2025-12-19 04:28:00The last crocodile collapsed into a pile of grey ash.
Lin Jin stood amidst the bone dust, his chest heaving. The grey mist retracted into his pores, leaving his skin looking like cold, polished marble. [System Notification: Iron-Rust Body (Stage 2) - Saturation 80%] The feeling was incredible. The heavy, metallic essence of the Iron-Back Crocodiles had filled the cracks in his foundation. He felt heavy, grounded, as if he could stand still and let a bull ram into him without moving an inch. "Barely passable," the Entity scoffed in his mind, though its tone betrayed a hint of satisfaction. "These lizards had a trace of Earth Dragon blood. Thin, diluted trash... but enough to patch your flimsy mortal frame." Lin Jin ignored the insult. He turned to leave. The hunger was gone, and he had no interest in humans. "Wait! Please, wait!" Su Qing, the beautiful Senior Sister of the Cloud Crane Sect, stumbled forward. She was clutching her side, her white robes stained red with blood. Her face was pale, a mix of awe and lingering terror. "Junior... no, Senior," she corrected herself quickly, unsure of how to address this terrifying youth. "I am Su Qing. On behalf of the Cloud Crane Sect, I thank you for saving our lives. If you hadn't intervened..." She glanced at the piles of dust that used to be monsters. She shivered. "I didn't do it for you," Lin Jin said coldly, not stopping. "You were just bait." Su Qing bit her lip. She had met many arrogant geniuses, but none who looked at her as if she were a rock by the roadside. "Even so," she persisted, reaching into her sash. "We cannot let you leave empty-handed. This is a Spirit Recovery Pill. It is worth 50 gold coins. Please, take it." She held out a small jade bottle. Lin Jin paused. He didn't need Spirit Qi, but gold was useful. And pills could be traded. He turned around, his grey, dead eyes landing on the bottle. "Hold on, Senior Sister." A sharp voice interrupted them. It was the male disciple, the one who had been screaming for help just moments ago. His name was Zhao Feng. He was limping, but his eyes were darting between Lin Jin’s tattered clothes and a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket. "Don't give him the pill," Zhao Feng said, a sneer replacing his fear. Greed is a powerful anesthetic; it numbs the brain to danger. "Zhao Feng, what are you doing?" Su Qing frowned. "He saved us!" "Saved us?" Zhao Feng laughed, pointing a trembling finger at Lin Jin. "Look at him, Sister! Look at his clothes! That's the Lin Family crest, ripped and muddy. And look at his face... pale, sickly..." Zhao Feng held up the paper. It was a Wanted Poster. "It's him! Lin Jin! The Lin Family's 'Living Coffin'!" Zhao Feng’s voice rose in excitement. "The Patriarch Lin Xiao has offered 500 Gold Coins and a Low-Grade Spirit Artifact for his head!" The other three disciples gasped, their hands instinctively moving to their weapon hilts. 500 Gold Coins. That was enough to buy resources for three years of cultivation. It was a fortune. "He's a fugitive?" "But... he just killed the crocodiles..." "He used a demonic art! Did you see that grey mist? He's a monster!" The atmosphere shifted instantly. Gratitude turned to suspicion. Fear turned to greed. "Zhao Feng, stop it!" Su Qing shouted. "He is strong! Do not provoke him!" "Strong?" Zhao Feng spat. "Look at him! He's panting. He's covered in sweat. That demonic technique clearly has a backlash. He just fought a whole pack of Stage 2 beasts. He must be empty! He's a paper tiger!" Zhao Feng’s eyes burned with avarice. He saw a weakened, exhausted boy worth a mountain of gold. "Hey, trash," Zhao Feng drew his sword, stepping forward. "You want the pill? How about you come with us to the Lin Family instead? Be a good boy, and I won't cut off your legs." Lin Jin looked at Zhao Feng. He didn't look angry. He looked... bored. "Humans," the Entity sighed. "They never disappoint, do they? You save the sheep from the wolf, and the sheep tries to bite you." "He thinks I'm empty," Lin Jin murmured. "Show him how full you are." Lin Jin took a step forward. "You want my head?" Lin Jin asked softly. "I'm taking it!" Zhao Feng roared. He wanted to steal the credit before his Senior Sister could stop him. He gathered his remaining Spirit Qi into his blade and thrust it toward Lin Jin’s chest. It was a fast strike. A lethal strike. Clang! There was no dodge. No block. Lin Jin didn't move. He let the sword hit his chest. The steel blade pierced his tattered