65: Chapter 65, Second Level – The Realm of Mountain Collision

As the three of them stepped out of the stone gate, a stench, like that of a slaughterhouse after the power has been out for half a month, seemed to grow hands and drilled desperately into their nostrils.

Mictlan's Second Layer — The Crushing Mountain Realm.

This place was practically the tomb of anyone suffering from claustrophobia.

Overhead was a suffocating, dark brown rock layer, and there was no path ahead—only two towering black mountains that reached the clouds, standing like two fierce gate gods, stubbornly blocking the way forward.

"Rumble—!!"

The two black mountains collided violently without any warning.

Hundreds of millions of tons of rock made intimate contact; the sound was more explosive than setting off a hundred firecrackers next to your eardrum.

Dark red slurry spewed from the cracks—that wasn't mud; it was the pulverized flesh and bone residue of countless unlucky souls who had attempted to pass the trial over the years.

How was this a path? It was the largest meat grinder in the world!

Xu Mo's face was deathly pale, and the fingers pushing up his glasses were trembling.

"How do we get through this?"

The frequency of the mountains' impact was ridiculously fast. The gap they left open was only two or three seconds, narrow as a sliver of sky.

Lin Sa's palm, gripping the dagger, was slick with sweat: "Forcing our way through is just sending ourselves to our deaths. Guaranteed death."

Despair instantly peaked. Faced with this absolute tonnage of power, all wisdom and movement techniques were a joke.

Pei Duo, currently in stealth mode, frowned.

"What a crude torture device."

She reached back into her qiankun bag and pulled out a brush, entirely pitch black, its tip flowing with ghostly golden light.

【Judge's Brush (Imitation)】

Although it was merely a projection of the Judge's Brush, in this instance—a dungeon filled with Western rules—it represented 'law' from another dimension.

"Open for this Princess!"

Pei Duo flipped her wrist and drew in the empty air.

"Voom—!"

A stream of golden brush intent, like a welding torch cutting through steel plate, carried the domineering power of rules and fiercely stabbed between the two black mountains that were about to close.

The black mountains, which were about to slam shut, seemed to have a golden jack forcefully jammed between them, letting out an angry and grating friction sound.

They wanted to crush this 'thorn,' but they were rigidly held in place by that seemingly thin golden light!

"Holy crap? A path?!" Lin Sa's eyes went wide.

"Stop spacing out! This power won't last long. Run!" Xu Mo roared, his survival instinct exploding into the speed of a hundred-meter dash as he led the charge toward the only path to life.

The three shot forward like arrows leaving a bow, plunging into that sole path of escape.

The moment they entered the fissure, the terrifying air pressure nearly squeezed all the air from their lungs. The rock walls on both sides groaned, threatening to crush them into patties at any moment.

The golden brush intent overhead was shaking violently, clearly indicating that the consumption required to resist the power of heaven and earth was astonishing.

"Hiss—!"

Misfortune never comes singly. The rock walls suddenly seemed to come alive, writhing madly, and countless mountain spirits covered in black pus drilled out.

These things had no legs; their lower halves were embedded in the stone, while their upper halves waved barbed ghost claws, frantically clawing at the trio's ankles.

"Get lost!" Zhao Tie roared, smashing the head of one mountain spirit with a punch. But his muscles were already torn from resisting the air pressure, and his entire body looked like a bloody gourd.

"Watch the left side!" Lin Sa cried out sharply, her dagger slicing out a silver gleam, severing a tentacle reaching for Xu Mo.

Just as her old strength was spent and new strength had not yet arrived,

A dark elf resembling a giant python suddenly darted out from the shadow of the rock wall, instantly coiling around her waist. A terrifying burst of strength erupted, dragging her directly toward a dead end!

"Lin Sa!" Xu Mo's eyes split with rage. He tried to reach out and pull, but several mountain spirits blocked him tightly.

Seeing Lin Sa about to be dragged into the rock layer, the golden light overhead had also begun to show cracks.

There wasn't enough time!

