The desert was a place of stark, magnificent beauty and profound, deadly silence. It was a land of extremes. Just over the crest of a single, towering dune, one side teemed with the bustling life of a thriving oasis city, while the other side stretched into an endless, sun blasted wasteland where nothing stirred. At this moment, a single, monstrous figure was slowly, deliberately making its way across those barren sands. Yet, wherever that figure passed, the golden desert turned a sinister, blood red hue. This was the result of a frenzied, accumulated killing intent so potent it had tainted the very spiritual energy around the creature, staining the air itself. Even Su Min, who had long been mentally prepared, felt a chill and furrowed her brows deeply at the sight.
"Such a thick, palpable killing intent... it has already entered the realm of a true malevolent spirit, a walking calamity. Yet it can still move freely under the blazing sun without dissipating. That must be because of that metal core holding it together."
She squinted up at the merciless sky. The desert was at its absolute hottest, the zenith of high noon. The surface temperature had reached well over seventy degrees Celsius, a killing heat where a normal person would quickly dehydrate and perish. Yet that horrifying, patchwork monster strode slowly across the burning sands as if the heat were nothing, its movements steady and relentless.
Soon, thanks to her extraordinary cultivator's eyesight, Su Min caught a clearer, more horrifying glimpse of it. Its body was a grotesque tapestry pieced together from countless, mismatched human bones, a grisly monument to the mass grave that birthed it. It stood over five meters tall, a hulking skeleton, and even its skull had been formed by compressing and fusing the fragments of many victims. At each of its major joints, metal components gleamed dully in the blinding sunlight, providing structure and movement. From its shoulders down to its distended ribcage, it bore six skeletal arms, and at the end of each arm, instead of hands, glinted long, razor sharp blades of rusty, soul tainted metal.
Su Min could easily imagine the terrifying, whirling storm of steel it would become when that creature unleashed all six bladed arms at once. She could not help but glance sideways at Hui Ming, who stood nearby, his knuckles white as he gripped his newly forged Water Fire Staff.
"You fought that thing bare handed before?" she asked, her voice laced with a newfound respect.
At this moment, she felt a genuine need to reassess the monk's strength and resilience. Against a monster like this, ordinary mortal weapons would have been utterly useless, shattered into splinters and shards by its overwhelming power and the corrosive energy it carried. To have survived multiple encounters without the aid of spiritual artifacts or powerful treasures was impressive in itself.
"My master once taught me the foundational form of the Arhat Golden Body," Hui Ming replied, his eyes never leaving the approaching horror. "Thanks to that blessing, I barely survived our encounters. Once deployed, the Arhat Golden Body renders one's skin and muscles temporarily invulnerable to blades and highly resistant to elemental forces. Otherwise, I could not have withstood even a single one of its flurries." As he spoke, he shook the Water Fire Staff in his hand, his posture visibly firming with the solid weight of the spiritual weapon now in his grasp.
"Arhat Golden Body, huh..."
Hearing that, Su Min immediately recalled the technique, a renowned defensive art among core Buddhist cultivators. Once activated, it granted formidable, near impenetrable defense and also amplified the user's physical offensive power considerably. For Hui Ming to have been taught such a core technique from beyond the Barrier, he must have been carefully nurtured as a direct disciple, a bearer of their legacy in this land.
"You engage it first. I need to observe and find its weak spot," Su Min commanded, her voice calm but firm.
With danger looming, she issued the order without hesitation. Since he had the Arhat Golden Body to protect him, Hui Ming was clearly the designated vanguard, the anvil to her hammer. Meanwhile, she had a plethora of techniques at her disposal and could wait for the perfect moment to strike a fatal blow. Moreover, in this sweltering, dry heat, her flames would burn with even greater ferocity and intensity.
With that thought, an intense, crimson fire erupted around Su Min's body. In an instant, her hair and pupils turned a vivid, glowing crimson. With a light tap of her foot against the air, she soared a hundred meters into the sky, appearing from below like a newly risen crimson sun against the azure backdrop. Now she began actively gathering the scattered, wild fire element spiritual energy from the superheated atmosphere, drawing it into herself. As the wielder of Nanming Lihuo, one of the most versatile and destructive sacred flames, her combat power in such an environment was anything but weak.
"Alright! I will draw its attention!"
