43: Chapter 43 Houtu, the Origin of the Earth, Bears Great Virtue and Carries All Things! The Evil God's Rank is utterly vulnerable!

The demon seed did not give anyone time to breathe.

That vertical mouth sniffed around, as if it had finally locked onto its target.

The black fog on its lower body suddenly contracted and violently exploded, turning its body into a dark cyan afterimage that lunged straight toward the direction of Investigator Zhao Pingchuan and the other two!

Its speed was more than a notch faster than before, dragging a harsh tearing sound through the air. Wherever it passed, floor tiles flew up, and black mycelium spread wildly!

Its target was very clear!

Swallow these three weak ones first to replenish the first wave of nutrients, then turn back to deal with the hard bone Lin Ye.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's spiritual energy anchor exploded into a chorus of screams in his consciousness; he wanted to move, but his body wouldn't obey.

Li Yan and Fang Hao were even more pathetic than him. The two were already kneeling on one knee, feeling their vitality rapidly draining away.

The demon seed's six-fingered sharp claws raised, cutting six fine slits in the air, with dark red evil qi oozing from the edges of the cracks.

They were about to fall in the next second.

A bright golden staff shadow lay horizontally in front of the three of them.

zhulong staff collided with the six-fingered sharp claws, and a ring of gold and black intertwined shockwave exploded at the point of collision.

The shockwave swept across the square, the flames of the forty-nine candles instantly lowered by half, and a layer of black mycelium on the ground was blown away.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan and the other two were pushed back five or six meters by the shockwave, crashing into the stone pillars at the edge of the square, but they managed to escape the direct attack range of the demon seed.

Lin Ye's feet plowed two charred gullies on the floor tiles.

A casual strike had already surpassed Hongxiu by several notches.

But it was still within the bearable range.

What truly made him frown was another matter.

The thunder light on zhulong staff was swallowed by a section the moment they contacted.

The thunder light flowed from the front end of the staff body to the demon seed's claws, passed through the scales on its arms, and finally converged into the depths of that vertical mouth, disappearing completely.

Thirty percent of the overflowing power of the thunder core was swallowed.

"Thunder can be swallowed too?"

Lin Ye was indeed somewhat surprised.

The demon seed's vertical mouth suddenly opened, splitting from the top of its head to its chin, with a vortex deep inside the slit.

At the edge of the black vortex, countless tiny serrated lights rotated, and the center was a mass of pure nothingness.

Light, air, dust, broken bricks—everything was surging toward that vortex and then disappearing.

A huge suction force grabbed Lin Ye's body.

The floor tiles under his feet shattered, his feet left the ground, and his entire body was dragged towards the depths of the vertical mouth by the suction force.

At the same time, the demon seed's other claw swept across. Wherever it passed, space was torn open into a neat crack.

Black smoke rose from the edge of the crack, and the scene on the other side of the crack could be vaguely seen in the smoke...

A desolate scorched earth covered with withered bones!

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan propped up his upper body from the side of the stone pillar, just in time to see that crack.

His pupils shrank to the limit, and a hoarse roar he didn't even realize he made came from his mouth: "Spatial attribute! It has a spatial attribute! Lin Ye!"

The demon seed's two attacks almost completely sealed off all retreats.

Retreating was the torn spatial crack, advancing was the vertical mouth being sucked into the vortex, and the air on both sides had been condensed by evil qi into substantial black walls.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's spiritual energy anchor was frantically calculating the counter-measures Lin Ye might take, and every calculation ended with Lin Ye being heavily injured.

His fingers dug into the gaps of the floor tiles, his nails cracking.

He couldn't accept that after finally meeting a newcomer who could create miracles, he was going to fall here.

Then, he heard the sound of wind breaking!

Lin Ye didn't retreat, but he didn't advance either.

In the process of being dragged toward the vertical mouth by the suction, he twisted his waist and rotated his hips. zhulong staff flipped half a circle in his hand with the staff tail facing forward, and taking advantage of the suction's acceleration and his own waist strength, he thrust the staff out!

"You like absorbing so much, don't you?"

"Then let you absorb your fill!"

The entire zhulong staff sank into the vertical mouth.

The thunder light exploded deep in the demon seed's throat, and the golden light of the yellow emperors essence blood poured in right after. The two forces collided with a bang in the black vortex inside the vertical mouth, making an extremely dull explosion!

The demon seed's vertical mouth suddenly closed and then opened, letting out a sharp screech. Its entire body leaned back, and its sharp claws tore deep trenches on the ground.

Its body was also blasted back more than ten meters from the black fog, breaking the remaining half of the locust tree trunk before barely stabilizing its footing.

Lin Ye also flew out.

The force of the rebound plus the evil qi impact erupted by the demon seed in the last moment before being repelled was too overbearing.

