"Four bursts"—two small teams' special warfare bodies exploded, and Gu Yechen shoved heavy weaponry into a patch of tall grass, then soared up like a phantom toward the distance.

Two streaks of piercing sword light, accompanied by sharp, grating rips through the air, descended from the flanking dogwood trees. The treacherous and fierce sword intent drove directly toward the back of Gu Yechen’s heart and his Tianling point. Even tens of meters away, the swirling Gang Qi emanating from the sword tips caused the ground to tremble faintly, revealing inch-deep sword marks scarring the earth. A continuous barrage of "pa-pa-pa-pa" air explosions filled the ears; the surrounding long grass snapped clean off, turning to ash that swirled amidst the sword energy, resembling dozens of roaring, coiling green dragons.

Gu Yechen's body contorted strangely into a fleshly ball, with only his two long arms whipping rapidly at his sides.

With crisp snapping sounds, the two long swords forged from special alloys shattered into pieces. The two assassins watched in horror at the bare sword hilts in their hands as their bodies grazed past Gu Yechen. The Ruyi Gauntlets, faintly glowing, slammed heavily into their armpits. Their Stealth Operative Type Combat Suits shredded instantly. The Snow Soul Divine Gang surged into their bodies, causing them to freeze and then explode.

"He is Gu Yisheng, kill him!" Over thirty figures burst out from the surrounding dense forest. The Special Operations Brigade was the Special Operations Brigade; they had located Gu Yechen in less than three minutes. Concentrating over thirty Xiantian-level fighters nearby, they launched a coordinated assault. Someone shouted the command, and the thirty-plus figures lunged toward Gu Yechen in unison.

Leading the charge was a powerfully built, imposing brute equipped with the Gaia 44-Type Mechanical Auxiliary Power Armor. This external suit, five centimeters thick, could withstand bombardment from a 120mm cannon. The brute advanced with heavy strides toward Gu Yechen, roaring deeply, "Gu Yechen, take my punch! ...'Storm Roar'!"

A grey whirlwind rapidly spun up around the brute. The howling gale carved palm-width grooves into the ground. Both of the brute's arms suddenly elongated by more than a foot. A gale roared around his fists, and countless palm-sized wind blades spun rapidly around him. The brute mustered all his strength and threw a punch straight at Gu Yechen's chest. With a strange "wooo" sound, the force of the punch lashed out over ten meters, nearly sweeping Gu Yechen off his feet.

Planting his feet firmly, Gu Yechen clenched his right fist and returned a punch toward the brute's fist. This brute possessed formidable internal energy cultivation, and his Wind Ability was exceptionally powerful. The combination of martial arts and ability resulted in this astonishing "Storm Roar" punch.

"Pa-pa-pa-pa"—nearly a hundred sharp, continuous bursts of thunder sounded. Even several meters before their fists met, the resulting forces had collided hundreds of times. The brute's punch was heavy as a mountain and fierce as a tiger; yet, such a weighty, ferocious punch possessed an unpredictable flow, like catkins dancing in the wind, making it impossible to grasp. The overwhelmingly powerful Snow Soul Divine Gang was forcibly diffused by thirty percent by the brute's punch force before Gu Yechen's fist violently collided with the brute's.

Following a muffled boom, the ground within a ten-meter radius around Gu Yechen simultaneously collapsed. A corkscrew whirlwind coiled up around him, lifting countless large chunks of debris, gravel, and thick layers of dead leaves nearly a hundred meters into the air.

The brute’s punch force surged continuously, wave after wave, each surge strengthening the vortex around Gu Yechen by another third.

Anyone else would have been shredded into dust by the wind blades within the vortex, but the Taoist robe and cloak that materialized around Gu Yechen—the Stealth Operative Type 4B-Type Combat Suit—offered astonishing defense. Countless blades sliced across his body, sparking profusely, yet the combat suit showed not a single scratch. With a "huhu" sound, Gu Yechen’s intensely compressed, vast True Qi surged through his broad, resilient meridians at high speed. Streaks of white cold air, accompanied by the crisp sound of ice crystals shattering, continuously erupted outward.

At the instant their fists met, the quantity of True Qi erupting from Gu Yechen was three times that of the brute. In terms of refinement, Gu Yechen's True Qi had been compressed five times more densely than the brute’s! This meant that in the same unit of time, the intensity of True Qi output by Gu Yechen was fifteen times that of the brute.

The brute’s cultivation was clearly much higher than Gu Yechen’s; he was at least a Low-Tier True Xiantian Fighter of Jupiter. However, in terms of punch force output, the blow he struck with all his might was inferior to Gu Yechen's.

A colossal explosion ripped through the air. Hundreds of bucket-thick mud waves erupted from the ground covering nearly a hundred meters around Gu Yechen. The intertwined forces of their fists detonated. Gu Yechen staggered back a dozen steps, while the brute was thrown dozens of meters high in absolute terror. The thirty-plus figures charging from behind had sharp eyes; they clearly saw that the brute's entire arm, from the right shoulder down, had frozen solid. Clearly, Gu Yechen's punch force had shattered the brute's attack and infiltrated his body, nearly striking his inner organs.

