Chương 15: Now Break Me

The thing was, even though the Abyssal Overseer was immobilized, it remained an apex predator at the peak of the Ash-Marrow realm—a nightmare forged in corrupted spiritual energy and unholy cultivation. It did not simply roll over to die or offer its neck like some pitiful Foundation Establishment disciple.

Thus, as the beast lurched forward—its massive left leg pinned uselessly by the concealed bone-spike driven through boot sole, gray flesh, and shattered joint—Shi Yan immediately closed the gap.

Of course, he did so only after bracing himself with a brief flex of his stance, boots grinding into the compressed ash beneath him with a dry, rasping crunch. The bone-dust clung to his worn soles, particles scattering outward in thin clouds. His [35 Agility] propelled him smoothly into the monster's shattered center guard, each step calculated to the inch, his body moving with the cold precision of a man who'd rehearsed a thousand combat entries.

Veins bulged on the back of his scarred hand as he aimed the chipped, Grave-Rot-poisoned jian directly at the thick, exposed flesh of the Overseer's throat. His fingers wrapped tight around the worn leather grip, knuckles bone-white with controlled tension. The emerald bioluminescence smeared along the jagged notches flickered faintly in the dim golden glow of the lift runes, casting sickly green reflections across the beast's corroded armor plates.

The trajectory of the swift blade was perfect, just as expected—a clean thrust angled upward beneath the jaw, designed to sever the carotid and windpipe in one surgical motion.

Yet, survival instinct is a brutal reflex—especially in creatures whose very existence defied the natural order.

"GRRAAAARRGH!"

Roaring in pure, agonizing fury that echoed off the vaulted ceiling and sent a fresh rain of gray dust cascading down from the leviathan-sized stalactites, the Overseer didn't reach for its fallen halberd embedded in the bedrock.

Instead, it swung its massive, free left hand—a fist the size of a boulder, clad in fused black-iron lamellar that scraped and ground with a metallic shriek—in a desperate, sweeping backhand aimed squarely at the assassin's skull. The motion was wild, uncontrolled, driven purely by animal rage and the primal need to crush the threat before it.

The displaced air screamed past Shi Yan's face with a hot, rancid gust, whipping his wild hair backward and stinging his cracked lips with freezing sulfur that tasted of ancient decay and corroded iron.

Fast—his pupils constricted to pinpricks.

Despite the perfectly executed trap, trading blows with a nine-foot behemoth was a fatal gamble—the kind of mistake that ended with a crushed skull and brain matter painting the cavern floor.

Rather than following through with the throat strike, he aborted his forward momentum entirely.

Dropping his center of gravity with an explosive flex of his knees, he contorted his waist, bending backward in an impossible, boneless backward evasion as the massive armored knuckles grazed the very fabric of his straw cloak—close enough that the corroded iron scraped audibly against the coarse fiber with a sound like grinding stone. The heat radiating from the Overseer's swollen flesh washed over him, a nauseating wave of sulfur and rot.

His boots scraped hard against the stone beneath the ash layer, the frictionless soles fighting for purchase as he forcefully halted his slide, muscles burning with the strain. He kicked up a thick cloud of gray bone-ash that clung to his grime-caked hands and stung the corners of his narrowed eyes.

In the same moment, using the rotation of his backward dodge as leverage, he dragged the chipped sword brutally across the underside of the Overseer's sweeping arm.

The blade sheared through the gaps in the rusty armor plates with a high, metallic shriek, slicing deep into the beast's mutated bicep. Thick, gray flesh parted like spoiled meat, revealing layers of blackened muscle tissue beneath.

The sick, wet crunch of tearing muscle echoed off the sheer bedrock walls in overlapping waves, mingling with the hiss of toxin meeting flesh—a sound like fat sizzling in a pan mixed with the sharp intake of poisoned breath.

More importantly, the bioluminescent green Grave-Rot violently rubbed off the steel, seeping directly into the monster's open bloodstream through the ragged wound. The fungal toxin glowed faintly as it mixed with dark, viscous blood that oozed rather than flowed—thick as congealed grease.

"GURRRGH!"

The Overseer yanked its arm back with a wet, gurgling shriek that bubbled up from its chest, thick dark blood spilling onto the cavern floor in heavy droplets that sizzled faintly against the frozen bone-ash, sending up thin wisps of acrid smoke.

