Dual Cultivation System: My Cultivation Was Crippled, So I Rely on Intimacy to Level Up

Chapter 242: Complete Annihilation

The stench of blood and pulverized stone made Tongming Valley feel like an open grave.

Zhou Kai had originally assumed the mid-stage cultivators would determine the outcome of this battle. But now, Gao Feihuang and Wu Chao were mutually broken, Zheng Pinxian was M.I.A., and Su Xuan was critically wounded. Who could have guessed that the fate of this chaotic battlefield would fall to five early-stage Golden Core cultivators?

Zhou Kai and Shen Hanyi.

Versus Li Wei, Zhao Hu, and Qian Mang.

Li Wei and his two comrades exchanged glances. The brief flash of apprehension in their eyes hardened into ruthless killing intent. Gao Feihuang might have won his duel, but he was effectively a walking corpse. Su Xuan could barely stand.

Three against two. A pair of rookies who just formed their Golden Cores. How can we possibly lose? Li Wei sneered inwardly.

Zhou Kai flicked his wrist, tossing a jade bottle toward Fish Baibai and Mo Qianyuan. “Baibai, Qianyuan. Heal them.”

The two women caught the bottle and, without even checking the Pills inside, blurred into motion. They darted out from the protective insect cloud, splitting up to reach Su Xuan and Gao Feihuang.

The battlefield was officially cleared.

Zhou Kai and Shen Hanyi stood shoulder to shoulder. Three distinct, icy killing intents locked onto them, pressing against their skin like physical blades.

“Arrogant whelps!” Qian Mang barked a feral laugh, taking the initiative. He slapped the Spirit Beast Bag at his waist, and three towering shadows roared into the open!

Three Iron-Backed Demon Apes, each over ten feet tall, crashed onto the battlefield. The earth splintered beneath their massive feet. Underneath their matted black fur, thick muscles roiled with explosive power. Their demonic aura pierced the sky, and the sound of them beating their chests hammered painfully against the eardrums.

Simultaneously, Qian Mang’s hands blurred through a sequence of hand seals. Seven black dots shot from his sleeves like bullets. Initially the size of rice grains, they swelled against the wind the moment they left his cuffs.

In the blink of an eye, they morphed into seven Iron-Armored Great Birds with wingspans stretching dozens of feet. Their metallic feathers ground together with a shrieking screech. Red light burned in their hollow eye sockets as they locked onto the pair below.

Demon Beasts on the ground, iron birds in the sky—an inescapable net of death.

“Husband. Let’s finish this quickly.”

Shen Hanyi’s voice was a chilling whisper. Before her words even settled, twelve flying swords fanned out beside her, forming a radiant, lethal wheel. The frigid light bleeding from the blades cast a snowy pallor over her beautiful profile. Her swords were drawn; her killing intent was absolute.

“Alright,” Zhou Kai smiled at her. He reached back and gripped the Chaotic Sky Hammer. Dark red veins pulsed to life across its pitch-black iron head.

“Die, you miserable pair!” Li Wei’s face twisted in rage. He opened his mouth and spat out a bronze censer .

This was his life-bound Dharma Treasure. The lid spun open on its own, vomiting a torrent of ink-black toxic smoke that instantly swallowed a hundred-yard radius. The smoke was completely blinding. When Zhou Kai swept his Divine Sense outward, it was like throwing stones into a swamp—his perception was smothered by a thick, sticky chaos.

At the exact moment Li Wei deployed the toxic smoke, Zhao Hu struck.

His face was an emotionless mask as he pressed his index and middle fingers together, slashing them toward the heavens. Seven flying swords of varying colors tore into the sky. They linked together, their auras resonating and fusing perfectly to form the configuration of the Seven Stars Sword Array.

A sword array!

Demon Beasts, puppets, toxic smoke, and a Formation. The ground, the sky, their Divine Sense, and their escape routes were entirely sealed off. It was a flawless kill box.

“Kill!” Qian Mang roared.

The three Iron-Backed Demon Apes charged, moving like living mountains of muscle. Above, the Iron-Armored Great Birds shrieked, folding their wings to dive-bomb, their metallic talons glinting like razors.

“Hanyi, the sword array is yours,” Zhou Kai ordered.

Instead of retreating, he stepped into the vanguard. His body rapidly expanded, violently tearing through the air until he transformed into a towering, twenty-five-zhang tall Five Emperors True Body. Blinding golden light banished the shadows as he fearlessly met the charging apes head-on.

