Gritting his teeth, Ryan refused to stop.
Before the weakness could fully take hold, he forced his body to move, circling around the poisonous mist.
Drawing on every remaining ounce of strength, he raised the Remnant Shadow Sword high.
"Oraaaa"
With a roar that tore from his throat, Ryan poured everything he had into a final strike and slashed straight toward Poison Elvis.
Poison Elvis's poisonous mist was never something it could unleash freely. Each time it used that ultimate life-saving move, its body would fall into a prolonged state of weakness, during which its strength would plummet to the lowest point.
In that fragile interval, even an ordinary creature could kill it with ease.
Precisely because of this, Poison Elvis would never activate the poison mist unless it was truly cornered, unless death was already pressing against its throat.
At this moment, Ryan was poisoned, his limbs weak and his breath uneven.
With every breath, his consciousness grew dimmer, yet he refused to fall.
Relying on the last shred of willpower left in his body, and taking advantage of the brief weakness Poison Elvis suffered after releasing the poison mist, he forced himself forward.
His steps staggered, but his grip on the Remnant Shadow Sword was steady. Gathering everything he had left, he swung the sword down in one decisive strike.
A dull, tearing sound echoed through the night as the blade sliced into flesh and bone.
The Remnant Shadow Sword cleaved straight into Poison Elvis's skull, cutting away half of its head in a brutal arc.
Blood splattered, and the massive body froze mid-motion.
One scarlet eye remained, wide open in disbelief, its jaws still parted as poisonous mist continued to leak out weakly.
Poison Elvis could not understand it.
It had already used its ultimate life-saving technique, yet the human still reached it and delivered the killing blow.
No matter how furious or resentful it felt, death was inevitable.
A few seconds later, the enormous body finally lost all strength and collapsed to the ground with a thud and became motionless.
Ryan watched the corpse fall, and only then did his knees give way.
He also dropped heavily to the ground, gasping for breath. His vision swam violently. "Dammit, Ryan… stay awake..." He knew he could not faint. The poison was still in his body, and once he fell unconscious, there was no guarantee he would ever wake up again.
Yet what could he do?
His limbs burned with pain, his chest felt tight as though suffocating, and the poison gnawed at his insides relentlessly.
He struggled to hold on, but it felt as though his life was slipping away every second.
A bitter smile surfaced in his heart.
He never expected that even with a godlike cheat such as the God of War System, he might still die at the hands of a monster.
The unwillingness surged violently stronger, even than Poison Elvis's resentment.
He had not married, had not become a true powerhouse, had not gone to settle the half-year contract, had not fulfilled his ambitions, nor passed on his bloodline. How could he die here?
But reality was merciless.
His eyelids grew unbearably heavy, his breathing erratic, his body numb and cold.
Hallucinations surfaced before his eyes. Familiar faces from his past life appeared one by one. Li Xue's gentle voice, Li Gengxin's unwavering support, Shangguan Siyu's mocking gaze. Scene after scene flickered rapidly through his mind.
"No… I don't want to die!" Ryan roared with everything he had left, pouring out all his defiance and unwillingness.
The cry drained the last of his strength.
His body collapsed, his eyelids sliding shut, consciousness sinking into darkness.
At that very moment, the lifeless body of Poison Elvis finally twitched once, then stilled completely. Its remaining vitality vanished, and it truly died.
A crisp, mechanical sound rang out in Ryan's mind.
"Ding! Congratulations to player Ryan for killing the fourth-ranked monster, Poison Elvis. You have gained ten God of War points and 300,000 experience points."
"Ding! You leveled up."
"Ding! You leveled up."
"Ding! You leveled up."
A brilliant yellow light burst forth beneath Ryan's body, rippling outward in radiant waves.
An indescribable sensation surged through his soul, as though his very essence were being purified and reborn.
The dizziness, the pain, the suffocating poison—all of it vanished in an instant.
His consciousness snapped back with startling clarity, vitality flooding every corner of his body.
Leveling up cleansed all negative states. It restored the body to its peak condition, like a complete rebirth.
Ryan's eyes flew open, shock and joy flooding his face.
He had survived.
Poison Elvis, even after losing half its head, had stubbornly clung to life just long enough for him to kill it and gain the experience needed to level up.
Had it died even a moment earlier, Ryan would already be on his way to the underworld.
