Lin Mu slammed into the pile of jagged rocks.
The searing pain of his back striking stone made his vision go black—he felt as though his internal organs had been knocked out of place.
The Red Mud Shield he'd once been so proud of had proven fragile as paper against the Boar King's onslaught of scorching heat and overwhelming force.
"Can't block it... there's no way I can block it."
He coughed up a mouthful of bloody saliva and watched the massive beast turn around, its body radiating that ominous red glow.
A wave of cold despair washed over him. This wasn't merely a gap in defensive Gu—this was pure Strength Path suppression. A single graze from that enormous body would shatter his bones and snap his tendons.
The Boar King had already locked onto him again.
Its hooves pawed at the ground, twin jets of scalding white steam shooting from its nostrils. The next charge was imminent.
Yet in this moment between life and death, Lin Mu's mind grew terrifyingly calm. It was as if all fear had been stripped away, leaving only calculations running at breakneck speed.
"Meet force with force? No—that single blow nearly scattered my Primeval Essence. I absolutely cannot face it head-on."
"Defend? Even worse. The Red Mud Shield is already pushed past its limit. It will never withstand another charge."
"If I can't block it, then I won't even try."
"Disperse!"
With a silent command, he voluntarily dissolved the remaining red mud armor on his chest and arms.
He drew upon the forty percent of dark green Primeval Essence still remaining in his aperture—the refined, high-grade essence processed by the Liquor Worm. He compressed every last drop into the meridians of his legs.
The mud rings around his ankles no longer took the form of sturdy, thick armor.
Under the surge of Primeval Essence, they spun and compressed at tremendous speed, becoming incredibly thin and resilient—like two coiled springs of red-hot, high-pressure potential, ready to explode.
At the same time, he commanded the Red Mud Gu to secrete a trace of blood-mud carrying a faint heat toxin, letting it seep directly into his pores.
The moment the poison entered his body, Lin Mu's pale skin flushed an unnatural crimson. The capillaries in the whites of his eyes burst one by one, and his vision turned blood-red.
The pain vanished. In its place came a manic excitement intense enough to fry his brain—an adrenaline surge purchased by burning through his own life force.
He was playing with fire. But only fire could fight fire.
"Earth Ring Body—Speed!"
"ROAAAAAR!"
The Boar King bellowed and transformed once more into a flaming war chariot, thundering forward. Stone pillars in its path were smashed to pieces, debris flying like rain.
But the instant before it struck its target, Lin Mu's figure vanished.
He was no longer running across the ground. He was ricocheting between the fallen pillars.
BANG!
His toes touched the side of a stone column. The mud ring, compressed to its limit, exploded into a spray of clay and generated a terrifying reactive force.
Lin Mu became a gray-red blur, shooting past the Boar King's tusks at an angle that defied physics.
The Boar King's charge met nothing but empty air. Its massive body slammed into the rock wall behind it, sending a cascade of stones tumbling down.
It twisted around in fury, searching for the slippery insect.
But Lin Mu had already appeared at its flank and rear.
The forest of scattered boulders had become his arena. He wove through smoke and debris, each footfall accompanied by the crack of exploding mud.
The Boar King possessed monstrous strength, yet it couldn't so much as graze the hem of Lin Mu's robe. Instead, the constant sudden stops and sharp turns left the beast dizzy and disoriented.
Crack... crack...
Under the strain of high-intensity movement and the heat radiating from its own body, the thick ring of charcoite armor around the Boar King's neck began to creak ominously from the constant friction and twisting.
Lin Mu's bloodshot eyes fixed on that spot.
Finally, during one violent turn of the beast's head, a thin, red-hot fissure split open across the dark charcoite armor.
It was no thicker than a strand of hair. It appeared and vanished in an instant. But to Lin Mu, it was the only gap leading to survival.
"Found it!"
He didn't rush to attack. Instead, he began provoking the beast even more frantically.
He leaped back and forth behind and beside the Boar King, occasionally launching an iron leaf or flinging a glob of red mud—always targeting its eyes and ears.
This fly-like harassment completely ignited the Boar King's rage.
It stopped caring about the terrain. It twisted, turned, and braked wildly, trying to tear apart this despicable enemy with its tusks.
