Essence Devouring Art

WHOOSH—

He spat a gout of Blood Flame more than ten feet long.

Facing the aggressive Stone God,

Wu Dao bent his knees slightly, assuming the Whale Shark Island Destruction Fist Formation. The muscles all over his body began to ripple like waves, starting from his feet. Immense, surging Power, mixed with Dominating Whale Fist Intent, converged into his right fist.

SPLASH—

Suddenly!

The furiously charging Stone God felt the world seem to fall silent for an instant.

Its surroundings transformed into a boundless, churning sea.

Within this vast sea,

a mountain-sized Barbaric Whale came hurtling through the waves from the edge of the horizon.

Its terrifying Power kicked up monstrous, sky-blotting waves. It charged with an unstoppable momentum, as if it dared to shatter the Celestial Pillar itself, hurtling madly toward an island in the sea!

’Wait!’

’Where did an island come from?’

The Stone God, standing directly in the Barbaric Whale’s path, suddenly snapped to its senses!

But it was too late!

BOOM—

He threw the punch!

It was like a clap of thunder, an explosion of Gangfeng Qi Flow!

The ground beneath his feet for dozens of meters around violently shattered and collapsed. The airflow swept up countless clouds of dust and debris, blasting them into the sky.

BZZZT—

On the level of Spiritual Consciousness, the world was a churning sea of waves.

The enormous Barbaric Whale let out an ethereal, tyrannical cry. It surged through the waves, crossing a hundred meters in less than the blink of an eye to slam squarely into the Stone God!

Divine Arrival!

Divine Arrival!

A Divine Strike from a distance!

Where the fist points, the divine arrives!

The "divine" aspect of the Overlord Whale Fist was that Barbaric Whale of the Wilderness—possessing infinite strength, capable of shattering mountains and islands, and reigning supreme over the vast sea!

With a single punch,

it was as if another Wu Dao on the level of Spiritual Will had left his body, transformed into the oceanic Barbaric Whale, and struck with the full force of the Overlord Whale Fist to annihilate the enemy’s soul!

In a sense, 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

this could be considered a form of "Spiritual Contamination" attack, but one that used the most unyielding and domineering Martial Arts Fist Intent.

BOOM!!

After the punch landed,

the Stone God’s enormous, speeding figure froze as if someone had pressed pause. The Gangfeng Qi Flow, compressed by its supersonic charge, exploded outward and raged in all directions.

From the billions of honeycomb-like holes all over its body,

the venomous, whispering curses ceased. They were replaced by pure, agonized shrieks, a series of crackling pops like a chain of bursting bubbles.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH—

Fierce winds ravaged the ruins of Lin Village.

"Cough, cough..."

Buried in the dust, Ding Bai suddenly felt his muddled consciousness clear. As if his soul had returned to his body, he snapped his eyes open and coughed violently.

But his first instinct was to get up and scan his surroundings, wanting to see how the battle was going.

’Uh...’

He saw the enormous Stone God standing frozen in the center of the distant ruins and, a hundred meters away, Wu Dao still holding his fist stance.

"What happened?"

Ding Bai was stunned. He shook his throbbing head, thinking he was still trapped in an illusion.

CRUMBLE—

Before Ding Bai could process what was happening,

the Stone God’s terrifying, seven-to-eight-meter-tall physique seemed to weather away. Countless fragments of stone and sand scattered on the wind, kicking up a cloud of dust.

After the dust settled,

all that remained was a gemstone, one foot square, crystalline and smooth as jade, shimmering with a faint spiritual light.

"A Spirit Stone??"

Ding Bai’s expression was one of pure shock. He was so stunned that he completely forgot the Stone God had just been subdued by Wu Dao.

He never imagined that the Stone God’s true form was a Spirit Stone!

No, wait.

To be precise,

its core had become a Spirit Stone!

Spirit Stones were Exotic Treasures formed from the convergence of nature’s spiritual energy. The Spiritual Qi inside was exceptionally pure. To practitioners of the Immortal Dao and to demonic beasts, they were no less valuable than Dragon Liver and Phoenix Marrow.

On the market,

a piece the size of a fist

could be auctioned for nearly ten million taels!

But this piece before him...

was a foot square!

Hiss!

