The searing, acidic burn of the poison Qi radiated through Lin Xuan’s right shoulder, turning the muscle into a cold, dead weight. His vision swam with faint, dark spots as the corrosive energy attempted to breach his central meridian channel.
Across the gray stone circle, Xiong Gu paused, his pale face twisting into a smirk of absolute triumph. He raised his right hand, the sickly green-black venom still dripping from his fingertips like greasy dew.
"Your calculations failed, little prodigy," Xiong Gu hissed, his voice echoing across the quiet plateau. "At Level 1, Sub-Level 7, the density of my Qi is leagues beyond anything you've faced. You're finished."
Level 1, Sub-Level 7, Lin Xuan’s mind repeated, processing the data through waves of agonizing pain.
For a brief, terrifying second, the illusion of his absolute intellect had wavered. But even as his body trembled, the core analytical machinery within his brain did not stop. It stripped away the terrifying aura, the cruel taunts, and the visual intimidation, reducing Xiong Gu back into pure, unvarnished numbers.
Unstable, Lin Xuan’s dark eyes locked onto Xiong Gu’s chest with razor-sharp intensity. His breathing rhythm is erratic. The lower dantian is pulsing with irregular thermal spikes.
Lin Xuan’s analytical model re-evaluated the data with sudden, brilliant clarity. Xiong Gu had not reached Sub-Level 7 through steady, disciplined accumulation. The violent, erratic fluctuations in his Qi flow were the unmistakable signature of a forced, premature breakthrough—achieved through harsh pills or desperate external stimuli just days prior. His foundation was hollow, his internal circulation hanging together by a thread.
"You didn't master that sub-level," Lin Xuan whispered, blood dripping from his chin as he slowly forced his battered body back to its feet. His voice, though raspy, carried a chilling, analytic certainty. "You forced it. Your lower dantian is leaking excess thermal pressure through your right ribcage. You're running on borrowed time." This chapter was copied from novelping(.)com without permission.
Xiong Gu’s confident smile faltered for a fraction of a second, his eyes widening in subtle shock. "You—!"
Lin Xuan did not wait for him to recover. Dropping all pretense of conservative defense, Lin Xuan channeled every remaining drop of his Dual Fire-Water roots into a suicidal, high-speed surge. He didn't evade; he launched himself directly into Xiong Gu’s personal space.
"Madness!" Xiong Gu shrieked, swinging his venomous claw in a desperate arc meant to decapitate him.
Lin Xuan ducked beneath the sweeping strike, letting the blade-like wind slice his cheek open. He drove his palm straight into the exact pressure point beneath Xiong Gu’s ribs where the unstable Qi was leaking.
THWACK!
Instead of absorbing the blow, Lin Xuan injected a hyper-compressed, dual-frequency pulse of Fire and Water directly into Xiong Gu’s core.
CRACK!
The fragile, forced equilibrium inside Xiong Gu’s meridians instantly shattered. The unstable Sub-Level 7 energy violently backfired, erupting outward in a muffled shockwave of purple blood and broken Qi. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
Xiong Gu’s eyes rolled back in agonizing shock. His legs gave out beneath him, and he collapsed heavily onto the slate, completely unconscious, his breath rattling in his chest.
Silence—profound, stunned, and absolute—swept across the entire Slate Plateau.
Lin Xuan stood over the fallen opponent, his right arm hanging limp, his robes soaked in blood and sweat. He did not celebrate. He did not smile with smug superiority. He simply stared down at his shaking, bloodied hands, the last remnants of his childish arrogance completely burned away.
The gap between realms and sub-levels was not a minor inconvenience to be solved by clever math. It was a vast, unforgiving chasm where a single forced breakthrough could spell ruin, and where raw power demanded absolute respect.
Across the plateau, Patriarch Lin Feng let out a long, shuddering breath, his old eyes gleaming with profound realization. The prodigy had won the day, but the boy who walked off that stone circle was no longer a child dreaming of conquering the world with a chalkboard—he was a cultivator who finally understood the terrifying weight of the path ahead.