Chapter 382: Yan Jing's Full Power (Two-in-One)

Surface World.

For a fleeting moment, total silence fell across every major broadcasting platform.

It wasn't because the viewers were stunned, but because the platforms themselves had completely crashed.

Beneath a tidal wave of exclamation marks, the major servers quickly buckled one after another.

Yet the audience's enthusiasm wasn't dampened in the slightest. Instead, viewers flooded from the major platforms into obscure, pirated streams to keep venting their excitement.

"What did I just see! I've witnessed history!!!"

"Unprecedented, absolutely unprecedented! Thank god I started screen recording! He Xinquan with four extreme quality Rituals, and Yan Jing with four Rituals surpassing extreme quality! Both in the same dungeon!"

"Fuck me, we hit the jackpot this time, a real jackpot! Four Rituals beyond the extreme limit!!"

"I can't even imagine it, I really can't!"

"This world has gone completely insane!!! How could anyone possibly accommodate Rituals of that level?! Can an expert explain how much this entire set of Rituals would cost, even setting aside the possibility of accommodating them?"

"The market value of those four Rituals is impossible to estimate. Even measuring by extreme quality standards, each piece would average close to a hundred million surface coins—and they're still things you can only chance upon, not seek out. But now, every single piece is beyond extreme quality. Both their price tag and the difficulty of finding them would multiply dozens of times over, at least."

"And—and! Most importantly! Rituals that surpass extreme quality aren't easy to accommodate at all. Forcing them into the body would likely cause a severe backlash!"

"Which means there's a possibility Yan Jing used a Ritual Blessing Coupon for every single one!"

Ritual Blessing Coupons!!!

The moment this speculation was voiced, the crowd exploded all over again!

These were truly rare treasures.

These non-tradable items meant you could only rely on your own strength and ability to clear high-quality dungeons for a minuscule chance of obtaining one!

And now, according to this deduction, Yan Jing likely had four of them!!!

"Fuck! I'm going crazy! I actually entered the same dungeon as a guy like that!!!"

"I'm really speechless! What words can I even use to describe my shock right now! Tell me, do you think even the Domain Chief's Rituals aren't as high quality as Yan Jing's?"

"I don't know about that. I only know that Deputy Domain Lord Ye's first four Rituals weren't all extreme quality, either. I think out of all of them, only one actually surpassed extreme quality."

"I'm truly stunned, but what the guy above said brings up another issue. The quality of a Ritual definitely represents a person's combat power within their Tier, but ultimately, reaching a higher Tier is the only true path forward.

"So, overall, I think He Xinquan might have walked down the wrong path. The Inner World dungeons are extremely treacherous, and they'll only get more dangerous.

"Even if your Ritual quality is incredibly high, you could still perish in a dungeon if you lack functional Rituals or reliable teammates. The reason Deputy Domain Lord Ye is so powerful is first because his combination of Rituals is excellent, and second—his Tier is genuinely high enough.

"Of course—all of that applies under normal limits. If we're talking about Yan Jing... just pretend I didn't say anything. I feel like fighting opponents at higher Tiers must be a routine occurrence for him."

"A routine occurrence? You have to realize that even He Quan never seemed to struggle much when fighting Fifth Tier opponents!"

The Losers' Bracket.

The vast majority of the people there wore numb expressions.

"Suddenly, I don't want to try catching up to him anymore."

Qi Ming sighed.

Zhou Xian didn't say much, though a hint of blankness showed in his expression. "I told you earlier—he's a monster."

Ren Tongtong sighed.

"But even I didn't expect him to be this monstrous. Didn't Big Sister Shen say he had terrible luck? What kind of dumb luck did she stumble into to pick this guy up?"

"Old Yan is a badass! Old Yan is a total badass!!!" Compared to the others' shock, Xu Weizhou was overwhelmed with gleeful delight.

"Fuck, I'm going to go out and brag about this! I'm posting my photo with Old Yan!"

Finally, the fiery-tempered Jiang Yao spoke up.

"Am I the only one wondering who actually died in the end?"

Everyone blanked at those words.

It was true.

The broadcast on the massive screen had actually cut out mere seconds after Yan Jing bound He Xinquan.

Which meant someone among the final four had definitely died.

But who could it have been?

Jin Yao and Wang Gang had been trussed up by branches, He Xinquan had been engulfed in silken threads, and Zhao Dongchuan had been outright wrapped into a ball.

All of them had been hoisted into the air, making it impossible to tell who had actually perished to trigger the end of the dungeon.

"I don't think it was Zhao Dongchuan."

Ren Tongtong fished a lollipop from her pocket, peeled off the wrapper, and popped it into her mouth.

"During the Mid-Autumn Festival, he had Xiao Ran send over a few boxes of mooncakes. Big Sister Shen says this monster is very gentle. While I certainly can't see it myself, he does seem to remember favors."

Beside her, Qi Ming chimed in.

"It probably wasn't He Quan either. After all, if He Quan died, things would get quite troublesome."

