CLANG—!
Lethal sparks exploded outward amid the deafening screech of clashing metal.
In a split second of life and death, Gyutaro swung his blood sickles and managed to parry Lu Li's strike.
He had misjudged Lu Li's speed, which was why his block was so frantic and ungraceful. But he had blocked it nonetheless.
However, this did not ease the blaring alarms in his mind. Instead, his eyes widened in absolute terror. The kinetic energy behind this god-speed strike carried a catastrophic, irresistible force.
If Lu Li had attacked him head-on, Gyutaro could have braced himself and parried it cleanly. But because he was blocking a lateral strike with only one hand, he had no leverage. And so, a scene that filled him with sheer horror unfolded.
Lu Li's blade simply pushed through his arm and his blood sickles. It was a display of both unparalleled, brute violence and extreme technique—mastering a flow of power like water while moving at hyper-speed, funneling all of it directly into the enemy.
Under the shocked gazes of the Explorers and Gyutaro's furious eyes, Lu Li's blade forcefully drove Gyutaro's own blood sickles forward... cleanly slicing right through Daki's slender neck. Her beautiful face still carried a look of complete bewilderment as her head fell from the air.
"Sister!"
Gyutaro screamed. But he didn't panic; he retaliated immediately. His free hand swung his second blood sickle toward Lu Li's chest.
His sickles were laced with his Blood Demon Art's lethal poison. A single scratch meant certain death.
Just as Gyutaro thought the strike would land, Lu Li dropped his elbow, slamming it squarely onto the flat side of the sickle and forcing it downward.
In one fluid motion, Lu Li reversed his blade's trajectory, slashing straight toward Gyutaro's neck.
Gyutaro frantically retracted his arm. [Blood Demon Art: Rampant Arc Weaving - Flying Blood Sickles]! He wrapped his arm and weapon in a spiraling barrier of blood slashes to protect his vitals.
Lu Li's blade first tore through the spiraling net of blood, then crashed into Gyutaro's sickle. The metal screeched, sending showers of sparks into the air like a fireworks display.
BANG—!
Buffed by Thunder Breathing and the [Brute Force Berserker] title, Lu Li held absolute superiority in the strength check. He completely blew Gyutaro away, sending the demon crashing through three separate buildings before finally stopping.
As Lu Li stabilized his stance, he slightly tilted his head. A spinning bullet, howling with wind pressure, grazed past his hair.
Simultaneously, a figure lunged from his blind spot. It was Mousse, the assassin of the Explorer team. His poisoned dagger thrust toward Lu Li's back, a look of ecstatic joy in his eyes.
He had calculated that after dodging the sniper's bullet, given Lu Li's current posture and distance, it would be physically impossible to evade a backstab. Even if the blade didn't pierce the heart, merely breaking the skin with the hyper-lethal poison would take half of Lu Li's life.
TING—!
To Mousse's utter bewilderment, the sound his dagger made upon impact was completely wrong. In fact, the feedback from his hand felt wrong the moment he struck.
When his blade touched Lu Li's baggy black haori, it felt like plunging a knife into a thick swamp. The bizarre, flexible resistance of the garment drastically dispersed the kinetic force. When the tip finally pierced the fabric and hit Lu Li's flesh, it sounded like metal striking solid iron.
"Mousse!"
The white-clad swordsman, who had just closed the distance, screamed in warning. But it was too late.
Lu Li seamlessly drove his elbow backward, slamming into Mousse's chest and instantly shattering his balance. Without missing a beat, Lu Li spun around with a sweeping arc of his blade, cleanly decapitating the assassin.
Even as his head flew through the air, Mousse couldn't comprehend why his full-power, specialized assassination thrust had failed to even scratch Lu Li's skin.
"Die!"
Without sparing a single second to mourn his fallen comrade, the leader of the adventurer team—the white-clad swordsman known as Brother Yu—charged forward.
Capitalizing on the exact moment Lu Li turned to execute Mousse, Brother Yu deduced that Lu Li couldn't possibly reverse his blade's momentum fast enough to block. Descending like an immortal from the heavens beneath the moonlight, he thrust his sword straight at the side of Lu Li's neck, aiming to pierce his throat completely.
But in the next microsecond, Lu Li's response filled his eyes with sheer disbelief. Lu Li made what appeared to be the most absurd combat decision possible: he simply reached out with his bare left hand, aiming his palm directly at the incoming blade!