"Damn it! His cultivation technique is strange!" the brute howled while still airborne. "Brothers, be careful! This kid's technique is bizarre; his True Qi output speed is extremely fast, and its compression is immense!" Gu Yechen’s Hanyuan True Canon Yijing Chapter was already mastered. The broad, resilient Huanghu channels didn't just allow for massive and rapid True Qi output; his recovery speed was also several times faster than normal. Furthermore, his one hundred and eight major acupoints could each be treated as a new Dantian, allowing his breathing and recovery to be frighteningly swift.

The brute, thrown backward, was still trying to sort out his bruised internal organs and the fragmented True Qi swirling chaotically through his meridians. Gu Yechen lifted his right palm. The Shaofu, Shaochong, Zhongchong, Shaoshang, Yiji, and Laogong acupoints, along with the Gang Qi cyclones in the three acupoints on his forearm—Lieque, Jingqu, and Taiyuan—all spun rapidly. Waves of pure Gang Qi rushed out from the major acupoints, converging into a terrifying torrent of Gang Qi that split into five claw strikes shooting forward.

To outsiders, it appeared that Gu Yechen was still staggering backward from the impact, yet his right palm suddenly lifted and flipped. His five right fingers stretched out by an inch, and five streams of white Gang Qi erupted from bizarre, transparent white claws. Amidst a piercing shriek, the five claw strikes ranged out thirty meters toward the airborne brute. The Gaia 4-Type Heavy Armor burst into countless metal fragments accompanied by a grating explosion. Five long, deep gashes appeared across the brute’s body, spraying out vast amounts of blood that had frozen into ice.

"Captain Quan!" the incoming figures cried out in synchronized horror. Five ferocious wounds marred the brute’s chest and abdomen. Through the wide openings, the torn internal organs were visible, all frozen into blocks of ice. With injuries this severe, the brute was certainly dead.

"Kill!"

Following a maniacal howl, over thirty dense waves of killing intent descended upon the dense forest.

The thirty-plus figures simultaneously lunged toward Gu Yechen, closing the distance and unleashing their strongest strikes all at once. Fists roared, palms sliced fiercely, and several Fire-attributed abilities mixed in. The thirty-plus converging Gang strikes formed a devastating torrent directed at Gu Yechen.

Gu Yechen swept both claws forward. The Qi cyclones in dozens of acupoints along both arms spun rapidly at the same instant, encasing his crossed, guarding arms in a layer of inch-thick ice shards. He rapidly tapped the ground with his feet and retreated backward. The combined Gang Qi from the thirty-plus attackers barely pressed against his arms, forcing him to fly backward continuously.

The forest shook as if an earthquake had struck. Over a dozen massive trees, several meters thick, were snapped by the rapidly retreating Gu Yechen. The thirty-plus fighters, consumed by grief and rage, focused all their attention on him, pooling all their power into their fists, determined to crush Gu Yechen in one decisive blow.

Faintly, nearly a hundred more figures could be seen swooping toward the area from the distant woods. These were also Xiantian Fighters from the Special Operations Brigade. They had heard the sounds of the fierce battle and received corresponding combat data from the front-line command system, prompting them to converge here.

A purple wave flickered between Gu Yechen’s brows. Zhao Yi and the others who had been sniping the special forces warriors from the distant woods simultaneously dissolved into a purple light. Almost at the exact moment Zhao Yi and the others vanished from afar, a dense cluster of purple light shadows flickered behind the fighters currently attacking Gu Yechen. Zhao Yi and his group stepped out from within.

Almost immediately upon stepping out of the light screen, a torrential downpour of lightning bolts, flames, ice blocks, clods of earth, metal blades, and wooden stakes rained down upon the backs of the thirty-plus fighters, who were caught almost entirely unprepared.

The Stealth Operative Type Combat Suit dutifully blocked the energy attacks like lightning and flame. The whistling metal blades only managed to etch marks of varying depths onto the suit’s surface. However, the cold wind generated by the ice blocks froze the bodies of these fighters; the earth clods and wooden stakes, carrying heavy impact force, scattered their formation, instantly disrupting their once-perfect synchronized assault pattern. A dragon's roar shot toward the sky. Gu Yechen seized the opportunity, stomping hard on a large tree behind him.

With a sharp explosion, the towering tree, over two hundred meters tall, disintegrated into fragments amidst the roaring sound, the largest piece no bigger than a palm. Gu Yechen utilized the force from this stomp to shoot forward. The Cloud Boots on his feet made his acceleration faster, more agile, and even harder to predict. His hands sliced through the air trailing thick cold air. Almost instantaneously, Gu Yechen struck each of the thirty-plus fighters present with a maximum-power blow.

Any other fighter would have been incapable of delivering so many full-power strikes in such a short span of time; only Gu Yechen, whose acupoints and meridians had been transformed by cultivating the Hanyuan True Canon, could achieve this.

Among the thirty-plus fighters, only two possessed a cultivation level deeper than Gu Yechen’s. These two suffered heavy blows to their backs. They hastily blocked Gu Yechen's powerful strikes, but their bodies sank entirely into the soft earth, and their arms were shattered by the Ruyi Gauntlets. The remaining thirty-plus fighters were only at the level of Low-Tier Pluto Fighters. Against Gu Yechen’s full-power strikes, they offered no resistance whatsoever. The chilling claw strikes tore their bodies apart, freezing them into ice sculptures.

Lightning bolts and fireballs whistled through the air, smashing the thirty-plus frozen statues into fragments.