Shen Hanyi didn’t reply, offering only a curt nod. She remained perfectly still, but her twelve flying swords flared with blinding gold and white light. They shot forward as radiant streams, clashing directly against Zhao Hu’s Seven Stars Sword Array.

Clang! Clang! Clang! A torrential downpour of metal-on-metal impacts detonated in the air. Sparks rained down like fireworks. Nineteen streaks of sword light engaged in a hyper-lethal dogfight in the sky. Shockwaves from their collisions gouged deep trenches into the earth below. Shen Hanyi’s swords moved with terrifying grace—sometimes dominating and explosive, other times weaving like an inescapable, freezing rain.

Meanwhile, Zhou Kai collided with the apes.

“Good timing!” Zhou Kai boomed. An earthy, yellow radiance erupted from the Chaotic Sky Hammer. He didn’t bother with intricate martial techniques; he simply gripped the shaft and delivered a brutal, horizontal sweep.

The power of earth—immeasurably heavy and absolute!

BOOM! The lead ape thrust out a fist as tough as a Dharma Treasure to block. The impact shattered its arm, twisting the limb at a sickening angle. The hammer’s momentum didn’t stop, launching the massive beast through the air until it smashed through a ruined wall.

The remaining two apes lunged, their claws raking across the Five Emperors True Body. Sparks flew, but the divine light didn’t even ripple. Zhou Kai reached down, snatching the left ape by the skull like a ragdoll. He clenched his fist.

Squelch. The ape didn’t even have time to scream before its head was pulverized into bloody paste.

Zhou Kai vanished, executing Dragon Roaming the Void. He left an afterimage where he stood, his True Body reappearing behind the rightmost ape like a titanic ghost. The beast swiped at empty air. Before it could turn, Zhou Kai brought his massive foot down on its back. The skull popped like a dropped melon, spraying red and white across the dirt.

Less than three breaths. Three Iron-Backed Demon Apes, completely annihilated!

“What?!” Qian Mang’s face drained of color. His prized Demon Beasts hadn’t even lasted three seconds against a first-layer Golden Core cultivator!

Panic seizing him, he mentally commanded the Iron-Armored Great Birds to break off their attack on Shen Hanyi and focus-fire entirely on Zhou Kai.

Right then, Li Wei’s toxic smoke completely flooded the battlefield. Vision was useless. Divine Sense was smothered. Only the shrieking of incoming projectiles warned of danger.

Pathetic tricks. Zhou Kai sneered. To a master of the Cicada Chirp Steals Heaven, this sensory deprivation was a joke. He could clearly “see” the exact flight path of every single iron bird, right down to the glowing runes etched onto their metallic wings.

“You want to play with birds? Let’s play.”

Zhou Kai slapped his Hundred Beast Banner. The black canvas unfurled, vomiting dozens of roaring beast phantoms that lunged into the sky, violently intercepting the iron birds.

At the same time, Zhou Kai triggered a thought.

Hummmm— A bizarre, soul-piercing vibration, completely distinct from Mana or Vitality, resonated across the battlefield. The high-frequency drone made Li Wei and Zhao Hu grunt in pain.

Split-Back Katydids!

A pitch-black tide of insects erupted from the shadows behind Zhou Kai, rushing forward like a breached dam of ink. Wherever the swarm passed, Li Wei’s prized toxic smoke was greedily devoured, leaving an absolute vacuum in their wake.

Their targeting was terrifyingly precise. They ignored the dogfight in the sky and the crushed apes on the ground. Like a disciplined army of executioners, they bypassed the Formation and swarmed directly toward Qian Mang!

Qian Mang stared in absolute horror as the black tide blotted out his vision. He could see every horrific detail of the Split-Back Katydids. They were only the size of a thumb, jet-black, with a grotesque, bony fissure running down their backs. Their legs were miniature hammers, and their mandibles clacked open and shut, glowing with a sickly green light. The stench of decaying earth and highly corrosive acid hit him, making his stomach heave.

“NO!!”

Qian Mang’s soul practically left his body. He desperately flared his protective spiritual light. A small Dharma Treasure shield hovered in front of him, and he frantically slapped dozens of defensive Talismans onto his body. He even burned his Essence Blood, trying to trigger a blood escape technique.

It didn’t matter. The insect cloud slammed into his shield. The Dharma Treasure let out a pitiful whine, instantly webbing with cracks before shattering. His layered spiritual defenses were peeled away like wet tissue paper, flashing once before being eaten alive.

