A terrifying explosion of thunder erupted. Accompanied by the deafening roar of the dragon yao, a sea of lightning spread outward from the yao at its center. The sight was magnificent.

Seeing this, Ji Ziyang quickly transmitted his voice. "This is trouble! Tu Yuan, Mulan, Bai Lin, you three get ready to take over."

Such a violent disturbance would not only attract powerful yaos, but it might also draw ill-intentioned figures lurking in the darkness. The three had rested enough. Their figures moved, and they vanished from where they stood in an instant.

Lin Zheyu and the other two were blasted backward like cannonballs. The dragon yao's enormous body crashed down from the sky. Thick black fluid sprayed everywhere, turning into a rain of blood.

Lei Yongtao struggled to his feet and bared his teeth as he said, "Hiss, that hurt like hell. We finally killed this big bastard!"

Dense black smoke clung to his body. It was the breath of the dragon yao. Lei Yongtao's overwhelming presence had drawn most of the dragon yao's attacks. Though he looked miserable, he carefully sensed the strange aura lingering around him and could not help grinning. His smile was full of delight. With this, the rule fragments were practically secured.

"Hurry and rest. There may be a hard battle ahead," Ji Ziyang looked over and said calmly. His gaze lingered on Ji Zitong. Seeing his sister uninjured, he quietly relaxed.

Lin Zheyu let out a long breath, brushed himself off, and rose to his feet. He had not suffered much damage, though he looked somewhat bedraggled.

Lin Zheyu sensed his condition and could not help but mutter, "Hmm, has my physique defense become this strong now?"

Though he had not taken the dragon yao's attack head-on, Lin Zheyu had still borne at least 40% to 50%of its force. Yet such tremendous power striking his body had caused him no harm at all. It felt like scratching an itch. During his earlier battle with that barbarian warrior who wielded spatial power, the opponent's claws had easily torn open the flesh of Lin Zheyu's arm. That had left Lin Zheyu somewhat lacking confidence in his own physique defense.

Now, after fighting this dragon yao whose strength rivaled the Golden Core realm, Lin Zheyu had regained strong confidence in his physical defense. It was not that his defense was lacking. It was that the barbarian warrior's claws had been monstrously abnormal. There had been something wrong with those claws. They were no ordinary claws. They contained terrifying spatial rule power, as though nothing could resist them. That was why they had so easily pierced Lin Zheyu's fleshly defenses.

Once you reach the Golden Core realm, does supremacy begin to depend on how much power of rules you grasp, and how strong they are? Lin Zheyu muttered inwardly.

After experiencing so many battles within the demon god barrier, he had gained a rough sense of where his strength stood. Lin Zheyu's power was roughly at the peak of the Foundation Establishment realm, comparable to those genius cultivators who had grasped a trace of rule power. But compared to true experts in the Golden Core realm, there was still a considerable gap.

His physique was terrifyingly powerful. So long as he did not encounter someone like Lei Yongtao or that barbarian warrior who wielded spatial rule power, those with overwhelmingly potent offensive methods, ordinary attacks would find it very difficult to break through Lin Zheyu's physical defense.

Lin Zheyu glanced at Lei Yongtao, who was recovering in meditation, and thought to himself, My defense now is comparable to powerful defensive dharma artifacts. If I use the Golden Body dharma form, my physical defense can rise even further. Defense is sufficient, but my offensive methods are still lacking. I cannot compare to Lei Yongtao at all in that regard.

Without Lei Yongtao's two powerful attacks, Lin Zheyu alone would have had no way to kill that powerful yao. Though, to be fair, that yao could not have done much to him either. What Lin Zheyu lacked most right now was a sufficiently powerful means of attack.

Seeing Lin Zheyu brush himself off and prepare to rush back toward the yaos, Ji Zitong could not help asking, "Fellow Daoist Xiao, you are not going to rest?"

"Mm, the earlier expenditure was not that great. There is no need to rest. The more yaos we kill, the higher the chances of obtaining rule fragments, right?" Lin Zheyu said with a smile.

With that, his figure blurred and vanished in an instant. Thanks to the solid foundation he had built in the past, Lin Zheyu's capacity for blood qi and true origin was enormous beyond measure. His endurance was terrifyingly strong. The earlier battle had not even consumed 30% of his energy. Only the final joint strike with Lei Yongtao and Ji Zitong to kill the dragon yao had consumed somewhat more of his golden energy. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Within the demon god barrier, roars, battle cries, and thunderous explosions rang through the heavens. Purple-black energy spread from Lin Zheyu's body. He moved like a reaper stalking the darkness, harvesting yaos one after another.

Within the demon-tainted soil, Tu Yuan suddenly seized a yao and dragged it underground, only to throw it back out moments later.

Tu Yuan poked his head out from the demon-tainted soil and cursed under his breath, "Damn, another yao got stolen."

He stared speechless at Lin Zheyu weaving through the yaos and thought to himself, Does this guy never get tired? Is the energy in his body endless? Does he not need rest at all? Damn, since when is a martial artist's endurance this terrifying?