Everyone murmured in agreement.

Inside the dungeon.

Yan Jing glanced at the prompt signaling the end of the mission. Without taking the time to check his rewards, he immediately dismissed the system panel.

[00:05:00]

He had ten minutes left to stay in the dungeon. Perfect. There was still one more person to deal with.

From his throne, Yan Jing looked toward his rear flank. Over there, an Old Man in a martial arts uniform was treading through the air.

"Tired of chasing?"

Yan Jing looked at the Old Man and smiled.

Before reaching the rooftop, the two of them had already exchanged a single blow. This was exactly why Yan Jing had manifested in the Fear Stance Second State the moment he arrived.

As for the outcome of that clash, Yan Jing had ended up slightly on the losing end.

The gap between the Fifth Tier and the Sixth Tier was much wider than the gap between the Fourth Tier and the Fifth Tier. Moreover, Yan Jing was currently only at the Fourth Tier.

"It's over. It's impossible for me to keep you here."

The Old Man sighed.

He knew that Yan Jing's Sin Value had already surpassed 3 million, so from the very beginning, he only had one possible way to keep Yan Jing here.

And that was to kill Yan Jing in a single strike.

But based on their previous exchange, he knew this human was far stronger than he had imagined. Keeping him here was no longer possible.

This was also the reason he hadn't revealed himself earlier.

"You can go," he said softly.

"Consider it my way of making friends with you. If you enter another dungeon in the future, I hope you won't come looking for trouble with me."

Yan Jing laughed.

"You couldn't make me stay in the first place, yet you call this making friends?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

"—"

Spoken to like that, the Old Man's expression turned ugly.

"I just can't kill you; it doesn't mean I can't beat you. You'd best watch your mouth, or I can still make you suffer a bit before you leave."

"What a coincidence—"

Yan Jing smiled.

"You aren't going to kill me, so I'm going to kill you."

The moment the words left his mouth, before the Old Man could even react to what he meant—

Suddenly, the towering, sky-piercing silhouette of the tree behind Yan Jing began to shrink rapidly. In an instant, it transformed to the size of a chicken egg.

At that moment, the pitch-black hue of the Fear Tree seemed to reach extreme condensation. No light that fell upon it could escape, and even the naked eye couldn't focus on its actual body, making out only a blurred edge.

Terror, malice, gloom—all sorts of negative elements were manifested to the extreme on this tiny sapling.

If the previous Fear Sapling brought the oppressive weight of an extreme, colossal size, the current Fear Sapling emanated the purest essence of dread.

The instant the Old Man laid eyes on the sapling, countless thoughts surged through his mind.

Do not look at it!

Do not look at it!

Do not look at it!

His heart violently shuddered, and his body trembled along with it. In a panic, he averted his gaze.

What was that thing!

He stared at Yan Jing in disbelief.

Yan Jing merely offered a faint smile and directly pressed that tiny shadow of a tree into his own chest.

"Boom!"

Countless black veins spread outward from Yan Jing's chest, snaking down to every fingertip and crawling up to his face beneath his messy bangs, before extending into the massive wings behind him.

At this moment, Yan Jing looked more hideous and terrifying than ever before.

Rifts tore open along the veins, and eyes snapped open within the fissures. Feathered tentacles slithered out from the cracks.

As if overcome by an infection, every inch of Yan Jing's skin and every single feather on his back sprouted pitch-black tentacles. Finally, at the tips of those writhing appendages, netherworld flowers bloomed, swaying in rhythm with his breathing.

"Phew..." Yan Jing exhaled a breath of cold air, then smiled faintly, looking at the shocked and bewildered Old Man opposite.

The third form of the Fear Stance.

Right now, he could feel those tentacles corroding his muscles and eroding his mind. Inexplicable whispers rang frantically in his ears, as though composing a dark symphony that didn't belong to the mortal realm.

"Grow stronger, strong, greatness will—creation—is—fearful you—inner heart—origin—destroy! Destroy! Destroy!—Flee!!!"

Countless voices echoed, and the tentacles danced wildly within Yan Jing's bloodstream. For the first time, Yan Jing felt like he was on the verge of losing control. He fought desperately to command his own body, then directly used a blink, appearing right in front of the Old Man.

The Old Man moved the split second Yan Jing did, but he was horrified to discover that Yan Jing's speed was actually far greater than his own!!

Almost instantly, Yan Jing closed the distance!!!

"Heh..."

Yan Jing grinned, and countless tentacles immediately wormed their way out of his mouth. He tried to speak, but what came out was a bizarre noise.

"Wuxilinama—"

That dreadful noise bored into the Old Man's ears, causing his head to feel like it was actively exploding!

As a Smart Seed, he instantly heard his mechanical core issue a warning that his mental stability was dropping too rapidly. In the next breath, alongside the automatic injection of a Mental Potion, a Giant Mechanical Fist hundreds of times larger than his own body materialized on his right arm and smashed directly toward Yan Jing.

