Chapter 49 : Chapter 49
Chapter 49: Final Guardianship, the Ring of Corpse Mountains
The facts proved them right.
There was clearly not much True Qi fluctuation left on Li Mu's body.
Relying only on the True Qi slowly recovering from the source of his Dantian Sea, Li Mu barely kept Mountain-Bearing Art running.
He swung the Thornflower Cudgel purely with the strength of his body.
Wang Longcheng's fists clenched until his knuckles turned white. In a low voice, he instructed the Adjutant Zhang beside him, "You go."
"Yes, sir!!"
Adjutant Zhang accepted the order and strode out of the command room.
The people around them were all startled.
It was obvious that Wang Longcheng meant for Adjutant Zhang to personally go and prepare to receive Li Mu, just in case something went wrong.
As the commander, Wang Longcheng could not leave the command room before the battle ended.
Otherwise, it would definitely give others something to say.
But the fact that he was sending his own adjutant in person showed just how highly he valued Li Mu.
The surrounding fog grew thinner and thinner.
But the frequency of the Bone Ghouls' attacks only increased.
And Li Mu's attacks were growing weaker and weaker.
At first, he had been killing them in two strikes.
Then it became three strikes.
Then even four strikes were not enough.
When two Bone Ghouls charged at him at once, Li Mu would even get pinned to the ground and ground across the earth for a long distance.
But after killing those two Bone Ghouls, Li Mu still staggered back again.
He returned to stand in front of Ma Jun and the others.
The hearts of Ma Jun and the others trembled!
Li Mu's blood-soaked figure, his wounds growing more and more numerous,
was already drenched from head to toe in blood, whether his own or the monsters'.
And yet his posture remained upright!
Ma Jun wanted countless times to crawl out there himself. He would have given anything, even if he had to drag himself with only his hands, just to help Li Mu.
But they all understood.
In their condition, going out there really would only make things harder for Li Mu.
Song Biao and Zhao Meiting had already crushed two Return Stones in succession.
They had pinned their hopes on the idea that now that the fog had thinned, the Return Stones might start working.
But of course, they were only disappointed.
Even now, within the Domain, the Return Stone formations still would not activate in the slightest.
Blood had nearly soaked the ground all around them.
The corpses of the Bone Ghouls had piled up so high that they were beginning to block Li Mu's sight.
Li Mu was simply like a perfect war machine of flesh.
He just kept swinging the weapon in his hands.
At first, Li Mu had still been able to use Flowing Cloud Triple Shock Staff Technique without True Qi.
He had still been able to maintain the footwork of Nine Steps of Earthwalking.
But in the end, all of that disappeared.
All that remained was a staggering body, a raised cudgel to block, and a descending cudgel to kill.
By now, the fog had almost completely dispersed!
The surrounding Bone Ghouls, like mosquitoes in autumn, had become utterly frenzied.
It was as if they knew they were about to vanish.
After Li Mu was struck in the eye by one Bone Ghoul and fought back desperately to kill it,
he actually staggered and began swinging his cudgel into empty air!
He swung it seven or eight times in a row!
That sight
made tears burst from Ma Jun and the others' eyes.
And the people in the command center felt their scalps go numb.
Li Mu...
had already lost consciousness!
He truly looked as though he had lost consciousness completely!
His body was just mechanically swinging the weapon in his hands, attacking enemies that did not exist before him.
And yet at that very moment, two Bone Ghouls, each a full four meters long, came leaping over.
Their target was Li Mu.
Zhao Meiting could no longer stand by and watch.
She was the only one whose legs could still move.
She suddenly threw off the cloak and rushed out.
She caught the powerless Li Mu in her arms.
With her back to the two Bone Ghouls, she raised a green shield of True Qi around herself.
She did not have much True Qi left either.
Even if her True Qi shield managed to block the monsters' charge, once they came again, she would have no way to fight back.
Song Biao and Ma Jun could not hold back any longer either.
There was no way they could just watch Li Mu die.
Dragging their ruined legs, the two of them crawled over as fast as they could and grabbed their respective weapons.
Ma Jun even lifted one of his severed lower legs.
With a ripping sound, he tore open the bandages Li Mu had tied around his wound.
Blood burst out again!
He let out a furious roar with death already accepted.
"Come at me! Come on!!"
He only wanted to draw the Bone Ghouls toward himself.
From the god's-eye perspective of the command center's screen, everyone saw that scene.
And every heart there clenched painfully.
At that moment, the meaning of the word guardianship became clearer and clearer upon this tiny squad.
Just then, a figure came rushing in from the distance!
Fast as a meteor, swift as lightning, he started later but arrived first, catching up to the two Bone Ghouls from behind!