Zhao Tie's eyes turned bloodshot, veins bulging across his body. Like a maddened bull, he charged forward against the air pressure and countless ghost claws, slamming hard into Lin Sa and Xu Mo.

"Go!"

Zhao Tie roared. Instead of pulling them, he used all his strength to slam his shoulder into Lin Sa and Xu Mo.

The immense impact force blasted them out like cannonballs, forcefully 'delivering' them past the fissure exit and onto the safe ground outside.

But Zhao Tie himself lost his balance due to the massive recoil, slipped, and fell deep into the dense nest of dark elves.

"Crack—!!"

Simultaneously, the golden brush intent that had been struggling to hold on overhead finally ran out, and the golden light shattered.

The two black mountains, long suppressed, lost their obstruction and closed with a world-destroying momentum!

"Zhao Tie!!" Lin Sa, sprawled on the ground, shrieked mournfully.

"Run!!"

Zhao Tie's last heart-rending roar came from the bottomless gap in the rock layer.

Immediately following that was the sound of countless ghost claws tearing flesh, and then the sound that brought utter despair—

"Thud—!!"

The black mountains closed.

Only this single, dull, massive sound remained in the world, as if it were the death knell sounded for Zhao Tie.

Xu Mo gritted his teeth, his entire body rigid.

Lin Sa knelt on the ground, gripping the earth fiercely with both hands until her nails broke, staining the soil red with blood. She trembled, emitting suppressed sobs from her throat.

The honest, simple man who had been silent all along, who would only smile foolishly and say 'I'm fine' even when injured, was gone.

He was annihilated to save her.

Even Pei Duo, invisible in the air, couldn't help but cover her mouth, a flicker of pity crossing her eyes. That was the compression of hundreds of millions of tons of rock; even a deity would turn into meat paste, right?

Xu Mo leaned against a rock, panting heavily, his heart feeling as if it were being fiercely squeezed.

Just as the atmosphere of sorrow reached its peak in that moment,

"Boom—!!"

A dull explosion actually came from the side wall of the closed black mountains!

Immediately after, the obsidian rock wall, whose hardness was comparable to diamond, bulged outwards, forming a large lump.

Lin Sa's crying stopped abruptly.

Xu Mo's hand, wiping his glasses, froze mid-air.

"Boom!!"

Another massive sound followed, and the large bulge suddenly burst open, sending gravel flying and dust filling the air.

A bloody, mangled fist actually punched its way out from inside the rock mass!

"Cough cough... Ptooey! That's damn hard. Almost suffocated me to death!"

In the swirling dust, a burly figure clung to the hole he had punched out, 'pulling' himself out like a radish being uprooted.

He was covered in blood, with countless bones likely broken. His entire body looked as if he had just been fished out of a pool of blood, but on his face, the signature honest smile was still present.

"Zhao... Zhao Tie?!"

Lin Sa shrieked, scrambling over. Ignoring the bloodstains on him, she threw her arms around his leg. "You... you're not dead? Wuwuwu... I thought you were dead!"

"Sis, don't cry. I thought I was dead too."

Zhao Tie grimaced as he rubbed his bleeding arm, his voice filled with the relief of surviving a disaster: "The moment the mountains closed, I happened to fall into a dead-corner pit and wasn't crushed flat. But I figured I couldn't just sit there waiting to die, so I smashed desperately toward the brightest spot. I didn't expect this rock, which looks hard, to actually be quite brittle. Haha, luck, pure luck."

Lin Sa wept tears of joy, not thinking much of it, feeling only that Heaven had blessed them.

However, Xu Mo did not move.

He stood three meters away. The gaze behind his lenses held no joy of reunion; instead, it was as cold as if he were looking at a monster wearing human skin.

"The stone is quite brittle?"

Xu Mo looked at the irregular hole punched out of the rock, its edges appearing melted, and then looked at the obsidian rock wall beside it, which even an S-rank dagger might not be able to scratch.

"You were trapped inside, yet you could still swing your fist? You could punch through several meters of rock layer in one blow?"

"Zhao Tie, are you really just lucky?"