Chapter 79: Compression (6)
79 – Compression (6)
In the blink of an eye, at that very moment, Chang Ji placed his hand on Lin Xun’s shoulder.
Lin Xun felt a moment of reassurance, his fingers gripping the creature’s fingers in return. With a sudden burst of strength from his wrist, he yanked the creature upward with all his might!
—It didn’t budge.
Lin Xun: “…”
The weight beneath his hand seemed to be several hundred pounds. He looked down and saw a massive dark shadow slowly approaching the water’s surface.
In the next moment, Chang Ji pulled him backward abruptly!
A golden Buddhist light suddenly rose, forming a solid golden barrier in front of them.
Splash—
A tremendous sound of water erupted as the lake surged forward. A colossal dark shadow slammed fiercely against the barrier.
Lin Xun focused on the appearance of this water ghost. His first reaction—it was hideous.
It resembled a mutated fish, bloated all over, with a ghastly pale, vaguely human-like face at the top, its crimson mouth split wide to the cheeks. Its swollen, spherical body was black, covered in armor-like scales, gloomy and devoid of any shine.
The most incongruous feature was the slender, elongated hands hanging from its sides. The pale, sickly fingers were thin and long, connected by ugly webbing, while its arms were entwined with long, blackish-green algae, dripping water incessantly.
Failing to strike, it charged madly again, churning the lake behind it into towering waves that crashed toward them, only to be entirely blocked by the solemn golden light.
Chang Ji’s voice was brief and urgent: “Late-stage Golden Core. Be careful.”
Lin Xun acknowledged with a sound. Shielded behind Chang Ji, he had a moment of respite and began employing every offensive method at his disposal.
Of course, the primary weapon was still Qi Yun’s sword Qi—using his sword Qi to rescue him could be considered making the most of the situation.
Given this eerie water ghost demon, Lin Xun was almost certain that Qi Yun’s disappearance was related to it. At the late-stage Golden Core level, he feared Qi Yun was in grave danger. Thinking this, he deliberately glanced at the water ghost’s spherical body and swollen belly, almost suspecting that Qi Yun had already been devoured.
His thoughts raced, but his hands never stopped moving. Sword Qi swished through the air, striking toward the water ghost, yet upon impact with its hard scales, the sword Qi shattered and dissipated without exception.
Chang Ji moved to the edge of the barrier. A golden illusory lotus lifted his body, suspending him mid-air. Holding his staff, he engaged in combat with the creature, each strike carrying immense force, as if weighing a thousand jun—yet the water ghost showed no fear. Relying on its hard scales for defense, it withstood Chang Ji’s attacks head-on, using its hands and tail to entangle with him. The battle was so intense, compounded by the massive waves the water ghost controlled, that it became a dizzying spectacle.
However, Lin Xun was close enough to see more clearly. For now, the two were locked in a stalemate, seemingly evenly matched. But this creature was at the late-stage Golden Core level, while Brother Chang Ji had only just entered the Golden Core stage. Over time, the water ghost would inevitably overpower him.
He pursed his lips, took a deep breath, and tapped a few keys on his keyboard, repeating his earlier trick. Thousands upon thousands of sword Qi materialized in the air, raining down like arrows toward the water ghost!
In an instant, the sword Qi surged forward, poised to turn the water ghost into a pincushion. But the water ghost opened its crimson mouth wide and let out an earth-shaking roar.
Lin Xun frowned, his brow furrowed. He saw what seemed like invisible ripples radiating from the water ghost’s body. Even the thousands of sword Qi failed to penetrate its defense, gradually dissipating instead.
Was this the difference in cultivation realms?
Even the greatest numbers could not withstand the water ghost’s single Spiritual Power barrier.
If that was the case, then what was the principle behind it?
Just as Lin Xun was pondering this, he suddenly heard Chang Ji shout, “Watch out!”
The next second, the water ghost’s massive, hideous body suddenly surged from the water, leaping high over Chang Ji’s defenses and lunging straight toward him!
Lin Xun thought, This is bad—my porcupine-style attack must have enraged this ugly thing.
He swiftly retreated, the Light Body Technique taking effect as his toes tapped lightly across the water’s surface, carrying him back more than ten meters.
But in that very moment, a colossal wave rose behind him, forcing him to halt his retreat.
The keyboard floated before him, and his hands flew across it at lightning speed!
Yet, at that instant, everything suddenly fell silent.
The waves vanished, and the water ghost slowly sank beneath the surface, its grotesque face gradually disappearing into the depths.
