Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 43: Kui Shadow Grand Completion

Deep within the ruined city, a foul, stagnant odor permeated Xu Qing’s hidden stone cave. Bird feathers littered the floor. The rocks and debris he had previously used to seal the entrance were now heavily corroded by Mutagen. A thick layer of dust blanketed the ground, heavier than when he had first left.

Clearly, even with scavengers trickling into the newly formed forbidden zone, his shelter remained perfectly concealed. No one had found it.

The mingled scent of dust and decay drifted into his nose, but he paid it no mind.

Xu Qing sat cross-legged, driving the Sea Mountain Technique to its absolute limit. Spiritual energy surged through his meridians as he built momentum, launching a full-force assault on the seventh level.

Outside, the night was alive with guttural roars, eerie wails, and spine-chilling weeping. The cacophony made Xu Qing’s mind wander for a fraction of a second. It felt like an illusion.

It felt like half a year ago.

Back then, when the deity first opened its eyes and the rain of blood fell, he had been entirely alone, struggling to survive in a city choked with corpses.

Xu Qing fell silent.

He buried the memories. His consciousness sank entirely into his cultivation. As the technique cycled, ambient spiritual energy gathered, rushing violently into his pores.

A rhythmic thumping echoed within his flesh, growing steadily louder until it became a deafening roar in his mind.

Accompanying the roar, black impurities oozed from his pores, thick and foul, expelled by the surging energy. Beneath his grime-soaked clothes, his muscles tore and knitted back together, compressing into something far denser. His veins bulged like writhing snakes; his bones popped and cracked under the immense pressure.

An hour later, a thunderous boom erupted in his mind. Xu Qing’s eyes snapped open, blazing with piercing purple light.

Behind him, the Kui shadow materialized.

But this time, it was fundamentally different. Its massive frame was pitch-black, thicker, and radiating raw brutality. The single horn on its head had split into a pair of spiraling, ox-like horns, their tips crackling with faint black lightning.

Its face was a mask of pure savagery, its gaping, bloody maw looking wide enough to swallow a vengeful ghost whole. Razor-sharp claws and glowing purple eyes exuded a breathtaking ferocity.

A terrifying pressure rolled off the phantom, heavy enough to shake the very walls of the stone cave.

Kui shadow, Grand Completion!

This evolution was only supposed to occur when the Sea Mountain Technique reached Grand Perfection. For an ordinary cultivator, reaching this stage meant hitting the absolute pinnacle of body refinement in the Qi Condensation realm—a bottleneck with no further room for growth. Yet for Xu Qing, this was merely the seventh level.

His physical body had undergone a drastic metamorphosis. His frame was leaner, stripped of all excess, forged into a weapon of pure lethal efficiency. The purple glow in his eyes lingered far longer than before.

And his face…

If he had been exceptionally handsome at the sixth level, the current Xu Qing, illuminated by his glowing purple eyes, possessed a dark, almost bewitching allure beneath the layers of grime.

But Xu Qing cared nothing for his appearance. His focus was entirely on the explosive power coursing through his veins.

He looked down, slowly clenching his fist. Veins bulged across his knuckles and forearms like steel cables. As the purple light faded from his eyes, he gauged his new strength.

It had more than doubled.

“The strength of one Kui?” Xu Qing murmured, glancing around the pitch-black cave.

Though his enhanced vision could pierce the gloom, he couldn’t see his own shadow. But he could *feel* it.

After the time it takes an incense stick to burn, a rare flicker of excitement crossed his eyes. His connection to the shadow had deepened significantly. He could manipulate it with microscopic precision, even drawing a fraction of the Mutagen stored within it back into his own body.

While practically useless, it proved his control had reached a new level of fluidity.

With this power, he wouldn’t even need the divine statue’s heavenly blade to kill the scavenger camp leader. A single punch would shatter the eighth-level body refiner’s arm.

“But it’s still not enough against the Vajra Sect’s Patriarch,” Xu Qing muttered, shaking his head.

He hadn’t fought the old monster directly, but the sheer oppressive force of the Patriarch’s fist shadow during his escape had made the power gap painfully clear. Even with the shadow as a trump card, he stood no chance against a Foundation Establishment expert.

“However… I can kill those two Qi Condensation ninth-level Elders.”

Murderous intent flashed in his eyes as he peered through the cave’s narrow exit.

The intermittent roars and eerie wails outside contrasted sharply with the dead silence of his shelter. The familiarity of the ruined city tugged at him. Instinctively, he drew his black iron spike, gripping it tightly as he weighed his options.

If he fled now, he could likely reach Lujiao City without issue.

But… he wasn’t willing to leave it at that.

Leaving enemies alive made him deeply uneasy. “I need to eliminate them,” he decided, his eyes narrowing.

A map of the ruined city unfolded in his mind. He knew these streets intimately. The nesting grounds of the mutated beasts, the safe zones claimed by the birds—every detail surfaced for his cold, calculating analysis.

“The City Lord’s Mansion,” he whispered, his gaze turning icy.

He would head toward the city’s exit. If he didn’t run into the Vajra Sect pursuers, fine. If he did, he would execute his counterattack.

