Chương 98: Where Is His Soul? (1/3)

The sheer, raw kinetic shockwave of the dual impact was staggering.

The concussive blast rippled upward in an eruption of invisible force, tearing through the layered fibers of Shi Yan's Stoneback Boar gambeson like invisible claws raking across his torso. The shockwave didn't merely push—it invaded, vibrating through muscle and marrow with brutal efficiency. His teeth rattled in their sockets, the impact resonating through his jaw hard enough to make his molars ache.

His ribs flexed inward dangerously, the bones creaking under the sudden compression despite the peak-mortal density of his newly forged Obsidian-Frame. For a single breath-stealing instant, his entire skeletal structure felt like it was being wrung out like wet cloth.

Overhead, stalactites the size of spears cracked free from the cavern ceiling with sharp, percussive reports—stone surrendering to shock. They plummeted downward in a deadly rain, shattering against the spiked reptilian shell that served as the anvil below. Fragments of calcified rock exploded outward in glittering clouds of dust and razor-edged shrapnel, pinging off chitin and stone alike.

To Shi Yan's eyes, the petrified carapace resembled the back of a prehistoric snapping turtle scaled up to the size of a main battle tank—its surface blackened by centuries of relentless, intense heat until it gleamed like scorched obsidian. Deep grooves and pockmarks scarred its surface, evidence of countless brutal impacts. The entire alcove shook violently, as if struck by localized seismic tremors, the bone dust underfoot rippling in concentric waves like disturbed water.

"Slippery meat! The shell moves too fast!" hissed a ragged chorus of voices from the leather apron, their tones overlapping in a frantic, hateful chant that echoed off the stone walls with unnatural resonance. The stitched faces contorted grotesquely, mouths gaping open to reveal filed-down nubs of teeth and black, withered tongues.

"Pin it down! Bind the waist! Burn the seams!"

Shi Yan's gaze snapped back to the fiend with predatory focus. He noticed immediately how the Jiuli Fiend did not need to recalibrate its stance to follow up—no wasted motion, no telegraphed shift of weight. Its middle pair of arms, currently gripping iron tongs long enough to serve as heavy pikes, lashed out with the fluid, terrifying speed of striking serpents. The rusted metal cut through the smog-thick air with a low, whistling hiss.

"Clamp the spine! Drag it to the fire!" the apron shrieked, the voices rising to a fever pitch of malicious anticipation. Dark Yin-fluid wept from the ragged eye sockets of the stitched faces, dribbling down the leather in oily streaks.

The rusted, heat-warped jaws of the tongs snapped open with a grinding metallic screech, their serrated inner edges crusted with ancient, blackened residue. They aimed directly for his waist—intent clear and brutal: crush his spine like kindling, clamp down until vertebrae shattered, then hoist his crippled body onto the fossilized anvil like a piece of scrap iron ready for reshaping.

Too close. Six arms, each moving for itself. A filthy thing to fight head-on.

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed to slits behind the Yaksha mask, his pupils contracting as tactical calculations flickered through his mind at lightning speed.

He couldn't draw a weapon fast enough to parry—his right hand hovering near his hip was a full second too far from any viable intercept. No ordinary silver sword or basic iron blade was going to deflect a pair of tongs wielded with enough crushing force to warp meteor iron into scrap.

He pivoted drastically, whipping his torso to the right with explosive rotational force. His spine twisted, hips rotating like a coiled spring releasing. He threw his heavily armored left side forcefully forward, sacrificing his vanguard flank to protect his center mass—a brutal trade, but a calculated one. He raised his left arm sharply, angling the thick spiked mountain-iron bracer directly into the descending path of the snapping iron jaws.

CLANG!

A blinding shower of orange sparks erupted in a violent cascade, illuminating the dim, smog-choked cavern in stuttering flashes of searing light. The fiend's iron tongs violently clamped down over his reinforced forearm with the sound of a forge hammer striking an anvil—sharp, deafening, absolute.

Bastard hits like a runaway truck!

Shi Yan grimaced behind his mask, his jaw clenching hard enough to make the muscles along his jawline stand out like cables. The impact reverberated through his entire arm, a shockwave of brutal force that rattled his elbow joint and sent jolts of white-hot sensation racing up toward his shoulder socket.