He leaped high into the air and smashed down onto one of the Bone Ghouls.
Then, with his bare hands, he actually seized that Bone Ghoul by the spine jutting from its back
and swung the creature overhead as if it were a weapon, before smashing it fiercely into the other Bone Ghoul.
Crack!
Both Bone Ghouls were crushed into mangled pulp as easily as rotten wood.
Driven by the enormous momentum of the impact, the remains carved a long trench across the ground.
Mud and blood flew everywhere, and dust rose in thick clouds.
The man walked out of the dust.
It was Adjutant Zhang.
By then, the fog had completely dispersed.
And it was as though Li Mu had sensed Adjutant Zhang's arrival as well.
In an instant, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, he dropped the cudgel, and his body collapsed into Zhao Meiting's arms.
With Adjutant Zhang there, they were completely safe now.
Zhao Meiting broke down in sobs, tears dripping one after another onto Li Mu's face.
"You lied to us, you lied to us!"
"You said if you couldn't hold on, you would definitely leave!"
"You lied..."
More than a minute later, the rescue squad arrived on horseback as well.
It was not that they were slow. Even if they ran at full speed, they were still not as fast as their warhorses.
This was already the fastest they could possibly move.
But Adjutant Zhang was an Eighth Grade cultivator. Running at full speed, he was much faster than any warhorse.
The moment the rescue squad arrived, one of them immediately crushed a Return Stone, planning to activate the formation as quickly as possible and send the wounded back.
But the formation still showed no response at all.
He was instantly baffled. The fog had already dispersed, had it not?
"It's useless. For several hours, no one will be able to return from this area."
Adjutant Zhang said this coldly.
Then he went over to Zhao Meiting, reached out, and took Li Mu onto his back.
"You carry the others."
He gave the order to the three rescue squad members.
Li Mu would be personally escorted by him.
The three rescue squad members quickly lifted Ma Jun and the others onto the warhorses.
They even remembered to take Ma Jun's two severed feet with them.
One of the squad members stepped forward to pick up Li Mu's weapon, the Thornflower Cudgel.
He reached down, and as soon as he gripped it, his body was already leaning forward, ready to lift it and mount up at once.
But he was suddenly yanked so hard that he almost threw out his back.
The Thornflower Cudgel did not budge at all!
"Holy shit!!"
The man cursed instinctively. Then he spread his legs, grabbed the Thornflower Cudgel with both hands, and only with veins bulging across both arms did he barely manage to lift it.
"How is this thing so heavy!!"
He shouted in shock.
At the same time, he looked toward Adjutant Zhang, clearly wanting to ask whether this thing still needed to be brought along.
Because if it were up to him, there was absolutely no way he could carry it. His horse would not be able to handle it.
Of all the divine abilities Li Mu possessed, the only one that did not require heavy True Qi expenditure was Divine Weapon Art.
Li Mu could freely apply Divine Weapon Art to a weapon or withdraw it at will.
As long as Li Mu had even the tiniest thread of True Qi left, Divine Weapon Art could continue indefinitely.
Before fainting, Li Mu had not withdrawn Divine Weapon Art.
So naturally, the Thornflower Cudgel still weighed more than seven hundred jin.
"Give it to me!"
Adjutant Zhang stepped forward and took the Thornflower Cudgel.
Even the moment it entered his hand, he was deeply shocked!
He gripped it in one hand and gave it a light swing, only to find that it still did not feel especially manageable.
Even for him, if he wanted to use this thing as a weapon, he would need to spend quite a while getting used to it.
And he was a Yellow Rank Eighth Grade Martial Artist.
Yet Li Mu used this thing as his normal weapon?
No wonder the kid was monstrously strong!
"Let's go."
Once Adjutant Zhang saw that the others were ready, he turned to leave with Li Mu on his back.
But then he suddenly felt a clear fluctuation in the energy within Li Mu's body.
The next instant, boom!
Surging energy burst out from Li Mu's body, and a beam of white light shot straight into the sky!
Everyone was overjoyed.
"He broke through??"
one rescue squad member shouted.
Another one nodded and looked around with a sigh.
"After a life-and-death battle like this, if he was already at a bottleneck, then this would absolutely be the perfect chance to break through."
"He bought this breakthrough with his life."
Everyone felt the same.
Because standing on top of the corpses, they could see the surrounding sea of blood and bodies even more clearly.
Wang Longcheng and the others in the command room raised the camera higher.
They saw it most clearly of all.
Centered on the spot where Ma Jun and the others had been hidden beneath the cloak,
within a radius of ten to thirty meters, Li Mu had carved out, by force, a circular ring formed from the piled corpses of nearly two hundred Bone Ghouls...
a ring of corpse mountains.