Chapter 355: Shattered Memory Shard
The burst of concentrated Qi drilled straight into the internal runic pathways of the arm, shattering the stone joint and forcing the heavy limb to snap backward uselessly.
With the construct’s posture completely shattered, Shen Yu planted his lead foot and transitioned seamlessly into the grand finale of the art.
His entire presence turned weightless before detonating with lethal acceleration.
The spear became a radiant, blinding streak of gold and crimson, tracing a flawless, ascending arc aimed directly at the pulsating runic core embedded within the puppet’s throat.
KABOOM!
The sharp spearhead pierced clean through the reinforced stone neck.
The volatile Qi detonated within the internal matrix, releasing a concussive shockwave that blasted through the sentinel’s frame from the inside out.
Violent fissures spider-webbed across the puppet’s torso, the malevolent crimson flames in its eye sockets sputtered into ash, and with a heavy, hollow crash, the towering guardian collapsed into a fine mound of dark grey dust.
Shen Yu smoothly twirled the spear around his back, killing its momentum and extinguishing the lingering flames with a crisp flick of his wrist.
Resting the spear lightly against his shoulder, he turned his golden gaze toward the pile of dust.
Nestled in the center of the mound was a glowing, fractured shard of dark red jade, its jagged, broken edges scorched pitch-black.
Approaching the pile, Shen Yu extended a wisp of Qi to levitate the shard into his palm.
The moment he sent his divine sense into the fragment, a chaotic, jumbled mess of fragmented information flooded his sea of consciousness, it was a piece of a shattered Memory Jade.
A knowing smile touched his lips as he looked toward the unsealed archway.
’It seems the trial rewards pieces of a broken memory jade. To unlock the ancient knowledge sealed within, I will have to clear the subsequent chambers and gather the remaining shards.’
Slipping the jade fragment into his spatial ring, Shen Yu walked through the archway into another long, winding subterranean tunnel.
Slipping the broken jade into his spatial ring, Shen Yu walked through the archway into another long, winding subterranean corridor that mirrored the previous one.
After walking for nearly half an hour, an invisible, ambient pressure began bearing down on him.
While faint at first, it grew progressively heavier with every step he took into the depths.
For now, it felt no heavier than carrying a modest ten-kilogram weight evenly distributed across his entire frame, but Shen Yu knew that as he ventured deeper, this gravitational suppression would escalate into a suffocating trial of endurance.
Another half hour passed before the tunnel expanded into a second cavern, revealing a nearly identical obsidian battle ring.
Sweeping his spirit sense across the chamber, Shen Yu confirmed the layout was virtually unchanged, save for the fact that there were two additional stone monoliths, bringing the count to four in total.
The moment he set foot on the arena floor, the ancient blood-red runes etched into all four monoliths flared to life.
From the shadows behind the central pillars, two stone guardian puppets strode forward in lockstep, their rusted greatswords scraping against the stone.
Both constructs radiated the suffocating, unyielding aura of the 9th Stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
A faint, confident smirk touched Shen Yu’s lips as he seamlessly dropped into the fluid opening stance of the Rising Swan Spear Technique.
BOOM!
The twin guardians detonated into motion simultaneously, their heavy blades cleaving through the air with synchronized, blood-drenched fury as the brutal trial commenced once more.
BOOM!
The cavern shuddered as the first puppet lunged with a sweeping horizontal cleave, aiming to bisect Shen Yu at the waist, while the second leaped into the air, bringing its massive greatsword down in a thunderous vertical smash designed to crush his skull.
The overlapping waves of blood-red blade Qi locked down his immediate routes of evasion, dense and suffocating.
Shen Yu’s golden eyes narrowed slightly. With the ambient gravity pressing subtly against his joints, executing the effortless float of the Rising Swan Spear Technique demanded a sharper burst of celestial Qi.
Twisting his hips mid-air, Shen Yu initiated Swan Glides Over Rippling Waters.
His body curved along the razor’s edge between the two intersecting blades, his gold-and-black robes brushing against the howling Qi currents.
CLANG— KABOOM!
The descending greatsword pulverized the arena tiles beneath him, sending razor-sharp obsidian shards spraying outward.
Shen Yu used the explosive updraft to propel himself upward, snapping his pitch-black spear forward in a blinding thrust aimed at the airborne puppet’s glowing throat core.
Clang!
Before his spearhead could pierce the stone flesh, the grounded sentinel thrust its off-hand upward, its heavy forearm deliberately intercepting the strike.
The dense defensive runes etched into its stone skin absorbed the initial pierce, sparking violently as it sacrificed its arm to trap Shen Yu’s weapon.
In that fraction of a second, the second construct swung its rusted greatsword around in a vicious, point-blank backhand slash.
The blade was fast, far faster than the single guardian from the previous chamber.
Feeling the lethal bite of wind against his ribs, Shen Yu abandoned the thrust.
Channeling a heavy burst of Qi into the shaft of the spear, he spun the spear like a radiant shield, catching the greatsword on the reinforced abyss-iron shaft.
CLANGGG!
The sheer concussive impact rattled up Shen Yu’s arms, the heavy kinetic force sliding his boots across the obsidian tiles for a full three paces before he dug his heels into the stone.
A faint, fiery numbness tingled across his palms, the combination of the realm’s creeping gravity and the synchronized force of two peak 9th-Stage Foundation Establishment constructs was finally forcing him to expend genuine effort.
A cold, exhilarating spark ignited within Shen Yu’s golden eyes.
"Not bad," he murmured, his breath steadying as the golden-pink radiance around his dantians surged with sovereign dominance.
"Now let us see how many strikes your formations can truly endure."
Executing Phantom Steps, his figure dissolved into thin air.
-x-
A/N:
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