93: Chapter 93 Godslayer? Just a Needle

Li Qingxuan watched Lin Qi's two fingers pressed together, his brows furrowing slightly.

He did not like this feeling.

Clearly, his opponent was at the end of his rope, and clearly, they were separated by an absolutely safe spatial barrier, yet his heart, belonging to an S-rank Genius, began to beat uncontrollably.

"Finger Gun?" Li Qingxuan chuckled, trying to dispel that inexplicable sense of unease. "Or some ancient martial arts secret technique? Lin Qi, don't waste your energy."

"Space is not a physical object. Even if you trained your fingers into diamond drills, you couldn't pierce through the concept of 'distance'."

Lin Qi ignored him.

His current state was very peculiar.

The noisy human voices around him disappeared, and the lights on the arena dimmed.

In his perceived world, the invisible wall before him transformed into a dense, intricate web.

This was a node constructed from energy.

As long as it was a man-made barrier, it could not be flawless.

Energy was flowing, nodes were leaping.

The top-left corner was too dense, the bottom-right corner too sparse.

The very center...

Lin Qi suddenly opened his eyes.

There was a tiny vortex there, the convergence point where all spatial energy gathered and dispersed.

This was it.

"You say distance cannot be pierced through?" Lin Qi pulled his lips into a cold arc. "That is because your needle is not sharp enough."

Before the words had even faded, he moved.

No running start, no charging up.

Those two fingers reached out lightly, looking slow, as if pressing a doorbell.

The faint wisp of True Qi at his fingertips suddenly condensed, turning into a cold glint.

Li Qingxuan instinctively wanted to laugh.

What could this soft, weak attack do?

Tickle the spatial barrier?

But the next second, his smile froze on his face.

Puff.

A very light, subtle sound.

It was just like a mischievous child piercing an inflated balloon with a needle tip.

That transparent barrier spanning between the two, which claimed to be physically immune, suddenly began to shake violently.

Centered on the spot where Lin Qi's fingertip tapped, dense cracks appeared out of thin air, spreading wildly in all directions.

The spatial structure, originally smooth as a mirror, collapsed.

"This is impossible!"

Li Qingxuan cried out in shock, and on that face that had always been as indifferent as a deity's, the terror of a Mortal finally appeared.

"What did you do? This is the rule of space! How could you possibly break the rules!"

"Rules?"

Lin Qi withdrew his finger. That wisp of True Qi had been completely exhausted, but the flame in his eyes burned brighter and brighter.

"My rule is, as long as I can touch it, I can smash it."

The barrier shattered completely, turning into countless turbulent flows that scattered.

The obstruction disappeared.

The distance between the two returned to the three meters within arm's reach.

This was also the kill range for melee classes.

Li Qingxuan panicked.

As a mage class, he knew very well what the consequences were of being face-to-face with a humanoid tyrannosaurus possessing monstrous strength.

"Teleport!"

The staff in his hand lit up with a blinding white light, and his body began to blur.

As long as he could put some distance between them, he still had a chance.

As long as he got into the air, this brute would...

"Too late."

Two words, like a death warrant.

Lin Qi took a step forward.

This step landed on the ruins of the arena, emitting a dull roar.

An invisible aura erupted from his body; it was the monstrous Evil Qi accumulated from his past life as a Martial Saint, and also the so-called high-level Martial Intent.

Li Qingxuan only felt his brain buzz, as if his body had been locked onto by some terrifying giant beast.

The teleportation skill he was activating was forcefully interrupted, and his body, which had just begun to blur, was forced to solidify again.

Stunned.

Even if only for a tenth of a second.

For Lin Qi, that was enough.

The wound on his left shoulder was still bleeding, but this did not affect the swing of his right arm in the slightest.

His spine, like a great Dragon, snapped and vibrated; power was conducted from the soles of his feet to his waist and hips, then twisted into a single rope and sent into his right arm.

This punch had no fancy name.

It was just a simple, straightforward punch.

But it carried all the frustration and all the persistence Lin Qi had felt since coming to this world, as well as that Dao heart that wanted to punch through every obstacle.

"Go down, Lord God!"

Boom!

The fist landed solidly on Li Qingxuan's expensive handmade trench coat.

The layers of automatically triggered protective Magical Artifact light shields were as fragile as eggshells in the face of this punch.

The crackling sounds of shattering merged into one.

Li Qingxuan was struck head-on as if by a high-speed train traveling at full velocity.

His chest visibly caved in, and blood sprayed from his mouth like it was free.

Whoosh—

This time, he really flew.

The white figure drew a miserable parabola in the air, crossed directly over the edge of the dozen-meter arena, and slammed heavily onto the lawn outside the field.

His body hit the ground, sliding seven or eight meters on the turf before coming to a stop.

Li Qingxuan lay on his back, the staff symbolizing his status already broken into two pieces.

He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, his chest heaving violently, his eyes full of bewilderment.

Lost?

As an S-rank Awakened, hailed as a heaven-favored son, he lost to a Blank Slate without a panel?

The arena was silent.

Tens of thousands of spectators maintained the posture of having their mouths wide open, many of them not even having reacted to what had happened.

One second, it was still a god performing dimensional strikes against a Mortal.

The next second, the god was knocked flat by a single punch from a Mortal.

This contrast was too strong, so strong that it made people wonder if they were dreaming.

"Won... won?"

In the lounge, Old Mo finally couldn't hold his thermos steady; it fell to the ground with a clang, spilling scalding goji berry water all over the floor.

The old man didn't care about the heat; he steadied the edge of the screen with trembling hands, his eyes rimmed with red.

This was not luck.

This was true skill.

It was a miracle of using the purest Mortal flesh to break the arrogant barrier of a digitized world.

On the arena.

Lin Qi slowly withdrew his fist, casually wiping away the blood splattered on his face.

On that somewhat pale face, there was no expression of wild joy; instead, it exuded a sense of calm as if it were a matter of course.

He lowered his head and looked at his right hand.

With that strike just now, although his True Qi was exhausted, he could feel the emptiness in his Dantian being rapidly filled by new power.

Breaking and then establishing.

That True Qi seed seemed to have become more solid and stronger because of the pressure of this battle.

"This is the Dao."

Lin Qi whispered to himself, his voice very light, yet it exuded a kind of determination that made people submit.

The referee finally came to his senses, scrambling to the outside of the field to check on Li Qingxuan's condition.

"Li Qingxuan has lost the ability to fight!"

The referee held up the microphone, his voice becoming sharp and cracking due to extreme excitement.

"The champion of this year's Freshman Grand Competition is—"

"No. 07-44, Lin Qi!!!"

Boom!

The long-delayed cheers finally erupted, as if to blow the roof off the arena.

Zhang Wei went crazy, tearing off his shirt and standing on his chair, waving wildly; his fat was even shaking along with him.

"Did you see that! That's my big brother! That's my big brother!"

In the VIP box, Li Shaobai watched Li Qingxuan being carried onto a stretcher, then looked at the figure standing tall like a javelin on the stage.

He didn't speak, just silently poured the unfinished red wine in his hand onto the floor.

As if mourning something, and also as if acknowledging something.

Lin Qi stood under the spotlight, listening to the mountain-shaking, sea-roaring cheers all around.

He silently thought to himself: "martial arts era, I have returned."