The sharp hum of the industrial boilers faded behind a dense, heavy layer of atmospheric pressure. Beneath the brilliant, intersecting beams of the halogen floodlights, the four elders of the Zhao clan stood loosely distributed across the stone flooring. Their long, gray linen robes hung perfectly still, entirely unaffected by the mechanical drafts blowing from the open ventilation shafts above.
The lead elder, whose face was maps of deep, intersecting wrinkles, let his hands drop slowly out of his wide sleeves. His fingers were long, completely hairless, and tipped with thick, yellowed nails that had been hardened by decades of stabbing into hot iron filings.
"The modern corporate suits think they run this family because they hold the banks and the contract ledgers," the old man rasped, his voice cutting through the basement with the dry scrape of sandpaper. "They built their high-voltage wire fences and bought their digital cameras, yet they failed to notice that a phantom has been bleeding their vaults dry from the inside out. Who is your teacher, brat? No independent rat in Jiangnan possesses the alignment to breach a Stage 9 container without a lineage crest."
Lin Feng didn't answer. He calmly slid his utility jacket off, draping it neatly over the rusted handle of a nearby auxiliary water valve. Beneath, his simple black t-shirt clung tightly to a frame that was deceptively lean, yet locked with the compact, dense physical mass of
Mortal Flesh RefinementâStage 9 Peak
.
"You old men should have stayed inside your ancestral tablets," Lin Feng said softly, his voice remaining smooth, undisturbed by the white glare of the lamps. "The era of hidden courtyards and closed-door cultivation died the moment the first fault line fractured. If you think your traditional breathing forms can containerize a regressed apex foundation, you're merely waiting to be turned into fertilizer."
The second elder, a short, barrel-chested man with a completely bald head and an indigo birthmark spreading across his left cheek, let out a harsh, booming bark of laughter.
"Arrogant whelp!" he roared.
Without waiting for a command from the lead elder, the bald man stepped forward. His bare feet didn't click against the granite blocks; they slammed into the stone with the deafening, explosive report of a cannon firing. The solid two-inch-thick granite beneath his heel instantly pulverized into a fine gray cloud of dust as his frame transformed into a blurred line of gray cloth.
He closed the ten-meter distance in a single, continuous stride, his right arm winding back like a heavy siege piston. His skin violently darkened, shifting from a pale elder tone to a mottled, iron-gray hue as he unleashed his family's signature close-quarter style:
The Mountain Shattering Hand.
The compressed air displaced by his fist generated a high-pitched, screaming whistle that echoed off the metal boiler shells. It was a strike that had taken forty years of daily, unbroken repetition to refineâa pure manifestation of mortal physical torque, completely unassisted by modern chemical enhancements or gene-stripping therapies.
Lin Feng stood perfectly unmoving, his feet anchored flat against the stone flooring. He didn't raise an arm into a defensive guard, nor did he use his explosive footwork to slip beneath the trajectory.
As the elder's iron-hard fist came within three inches of his sternum, Lin Feng simply let out a short, sharp exhalation through his nose.
BOOM.
The bald elder's massive fist struck Lin Feng squarely in the center of his chest.
A violent, crushing shockwave of displaced kinetic force detonated outward from the point of impact, tearing through the air and violently shattering the nearest row of glass pressure gauges on the water lines twenty feet away.
But the bald elder's triumphant grin instantly froze into a mask of absolute, uncomprehending horror.
Lin Feng hadn't moved an inch backward. His chest hadn't compressed, his ribs hadn't cracked, and his posture remained as straight and unyielding as an iron pillar. The immense, mountain-shattering kinetic energy he had thrown into the strike hadn't penetrated Lin Feng's flesh; instead, the moment it hit his pearlescent, Stage 9 skin, the force experienced a total, flawless structural reflection.
CRACK.
A sickening, rapid series of splintering sounds ripped down the elder's right arm. The bones in his knuckles, his wrist, his forearm, and his elbow violently shattered under the weight of his own reflected momentum. The iron-gray hue in his skin instantly dissolved, replaced by a spray of bright crimson blood as he was thrown backward by the kinetic recoil, crashing heavily into a main distribution pillar before sliding onto the floor, unconscious and mangled.
