Chapter 54 — Wide Pipe, Pouring Faucet

An hour later, a group of vans were camped outside of the entrance to the holy land, each filled with various bits of equipment ready to extract from the site the second it was fully open. The site supervisor, Jianfeng, was writing down orders from Elder Mao to coordinate and manage the extraction team’s shift.

The extraction team consisted of six people, all of whom had called in sick at school to be ready for the big day. Despite Lin Che telling the Shen Clan that the cultivation level restrictions would be lifted, he had insisted on having the same team enter after him to gather resources, citing that there would be no need to spend time and resources to deviate from an already solid plan.

Lin Che stood outside of the portal entrance, and the air warped around the hand he stretched outwards into the portal. It disappeared from view, but the remainder of Lin Che’s body was still on Earth.

“Wish me luck!” shouted Lin Che, as he closed his eyes and stepped in.

***

The holy land looked the same as before, which is to say that the map Lin Che had memorised and brought back to this life was still the correct route. He started down the stone corridors and took a deep breath in.

Time for a speedrun.

Lin Che rolled his shoulders and put an ear to each shoulder. He began the Hollow Bell Resonance, pushing it as far as he could until it pressed against the very extremes of his reach. Everything in range was within his domain.

He tightened the muscles in his lower limbs and allowed whichever energy remained in his system to flow downwards.

And then, he ran.

It wasn’t a movement technique, which was obvious from its semi-clumsy execution, but Lin Che now sprinting down the corridor at an inhuman speed. Occasionally, he had to slow down to prevent tripping over his own feet.

The first creature was around the second junction, and, as the Hollow Bell Resonance broadcasted his Qi into the entire area, it had long sensed Lin Che. This time, however, the gap between sensing and acting was an unreachable hurdle for the brown, dog-like creature. It swerved to dodge, but—

Lin Che kept running. Through the creature.

Once he got close enough, Lin Che launched a powerful, short-range burst of sound Qi through his mouth, which caused the creature to erupt in a violent bubble of guts and fall downwards. He jumped over the creature before it even had a chance to hit the floor.

Lin Che scanned the area using his sound arts like a radar and pivoted to the right before breaking into a sprint once again.

The two creatures ahead of him jumped upwards towards him, but Lin Che came in low and drew the heel of his palm upward into the base of one wolf’s jaw with full force and momentum. It slammed into the other wolf, but both were still alive.

Before they could get up and react, he kicked each skull until he heard a crack.

He moved onto the next set of wolves.

***

By the time Lin Che dealt with the sixth pack of wolves, his joints, particularly at his ankles and knees, gave him jolts of pain whenever he placed his weight onto them. Moreover, his calves and glutes were strained — despite his increased endurance and physical strength.

Apparently muscles were still important.

But muscles didn’t carry over in each loop. Only the increased strength from body refinement did.

Instead, he swore to do the next best thing in this life and the next few: invest time into a martial technique, or combat technique, or whatever the equivalent was in terms of cultivation, and spend time training a movement technique, too.

He had been putting it off, as, despite having essentially infinite time to train these, Lin Che was ultimately a rather lazy person. When it came to cultivation, he could abuse his power to exponentially raise the levels of his cultivated Qi, and he could come to reasonable conclusions known as breakthroughs for sudden surges in power.

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There was no alternative for martial arts. Those had to be engraved into the muscle.

But, at least then he’d be able to throw a punch without almost dislocating his wrists or risking a boxer’s fracture.

***

The final chamber was now ahead.

Lin Che slowed to walk at the entrance, partly because his legs were sending increasingly wearier signals, but also because he was afraid the Hollow Bell Resonance would alert the final boss and provide it with enough time to attack him. Of course, Lin Che could easily defeat an injured opponent, after all he’d already defeated this wolf before, but he didn’t wish to wake it as doing so would just prolong its conscious awareness of its suffering.

The chamber’s Qi density hit him immediately, which was particularly striking as the entire holy land itself already possessed a great density. He had surely noticed this before in his past life, but his sensitivity was much greater now, and it took him a concerningly large amount of restraint to not immediately invoke the Boundless Intake Sutra.

He brought all of his Qi inwards and concentrated it into a small point, hiding it away within the depths of his body so as to not wake the wolf. Lin Che crouched in front of it as it slept and placed his hand on its neck, right where the carotid artery would be.