High Martial: I Grind Professions

His thoughts raced. He immediately shouted, his voice carrying clearly to the entire convoy:

"The stench of demon and human blood is too strong! In a few minutes, it’ll attract powerful Demon Beasts from miles around. It might even draw a Flying Star Realm Demon Beast! Everyone, get in the vehicles now! Full speed back to Bluestone City! Don’t stop for anything!"

The Li clansmen, having just escaped with their lives, didn’t hesitate for a second. The terror from the two Wolf Demons hadn’t even faded, and the horrifying legends of mid-tier Demon Beasts—let alone a great demon of the Flying Star Realm—were enough to make their blood run cold.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry! Get in!"

"Listen to Xiaowen! Let’s go!" Amid the panicked shouts, everyone scrambled clumsily into their vehicles.

Li Wen’s parents were just as pale. His mother gripped his arm tightly.

"Xiaowen, you have to come with us."

His father was also frantic. "It’s too dangerous!"

"Mom, Dad, you go first. I have to stay behind and cover our retreat, to make sure no Demon Beasts catch up to the convoy."

Li Wen’s tone was resolute, laced with an undeniable strength. "Trust me!"

He turned and looked at the driver of his exclusive escort vehicle—a professional dispatched by the Fire Hall.

The driver clearly understood the importance of an A-rank member like Li Wen and could feel the invisible pressure emanating from him. With a solemn expression, he nodded firmly. "Rest assured, Mr. Li!"

As he watched his parents get practically shoved into the back of the car, which then shot away in a streak of light, the tension in Li Wen’s chest eased just a fraction.

With his back to the sweep team that was just beginning their recovery operation, his gaze, sharp as a blade, locked onto the cave in the cliff face.

The instant the taillights of the last Li family vehicle vanished around the bend—

"ROAR!!!"

A deafening roar, brimming with greed and savagery, shattered the valley’s silence.

With the roar came a fetid gust of wind, several times more potent than that of the Wolf Demons, kicking up sand and stones.

A much larger black shadow, carrying a suffocating pressure, burst from the cave. It transformed into a tan-colored hurricane, aiming straight for the two Wolf Demon corpses still on the ground, and for the living human nearby who emanated a vibrant aura of lifeblood.

A peak mid-tier Super Martial Artist-level Demon Beast—the Iron-Armored Earth Dragon Beast.

The Demon Beast resembled a giant pangolin, but it was the size of a small truck.

Its body was covered in overlapping, angular, heavy plates of earth-yellow armor, like a suit of naturally formed heavy plate mail.

A glossy, jet-black horn with a metallic sheen protruded from the front of its massive skull. Its four thick, short legs made the ground rumble as it charged.

Its bloodshot eyes glinted with a ravenous hunger, its ferocity clearly triggered by the scent of blood.

The powerful lifeblood fluctuations of a peak mid-tier Super Martial Artist radiated from it without reserve, creating a pressure field as heavy as a mountain that far surpassed the two earlier Wolf Demons.

’Just in time!’ A sharp light glinted in Li Wen’s eyes as he advanced instead of retreating.

He reached out, and the other, undamaged longsword flew into his grasp.

Facing this behemoth known for its defense, Li Wen didn’t immediately play all his trump cards. His figure blurred as he used the Flowing Rainbow Step Skill, leaving a trail of afterimages as he closed the distance in an instant.

The blade moved with his body as he opened with his lightning-fast and incomparably sharp killing technique—the Shadow-Stealing Form.

SWISH—SWISH—SWISH!

A continuous whistle tore through the air. The first strike targeted its relatively vulnerable eye.

CLANG!!!

Sparks flew! The ear-splitting screech of metal on metal echoed through the valley.

The beast’s eyelids were also covered in small, tough scales, like a pair of natural goggles.

The tip of the blade only left a glaring white scratch. A powerful shockwave traveled up the sword, numbing the web of Li Wen’s hand and making him falter for a moment.

Pained and enraged, the beast swept its massive horn like a giant siege hammer, the attack accompanied by a shriek that tore through the air.

Relying on the exquisite body control of a Power Realm Powerhouse and the uncanny wonders of his Flowing Rainbow Step Skill, Li Wen twisted away, narrowly avoiding the blow.

The force of the wind scraped his face like a razor, carving a deep furrow in the ground behind him.

The moment he regained his footing, Li Wen attacked again.

He launched the Shadow-Stealing Form a second time.

This time, he aimed for the seam between the armor plates on the beast’s neck. The blade flashed like a streak of a Flowing Rainbow, carrying a sharp cutting intent as it slashed down viciously!

CLANG!!! Another piercing shriek of metal.

The apparent seam was actually covered by a thick membrane and fine secondary scales. The blade left a slightly deeper gash, but not a drop of blood was drawn.

Li Wen felt as if his blade had struck thousand-year-old leather. Even the razor-sharp Shadow-Stealing Form felt inadequate.

"ROAR!" The beast roared furiously and slammed a giant claw into the ground. A thick, tan-colored halo of Demon Power instantly condensed around its body, its Defense Power soaring once more.

At the same time, its terrifying black horn shot toward Li Wen’s heart like a bolt of lightning.

’Such strong defense,’ Li Wen thought, his heart sinking.

Using the extreme speed of the Shadow-Stealing Form, he again dodged the fatal blow. Undiscouraged, he began to circle the behemoth like a phantom.

He searched for an opening in its movements, unleashing a third and fourth Shadow-Stealing Form.