"Second brother!" the third elder cried out, his hands flying to the hilt of a long, traditional bronze sword strapped to his back.
"Stand down, third!" the lead elder commanded, his rasping voice dropping into a register that vibrated with a terrifying, ancestral pressure. His deep-set eyes locked onto Lin Feng's chest, where the black cotton fabric of his t-shirt had been completely vaporized by the impact, revealing smooth, unblemished skin that glowed with a faint, temporary golden undertone.
"The Unbroken Vajra Shell..." the lead elder whispered, his long fingers trembling slightly inside his sleeves. "You didn't just refine your flesh, brat. You've completed the
Nine Channels of Primordial marrow
. Your body doesn't absorb impact; it rejects the very concept of external force."
"I told you," Lin Feng said, taking his first slow step forward over the cracked granite blocks. "Your playbook is obsolete. Your brother spent forty years training a punch that relies on mortal resistance. When the target's cells are already aligned with the fault lines of the earth, a mortal punch is just a wave breaking against a cliff."
The lead elderâs expression turned completely cold, the last remnants of senior arrogance vanishing from his wrinkled features. He knew that if this youth was allowed to reach the sealed spiritual well at the center of the basement, the entire foundation of the Zhao clanâs ancestral line would be thoroughly erased before the morning sun could pierce the mountain fog.
"Third brother, form the
Dual Solstice Array
," the lead elder ordered, his voice flattening into an absolute execution protocol. "Do not engage his flesh. Target his breath. If his foundation cannot be broken from the outside, we will suffocate his meridians using the ancestral script."
The third elder nodded grimly, drawing his long bronze sword with a sharp, clear metallic ring. At the same time, the lead elder reached into his long gray robes, pulling out a small, triangular iron talisman covered in ancient, hand-carved cinnabar seals.
The two remaining elders split instantly, their movements fluid and synchronous as they flanked Lin Feng at a distance of five meters.
The lead elder bit his thumb, smearing a line of fresh blood across the face of the iron talisman. He let out a deep, sonorous chant that echoed through the granite cavern like a funeral dirge.
âThe earth locks the dragon, the iron binds the spring, let the seven gates close to seal the mortal breath!â
Suddenly, the massive multi-ton steel slab sealing the ancient spiritual well in the center of the room violently groaned. The heavy iron chains wrapped around the mechanism vibrated furiously, but they weren't looseningâthey were tightening. The pale blue, sapphire moisture sweating from the bedrock was instantly sucked back down into the fissures as an invisible, suffocating dome of absolute spiritual vacuum dropped over the entire basement grid.
Lin Feng paused, his chest tightening slightly as the ambient air within the chamber was violently stripped of its microscopic spiritual currents.
The array wasn't designed to strike his body; it was a high-level pre-Awakening suppression formation explicitly built to starve an independent cultivator's
Dantian
of fuel, forcing their expanded meridians to violently collapse inward from the sudden drop in internal pressure.
A mishap,
Lin Feng calculated, his internal gaze scanning the rapid drop in the basementâs energetic baseline.
The old hags didn't just guard the node; they tied its safety valve directly to an ancestral self-destruct array. If I force my way through their circle, the talisman will permanently collapse the subterranean cavern, burying the spiritual well beneath five hundred tons of mountain granite.
The third elder saw the brief pause in Lin Fengâs stride and let out a fierce, desperate roar. He sprinted forward, his bronze blade weaving a complex, overlapping net of metallic reflections aimed directly at Lin Fengâs throat and eyesânot to puncture his skin, but to force him to expend his internal Qi reserves while the vacuum array starved his lungs.
"You've run out of sky, brat!" the third elder yelled, the bronze blade hissed through the air.
Lin Feng stood at the center of the crimson strobe lights and the suffocating pressure, a dark, undefeated smile creeping onto his face amid the white glare.
"You think a vacuum can starve a sea?" Lin Feng whispered, his eyes flashing with an ancient, golden light.
He didn't draw a weapon. He simply closed his eyes, preparing to ignite the second stone.