Chapter 122: It Feels Quite Nice

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Ran Bingqing herself was not truly a Fifth-Level being. Yet the ingenious combination of her energy-absorption superpower and the Golden Bell Shield allowed her to cross that barrier with ease, at least for a short time.

But in the face of Adongsa’s long-charged strike, even energy absorption could only convert ninety-nine percent of the force. The remaining one percent still had to be borne by her herself. In other words, her Golden Bell Shield had to withstand the equivalent of a thousand tons of power on its own.

That was not entirely impossible. With enough effort, she could endure it. The problem was that Ran Bingqing’s Golden Bell Shield had already reached its highest level. There was nowhere left for it to advance. To progress further, she would have to elevate the entire art into a supreme martial discipline—and that was not something she could accomplish in a short time.

The sixteenth layer of the Golden Bell Shield was already the limit of the technique. Her physical attributes had likewise been strengthened to their utmost extent. Even among Fifth-Level beings, she could no longer be considered weak.

But Adongsa’s power was virtually inexhaustible. Merely absorbing the aftershock of the clash between the two had already swollen Ran Bingqing into her present massive, flesh-ball-like form. If she forcibly took Adongsa’s full-powered blow and absorbed that terrifying kinetic force, she would likely turn into a living bomb of flesh and blood, exploding on the spot without leaving so much as a scrap behind.

In less than one-thousandth of a second, Ran Bingqing vanished from everyone’s sight. All that remained was a deep scar stretching almost endlessly across the earth, marking the direction of that punch.

The astonishing destructive force left the air unable to react for an instant, creating a long vacuum. A second later, as though stunned with terror, the air finally rushed into the void under the pressure difference, furiously compressing and colliding until it whipped up hurricanes as sharp as blades.

The sudden change left everyone too stunned even to show surprise. All that remained on their faces was ridiculous bewilderment.

The air around Adongsa’s fist had been compressed into an extreme projectile. Friction ignited the oxygen, and the punch erupted in terrifying flames.

The hurricane nearly tore away a layer of earth. Even Nash and Kant, who were nearby, struggled to remain standing.

Even Ava and the other two’s incomparably sturdy protective barrier rippled violently beneath the hurricane, turning her face pale with fright.

Adongsa, however, was not unharmed. Delivering such a punch required not only perfect coordination between muscle and bone, but also an appalling output of energy. Under the excessive discharge, the near-superconductive nanoconductors throughout its body showed signs of melting. Even its high-strength muscles and bones developed hairline cracks.

But these injuries were insignificant. Adongsa’s body was under the perfect control of its consciousness, and with an abundance of resources to draw upon, every injury could be repaired in short order.

Before the turmoil had even settled, Adongsa had already disappeared from where it stood.

It had no intention of savoring the feeling of victory, because the battle had merely been interrupted, not ended.

Yes, Ran Bingqing was not dead. She had not even lost her ability to fight.

At the critical moment, Ran Bingqing had decisively shut off her energy absorption. In doing so, she had also forfeited that terrifying ninety-nine-percent damage reduction, intending to rely solely on her sixteenth-layer Golden Bell Shield to withstand Adongsa’s punch.

Even with the sixteenth-layer Golden Bell Shield, stopping that punch had been unimaginably difficult. A terrifying fist mark was clearly imprinted across Ran Bingqing’s chest. Her entire torso could no longer be described as merely caved in; it was only a hair’s breadth away from being punched straight through.

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The fist mark even protruded from her back, forming the unmistakable shape of a fist. The sight made one’s scalp crawl.

For an ordinary person, that punch would have shattered more than eight ribs and pulverized the heart and lungs. Even the other internal organs would have been crushed into mangled flesh by the impact.

The Golden Bell Shield could completely transform a person’s physical attributes, even remaking a human being into a body of innate perfect metal and forming an internal cycle that freed them from the constraints of birth, aging, sickness, and death.