Shi Yan immediately danced two steps back, lowering his sword into a neutral guard. His deadpan expression didn't shift—no satisfaction, no triumph, just cold tactical assessment. His breathing remained steady, measured, his heart rate locked at fifty-five beats per minute despite the adrenaline flooding his system.

The toxin had entered its blood.

Now, let it suffocate and wait for it to die.

The moment it seeped in, the bioluminescent fungus reacted instantly, spreading through corrupted spiritual channels like wildfire through dry tinder. The Overseer clawed frantically at its own arm, thick fingernails scraping uselessly against corroded iron gauntlets with metallic screeches that set his teeth on edge. Its dark blood turned sickly green as the poison violently attacked its nervous system, veins bulging grotesquely beneath gray flesh like fat worms writhing under skin.

The beast fell heavily onto one knee—the intact right one—its chest heaving in erratic, strained spasms as its vocal cords began to paralyze. Each breath came as a wet, rattling wheeze that echoed in the sulfur-thick air.

The thud of its iron-soled boot crashing into the bedrock sent a miniature shockwave rippling outward through the compressed ash, rattling loose shards of calcified bone and sending them skittering across the floor with dry, clicking sounds.

Shi Yan remained in a calm-looking, unhurried tactical stance, sword angled low at his hip, tip hovering inches from the ground. His scarred fingers adjusted slightly on the worn leather grip, maintaining readiness without tension. There was no need to rush; he simply waited for the tenacious vitality to drain and for the monster to grow weak—a predator watching prey bleed out from a calculated wound.

But a second later, his combat instincts screamed a warning—that primal alarm honed through countless firefights and close-quarters kills.

He felt something off.

The air pressure shifted. The temperature spiked.

And as expected, he saw the exact signs now—the Overseer wasn't dying. It was swelling.

Its dark gray skin rapidly flushed with a terrifying, charcoal-black heat that rippled outward from its core, veins pulsing so violently they looked ready to rupture through the surface like pressurized pipes about to burst.

The thick veins in its neck bulged to the point of bursting, cords of blackened tissue standing out in sharp relief, and the fused black-iron lamellar plates groaned audibly as the flesh beneath expanded—metal warping with creaking protests, rivets straining in their housings.

The ambient temperature of the cavern violently spiked, drying the moisture from his cracked lips in a fraction of a second and forcing him to squint against the sudden, oppressive wave of sulfuric heat that rolled off the creature in shimmering waves. The freezing air warped, distorting his vision of the far walls. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"SKREEEEAAAR!"

The beast let out a distorted, high-pitched wail that seemed to vibrate from its very bones—a sound that wasn't meant to come from any humanoid throat. The acoustics of the cavern amplified it into something unbearable, rattling the stalactites above and sending hairline cracks spiderwebbing across the sundered Daoist statue's stone face with sharp popping sounds.

A sharp, unexpected jolt of panic hit his chest—a cold spike of adrenaline that threatened to break his controlled breathing rhythm.

Wait. It's about to... explode?

His dead eyes narrowed fractionally, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.

No... I mean, how is that physically possible? The toxin shouldn't trigger a chain reaction like this— Yet, the panic lasted less than a millisecond before he suppressed it with ruthless mental discipline, forcing his rapidly beating heart back into a measured rhythm. Training overrode instinct. Analysis replaced fear.

Assess. Adapt.

First of all, the Grave-Rot was killing it—that much was undeniable from the way its movements had become jerky, uncoordinated. As a final, desperate survival mechanism, the Abyssal Overseer was manually detonating its own corrupted Dantian, flooding its veins with volatile, boiling Demonic Qi simply to burn the neurotoxin out of its bloodstream through sheer spiritual combustion. He'd never seen it happen before—cultivation manuals didn't cover self-immolation techniques—but the logic tracked.

Desperate cultivators did desperate things.

"ROAAAR!"

With a bellow that sounded more like an erupting alchemy furnace—a deep, furnace-roar mixed with the shriek of metal under stress—the Overseer yanked its massive Guan Dao violently from the bedrock where it had been embedded.

Chunks of compressed bone-ash and stone scattered outward in a spray of debris that clattered across the floor, some fragments striking Shi Yan's boots with sharp taps.