Listening as the roars outside drifted further away, Xu Qing moved the debris blocking the entrance and squeezed through the crack. His newly refined, slightly broader frame made it a tight fit. Jagged rocks tore at his skin, but his expression remained impassive; the minor scratches would heal in moments.

Emerging into the oppressive darkness, Xu Qing slipped into the ruins, moving with hyper-vigilant precision.

He was even more cautious here than in the depths of the forbidden jungle. The ruined city at night was a breeding ground for horrors.

Fortunately, his intimate knowledge of the terrain allowed him to bypass most of the roaming beasts. When a confrontation was unavoidable, he struck with lightning lethality, silencing the threat before vanishing into the shadows.

For over an hour, Xu Qing navigated the Mutagen-choked ruins. As he neared the city’s edge, distant explosions caught his attention.

His eyes sharpened into the predatory glare of a lone wolf. He melted into the darkness, stalking toward the noise. A short while later, he spotted two figures fleeing from a pack of seven or eight mutated beasts.

It was the two Vajra Sect Elders.

They had arrived at the city long after Xu Qing and the Patriarch. Reaching the perimeter in the dead of night, they had wisely chosen to hide near the edge rather than brave the depths.

But without the safety of a bird’s shelter, encounters with the city’s monstrosities were inevitable. To avoid drawing a horde, they had fought only when cornered. Their caution and formidable cultivation had kept them alive.

Now, sprinting through the ruins, they were on the verge of shaking off their pursuers.

Suddenly, a cold glint tore through the darkness.

Like an arrow loosed from a bow, it shrieked straight toward the leading Elder—the one who had arrived later with the Patriarch.

The Elder’s face warped in alarm. He slammed his hands together, conjuring a thick wall of ice while simultaneously reinforcing his personal spiritual barrier.

The projectile hit with terrifying force, shattering the ice wall instantly and slamming into the barrier. Spiritual energy violently rippled as spiderweb cracks spread across the shield. It held, just barely, revealing the weapon: a black iron spike.

The Elder’s pupils shrank. He whipped his head around to warn his companion, but he was a second too late.

The spike was a feint.

The moment it struck, a shadow exploded from a nearby alley like a bolt of black lightning, closing the distance to the second Elder in the blink of an eye.

It was Xu Qing.

His true target was the middle-aged Elder he had fought previously—the one whose left foot he had crushed!

Xu Qing’s speed erupted, vastly outstripping his limits at the sixth level. The wind shrieked around him as he closed in on the crippled cultivator.

Hindered by his injury and unable to use a flight talisman in the Mutagen-dense air, the middle-aged Elder’s footwork was sluggish. Sensing the lethal threat, the man’s eyes bulged in terror. He desperately tried to throw himself backward.

But Xu Qing gave him no quarter.

Launching himself into the air, Xu Qing drew back his right fist and unleashed every ounce of his newly refined strength and speed.

Behind him, the ferocious Kui shadow materialized, unleashing a silent, earth-shattering roar before surging directly into Xu Qing’s fist.

The air itself seemed to compress and detonate around his knuckles. With the crushing weight of a mountain, the punch slammed into the Elder’s chest.

The man’s protective barrier shattered like glass. Xu Qing’s fist drove through the resistance like a hot knife through butter, caving in the Elder’s sternum.

A deafening boom echoed through the silent city.

The crippled Elder unleashed a blood-curdling scream, vomiting a geyser of blood as his ribcage collapsed, his internal organs rupturing from the sheer kinetic force. He was sent flying backward like a kite with a snapped string.

Yet, he was still a Qi Condensation ninth-level cultivator. Eyes wide with absolute terror, he forcibly suppressed his fatal injuries and channeled spiritual energy into the flight rune attached to his intact right leg. The rune flared, twisting his airborne body as he prepared to launch himself into the sky.

A second cold glint flashed.

A longsword whistled through the air, cleanly severing his right leg at the thigh.

Blood sprayed in a crimson arc as the Elder’s agonizing shriek tore through the night. The severed limb, still glowing with the flight talisman’s power, tumbled away.

Before the mutilated man could even hit the ground, Xu Qing’s legs coiled and fired. He launched himself forward just as a barrage of ice blades, conjured by the surviving Elder, impaled the ground where he had stood a fraction of a second prior.

Ignoring the attack behind him, Xu Qing caught up to the falling Elder in mid-air. Staring into the man’s despairing eyes, Xu Qing threw one final, devastating punch.

The Kui shadow roared, wrapping around his fist as it smashed directly into the Elder’s forehead.

*BANG.*

The man’s body convulsed violently as his head exploded like a crushed watermelon. Brain matter and blood rained down as his headless corpse plummeted to the ground, instantly swarmed and torn apart by the pursuing mutated beasts.

Xu Qing didn’t pause for a single breath. Landing smoothly, he ripped the flight talisman from the severed leg on the ground. He then turned slowly, locking eyes with the remaining Vajra Sect Elder, whose face was completely drained of color, his eyes wide with abject horror.

Xu Qing licked his lips. A feral, wolf-like glint flashed in his eyes as he exploded forward.

*Kill!*