Watching Su Min soar skyward in a blaze of fierce, concentrated heat, Hui Ming understood she was preparing for a decisive, overwhelming strike. He himself was filled with a righteous anger and pent up resentment. Having nearly lost his life multiple times because he lacked a proper weapon to fight back, he now had a perfect outlet for his fury. Without a moment's hesitation, he channeled spiritual power into his legs and transformed into a golden streaked blur, charging directly toward the bone horror. The next moment, amid the swirling desert sands, the sharp, metallic clang of staff meeting blade rang out across the dunes, a discordant symphony of battle.
At just the first clash, visible waves of destructive sword energy exploded outward in all directions. Hui Ming's skin instantly gleamed with the dazzling, metallic hue of the Arhat Golden Body, and the powerful shockwaves shredded his simple robes to tatters, exposing his heavily muscled, V shaped torso, now gleaming like polished bronze.
"What terrifying sword energy!" Su Min observed from her aerial vantage point, sucking in a sharp breath.
The monstrous creature was a whirlwind of death, unleashing all six of its bladed arms in a frenzied, unpredictable flurry, and every single strike carried a projected blade of deadly, corrosive energy. If not for Hui Ming's golden body defense, his flesh would have already been riddled with fatal wounds. But the surrounding environment fared far worse. Smooth, wind swept sand dunes were torn open by invisible slashes, and deep, gaping wounds were gouged into the earth where the energy landed. Relying on the defensive capabilities of his Water Fire Staff, Hui Ming desperately deflected the most deadly strikes, enduring the lesser, glancing blows with his sheer physical and spiritual toughness.
"He will not last long."
Soon, even from a distance, Su Min noticed the signs of his strain. Though the Arhat Golden Body was powerful, it was a massive drain on spiritual energy and could not be maintained indefinitely. Sustaining excessive damage or simple spiritual exhaustion would cause the technique to collapse prematurely. Without its protection, Hui Ming would not survive more than a few seconds against this abomination.
"But... you have bought me enough time. Now, Vermilion Bird Possession!"
Taking a deep, controlled breath, Su Min unleashed her true, concentrated strength. Her spiritual power surged forth like a breaking dam, and the flaming wings on her back, initially spanning over a meter, instantly expanded two or three times larger, becoming a magnificent, terrifying canopy of fire. Blazing, white hot flames roared around her, enveloping her completely until her individual form was lost within the conflagration. In a flash, a massive, avian shaped construct of pure fire emerged in the sky, its presence dominating the landscape and dwarfing the combatants below.
This was a technique Su Min had developed herself, inspired by the Vermilion Bird's legacy. It involved enveloping her entire body in the pure, unadulterated power of Nanming Lihuo and unleashing its most primal and ferocious state, sacrificing finesse for raw, apocalyptic power. In this mode, the flame's destructive potential reached its absolute peak.
Su Min had named it the Vermilion Bomb, half jokingly calling it the "Ultra Bomb" in the privacy of her own mind. The next instant, the colossal firebird ceased hovering. It angled its head down and plunged toward the earth like a falling star, a meteor of pure annihilation aimed directly at the bone horror.
Below, Hui Ming, still struggling to hold his ground and parry the relentless assault, suddenly felt a searing, terrifying heat descend from above, a pressure that stole the breath from his lungs. He recognized the signal. He dared not hesitate. With a final, mighty swing of his staff to absorb the impact of a blade just enough to create an opening, he hurled his golden body backward at his absolute top speed, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the epicenter.
He had barely managed to retreat a dozen meters when
Boom!!!!!!!!
A deafening, world shaking explosion ripped through the desert silence. The resulting shockwave and blistering heat blast hit Hui Ming like a physical wall, sending him flying through the air like a leaf in a gale. He tumbled helplessly across the scorching dunes until he slammed hard into a sandy ridge and finally, painfully, came to a stop. But he barely noticed his own battered condition, his wide, disbelieving eyes were locked on the inferno that now raged where the monster had stood. This was a desert, there should have been nothing to burn. Yet the sacred flames of Nanming Lihuo blazed furiously across the sands, clinging to the bone and metal of the creature, burning with an undying, purifying intensity.
How could he not be utterly shocked? This was power on a scale he had only heard of in his master's parables.