Ignited by the beast's overloading core, the heavy steel blade erupted in pitch-black, demonic fire that licked hungrily at the freezing air with tongues of unnatural flame—cold at the edges, burning hot at the core. The fire cast writhing shadows across the cavern walls that danced like tortured spirits, and the smell of burning corruption intensified until it was almost unbearable.

Damn.

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed further, and this time, he bit his lower lip hard enough to taste copper—a sharp, metallic tang that focused his mind.

In a blind, suicidal frenzy driven by Demonic Qi overload and animal desperation, the burning Overseer pivoted on its ruined knee—ligaments tearing further with wet popping sounds—and executed a devastating, 360-degree horizontal sweep with the flaming halberd.

The radius of the swing was massive—easily spanning thirty feet. The black flames trailing behind the blade left afterimages seared into his retinas. His mind grasped the arc instantly, his [35 Agility]-sharpened senses reading the halberd's path and calculating vectors with mechanical precision. He tracked the angle, the velocity, the reach, the inevitable intersection points with his current position.

The flaming crescent blade was extending outward in a perfect killing arc. If he tried to dodge backward out of range, the tip of the burning blade would inevitably catch his torso, cutting him in half and searing his organs to ash before they hit the ground.

Tsk! I mathematically cannot outrun the outer arc.

So, he didn't run away.

He ran forward.

With ruthless judgment born from battlefield experience, he chose the path of least lethal resistance. The blade of a halberd was the deadliest part—designed to cleave through armor and bone with ease; the heavy shaft near the monster's hands carried only blunt force trauma. Survivable. Manageable.

Boots skidding across the ash-slick floor with dry scraping sounds, he stepped aggressively inside the beast's guard, closing the distance in two explosive strides. His legs burned with the sudden exertion, muscles coiling and releasing like springs.

He raised his left arm, relying on his thick black-iron vambrace and his [35 Physique]-hardened musculature, angling his forearm like a rigid shield to intercept the heavy wooden shaft bound in clinking iron rings that rattled with the weapon's momentum.

CRACK.

The impact was absolutely devastating.

Even stopping the weapon near the handle, the force was equivalent to being struck by a charging siege ram—the kind of impact that killed horses and shattered gates.

The thick wooden shaft of the Guan Dao slammed into the black-iron vambrace with a resounding clang that echoed violently across the cavern, the sound sharp enough to hurt his ears. The metal held—the forged iron bowing inward but maintaining structural integrity. The bone underneath did not.

"Ugh!"

His left ulna and radius snapped with a sickening, audible crack—the sound wet and brittle, like green wood splitting under pressure, overlaid with the sharper snap of calcified bone giving way. The shock of pain was immediate and white-hot, lancing up his arm and exploding in his shoulder socket. Nerve endings screamed. His vision tunneled briefly, black spots dancing at the edges.

The blunt force violently threw him backward, his boots skidding heavily through the thick bone-ash, carving deep furrows in the gray powder that rose around him in choking clouds.

He crashed onto his right knee, the frozen bedrock biting through fabric and skin with brutal cold that numbed even as it abraded. His left arm dangled uselessly at a broken angle, the vambrace now grotesquely misaligned—bent inward where the shaft had struck—the metal pressing against swelling flesh. The limb screamed with white-hot agony that radiated up into his shoulder and down to his fingertips, each heartbeat sending fresh pulses of pain through shattered bone.

But the block succeeded.

Because he had absorbed the momentum of the shaft—converting kinetic energy into structural damage to his own body—the Abyssal Overseer's desperate swing was abruptly halted midway through its arc.

Thrown completely off balance by the sudden resistance where none should have existed, the burning monster stumbled awkwardly forward with a confused, guttural growl that bubbled up from its chest, its wide chest entirely exposed, the pitch-black demonic fire still roaring along the halberd blade with hungry, unnatural heat.

Shi Yan didn't gasp. He didn't look at his mangled arm—didn't waste processing power on assessing damage he could already feel. His dead eyes remained locked forward as he stared directly at the golden UI floating in his vision, overlaying reality with translucent information panels only he could see.

Damn, it's broken.

But he had exactly 280 Dao Embers banked.

The System wasn't a magical fairy that cast healing spells; it was a cold, biological engine. When an Attribute increased, the Vessel forcibly reconstructed tissue to accommodate the new power limit—bone density increasing, muscle fibers thickening, cellular structure optimizing through accelerated spiritual energy infusion.

So that was his only chance.

System. Push Physique by two points. Now.