There was no grand explosion. Just a dense, maddening symphony of chewing that drilled straight into the marrow of his bones.

Rustle, rustle. Crunch, crunch. Qian Mang’s defenses lasted less than a single heartbeat.

“AHHHHH!”

A scream of pure, inhuman agony tore through the valley, only to be abruptly choked off. The swarm engulfed him entirely, forming a writhing, pitch-black humanoid pillar. Qian Mang felt thousands of tiny, razor-sharp mandibles slicing and tearing away his skin, millimeter by millimeter. He tried to scream again, but Katydids swarmed down his throat, devouring his vocal cords and choking his wails into a wet, gurgling rattle.

He smelled his own roasting flesh. He felt his life force hemorrhaging from a million microscopic wounds. The agonizing pain and primal terror consumed him, until the sweet release of dark, icy nothingness finally took him.

A mere three seconds later, the swarm scattered, flowing back into Zhou Kai’s shadow with a whistle. Where Qian Mang had stood, there was only a blood-red outline of a man etched into the scorched earth. Not a single fragment of bone remained.

A deathly silence fell over the valley. The wind stirred, lifting a few flakes of foul-smelling ash.

Zhao Hu’s Seven Stars Sword Array stuttered. Li Wei’s hand seal faltered. Both men froze in absolute terror. A living, breathing Golden Core cultivator had been erased from existence in three seconds flat. Devoured to the bone.

Qian Mang was dead!

The moment he died, the Iron-Armored Great Birds lost their power source, dropping from the sky like lead weights. Ice water flooded the veins of Li Wei and Zhao Hu.

“Shit!” Zhao Hu’s mind reeled. His finger seals slipped, causing a fatal hesitation in his sword array.

Shen Hanyi’s eyes narrowed, seizing the microscopic opening.

“Break,” she whispered, her voice like cracking ice.

Her twelve swords flared with blinding intensity, merging into a massive slaughtering array. The boiling wave of sword light violently ripped Zhao Hu’s Seven Stars Sword Array to shreds!

Pfft! Zhao Hu convulsed, vomiting a mouthful of blood as the mental link to his life-bound swords was ruthlessly severed. His aura plummeted. His array was broken.

Darkness crept into the edges of his vision. He looked up, his gaze locking with Shen Hanyi’s freezing stare. Those weren’t human eyes! Deep within her pupils, dark red whirlpools slowly churned, looking like gateways to a sea of blood that threatened to devour his very soul.

She didn’t even glance at her twelve retreating flying swords. She simply raised her silver-white longsword.

To Zhao Hu, her movements seemed incredibly slow, yet his body was entirely paralyzed by her Aura Pressure. He couldn’t even twitch a finger. A tyrannical sword intent locked onto him, scraping against his skin like physical blades.

Clang— The sword hummed—a clear, draconic cry that heralded death. The blade in her hand suddenly erupted with a bizarre, mesmerizing radiance. It was no longer pure gold and white, but a terrifying gold-red! The colors swirled along the steel like molten gold mixed with fresh blood, magnificent and utterly lethal.

Zhao Hu watched in absolute terror as the sword came alive.

It wasn’t a weapon; it was an awakened primordial beast unhinging its jaws to consume him! The gold-red light was the beast’s breath, carrying an apocalyptic Aura Pressure meant to incinerate all life. The scorching stench of blood and rusted iron flooded his soul, making him tremble uncontrollably.

I have to block it! I have to block it! Pure survival instinct took over. Zhao Hu roared, burning his very last drop of Mana to heave his broken magic sword up in a desperate guard.

It was useless. Shen Hanyi thrust her sword forward.

There was no thunderous clash. Just a soft, sickening pfft.

Zhao Hu froze. Slowly, he looked down. The magic sword he had nurtured with his soul for a hundred years was sheared cleanly in half, its spiritual light dead. In the center of his chest was a perfectly smooth, bowl-sized hole. There was no blood. The edges of the wound were cauterized black, his flesh and vitality instantly vaporized by the sheer heat of her sword intent.

He didn’t even feel pain. Only a profound, soul-crushing cold that spread outward from the cavity, instantly freezing his soul. He felt the tyrannical sword intent detonate inside his body, frantically shredding his internal organs and wiping out the last embers of his life force.

