Chapter 61: System Awakened Again

The Skypiercer had already torn free. For one frozen heartbeat Lin Feng was certain it would lance straight at his throat. Instead the beast twisted in mid air, let out a furious, resentful cry, and shot toward the deeper swamp like a barbed arrow. In seconds the mist swallowed it’s escaping figure.

Lin Feng had no time to curse.

The Ironback and the Water Beast felt the broken link and surged against the remaining binds with redoubled hatred. His will alone was not enough. Pain flared down his cracked meridians.

"Yu Mei!"

She was already moving. Thick mud and root spears slammed around the Ironback, reinforcing the lock. Lin Feng triggered the Pungent Ward with everything he had left. The burst was weaker, but the sudden foul interference made both beasts recoil just long enough for him to drive his remaining will and the thin residual hostility in the air back into the binds.

The links caught barely. It was frayed and unstable but held. Silence fell, broken only by harsh breathing and the low, sullen growls of the two remaining beasts.

Lin Feng stayed on one knee, blood dripping from his nose. But the struggle itself had left something useful behinde. Fresh residual hostility, generated by the beasts’ rebellion, the Skypierce’s escape, and his own spiked fear and anger. It clung to the air and to his skin.

It was all he had. He dropped cross legged right there and pulled that messy, personal residual into his meridians. The pure qi still clogging his foundation fought it. The two energies tore at each other inside him. He clenched his teeth and forced the residual hostility to scour the pathways anyway, burning, scraping, reclaiming territory inch by inch.

Slowly the System interface flickered like it was glitching. Then, slowly, it stabilized enough to function.

[System partially restored]

[Warning: Foundation integrity compromised]

[Foundation Integrity: 61%]

[Warning: Bind strength reduced]

[Warning: Efficiency penalties active]

[Efficiency Penalty: Active — Rage Point conversion and residual absorption reduced]

[Additional Penalty : - 30,000 Rage Points reduced ]

[Current Rage Points : 54,900]

Lin Feng exhaled a shaky breath and contained the last of the internal collision. The pure qi was not gone, but it was no longer drowning everything else.

Yu Mei stared at him.

"Your aura... You’ve far exceeded a normal Level 8. Even most early Core Formation cultivators wouldn’t want to trade foundations with what you’re putting out right now."

Lin Feng gave a weak, bloody grin. "Say that to the old geezers in the Flowing Wind Sect for me." He coughed hard, wiped red from his mouth, and muttered more to himself than to her, "Never again."

Never pure stones or pure qi cultivation Yu Mei studied the two remaining beasts, then him. "We managed to reduce the damage. You’re more powerful now... except you lost one of your beasts."

"Yeah. But I still have two." He forced himself upright. His legs shook. "We really should move. The ruckus was loud enough to summon everything in the area."

She nodded, slipped under his arm without comment, and helped him walk. Behind them the Ironback and Water Beast followed with clear reluctance, binds holding by threads.

They had only gone a few hundred steps when the sound tore through the deeper swamp.

SCREEEEEEEECGHHH—!

It was loud, and full of something that sounded like rage and agony mixed together. Then it cut off with unnatural suddenness.

Every living thing on the ridge froze. Even the two bound beasts went rigid.

Yu Mei’s voice was tight. "What the hell was that?"

Lin Feng’s blood had run cold. He didn’t answer at once. He only adjusted her supporting arm and started walking again, faster.

"That’s our cue to move."

They pushed deeper into the mist without another word. Behind them the swamp had gone too quiet.

Lin Feng kept his face blank, but inside the recognition was certain. He had forced a bind on that residual signature. He had felt it fight him for weeks. The thing that had just screamed and then fallen silent in the deep, he knew with a cold, certainty that it had belonged to the Skypierce.

He didn’t say it out loud.

Some things were better left alone while you were still trying to get away.

They did not stop until the residual echoes of the earlier struggle had thinned into the background noise of the swamp. Even then, Yu Mei only called a halt when Lin Feng’s steps started to drag badly enough.

The hollow she chose was nothing special, a shallow depression in a thick root wall, elevated enough to keep the worst of the damp out, with two narrow approaches that could be watched.

He sat down carefully, back against the root wall, and finally let himself relax a bit. The difference in raw power was undeniable. Qi denser than anything he had carried at Level 5 or 6 moved through his meridians. His senses stretched farther. The residual hostility in the air around them tasted sharper, more detailed. On pure numbers he had leapt ahead.

But the cost...His foundation felt like cracked porcelain wrapped in wet silk. Power leaked in fine, irritating threads. Every circulation carried a low grind of instability, as if the meridians had been forced open with a crowbar. The pure spirit-stone qi that still lingered in places clashed with the residual hostility he preferred, creating small internal eddies of turbulence.

He then opened the System. And the real reason he had opened the interface sat in a section of the shop that had been greyed out for weeks.

The Level 7 unlock.He navigated to it and the item was still there, no longer locked.

Lin Feng stared at the item and description for a long time. Then his widened and a grin formed in his face. The item will cost 48,000 Rage points but even after the system penalty he have a little more than enough to buy it.

"Fucking finally! It’s about time." He said while grinning