robe and struck the skin over his sternum. But instead of piercing through, the sword stopped dead with the sound of a hammer hitting an anvil. Sparks flew. "What?" Zhao Feng’s eyes bulged. His hands vibrated from the impact. It felt like he had stabbed a solid iron wall. Lin Jin looked down at the sword pressing against his skin. Not even a white mark was left. "My turn." Lin Jin’s hand shot out, grabbing the blade of the sword with his bare palm. Ashbone Art: Corrosion Touch. Hiss... The steel turned grey. Rust spread from Lin Jin’s fingers like a fast-forwarded disease. It raced down the blade, toward the hilt. "My sword! My—" Zhao Feng tried to let go, but he was too slow. The rust reached the handle. The grey mist jumped onto his hand. "AAAAHHH!" Zhao Feng shrieked as the skin on his right hand began to flake away. His fingers turned grey, then black, then withered into bone. Lin Jin twisted his wrist. SNAP. The rusted sword shattered into dust. Lin Jin stepped through the cloud of metal powder and grabbed Zhao Feng by the throat. He lifted the grown man into the air with one hand effortlessly. "500 Gold Coins?" Lin Jin tilted his head, his face inches from the screaming disciple. "Is that the price of your life?" "No! Please! Spare me! Senior Sister, help!" Zhao Feng kicked his legs helplessly, wetting his pants in terror. The other disciples froze. Their greed evaporated, replaced by the primal fear of a prey facing a predator. Su Qing’s face was white as a sheet. "Senior! Please! He was foolish! Spare him!" Lin Jin looked at Su Qing. Then he looked back at the sobbing piece of garbage in his hand. "Kill him," the Entity whispered. "He is an enemy. Enemies must be erased." Lin Jin tightened his grip. Zhao Feng’s eyes rolled back. But then, Lin Jin loosened his hand. He dropped Zhao Feng into the mud. Thud. Zhao Feng gasped for air, clutching his withered, skeletal hand, sobbing uncontrollably. "I am not a murderer," Lin Jin said, his voice cold enough to freeze the swamp water. "I am a collector." He turned to Su Qing. "Give me the pill. And all your gold. And your map." "Y-yes! Of course!" Su Qing didn't hesitate. She threw the pill bottle, her own coin pouch, and a high-quality sect map onto the ground at Lin Jin’s feet. The other disciples quickly did the same, terrified he would touch them. Lin Jin picked up the loot. He looked at Zhao Feng, who was curled up in a ball. "If I see you again," Lin Jin whispered, "I will eat the rest of you." He turned and walked away, melting into the fog toward the direction of the Dead Zone. Behind him, the Cloud Crane Sect disciples stood in the mud, shivering, poorer, but alive. They had just learned a lesson that no sect elder could teach them. Some monsters in this world don't just kill you. They unmake you.
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Chapter 210: The Hammer and the Anvil
Gravity is the only law that cannot be bribed. The Solar Ark—a city of marble and gold weighing fifty million tons—was screaming. The aerodynamic seals on the hull had failed. The gargoyles on the parapets were ripping off, tumbling into the slipstream like gravel. The incense smoke inside the nave didn't drift anymore; it was flattened against the floor by the G-force. Lin Jin held the control yoke. His steel fingers had punched through the leather grips and dug into the metal chassis beneath. He wasn't steering a ship; he was wrestling a falling mountain. "Pull up!" The High Priest shrieked, his voice distorted by the rattling of his own teeth. He was dangling from Lin Jin’s other hand, his silk robes flapping violently in the gale rushing through the broken window. "The Spire! You'll kill the Pontiff! You'll kill God!" "God can dodge," Lin Jin growled. The view through the shattered Rose Window was terrifying. The ground was rushing up to meet them at Mach 3. The Solar Spir
Chapter 209: The Eclipse Protocol
The light was deafening. It wasn’t a sound; it was a frequency so intense it vibrated the rivets out of Lin Jin’s steel plating. The Solar Ark opened its main cannon—God’s Hammer—and the sky turned white. "Warning," Vulkan’s voice cracked over the comms, reduced to a static whisper. "Thermal spike detected. It’s not a laser, Boss. It’s a directed coronal mass ejection. If that hits the factory, we don't just die. We evaporate." Lin Jin didn't answer. He couldn't. His vocal processor had shut down to divert power to his thrusters. He was a black speck flying into the heart of a supernova. His stolen Seraphim wings were burning, the golden feathers turning into slag that dripped down his legs. He wasn't fast enough. The cannon fired. VOOOM. A pillar of pure, concentrated sunlight the width of a city block slammed down. The air didn't move out of the way; it burned. The clouds vanished instantly. The sound of the atmosphere tearing apart was like the universe screaming. Lin Jin