Not far away, Bai Lin's muscles bulged as a terrifying aura spread from him. Blood-colored energy swirled around his body. With one punch, he blasted apart the head of a yao before him. In the brief gap after killing it, he could not help glancing toward Lin Zheyu, and a thought similar to Tu Yuan's flashed through his mind.

What technique is Fellow Daoist Xiao cultivating, for the blood qi energy within him to be this terrifyingly abundant? Did he break into the Marrow Refining realm through the Blood Qi Dragon Transformation...? Bai Lin could not help but ponder.

Only a genius who had reached the Blood Qi Dragon Transformation could lay such a terrifying foundation and cultivate such vast blood qi energy.

"No wonder he is a freak capable of opening the three great divine repositories!" Bai Lin muttered, then stamped hard and lunged toward the nearest yao like a human-shaped ferocious beast.

A cold blade-light flashed and cleaved down from the sky, splitting a strange wraith in two. Yet the wraith twisted in a strange distortion, fused back together, and though its aura weakened somewhat, it did not die.

"These Annihilation Wraiths are hard to kill in a single strike, and they consume too much true origin. Forget it, I will leave the Annihilation Wraiths to them. I will focus on dealing with the yaos." Lin Zheyu shook his head slightly.

His right hand swept the long blade across. Over a hundred streaks of blade-light burst from the darkness, and the newly reformed Annihilation Wraith exploded like foam. Every art had its specialty. As a crude martial brute, Lin Zheyu was somewhat ill-suited for dealing with spirit entities like Annihilation Wraiths. The effort spent killing that one Annihilation Wraith would have been enough for him to kill two or three yaos.

***

Time passed slowly. More than another two hours went by. Yaos still poured out without end, as if they cost nothing, charging forward wave after wave. One batch died, and another came.

Lin Zheyu finally returned to the center of the formation, breathing hard, and sat down cross-legged to rest. After fighting continuously for so long, both his true origin and blood qi were nearly exhausted. Without resting for a while, he could easily fall into unforeseen danger.

Ji Zitong blinked and could not help laughing as she said, "Fellow Daoist Xiao, if you kept refusing to rest, I would start suspecting you were a puppet forged by some mighty expert."

Lei Yongtao opened his eyes as well. He glanced at Lin Zheyu, his eyes widening at once as he muttered, "Damn, the aura on you is even stronger than mine. That makes no sense, damn it."

Earlier, at tremendous cost, he had used the Nine Radiant Heaven-Slaying Spear twice in succession to kill that powerful dragon yao, all to accumulate this mysterious aura and increase the odds of obtaining rule fragments. But now that he looked again, Lin Zheyu, who had been far weaker than him before, had now surpassed him by a wide margin.

"Flowing water does not compete to be first. It competes in a never-ending. Though the yaos I killed were not especially strong, I made up for it in sheer quantity. A quantitative change became a qualitative change," Lin Zheyu said with a smile.

He pulled several bottles of spirit liquid from his robe and drank them down in gulps. Refining and absorbing spirit liquid took time, but with Lin Zheyu's current powerful physique, the absorption rate after consumption was astonishing.

Lei Yongtao stared at Lin Zheyu and said with some indignation, "This makes no sense, absolutely none. Damn it, I even used the Nine Radiant Heaven-Slaying Spear and still lost to you. Hey, are you really only in the Divine Repository realm, not in the half-step Shackles realm? I have heard that in martial cultivation, there is such a thing as a half-step Shackles realm, where part of the shackles have been broken, but not fully severed."

"You jest, Fellow Daoist. I have not even touched the Shackles realm. How could there be any talk of a half-step Shackles realm?" Lin Zheyu said, shaking his head speechlessly.

He had not even found the path to the Divine Repositories, much less the Shackles realm. As for the so-called Shackles realm, Lin Zheyu only understood it vaguely, knowing it was a realm equivalent to the Golden Core realm of the Immortal Dao. Beyond that, what the shackles actually were, how they were broken, and what abilities one gained after breaking them, he knew nothing about.

Lin Zheyu even intended, after this matter ended, to build a good relationship with Fellow Daoist Bai Lin and join the Martial Alliance through Bai Lin's introduction, so he could obtain cultivation techniques for the Divine Repository realm and the Shackles realm.

"Really? Damn, without breaking the shackles and without even an aura of rule power, you still have strength like this? That is too monstrous. Is martial cultivation really this powerful? How did I never realize it before?" Lei Yongtao muttered.

He lifted his head and glanced at Bai Lin in the distance, who looked like a human-shaped ferocious beast, and regained a bit of pride from the sight.

See, that is what a crude martial brute looked like. Damn it, Fellow Daoist Xiao does not count.

"Pfft..." At the side, Ji Zitong heard the exchange between Lin Zheyu and Lei Yongtao and burst into laughter.

She blinked her beautiful eyes and took a few more looks at Lin Zheyu. This martial artist she had drawn in on a whim had brought her many surprises.

"Ahem. Fellow Daoist Xiao, once this is over, let us find time to spar. Let me see the true strength of a martial cultivation genius." Lei Yongtao coughed twice and extended the invitation. The man was battle-crazed, and now that he had met worthy prey, he was eager to cross hands with Lin Zheyu.

"Mm, no problem." Lin Zheyu nodded slightly in agreement.