In response, Yan Jing threw out a punch of his own.

The colossal mechanical fist and Yan Jing's normal-sized fist formed a stark visual contrast.

But the moment the blow landed, the Old Man's face completely changed.

Yan Jing didn't budge a single inch, whereas the Old Man was forced several meters back. The outer casing of the Giant Mechanical Fist had entirely caved in, leaving a third of its electronic circuitry heavily damaged.

The Old Man immediately began repairing the Giant Mechanical Fist, but Yan Jing's next strike had already arrived.

In an instant, fists rained down on the Old Man like a tempest.

Unable to dodge, the Weird Energy around the Old Man surged madly. His human-looking exterior instantly tore apart, revealing a chassis built entirely of metal, save for his brain. He collided head-on with Yan Jing.

The shockwaves of Weird Energy generated by their clashes rippled outward, causing the hundred-meter-tall skyscraper to tremble violently. The exterior glass shattered pane by pane, and the clouds high up in the sky were continuously pushed back.

A relentless chain of deafening explosions erupted.

The longer they fought, the more terrified the Old Man became. He was being completely suppressed by Yan Jing. The outer casing built from special metal had already begun to fracture. If this kept up, his situation would be grim!

'How is this possible! My opponent is merely at the Fourth Tier!!! Something's wrong, a hundred and one percent wrong!'

Just as he was trembling in fear and preparing to retreat, Yan Jing's body suddenly froze for a split second, before violently coughing up a mass of squirming tentacles.

Covered in eyes and root-like appendages, the tangled mass of tentacles pounced back onto Yan Jing the moment they were expelled. They began ripping apart his skin, burrowing straight into his flesh and blood.

The Old Man suddenly realized what was happening.

'The cost of his ability is extremely high!!!'

'If that's the case—'

The Old Man's breathing grew slightly ragged. Perhaps he could kill him.

'As long as I force him to lose control—'

He had come here with a mission, after all. While the company wouldn't dish out an overly extreme punishment to a Sixth Tier like him, managing to kill the target was another matter entirely!

'Yes, I have to kill him!'

With that thought in mind, he dialed up his power output!

To hasten Yan Jing's loss of control and force his death in a short window, the Old Man even began abandoning some defensive measures. His body morphed into an ultimate weapon.

A dense array of gun barrels and mechanical limbs deployed, engaging Yan Jing in a frenzy of wild attacks.

New wounds continued to tear open across Yan Jing's skin. Gradually, his movements began to slow. The tentacles, much like proliferating cancer cells, nearly engulfed him entirely, reducing him into a monstrosity that was neither human nor ghost.

'I'm going to win!'

The Old Man rejoiced inwardly. However—

Right at that moment, he heard two syllables slip from Yan Jing's tentacle-stuffed mouth:

"Forsake Life."

Almost the instant he heard those two words, an extreme, mortal terror bloomed in the Old Man's heart, making his body shudder involuntarily. Hearing the shrill warning of a lethal threat going off in his ears, he threw himself backward to flee without a second thought.

But it was already too late.

A second later, his mechanical heart lurched violently. He felt as though he had been targeted by a being an entire realm above him, causing his figure to freeze mid-air.

In the following second, a streak of rainbow light flashed.

The world seemed to fall dead silent.

Yan Jing's body, at some unknown point, had transformed from a mass of writhing tentacles into a shriveled corpse made of little more than bone. He dropped to the ground, the agony threatening to plunge him into unconsciousness.

'I'm dying.'

'I'm really dying.'

This was the first time Yan Jing had ever felt so close to death. Every inch of his skin, every single pore on his body, was screaming in excruciating pain.

He hadn't expected the side effects of Old Man's technique to be even worse than the third form of the Fear Stance.

[Forsake Life]: Fuses all of the user's abilities and uses their life force as fuel to deliver a devastating strike capable of stabilizing against an opponent one tier higher.

Several meters away from him, beside a pile of black mechanical scrap, a tiny mechanical figure crawled out from the debris.

The small figure looked exactly the same as the Old Man had after tearing off his human skin, only it was significantly shrunken, standing barely half a meter tall.

But right now, he was laughing uproariously as he walked toward Yan Jing step by step.

"A Fourth Tier actually thought he could kill a Sixth Tier?"

A hideous smile formed from shifting metal chains surfaced on the Old Man's face.

"I'll admit, you're the most monstrous human I've ever seen, but you dragged it out too long. You really dragged it out too long—"

As he spoke, the Old Man walked up to Yan Jing's side. Staring down at Yan Jing, who looked like a desiccated corpse, he roared with laughter.

"This is the end for you!"

Yan Jing's gaze remained tranquil. Then—under the Old Man's bewildered and horrified stare—the Weird Energy around him revived like sprouting spring shoots. Along with it, his shriveled flesh rapidly began to regain its fullness.

Finally, completely restored to his normal state, Yan Jing shot a teasing gaze at the Old Man, who had collapsed onto his rear on the ground.

Chongming.