He flew across a little half of the square in the air, smashing through a two-story building at the edge of the square.

And crashed out from the wall on the other side.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's heart skipped a beat.

"Lin Ye!"

A sound of bricks and stones turning over came from the ruins of the small building.

Lin Ye stood up from the pile of rubble, patted the broken brick dust on his shoulders, and frowned.

There was a slender wound on his forearm. The wound was not deep, but it showed an abnormal dark gray color, and it was still slowly spreading.

"Evil qi invasion?"

He tried to urge the body-tempering ointment in his body to repair it. The edges of the wound wriggled slightly, but soon subsided again.

The repair speed was far behind the speed of evil qi erosion, and the dark gray area expanded at a rhythm visible to the naked eye.

For every bit it expanded, the strength of his right arm decreased by a bit.

The demon seed straightened its body over at the ruins.

Smoke was still coming out of its vertical mouth, and the lingering traces of thunder light and golden light deep in its throat were clearly visible, but it didn't care at all.

It opened its vertical mouth wide, and the evil qi lingering in the square, the resentment remaining on the townspeople, the green smoke produced by the burning candles—everything was sucked into its vertical mouth.

Even the smoke coming out of its throat was swallowed back together by it.

This guy didn't even let go of the energy remnants generated by its own injuries.

Its vertical mouth turned toward the direction where Lin Ye was, and the facial slit opened slightly.

A pure emotion emanated from that consciousness.

A kind of excitement that a hunter would only have when seeing a more tricky prey, mixed with a greed bordering on frantic hunger!

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan crawled up from the side of the stone pillar and glanced at the spreading gray wound on Lin Ye's right arm.

"Evil qi has entered the body. The flesh and blood near the wound must be cut off immediately! Otherwise, once the evil qi invades the bone marrow, not even immortals can save you! The right arm must be amputated!"

Li Yan and Fang Hao moved over, supporting each other. Hearing the word "amputation", their faces looked even worse than Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's.

Fang Hao gritted his teeth and pulled a dagger from his boot shaft, his hands shaking constantly, but his tone carried a bit of seriousness.

"I'll do it, my knife skills are okay. Brother Lin, don't move, bite your teeth, it'll be quick... Your right hand still has to hold the staff, it can't be ruined here!"

"No need."

Lin Ye raised his left hand and pressed against the clothes on his chest.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan became anxious: "Lin Ye, although this fellow is currently only a demon seed, every demon seed carries an evil god status on its body and cannot be underestimated. Those in the archives who met this end ended up having their entire flesh, bones, and internal organs assimilated by evil qi, turning into a pile of moving mud! It's still not too late to amputate the right arm now; there's a way to reattach it when we get back to the provincial capital, but if we drag it out any longer—"

His voice stopped abruptly.

He saw Lin Ye's chest light up.

A warm, heavy, and profound earth-yellow light, as if carrying the entire earth, overflowed from the gaps in his collar.

kun tu jade essence!

Transformed from the origin essence of Houtu, carrying all things with virtue, containing bearing, nourishing, harmonizing, and heaviness...

A certain power that harmonized the earth awakened on its own at this moment, like a Tibetan mastiff guarding its territory sniffing the scent of an invader.

The earth-yellow light flowed down from the pendant, as slow as honey and as heavy as magma.

The light touched the skin on Lin Ye's chest, and then spread downward at an unhurried rhythm, flowing past his shoulders, his elbow bends, and past that still-spreading dark gray wound.

The evil qi instantly let out a faint screech, being dealt with in a gentler yet overbearing way.

In the blink of an eye.

The dark gray evil qi faded bit by bit, turning light gray, and then transparent.

Finally, it even turned into a trace of upright and peaceful energy, slowly flowing back along Lin Ye's meridians to his dantian, becoming a part of his own spiritual power.

Transformation?!

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan widened his eyes.

He had seen methods of dispelling evil qi, sealing arts for sealing evil qi, and even witnessed a few high-star testers using secret arts to expel evil qi out of their bodies.

But he had never seen this kind of handling method.

Digesting evil qi like ordinary spiritual energy to feed back into oneself?

How could this be possible?

That was the evil qi of a demon seed!

It carried the status of a future evil god!

After purifying the wound, it began to repair.

New flesh grew on the wound of Lin Ye's arm, and the new flesh closed toward the center at a speed visible to the naked eye.

A few seconds later, not even a scar was left.

This wasn't over yet...

All minor scrapes and scratches remaining on Lin Ye's body, his aching meridians, and all subtle hidden injuries were repaired together under the soaking of the light of Kun Tu.

His body became very comfortable, every inch of muscle relaxed, and every bone let out a satisfied sigh.

"Carrying all things with virtue..."

Lin Ye lowered his head to look at the kun tu jade essence in his hand, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly.

The expressions of Fang Hao and the others were more brilliant than ever.