He stood up abruptly, checked his body, then exhaled deeply before breaking into uncontrollable laughter. "I'm alive, haha..." The suffocating closeness of death left behind a thrill so intense it made his heart race.
Only now did Ryan truly understand why some people were obsessed with extreme challenges.
That sensation of returning from the brink of death was more intoxicating than anything else.
Yet along with the thrill came fear. A deep, sobering fear. He never wanted to experience this again.
This brush with death forced him to calm down completely.
The God of War System was powerful, but it did not make him immortal.
He was still flesh and blood. Overconfidence could still kill him.
From now on, no matter how strong he became, he would never allow himself to lower his guard again.
After collecting his thoughts, Ryan opened his status panel to examine the gains from this terrifying battle.
Player: Ryan
Level: 33 (Three-Star Exalt)
Experience: 85,541 / 1,000,000
God of War Value: 20
Techniques:
Desolate Landslide (Inferior Sky Rank)
Wind Blade (Inferior Sky Rank)
Heavenly Star Palm (Inferior Sky Rank)
Heaven's Guidance (Top Sky Rank)
Skills:
Basic Boxing (Fist), Basic Sword, Basic Blade
Movement Technique: Phantom Step
Finishing Technique: Mountain Splitting (Level 1)
Secondary Professions: Alchemy, Forging, Puppetry
Special Attribute: Three Thousand Flames (Extreme Fire)
Backpack Items:
Frost Sword, Remnant Shadow Sword, God Boots, Power Pill ×56, Dexterity Pill ×42, Constitution Pill ×66, Intellect Pill ×44
Looking at the panel, Ryan clenched his fists slowly. "Level-33. I'm now even stronger than Master Yuda… Only that arrogant senior disciple of Heaven's Gate is a bit stronger than me."
The road ahead was still long, but this time, he had truly stepped onto it as an Exalt.
If one truly survived a great calamity, then what followed was bound to be a blessing.
Ryan finally understood the weight of those words.
Staring at his rapidly growing attribute panel, he felt a lingering sense of disbelief.
That battle had brought him to the brink of death, yet the rewards it yielded were nothing short of astonishing.
After slaughtering the first wave of hundreds of level-three Bloodthirsty Cat Demons, his cultivation had leapt from the Nine-Star Upper Elite straight into the realm of an Exalt.
From an ordinary warrior, he had crossed a threshold countless cultivators might never touch in their entire lives.
Then came the fall of Poison Elvis.
With the death of that terrifying fourth-level boss, Ryan's cultivation rose again, stepping firmly into the Three-Star Exalt realm. His strength surged forward like a flood breaking through a dam, becoming incomparably more solid and terrifying.
Even better, Poison Elvis had not only granted massive experience points. It had dropped treasures Ryan desperately needed. One was a sword technique, the other a piece of movement equipment, both perfectly suited to him.
Heaven's guidance was a top-grade Sky rank sword technique. With a single thrust, it unleashed a straight-line sword aura whose destructive power reached one and a half times the user's own strength.
The requirement was simple, yet absolute: a sword must be equipped.
For Ryan, who was lacking a proper sword technique, this was like rain falling on parched earth.
The second reward was the God's Boots. Their description was simple yet outrageous: sleepless travel across thousands of miles. Once worn, they increased movement speed by thirty percent and endurance by another thirty percent. This was precisely what Ryan needed to push his mobility to an even more terrifying level.
Without hesitation, Ryan decided to test the new sword technique. He drew the Remnant Shadow Sword, his grip tightening as his gaze locked onto a massive tree in the distance. Taking a steady breath, he thrust forward.
"Heaven's Guidance!"
A brilliant white sword aura erupted from the blade, shooting straight ahead.
Wherever it passed, the ground split apart as if torn open by an invisible blade, leaving behind a deep, straight fissure that looked like an exposed wound carved into the earth itself.
A thunderous explosion followed, and the giant tree was cleanly severed, its upper half crashing down amid flying splinters and dust.
Ryan inhaled sharply.
That tree had been so thick that even two grown men could not have wrapped their arms around it.
Yet it had been cut cleanly in half by a single strike.
The power of this sword technique was dozens of times greater than Wind Blade and clearly surpassed his previous Sky rank martial arts, like Desolate Landslide. A top-grade Sky rank skill truly lived up to its name.
Satisfied, Ryan equipped the God's Boots and tested his movement.