Is this monster insane?! Brother Yu thought. His sword was a Purple-grade weapon boasting incredible sharpness. Attempting to catch it barehanded... did he really think sacrificing a hand would save his throat?
Just as the swordsman believed victory was at hand—imagining his blade piercing the palm and skewering the man's throat—an impossible reality unfolded.
CRACK—SHATTER!
Accompanied by the shrill sound of collapsing metal, his newly purchased Purple-grade sword began to fragment. Starting from the very tip that touched Lu Li's palm, the blade shattered inch by inch.
The destruction continued until all the kinetic momentum was exhausted, leaving only the hilt slamming harmlessly into Lu Li's hand.
The white-clad swordsman's eyes bulged in absolute shock, as if he were witnessing the most absurd farce in the universe. Under his paralyzed gaze, Lu Li's fingers closed, gripping the hand holding the shattered hilt.
Looking at the demonic grin spreading across the man's face, Brother Yu finally understood why Lu Li had dared to come here alone, completely fearless of any traps.
They were never the hunters. They were just a pack of stray dogs that had wandered into a jungle and run straight into a primeval tiger.
Lu Li tightened his grip, grinning savagely. He reversed his blade's momentum and slashed upward in a brutal, vertical arc, cleanly cleaving the swordsman in half.
"Boss!"
"Brother Yu!"
"Captain!"
The three remaining team members screamed in fury and despair, completely unable to rescue him. Under their horrified gazes, Lu Li followed up with a horizontal slash, taking the bisected swordsman's head out of the air.
Lu Li watched the swordsman's corpse tumble into the ruins. He casually flicked the blood off his blade.
"Upper Rank Moons. Is this all?"
"You monster!"
With a furious roar, the main tank, Steel Plate, charged at Lu Li, leading the remaining two Explorers in a desperate assault.
They were all veterans of the Terminus Space. They could read the situation perfectly. Having accepted Muzan's blood, and with the artificial twilight as their only shield during the day, they had absolutely nowhere to run.
If they broke formation and fled, they would undoubtedly be hunted down and slaughtered one by one. Their only microscopic chance of survival was a fight to the death.
Facing Steel Plate's charge, Lu Li first leaped backward, effortlessly dodging another sniper round. His leap covered a massive seven or eight meters, landing him squarely on the vertical wall of a building across the street.
The towering Steel Plate, holding his massive shield, continued his charge like a rabid bull. He knew he was the tank. With their assassin, berserker, and swordsman dead, he had to press the frontline and lock Lu Li down. Otherwise, the monster would instantly target their fragile mage.
Lu Li stood horizontally on the wall. He coiled his leg muscles, golden lightning roaring to life around his entire body. In the next heartbeat, amidst a deafening thunderclap, the wall behind him exploded outward into a ring of splinters.
Lu Li launched himself like a railgun projectile. He didn't use his sword to cut the massive tower shield; instead, he simply unleashed a devastating kick right into its center.
CRACK.
Under the apocalyptic kinetic force and hyper-speed, a web of cracks instantly spiderwebbed across the shield. In the next second, the entire heavy shield violently exploded into shrapnel.
Steel Plate violently coughed up blood as he was blasted backward through the air. He felt as if he had just been hit head-on by a speeding freight train.
"Blood Demon Art: Crimson Spirit Fire!"
A low shout came from the flank. A pillar of roaring flame, over two meters thick, blasted toward Lu Li.
Lu Li abandoned his pursuit of the falling tank. Channeling his kinetic energy, he seamlessly fused the mechanics of [Shunpo] and Thunder Breathing. His speed reached a threshold where the remaining fighters only saw a blurry afterimage as he vanished from the inferno's path.
All of this—from the moment Lu Li decapitated Daki to the deaths of two veteran Explorers—had occurred in the span of a mere few seconds.
When Lu Li's form finally solidified on the street, Gyutaro exploded out from the ruins of a collapsed building.
The demon looked completely deranged. Countless blood-red sickles swirled around his body like a vortex, and the main weapons in his hands seemed to have swollen in size. He lunged at Lu Li with a wave of absolute, unadulterated killing intent.
Lu Li calmly raised Qiu Mo to block the strike, using the immense kinetic feedback to slide backward across the cobblestones.
After landing the strike, Gyutaro didn't immediately pursue. Instead, his face was twisted in a mixture of profound fury and sheer terror.
"What the hell did you do to my sister?!"
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