365: Chapter 366 Eight Extremes Iron Mountain Lean, the Centenarian High Priest Ascends to Heaven on the Spot

Deep underground, something was pulsating.

Once per minute.

When Lin Qi's Dao Source perception touched that direction, it was bounced back by an extremely thick Law barrier.

He couldn't see the full picture, but the frequency and intensity of the pulsation were slowly rising.

From once per minute, it became twice per minute.

It was accelerating.

"Do you hear it?" Ku Ye's voice carried a hint of almost frenzied pride. "That is the gift bestowed by the Throat of Devouring Heaven. I spent a hundred years using all the vitality of this forest to feed it. It is right beneath your feet, three hundred meters deep."

"When it wakes up, you, I, this forest—everything will become its nourishment."

The corners of Ku Ye's mouth twisted.

"I cannot kill you, but it can."

Lin Qi glanced down at his feet.

Then he looked up at Ku Ye.

"So your plan is to wake up your family pet to bite me?"

Ku Ye's smile stiffened for a moment.

It wasn't because of Lin Qi's contemptuous tone. It was because after Lin Qi finished speaking, his entire aura changed.

Before, he was casual and lazy, like a tourist.

Now, there were no more stray thoughts in his eyes.

There was only one word.

Fast.

He had to be fast.

The thing underground was accelerating its awakening; if it truly woke up, the variables would multiply.

More importantly, when Ku Ye released Extreme Decay just now, the Law fluctuations spread out for at least twenty kilometers. Although the perception network was down, if the Prophet had other ways of receiving signals, dragging this out would only lead to more trouble.

The battle had to be resolved in the shortest time possible.

Lin Qi made his judgment.

He thrust the entrenching tool into the mud behind him with a backhand grip.

Seeing this, Ku Ye's eyes narrowed.

Sticking his weapon into the ground while facing a hundred-year-old Law High Priest...

This wasn't a provocation.

This was a pronouncement of sentence.

"You..."

Ku Ye didn't have time to finish that word.

Because Lin Qi moved.

Ghost Shadow Yu Step.

His figure vanished from the spot and reappeared two meters in front of Ku Ye in the next instant.

For a long-range combatant skilled in Law Domains, this distance was already the distance of death.

Ku Ye's reaction speed was worthy of his hundred-plus years of cultivation.

He slammed his hands together, and his Law power underwent a complete morphological transformation at that moment.

He stopped releasing the decay mist and instead compressed all his Law energy onto the surface of his body, forming a dark green Law shield.

At the same time, the soles of his feet reconnected with the remaining roots of the ancient tree, draining the last trace of vitality from this half-dead thousand-year-old tree and pouring it into his Law shield.

The ancient tree behind him let out a dull cracking sound, and the last few clusters of dark green leaves on the trunk instantly withered into ash.

The energy density of Ku Ye's Law shield soared to its limit at this moment.

The dark green light wrapped his entire person like a glowing cocoon.

"Come on!" Ku Ye roared, his cloudy eyes filled with madness. "The Law barrier condensed from my century of cultivation—can you punch through it?"

A System panel appeared over Ku Ye's body.

Shield Value: 2,847,000 / 2,847,000.

Nearly three million shield health points.

This was the limit value of a Law-level expert turning a lifetime of cultivation into defense.

In the Federal Military's combat power assessment System, breaking through this shield would require at least a specialized team of three fourth-turn Peaks to output damage continuously for over forty seconds.

Lin Qi didn't look at the panel.

He couldn't see it anyway.

He was a Blank Slate.

Other people's panels had never existed for him.

And that was just right.

A person who cannot see health bars will not be limited by health bars.

Lin Qi stepped out with his right foot, his center of gravity suddenly shifting forward. Power was transmitted from the soles of his feet to his spine, gathered from his spine to his shoulders and back, and poured from his shoulders into his entire right side.

The Dao Source was not released outwardly.

It was all compressed between his muscles and bones, using his Tongshen Realm Physical Body as a Container to condense all the energy into a single point.

A point with a contact surface only as wide as a shoulder.

Baji Quan.

Iron Mountain Lean.

The most violent, concise, and unreasonable move among all martial arts techniques.

No starting stance, no wind-up animation, no flashy special effect circles.

Just a person, using their shoulder, to slam into another person.

Ku Ye saw Lin Qi's shoulder.

Then he saw the dark green light shatter.

The moment the contact surface of the Iron Mountain Lean hit the Law shield, the nearly three million shield points didn't show a process of gradually reducing numbers.

It went straight to zero.

It wasn't a breakthrough.

It was a total bypass.

The physical impact condensed from the Dao Source did not follow the defense judgment logic of the Law shield because it wasn't within the System's damage calculation framework at all.

Lin Qi's attacks never engaged in a dialogue with your panel.

He spoke directly to your body.

The power of the Iron Mountain Lean penetrated the no-longer-existent shield and acted fully upon Ku Ye's withered body.

In less than 0.1 seconds.

Ku Ye's chest cavity collapsed.

This wasn't an exaggerated description. It was a physical collapse. The sound of ribs breaking was like a dense string of firecrackers, exploding from his chest all the way to his back.

Under the transmission of the impact, his spine shattered into three pieces. His entire person was like a dry branch hit by a sledgehammer, snapping in the middle.

Ku Ye's body flew backward.

Not very far. Three meters.

Because his body had already fallen apart during the flight.

When he hit the ground, the sound was like a bag of dry firewood being tossed down.

The dark green Law light dissipated from his body like a shattered light bulb.

The pillar of light from the faith channel was completely extinguished at this moment.

Silence.

The Rotten Wood Forest returned to silence in the morning's faint light.

Lin Qi stood where he was and retracted his right shoulder.

He looked down at his jacket. There was still that loose thread on the collar.

There was a bit of mud on his sleeve. No blood, because the impact of the Iron Mountain Lean was transmitted evenly through the entire contact surface, causing no external wounds.

Internal damage was maximized.

The exterior remained intact.

It was cleaner than a kill in a game.

Lin Qi walked toward where Ku Ye had fallen, casually pulling the entrenching tool from the ground and shouldering it.

Ku Ye wasn't dead yet.

His hundred-plus years of Law cultivation gave his vitality a resilience far beyond ordinary people. Even with a collapsed chest and a shattered spine, his heart was still beating.

It was just beating slower and slower.

Dark red liquid overflowed from Ku Ye's mouth—not the red of fresh blood, but a dark red close to resin.

His body, aged to a certain degree, no longer even had blood like a normal person's.

His eyes were still open, looking at Lin Qi standing before him.

His lips were moving.

The sound was very light, like the rustling of wind blowing through withered leaves.

"...One move?"

Lin Qi crouched down.

"You people from the Church have a common failing," he said. "You like to talk too much."

The corner of Ku Ye's mouth twitched; it was unclear if he was smiling or spasming.

"Are you done?" Lin Qi tilted his head. "Then it's my turn."

He reached out his right hand, fingers splayed, and clamped them onto Ku Ye's skull.

"Everything you know—I want all of it."