Chapter 208: The Weeping Angels
The sky wasn't a battlefield. It was a slaughterhouse. The steam catapults of the Iron Grave screamed, launching a hundred Skeleton Angels into the purple clouds. They didn't have divine grace. They had rusted joints, leaking hydraulics, and stolen golden wings that were bolted into their shoulder blades with crude steel rivets. They looked like a swarm of locusts rising from hell to eat the sun. Lin Jin flew at the tip of the spear. The interface ports on his back were burning. The stolen hard-light wings were rejecting him. Every flap sent a spike of agony through his neural link, like someone dragging a serrated knife down his spine. [System Warning: Bio-Rejection 400%.] [Pain Inhibitors: MAX.] [Altitude: 3,000 meters.] "For the Horde... no, wait, for the overtime pay!" Vulkan’s roar from the ground was drowned out by the wind shear. Lin Jin slammed into the first enemy. It was a Seraphim, four meters tall, wielding a spear of condensed sunlight. Its movements were perfect
Chapter 207: The Sky Burial
The workshop smelled of burnt feathers and ozone. Vulkan stood over a workbench, holding a severed Seraphim wing. The hard-light feathers were still flickering, trying to reconnect to a nervous system that was currently being digested by the bio-reactor. "It's Plug-and-Play," Vulkan said, jamming the golden wing socket into the rusted shoulder blade of a skeletal trooper. CRUNCH. The bone splintered. Vulkan ignored it. He grabbed a welding torch and fused the joint with a bead of molten steel. "If you ignore the screaming," Vulkan grinned, his red optical sensors zooming in on the weld. "The interface is surprisingly compatible. The Federation uses holy light. We use necrotic electricity. Voltage is voltage." Lin Jin watched the surgery. It was blasphemy. A rusted, oil-stained skeleton, stripped of dignity, now sporting a pair of pristine, glowing golden wings. It looked like a demon trying to sneak into heaven wearing a stolen coat. "Does it fly?" Lin Jin asked. "Theoretica
Chapter 206: The No-Fly Zone
The sky didn't rain water. It rained gold. The Seraphim didn't just dive; they pierced the smog layer like needles through wet silk. Twelve of them. Giants clad in aerodynamic plate armor, their wings burning with hard-light propulsion that screamed in a frequency high enough to shatter glass. BOOM. The first sonic boom hit the factory floor. It wasn't noise. It was a physical hammer. The remaining windows of Sector 7 exploded inward. Shards of dirty glass rained down on the assembly lines. Lin Jin was thrown against a support pillar. His magnetic boots locked, sparking against the iron floor, but the sheer displacement of air dented his chest plate. "Status!" he roared over the screaming turbines. "We're taking fire!" Vulkan was on the roof, manning a quad-barrel flak cannon. "They're too fast! My targeting sensors can't lock! They move like light!" Above them, the Seraphim pulled out of their dive. They banked in perfect unison, defying inertia. They didn't drop bombs. They
Chapter 205: The Harvest
The mud in the trenches wasn't brown anymore. It was a thick, red paste that sucked at the boots of the dead and the undead alike.Silence had returned to Sector 7, but it wasn't the silence of peace. It was the silence of a butcher shop after closing time. The screaming had stopped, replaced by the wet, rhythmic sound of dragging.Lin Jin stood on the gantry overlooking the main conveyor belt.Below him, the Iron Legion was working. They weren't fighting; they were harvesting.Skeletal soldiers, missing arms or jaws, dragged the corpses of the Federation Paladins out of the mud. They tossed the white-armored bodies onto the belts with mechanical indifference. Thud. Thud. Thud.The belts hummed, carrying the fallen crusaders into the mouth of the factory."Efficiency," Lin Jin whispered. His voice processor was still raspy from the railgun feedback. "It’s the only morality left."He watched a Paladin—a young man, maybe twenty, his face frozen in a rictus of holy terror—disappear into
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