Based on his tactical understanding, the creature's raw physical strength was astronomical—easily equivalent to a Tier-2 Furnace-Core cultivator, perhaps even surpassing that threshold. The kind of force that could shatter foundation stone and bend tempered steel like wet clay.

The rusted metal of the tongs shrieked in protest, the corroded surfaces grinding together with an ear-splitting metallic scream as they bit deeply into the mountain-iron plate of his Yaksha armor. The thick bracer contorted visibly under the immense pressure, the metal groaning and warping, shallow dents forming along its surface. But the underlying layers—shock-absorbing pond-spider silk interwoven with coarse ox-hair padding stitched into the gambeson—did their job with stubborn resilience.

The armor held together, preventing the serrated jaws from punching through and shattering the radius bone beneath into splinters. Yet despite the protective layering, a sharp, localized jolt of agony shot all the way up from his trapped forearm to his elbow, then exploded outward into his shoulder joint like a spike of molten metal driven into flesh. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

He merely gritted his teeth harder, a low growl rumbling in his chest. His eyes glared through the mask's eyeholes with cold, unrelenting fury—no fear, no hesitation, only the icy calculation of a soldier who had long since learned to weaponize pain.

"Got the arm! The iron shell breaks!" the stitched faces wailed in unison, their voices pitching upward into a horrific chorus of glee that reverberated through the chamber like the cries of damned spirits. Their torn mouths stretched impossibly wide, black fluid bubbling from cracked lips.

"Rip the limb from the socket! Bleed the joints!"

However...

Shi Yan's lips curled into a cold, predatory sneer beneath the mask.

Wrong arm.

He didn't try to pull away—didn't waste energy fighting the crushing grip. Instead, he used the clamped tongs as a fixed anchor point, a fulcrum of unyielding leverage. Utilizing the very fixture of the fiend's own iron grip against it, Shi Yan hoisted his entire body weight upward with explosive core strength. His abdominal muscles flexed hard, his obliques firing like pistons as he swung his right leg back in a wide, sweeping arc to gather maximum rotational torque.

His core twisted like a drawn bowstring pulled to its absolute limit, every muscle fiber in his torso coiling tight before he executed a devastating, horizontal roundhouse kick aimed squarely at the grotesque cluster of stitched human faces on the monster's thick leather apron.

With his [Might: 55], he possessed the absolute peak physical threshold of the mortal realm—strength that bordered on the inhuman, forged through relentless system refinement and brutal conditioning. His iron-shod boot struck with enough raw, concentrated kinetic energy to shatter the reinforced hull plating of a military war-chariot, the kind of blow that could cave in tempered steel and pulverize bone into powder.

The strike landed dead center on the grotesque apron with a sickeningly wet CRUNCH.

The sound was visceral—a meaty, pulping noise mixed with the sharp crack of rupturing tissue. Several of the tanned, stitched faces practically exploded under the sheer blunt-force trauma, their desiccated features collapsing inward before bursting outward in sprays of foul, thick dark Yin-fluid. Black ichor splattered across the apron and dripped in heavy, oily ropes to the bone-dusted floor.

The ruined faces wailed in a sudden, twisted chorus of phantom agony—voices layered and discordant, shrieking in pitches that scraped against the inside of Shi Yan's skull.

"The flesh bites back!" the destroyed faces shrieked, their voices bubbling wetly through torrents of black gore. Fluid spurted from torn seams and ruptured mouths.

"Tear it! Tear it apart!"

The Jiuli Fiend's massive armored torso violently shuddered, chitin plates rattling against one another with sharp clicking sounds. The creature's entire upper body recoiled slightly, its fused lower half grinding against the cracking fossilized shell beneath it.

It had clearly not expected a human—a mere mortal vessel—to deliver a blow capable of shaking its internal mass without drawing upon a single trace of Qi, completely bypassing the layered spiritual sense traps and ancient defensive wards it relied upon to detect cultivator attacks.

Its crushing grip on the tongs momentarily spasmed, the pressure slackening as the concussive shock rippled through its arms. The iron jaws loosened fractionally, their serrated teeth scraping against the warped surface of Shi Yan's bracer.

Shi Yan ripped his left arm free with a harsh, grinding scrape of metal on metal, sparks trailing from the contact points. He dropped immediately, his boots hitting the bone-dusted floor with a muffled thud. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet, his knees flexing to absorb the impact, and immediately backpedaled several paces out of the creature's immediate striking range. His breathing was controlled but sharp, his chest rising and falling in measured rhythm.