For a moment,

Ding Bai found it hard to suppress the greed rising in his heart.

However, the thought of Wu Dao’s tyrannical methods immediately transformed his greed into boundless caution and fear.

He had taken down a Three-Layered Black Lotus Fierce Gu that even Innate experts would find troublesome. And though he appeared to have paid a heavy price, his entire body having shriveled up,

Ding Bai had no doubt that Wu Dao still had the ability to crush him to death with one hand!

"AH! THE PAIN!!!"

Just then, an inhuman, piercing shriek of extreme agony rang out, as if something had been flattened into a meat patty.

The one-foot-square Spirit Stone suddenly began emitting wisps of black qi, invisible to the naked eye.

The black qi converged into a blurry, indistinct human figure that shrieked and unleashed a psychic tsunami as it shot straight into the sky.

"Pfft!!"

Unsurprisingly,

Ding Bai once again spurted blood from all seven orifices.

However,

he was prepared this time.

He activated the heavily cracked Soul-Controlling Talisman Jade. A Golden Light Shield descended, barely managing to withstand the majority of the spiritual impact.

WHOOSH—

The psychic tsunami crashed over him,

but Wu Dao was like an ancient, frozen pond, his expression completely unchanged.

His Spiritual Will, which had surged after using the Overlord Whale Fist’s Divine Arrival, had increased the thickness of his Spirit Armor to ten centimeters.

He was indestructible on a spiritual level. The Stone God’s dying counterattack couldn’t even cause a single ripple!

WHOOSH—

He spat another mouthful of Blood Flame.

Wu Dao glanced indifferently at the soaring Stone God. The immense Power and Fist Intent in his body converged. He clenched his right hand into a fist, pointed it at the sky, and brought it down like a hammer!

Whale Hammer Technique!

RUMBLE!

The surrounding earth once again collapsed and shattered. Dust billowed as a massive Fist Intent shot up into the sky, reversing its flow to pour upward!!

SCREECH!

The ancient, ethereal, and barbaric cry of a whale once again echoed through the spiritual ocean.

In a daze,

the sky in Ding Bai’s vision, once as clear and blue as if freshly washed, seemed to transform into a churning sea.

An Ancient Barbaric Whale leaped high out of the sea, then plummeted back down at extreme speed, using its head as a hammer to viciously smash the soaring Stone God.

"Is this True Boxing Dao? No, no, he’s not even at the Innate realm, how could he..."

Ding Bai felt that unyielding and domineering Fist Dao Will, his expression changing drastically. He questioned reality, shaking his head again and again in denial.

’It’s similar, yet different!’

He had once had the good fortune to witness an expert who had surpassed the Innate realm use True Boxing Dao at the Jingzhe Bureau headquarters in the Southern Border.

When that Fist Intent was unleashed, everything in the world within a certain range was tangibly affected by the Mental Realm, not just limited to moves and techniques on the spiritual level.

The Overlord Whale Fist that Wu Dao used,

though every move was accompanied by a massive Fist Dao Will,

was at best a true mastery of the Fist Technique’s essence. His Martial Dao Will could leave his body to attack, but he was still a long, long way from forming a true Mental Realm.

But even so, it was terrifying enough.

One could even call him a monster!

’The prototype of a Mental Realm at the Cocoon-Breaking Realm?’

Forgive Ding Bai for his limited experience, but in his nearly eighty years of life, he hadn’t just never seen such a thing—he’d never even heard of it!

BOOM—

A powerful psychic tsunami interrupted Ding Bai’s thoughts.

Low in the sky,

the Dominating Whale Fist Intent had already collided with the Stone God!

The instant they struck, the spiritual ocean erupted with massive, churning waves that overturned heaven and earth.

"YAAAAHH!!!"

Another piercing shriek vibrated through the air.

The soaring Stone God felt as if it had truly smashed headfirst into an Ancient Barbaric Whale!

The impact left its head battered and bleeding, knocked its three souls from its body, and sent it plummeting like a heap of mud into the depths of the ruins at an even faster speed.

BANG!!

The instant the Stone God fell,

Wu Dao had already kicked off the ground with explosive force. Before the tens or hundreds of tons of earth and stone could even land, his body had already blasted through the Gangfeng Qi Flow. With the sound of a sonic boom, he vanished from Ding Bai’s sight.