No way?

They didn't know what happened, only feeling that Lin Ye was clearly in battle-damaged version the last second, and now suddenly sublimated?

A flash of light crossed the bottom of Lin Ye's eyes.

He clenched the kun tu jade essence, actively urging the Houtu origin qi within it.

The earth-yellow light suddenly diffused, rippling in all directions with him as the center.

In the area swept by the light, the black mycelium withered and turned yellow, the evil qi was harmonized into harmless spiritual energy, and even the foul-smelling mucus oozing from the ground after being polluted by evil qi was evaporated and dissipated under the soaking of the light of Kun Tu, leaving only a dry slate ground.

Within a radius of a hundred meters, the evil qi vanished completely in a flash!

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan, Li Yan, and Fang Hao stood within the range of the light of Kun Tu, feeling their bodies lighten simultaneously.

That cold and suffocating feeling that had been pressing on their spines since entering the town disappeared.

It was replaced by a warm, steady, and inexplicably reassuring warmth.

The three of them looked at each other, their expressions looking like they had just been yanked awake from a nightmare. Looking at the surrounding scenery, they couldn't tell for a moment which was reality.

"This is..."

Li Yan lowered his head to look at the cyan-purple bruises on his arm previously compressed out by the evil qi, which were receding at a speed visible to the naked eye. "Am I dreaming?"

Fang Hao pushed his glasses and said a nonsense sentence in an extremely academic tone: "From a medical perspective, our physiological indicators have normalized by more than double!"

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan fought back his excitement.

His spiritual energy anchor scanned Lin Ye once, then scanned again, and then scanned a third time.

The result of the first scan was "blood loss, evil qi erosion, multiple soft tissue contusions".

The result of the second scan was "evil qi zeroed, wound healing, recovering".

The result of the third scan was "Status: Peak"!

The three scans were less than half a minute apart.

He watched the coiled dragon mark on Lin Ye's wrist glowing with golden light under the reflection of the light of Kun Tu, and the scales on the dragon's tail part were lighting up one by one.

Like some ancient seal being peeled open layer by layer, he remembered the dragon roar he heard on the hilltop.

It was not an illusion, nor a misjudgment; Lin Ye still had an even bigger trump card on him!

The demon seed interrupted his thoughts.

It had never felt this kind of power...

That was an extreme overbearing harmony of heaven and earth, a neutralization of all things!

Its vertical mouth opened abruptly, and its six-fingered sharp claws waved frantically, tearing three spatial cracks in the air, trying to cut off the spread of the light of Kun Tu.

But the cracks closed faster than they opened in front of the earth-yellow light.

"The power of Houtu carries all things and also harmonizes all things; spatial cracks are also one of all things."

Lin Ye watched that beast still trying to struggle and smiled.

zhulong seal vibrated simultaneously.

In the dantian, that small portion of Zhulong Divine Sense harmonized by the light of Kun Tu lay there obediently like a beast whose fur had been smoothed down.

The Zhulong Divine Sense harmonized by the kun tu jade essence needed to be actively absorbed.

A period of time had also passed since the last absorption.

During this period, quite a few gentle parts of divine sense had been harmonized out.

Coupled with this active triggering of the kun tu jade essence, a large amount of extra power was harmonized all at once...

It was time to absorb them together!

The overbearing power continuously surged into his body.

The zhulong seal on his wrist suddenly lit up, and behind the dragon's tail, the outline of a small section of the dragon's body began to emerge.

The momentum on his body also changed.

The sense of oppression he released during the previous battle was mainly the Human Emperors Coercion brought by the yellow emperors essence blood, which was fierce, overbearing, and like mountains and peaks.

And now, a more ancient, vast, and closer-to-the-origin-of-the-world coercion rose from his body, intertwining and fusing with the Human Emperors Coercion, forming a brand-new aura!

The demon seed stopped screeching.

This was the first time it had stood motionless since its descent.

Because for the first time it felt something other than 'hunger'...

Fear!

Every time the aura on Lin Ye grew stronger by a fraction, that bit of evil god status inside its body trembled, as if its neck was being held down by something even more ancient.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's spiritual energy anchor exploded into a mess of garbled code on Lin Ye.

He tried to read Lin Ye's current energy fluctuations, but the signals fed back by the spiritual energy anchor were all noise.

Like an old camera trying to photograph the sun.

Fang Hao pushed his glasses; he had many vocabulary words to describe the scene before him...

"Momentum soaring to the skies", "overbearing aura leaking out", "shocking the whole audience"...

But he found that all these words were not enough.

The sense of oppression emanating from Lin Ye had already surpassed the scope of what language could describe.

Li Yan was the simplest; he only said two words: "What the f*ck?!"

The dragon majesty in Lin Ye's pupils was fully displayed, seemingly reflecting a realm of heaven and earth...