Lin Xun remained unfazed, his fingers a blur across the keys as he pushed his typing speed to its absolute limit. He wished he had thirty fingers—twenty-six for the alphabet keys, and the remaining four for Enter, semicolon, and braces.
One second, two seconds, ten seconds.
The deafening roar of waves erupted once more, and a terrifying dark shadow emerged from the water beneath him. The water ghost surged upward again, its gaping maw aimed directly at him!
At this critical moment!
Lin Xun levitated in place, his gaze fixed intently on the creature.
With a gentle flick of his finger, he pressed the execute key.
There was no overwhelming surge of sword Qi, nor an endless barrage of viral attacks.
But in that instant, the air around him seemed to be sucked into a vacuum—or rather, it was as if everything in that space had been forcibly compressed into an infinitesimally small point: a droplet, a particle, or something else entirely.
Then, it shot toward the water ghost.
A sword Qi—white, unremarkable sword Qi.
It resembled the white trail left by a dolphin’s dorsal fin skimming the ocean’s surface, slow yet smooth as it pierced toward the ferocious water ghost.
Yet, the water ghost—whose iron-like scales had remained unscathed even under a storm of sword Qi—seemed frozen in place, unable to move an inch. The moment the tip of the sword Qi touched it, the creature let out a piercing, agonized shriek!
This move—could be explained from many perspectives.
Take Earth, for example.
Earth is a planet with a radius of six thousand kilometers and a mass of approximately six times ten to the twenty-first power tons.
In the universe, there is also a type of celestial body known as a white dwarf. A white dwarf with a radius of three thousand kilometers—half that of Earth—has a mass three hundred thousand times greater than Earth’s.
If we consider another celestial body, a black hole, its mass is even more terrifying, as its density is theoretically infinite.
This illustrates that mass is not determined by volume but by density. How can density be increased? Through collapse.
In astronomy, it’s called collapse; in computing, it’s called compression.
For instance, if you wanted to send someone a message containing the numbers from 1 to 10,000, it would be foolish to simply transmit all ten thousand digits one by one. From a technical perspective, the approach is to compress these ten thousand numbers into a simple message: “1-10000.” This concise message travels swiftly and lightly to the recipient, where it is decompressed back into the original ten thousand digits. This is compression, ensuring the efficiency of internet transmission.
This concept is also key to the Golden Core stage. Lin Xun had previously practiced compression algorithms, advancing his Golden Core progress to ninety percent. However, he had only applied it to himself, not to the external world. In other words, he had merely condensed the spiritual energy within his body into a Golden Core without grasping its true purpose. But this time, in a flash of inspiration, he succeeded. The sword strike just now, seemingly an ordinary burst of sword Qi, was actually compressed from ten thousand sword energies.
—This single strike, condensing ten thousand swords, was unstoppable and indestructible.
A piercing, agonized shriek erupted, sharp enough to rupture eardrums.
Immediately after, as if enduring excruciating pain, the water ghost’s massive, grotesque body thrashed and writhed wildly in mid-air. Its form was torn open by that sword energy, like a punctured balloon, spewing filthy black liquid from the rupture as its body rapidly shrank.
At that moment, Chang Ji’s attack also arrived. An invisible, colossal palm seemed to slam down from above, its solemn yet gentle force nearly unstoppable, smashing the creature from the air and mercilessly pinning it onto the pier. The entire pier and pavilion shuddered from the impact.
The water ghost tumbled a few times on the ground, seemingly dazed by the blow, before collapsing limply on the pier. Surprisingly, after rapidly dehydrating, the body amidst the sludge and algae had shrunk to human size—with long black hair and an indistinct form resembling a mermaid, though still oozing viscous black fluid.
Chang Ji frowned slightly, sitting cross-legged on the spot. A Buddhist lotus bloomed gently, enveloping the small pavilion in a golden halo as he began to purify the demonic entity.
Lin Xun also sat down nearby, reflecting on that stroke of genius from earlier.
The long-absent mechanical voice sounded.
“Main Quest: Reach the Golden Core stage. Progress: 100%. Congratulations on completion.”
“System repair speed accelerated. Estimated completion time: 24 hours. Please wait.”
Lin Xun let out a soft sigh of relief.
Thanks to the compression algorithm, that earlier sword strike hadn’t drained much of his energy. He stood up to examine the water ghost now encircled by the golden Buddhist lotus.
He brushed aside the substance on the water ghost’s head—something between algae and a black, translucent, slimy tissue.
A face was revealed.
A human face, with closed eyes.
It was quite a handsome face, though remnants of bluish-black scales added a sinister, demonic aura.
Lin Xun was taken aback.
The next second, he laughed.