"Hiss..."

Ding Bai wanted to move his body to witness this "Godslayer" moment with his own eyes, but unfortunately, even the thought of moving felt like it would make his head explode, so he could only give up.

RUMBLE—

A violent Gangfeng Qi Flow swept up the endless dust of the ruins, sending it soaring into the sky.

Wu Dao’s shriveled, Blood Flame-spewing body reached out with a large hand, grabbing the Stone God’s head in mid-air before it could hit the ground and slamming it viciously down!

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH—

The Qi and Blood Burning Prison reappeared, compressed into a ten-foot radius. The terrifying Yang Fire burned the hard stone ground into liquid magma, scalding the heavily-injured Stone God and making it scream incessantly as black smoke rose from its body.

Wu Dao’s large hand gripped the Stone God’s head, which was shifting through a thousand different faces. The violent Dominating Whale Fist Intent bound it like layers of a fishing net, locking down any possibility of transformation and forcing it to maintain its human form. It couldn’t even kill itself.

"Take a guess."

Dragging the Stone God before him, Wu Dao bared two rows of vicious, shark-like teeth. Like an Evil Ghost, he leaned close to its ear and whispered, "How do you think that little cutie you sent to Tan County died?"

"Please... spare me..."

The Stone God managed to force out the words, its former arrogance gone, now begging with utmost humility.

’Cultivation is not easy!’

’Attaining a spirit form is so hard!’

’Becoming a Three-Layered Black Lotus is even harder!’

’I just gained the confidence to break free from my restraints.’

’To die in my own Birthplace without ever seeing how vast and boundless the World is... I can’t accept it!’

"Tsk, wrong answer."

Wu Dao shook his head, bored. He smacked his lips and said to himself, "It had much more spine than you. It was still struggling desperately even after it was in my mouth.

But it didn’t struggle for long. And you know what?

I stabbed it, bit by bit, until it was a real hedgehog!

You know,

the screams of one’s food right before it dies are quite wonderful. It really enhances the flavor and whets the appetite. It’s just a shame it’s not very long-lasting.

So,

why don’t you let me hear you for a bit, hmm?

You can definitely last longer, can’t you, little cutie?"

"No, spare me, spare me!!!"

The more the Stone God listened, the more it broke down. Its former arrogance completely vanished, and its pleas almost turned into sobs.

It had previously thought Wu Dao was just making empty threats.

It never expected that Wu Dao was actually going to eat it!

What could be more terrifying than watching yourself be eaten alive and digested?

But unfortunately for it,

the nearly ravenous Wu Dao couldn’t be bothered to listen to the Stone God’s wails and pleas.

"AHHH!!!"

Amidst its inhuman, piercing screams,

the Stone God was stretched by Wu Dao into a giant, several-meter-long strand of ramen.

Then,

bound in Wu Dao’s giant palm, it ’watched’ with its own eyes as it was fed, bit by bit, into a bloody maw that resembled a Flame Mountain.

SLUUURP—

Wu Dao slurped it down just like eating ramen. With a powerful inhale, a section of the ’noodle’ fell into his esophagus.

A furnace blazed, and Blood Flame raged.

The Stone God opened its eyes and was so terrified its three souls nearly fled its body!

This wasn’t an esophagus—it was a Demon Cave!

Inside the deep tunnel that led straight to a lake of magma, rows upon rows of triangular, fiery-red, churning shark teeth grew from top to bottom. They opened and closed constantly, waiting for food to fall in and be ground to dust, bit by bit!

"No, don’t!!"

"AHHH!!"

"Please..."

As the ’ramen’ was slurped in bit by bit, the screams rose and fell, one wave after another, each louder than the last.

Wu Dao’s expression grew more and more savage, more filled with pleasure.

This wonderful sensation of meticulously experiencing his prey merge with his own being and transform into Power was a thousand times better than sex!!

Unfortunately,

this feeling was like a cresting wave; it couldn’t last forever. As the last bit of ramen entered his stomach, the screaming stopped abruptly.

Wu Dao smacked his lips with regret. His esophagus returned to normal, and his expression showed that he was far from satisfied.