It was only through this miraculous function that Ran Bingqing managed to snatch her life back from the jaws of death.

But even so, Adongsa still had no intention of letting her go.

Having fully repaired its body, Adongsa took several great strides in succession. Every step landed with the explosive roar of a buried mine, sending shattered stones flying like shrapnel. In the blink of an eye, it had reached several kilometers away.

Ran Bingqing was still rolling and dragging across the ground from the force of the blow when Adongsa seized her by the neck and lifted her one-handed into the air.

Adongsa braked at tremendous speed. Its feet plowed into the earth like iron harrows, carving through dozens of meters before it finally came to a slow stop.

Ran Bingqing seemed to retain a faint thread of consciousness. She struggled with great difficulty, one hand desperately reaching toward Adongsa’s sea-anemone-like face.

There was no need for words. Adongsa clamped Ran Bingqing’s neck in place and punched her directly in the abdomen.

Ran Bingqing activated her energy absorption once more. As expected, Adongsa’s fist accomplished nothing. At close range, it merely produced another long, resonant chime.

Adongsa nodded, as though confirming something. Then it viciously slammed the struggling Ran Bingqing into the ground and brought its fist crashing down.

Boom!

The earth let out a muffled groan as Ran Bingqing was smashed directly into the ground.

“What a satisfying fight!”

Then came another punch. And another. And another...

Adongsa’s fists instantly became a chaotic blur, surging into Ran Bingqing’s body like a black torrent.

The more Adongsa struck, the more excited it became. The sensation of hitting her was simply too satisfying.

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A target this perfect was truly a rare thing.

Vast quantities of energy once again poured into Ran Bingqing’s shattered meridians, filling her with agony so intense that even the depths of her soul seemed to burn. The golden radiance symbolizing the Golden Bell Shield stirred restlessly, stubbornly resisting Adongsa.

But the flawless cycle that Ran Bingqing had once regarded as her trump card had now become nothing more than a desperate attempt to sustain herself by drinking poison to quench her thirst.

Bundles of muscle, a hundred times harder than steel bars, slid and crossed over one another. The vibrations and friction generated immense heat, instantly raising the temperature around Adongsa to several hundred degrees. Billowing waves of heat blurred the surrounding vision.

Yet the most tragic sight was Ran Bingqing, who continued sinking deeper and deeper.

The pile-driver-like fists battered her bulky, powerful body, forcibly collapsing the earth, compacting it, then collapsing it again and compacting it once more. In the blink of an eye, a flat stretch of land had been pounded into a crater resembling the impact site of a meteorite.

The underlying earth was violently upheaved, and cracks spread for hundreds of meters. Seen from high above, the pattern truly resembled a flower in bloom.

A succession of fine yet violent tremors spread outward. Even Provence, a thousand meters away, could clearly feel the savage destructive force. As for Ran Bingqing, who had borne the full brunt of it, even he scarcely dared imagine what state she was in.

The Ran Bingqing who had once resembled a golden-armored war god had long since lost her former valor. Her pure-gold body was cracked and caved in, battered until she was almost nothing more than a shapeless ingot of gold.

Toward the end, Adongsa’s attack frequency dropped considerably, settling into an interval of one punch per second, though the power of each blow did not diminish in the slightest.

With every punch, the already lump-like Ran Bingqing subtly deformed and sank another inch, while the earth shuddered violently as if in pain.

Each punch seemed to strike the hearts of everyone in Prism. The profound tragedy of it became more than Nash could bear.

With a roar, he transformed once more into the famed monster from the Classic of Mountains and Seas—the Golden-Haired Hou—and charged toward Adongsa with earth-shaking strides.

Nash’s attack left Kant hesitating for a moment. But soon, having lost all emotion, he ignored the glaring warnings flashing across his retinas and charged forward with grim resolve.

Kant followed close behind, transforming into a high-speed shadow like a trail of green smoke as he rushed toward Adongsa, which was still viciously pummeling Ran Bingqing.

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