One slash aimed at the inside of a joint, another jabbed at the weak point where the plates on its flank overlapped.

CLANG! KSHH! TCH... Sparks and stone fragments flew.

The skin on the inside of the joint was indeed softer. The blade opened a gash about an inch deep, and blood began to seep out. But relative to the behemoth’s massive body, it wasn’t even a minor wound.

As for the weak point at the overlap, the thick halo and rippling muscles beneath easily dissipated most of the force. The attack was just as ineffective.

Such heavy armor, combined with the condensed Demon Power shield, made Li Wen’s standard-issue longsword and his masterfully cultivated Shadow-Stealing Form seem utterly useless against this ironclad fortress.

Though his attacks were swift and sharp, he couldn’t inflict any real damage. He could only manage to nick its hide here and there, much less seriously wound or kill it.

The beast grew more and more frenzied, its charges becoming fiercer each time. As the situation grew more perilous, Li Wen knew he couldn’t drag this out.

The speed-focused Shadow-Stealing Form alone would never break through this creature’s damn shell.

HUFF... Li Wen’s gaze suddenly sharpened, becoming as keen as a blade and seeming to hold a swirling Star Sea.

’I have to try it. I need to find a weak point and kill it in one strike.’

’Absolute Focus!’

A mysterious power instantly enveloped his sea of consciousness. The eighty-percent boost to his comprehension made the world in his perception suddenly become crystal clear and slow.

Every detail was magnified infinitely. The clamorous roars, the billowing dust, the trajectory of the air currents, and even the surging lifeblood within the Demon Beast’s body all seemed to unfold before his very eyes.

The power of his Primordial Spirit simultaneously surged forth, fusing perfectly with his state of Absolute Focus.

This probing power, originating from the very source of his soul, acted like the most precise scanner. In an instant, it pierced the beast’s thick scales and halo of Demon Power, meticulously examining every trace of lifeblood circulation, every muscle and sinew, and every skeletal joint within its colossal frame.

The beast attacked again, its massive horn charging straight for Li Wen with an ear-piercing shriek.

In Li Wen’s highly focused consciousness, time seemed to slow to a crawl, thick as molasses.

The horn’s trajectory was perfectly clear, and the terrifying power it contained was heart-stopping.

But under the probe of his Primordial Spirit, he saw it. Beneath the seemingly impenetrable shield of lifeblood, as the beast lowered its head to charge, the joint connecting its jaw and neck stretched. For a fleeting, infinitesimal moment, a gap appeared in its lifeblood circulation—a tiny delay.

’Position locked! The joint at the jawbone! Now! This is the perfect moment!’

A direct clash would be suicide! In a flash, Li Wen’s body twisted at an impossible angle, moving like a ricocheting stream of water to narrowly evade the horn’s frontal assault. The violent gust of wind shredded one of his sleeves to pieces.

The instant he completed the dodge, he used the momentum to pivot, stomping his left foot hard on the ground. The powerful reactive force propelled him into the perfect position.

"Now! Overlapping Waves!!"

His mind and intent became one. His blade’s momentum abruptly shifted from the unparalleled speed of the Shadow-Stealing Form to one of extreme weight and condensed power.

In the sea of energy within his Dantian, the lifeblood he had cultivated through the Splitting Blade Golden Killing Skill was compressed to its absolute limit. In his sea of consciousness, the abstruse principles of the Overlapping Waves Form—of which he had only a rudimentary grasp—began to churn frantically.

This wasn’t a single strike!

Guided by the unparalleled precision of his Primordial Spirit and with his body’s control pushed beyond its absolute limits...

Amid the screaming roar of his lifeblood erupting in frantic, overlapping bursts, several condensed beams of blade energy—each containing the power to split metal and shatter rock—were compressed, fused, and focused into a single point at the tip of his standard-issue longsword.

VMMMM—!

The blade, groaning under the terrifying force, emitted a low hum so deep it seemed to vibrate the very soul.

The air around the tip of the blade warped violently, and even light seemed to be drawn in and bent. A destructive power gathered at that single point, poised to erupt.

"Break... for me!!!"

A roar containing the full force of his will erupted from Li Wen’s chest.

He gripped the nearly-shattering hilt with both hands, pouring out the full might of the Blade Momentum Realm he had painstakingly cultivated and drawing upon the power of the world to augment his strike.

He aimed this Overlapping Waves Form—which concentrated all his essence, energy, and spirit, like a miniature tactical nuke—with uncanny, pinpoint precision. He thrust it at the only weak point he could see: the newly exposed gap in the lifeblood flow at the creature’s jaw.

PSHHHHHK—!!!

This time, the sound was muffled and deadly, not the futile clang of metal.

The tough hide and scales, which had only been scratched by repeated attacks from the Shadow-Stealing Form, were instantly pierced and torn asunder by the terrifying power of the Overlapping Waves Form—a force concentrated into a single point that drilled and exploded with the power of a super-high-energy drill.

Blood erupted in a violent spray, gushing like a fountain.

The savage blade energy of the Overlapping Waves Form, like a bursting dam or an erupting volcano, poured madly through the tiny gap in the bone and into the beast’s incredibly tough insides.

The blade energy exploded in successive waves, instantly obliterating the surrounding muscles and blood vessels and penetrating straight through to the seams of its thick cervical vertebrae.

"AARRROOOO—!!!"

The Iron-Armored Earth Dragon Beast let out a world-shaking cry—a desperate, tragic shriek filled with utter disbelief, excruciating pain, and the finality of its life being extinguished.