He opened his mouth to speak, but only a wet, wheezing rattle escaped, accompanied by a spurt of black blood and pulverized organ tissue. The world went dark, leaving only the image of Shen Hanyi’s devastatingly cold, peerless face.

Shen Hanyi smoothly withdrew her blade. The gold-red light vanished, leaving the silver steel pristine and unstained.

Thud. Zhao Hu fell backward like a felled tree, dead before he hit the ground.

From a distance, Li Wei witnessed the immaculate, brutally efficient slaughter. Qian Mang eaten alive. Zhao Hu pierced through the heart. It had happened so fast he had practically forgotten to breathe.

A paralyzing chill shot from his tailbone straight to his scalp. He finally understood. These two weren’t ordinary early-stage Golden Core cultivators! Shen Hanyi’s sword was unreasonably, terrifyingly sharp. And Zhou Kai was a walking nightmare with endless, lethal methods.

Damn it! Damn it! Despair instantly swallowed him.

If I’m dying, I’m taking you with me! His face twisted into a mask of pure madness. He recklessly dumped every last ounce of his Mana into the bronze incense burner!

Hummm— The censer shrieked. Blood-red runes spider-webbed across its bronze surface, glowing like magma.

“Disperse!” Zhou Kai barked.

His Flowing Light Sword transformed into a streak of starlight, slashing furiously toward the censer. Simultaneously, he stepped in front of Shen Hanyi, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into a rapid retreat.

But a man intent on death moves at the speed of thought. Li Wei’s Divine Sense smashed into the detonation runes, giving Zhou Kai absolutely no time to stop it.

“Die with me!” Li Wei shrieked.

A fraction of a second before the sword struck, Li Wei initiated the Self-Destruction of his life-bound Dharma Treasure.

BOOM!!! An apocalyptic storm of destructive energy erupted from the censer, annihilating everything in its path! The earth convulsed violently. A shockwave packed with thousands of razor-sharp Dharma Treasure shrapnel ripped through the smoke, expanding outward like a hurricane.

Li Wei, standing at ground zero, didn’t even have time to scream before his body and bones were completely vaporized.

Zhou Kai rapidly channeled his Five Elements Vitality, projecting a dense, five-colored barrier around himself. He planted his feet like iron pillars, rooting himself to the earth.

Bang! Bang! Bang! A torrential storm of shrapnel hammered the five-colored shield, sending violent ripples across its surface. Zhou Kai grunted, tasting copper at the back of his throat. The Self-Destruction of a Golden Core cultivator was no joke. Even with the Five Emperors Prison Suppression Sutra protecting him, the sheer kinetic force made his Vitality churn erratically.

The shield flickered wildly, threatening to collapse, but it held. Shen Hanyi, protected securely behind him, remained completely untouched.

The energy storm finally dissipated, leaving behind a scorched, cratered wasteland. Where Li Wei had stood, there was only a massive, smoking pit.

Zhou Kai dispersed the shield. His face was a bit pale, but his breathing remained steady.

“Are you alright?” he asked, turning to grasp Shen Hanyi’s slightly cold hand.

“Mm,” she replied softly, squeezing his hand in return.

“Just a minor scuffle,” Zhou Kai chuckled, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He turned his gaze to the ruined battlefield, his expression returning to absolute zero.

He spotted two figures weakly squirming in the dirt. Zheng Pinxian and Wu Chao, already hovering near death, had been swept up in the shockwave and were completely paralyzed.

Zhou Kai’s face was expressionless. He flicked his fingers, sending two emerald streaks of light darting across the crater. With two short, muffled screams, the Jade Arm Mantis executed the downed cultivators. He casually recalled his pet, unceremoniously stripping the corpses of all their loot.

They couldn’t stay here. Zhou Kai’s heart tightened as he thought of Li Youci’s battle elsewhere.

Without a second thought, he pulled out Du Chuyao’s communication jade slip and imprinted a Divine Sense message onto it. He rushed over to Su Xuan and Gao Feihuang.

Gao Feihuang was in critical condition; chaotic, bloody energy writhed beneath his skin. He was on the verge of exploding from the backlash of his Blood Art. Zhou Kai’s expression darkened. He immediately channeled a stream of gentle Mana into Gao Feihuang to lock down his heart meridian, then turned to Su Xuan.

“Let’s move!” he ordered.

He summoned his Spirit Boat, loaded all five of them aboard, and shot into the sky, vanishing over the horizon in the blink of an eye.