouring into the rock layer where Rift was emerging.

The spatial fissures on Rift's body vibrated violently upon encountering the Dao Source.

Those miniature spatial cutting planes were forcibly sealed by the power of the Dao Source—just like gluing together cracked glass; the cracks were still there, but they could no longer cut anything.

Rift's amorphous body was shaken out from underground, fell to the ground, struggled twice, and turned into a puddle of dark purple mush.

It wasn't dead.

But it had temporarily lost its combat capability.

A joint assault by three inner deacons.

From initiation to conclusion.

Less than four seconds.

Silence hovered in mid-air, watching as all her ice cones melted, watching Shi Gu embedded in the mine wall, and watching Rift lying on the ground turned into mush.

She quietly withdrew her semi-transparent membrane, wrapping herself up again.

There was no next wave of attacks.

Because she had understood one thing in those four seconds—there wasn't much difference between these three people attacking together and attacking one by one.

The only difference was the order in which they were sent flying.

Lin Qi replanted the entrenching tool into the ground and continued the formatting.

"You guys discuss it," he said, head bowed, his tone flat. "Whether you want to come for another round. I can still free up one hand."

The bottom of the mine was quiet for three seconds.

Shi Gu fell from the mine wall, his chest armor caved in significantly, and he bent over to catch his breath.

He looked up at Silence, then at Rift on the ground.

Then he did something that no one present had expected—

He deactivated his armor.

The iron-grey armor plates that had grown out from his flesh retracted piece by piece under his skin.

Without the armor, Shi Gu was just a two-meter-tall bald, muscular man, covered in scars.

"Boss." He shouted in the direction of the High Priest.

The High Priest didn't reply.

He no longer had the strength to reply.

The purple light beam of the faith channel had become even thinner, with only a little over a meter left.

His body was bleeding and shattering.

"Boss, we lost." Shi Gu's voice was surprisingly calm.

He did not say useless things like "I'm not reconciled."

Lost was lost.