He took a short, sharp breath through his nose—and instantly regretted it. The acrid, caustic scent of the spreading corpse-gas seared the back of his throat like inhaled acid, leaving a burning, chemical taste on his tongue. His eyes watered reflexively behind the mask. His mind raced in constant motion, flipping through a rapid succession of operational parameters with the speed and precision of a tactical computer.

Think.

His gaze locked onto the towering horror before him, tracking every minute shift of its six arms, every flex of chitin plating, every subtle vibration in its fused lower body.

Its strength is at least Furnace-Core level. Too many arms. Too many simultaneous attack vectors. No clean way to flank it or get around its reach.

And this thing doesn't fight like a man. No throat to crush. No carotid artery to sever. No blood to drain.

He glanced sharply at his surroundings—the spreading mist creeping along the floor, the corroded wall behind him weeping dark sludge, the loose weapons rattling on their chains as the chamber continued to vibrate with residual tremors.

Worse, this place itself is killing me. The corpse-gas is still spreading. In half a minute, maybe less, every breath in here will turn poisonous. My lungs will start dissolving from the inside.

In short, a drawn-out melee engagement against a tireless, mechanical biological weapon in an enclosed, heavily restricted, toxic space was a zero-percent survival scenario. The math was brutally simple.

If I stay and trade blows, I die. Simple.

No Qi, either.

He clicked his tongue in sharp frustration, the sound harsh and clipped.

A spiritual root would be damned useful right now.

If he possessed even a basic elemental affinity, he could conjure a gust of wind to blow the heavy gas away, disperse it before it reached critical concentration. He could summon a glowing Qi barrier to filter oxygen and provide temporary atmospheric protection. But fantasy was fantasy—wishful thinking was a luxury he couldn't afford. He had to deal with the brutal, unforgiving reality of his Daoless vessel.

Regarding his current tactical situation, if he stayed engaged in a battle of pure physical attrition against this thing, he would simply run out of breathable air before he could deliver a killing blow. His lungs would burn, his stamina reserves would fail, and he would eventually be pinned to the floor—immobilized and forced to inhale the concentrated soul-seizing mist straight into his lungs.

Big, tireless, and ugly. Bad enough. Trapped in a poison pit with it? Worse.

Shi Yan's sharp gaze tracked the creeping mist spreading across the bone-dusted floor like a layer of dry ice, tendrils of vapor curling upward in slow, writhing coils.

There was no other logical choice. Not here. Not over a lump of steel, no matter how valuable.

The next moment, Shi Yan pushed off hard with his rear leg, his iron-shod boots throwing up a thick cloud of crushed bone dust that hung in the air like pale fog. He immediately pivoted a full hundred and eighty degrees, completely turning his back on the hulking horror without hesitation. He broke into a full sprint, his powerful legs driving him forward with explosive acceleration directly toward the steep, treacherous stone stairs that led back up toward the upper tiers of the Ghost Market.

His muscles burned with the sudden exertion, lactic acid flooding his quads and calves. The system ability [Blood-Ignition Flash Step] itched insistently in the back of his mind like a finger hovering over a trigger—a potential emergency override, ready to be deployed if the situation turned critical. His sole focus was now entirely devoted to breaking past the chamber's perimeter and getting back to breathable air, to open space where he could reassess and reposition.

But how could he know that the Ghost Market was not a place one could simply choose to leave at will?

As Shi Yan moved, covering ground with rapid, pounding strides, the Jiuli Fiend let out another silent, vibrating roar of absolute rage. The sound wasn't audible in the conventional sense—it bypassed the ears entirely, resonating directly through bone and marrow as a deep, subsonic rumble that made the loose weapons on the walls rattle violently against their chains.

Sensing with ancient, primal instinct that its prey sought to break free of this domain—to escape the sealed chamber and flee back into the labyrinthine market above—the entity suddenly thrust its lower pair of arms downward. These were the same limbs that had earlier worked the fleshy, organic bellows with methodical precision. Now they plunged beneath the massive petrified reptilian shell serving as its anvil, chitin-plated fingers disappearing into the shadows beneath the blackened carapace.