And with each violent motion, the crack at its neck grew clearer, glowing hotter.
That was the only junction point in its full-body defense. Its only fatal weakness.
Finally.
After another failed charge, the Boar King's massive body skidded forward on momentum alone—old force spent, new force not yet gathered.
In its fury to locate Lin Mu, it wrenched its neck to an extreme angle.
The fissure was fully exposed.
"Now!"
Lin Mu didn't retreat. His feet exploded off the ground, and he charged directly into the rolling waves of heat radiating from the beast's body.
In mid-flight, his left hand scooped up a handful of sharp debris—fragments of the stone pillar the Boar King had just shattered.
The Red Mud Gu in his aperture let out a shrill cry and instantly secreted scalding, viscous mud that wrapped around the shards, forming a nauseating dark-red mass.
"Combination technique—Mudslide!"
Riding his momentum, Lin Mu closed in on the Boar King's face in an instant—less than half a meter away.
He could see the shock and cruelty warring in the beast's eyes.
"Swallow this!"
Both hands struck as one.
In his right palm, the one-time consumable Gu he'd obtained at the stone gambling den—the trump card he'd been clutching all along—the Chain Stone Bullet Gu—finally bared its fangs.
Less than half a meter. He'd practically shoved it against the Boar King's snout.
"Detonate!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three explosions rang out in rapid succession like rolling thunder.
Three stone projectiles, each carrying the force of a Rank 2 attack, detonated at point-blank range.
The Boar King's hardened skull couldn't withstand such close-quarters devastation. Half its face was instantly reduced to a bloody pulp, its eyeball bursting on impact.
"AAAARRGH!"
The massive shockwave didn't just blind the beast—the searing agony made it throw its head back.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
At the same moment, his left hand slapped forward. The sharp debris wrapped in scalding mud drove through the blasted wound and into the Boar King's eyes and nostrils with surgical precision.
Blinded! Suffocating!
"AAAARRGH!"
The agony of having both eyes pierced, combined with the choking sensation of boiling mud sealing its nostrils, tore a blood-curdling scream from the Boar King.
Instinctively, it threw its head back and opened its mouth wide, gasping for air.
And with that motion, the fissure at its neck split wide open.
The killing opportunity would last only an instant.
Lin Mu was already airborne. In his right hand, he gripped the Iron Leaf Gu—the one weapon he hadn't yet used.
Every last drop of dark green Primeval Essence poured into it without reservation. The edge of the iron leaf began to glow with a piercing cyan light, its sharpness pushed to the absolute limit. It even hummed faintly.
"Die!"
No sweeping slash. No flashy technique.
Lin Mu's wrist was steady as bedrock. The iron leaf in his hand moved like a precise surgical scalpel, sliding silently into that hair-thin, red-hot fissure.
It bypassed the hardest charcoite bone. It severed the tough muscle.
Shhhhk—
A soft sound.
Then came the spray of something hot and wet.
Lin Mu's figure passed the Boar King and crashed heavily to the ground.
Ignoring the pain, he looked back.
The Boar King's massive body had frozen in place. From the fissure at its neck, scalding blood erupted like a high-pressure fountain, instantly dyeing the ground crimson.
Its trachea and carotid artery had been severed simultaneously. A fatal wound.
"Hhhh... hhhh..."
A wheezing, whistling sound escaped the Boar King's throat.
Its four hooves scraped weakly at the ground a few times before that mountain-like body collapsed with a thunderous crash, crushing countless stones and sending clouds of dust billowing into the air.
Lin Mu lay on the ground, gasping for breath.
As the blood toxin's effects faded, pain flooded back like a tide. He didn't have the strength to move a single finger.
Inside his aperture, the Red Mud Gu—having performed so valiantly—now lay curled in a corner, its luster faded, clearly exhausted from the ordeal.
But he smiled.
On that face caked with blood and grime, a smile appeared—uglier than crying.
This battle was razor-close. A fraction of a second slower, a single inch off with the iron leaf, and it would have been him lying dead.
But this wasn't merely a hunt. It was the ultimate proof of everything he'd trained for over these past days.
"I won."
Lin Mu gazed at the massive corpse, its warmth slowly fading. His eyes, still red with blood, shone with unusual brightness.
"I won."