...
"Huh... You seem more distracted than usual, Qingzhu. What's wrong?" Lin Xi Chen smirked and rested her wooden sword on her right shoulder—acting as if she hadn't just taken him down in two moves—while extending her other hand to help Shen Qingzhu up.
"Tch... It's nothing..."
Shen Qingzhu swatted her hand away without even glancing at her, which only made her even more amused and eager to tease him. She sat down next to him with a mischievous smile, as if she had planned a prank all along, "Aw, come on, tell me. You've got a crush on someone? Who knows—maybe I could help you confess your feelings?"
"You nerdy woman!"
Shen Qingzhu nearly coughed up blood; she was the very person he liked—though she was unaware of it—yet she had the audacity to tease him like that. Feeling his face heat up as he looked at Lin Xi Chen, he decided to change the subject before he turned beet red.
"It's just that... if you're in a fight you can't win, what would you do?"
"Of course I will bail fast."
Shen Qingzhu:... She is simple-minded
"Oh, so you're asking if they have the edge over us in terms of pure strength?"
"Mm..."
"Hm... Maybe I'll gamble with Death itself to take down my opponent?" Only then did Lin Xi Chen truly begin to reflect; she cradled the wooden sword and rested her head against it, her gaze fixed on the distance ahead. But then she smiled teasingly at him. "There's a difference between risking death to win and dying to win, you know that?"
"Just like earlier, when you tried to take me down without knowing if I had any tricks up my sleeve—and ended up getting knocked down yourself." Lin Xi Chen chuckled softly as she watched Shen Qingzhu scoff and look away, unwilling to admit his mistake.
"Of course, we can't use our trump card to solve tough fights instead of trying to survive."
"As the kind of person who easily throws life away to save those around me, I wish I could also value my own life and be more selfish instead of throwing mine away when things get difficult."
"At least for the bare minimum, we can fight hard, stay greedy for victory, and try our best to stay alive while doing it."
"If we can't win fair and square, then let's trick the opponent and take them down with dirty tricks."
...
"Pay with my life?" The man sneered twice. "How could you possibly make me pay with my life?"
Shen Qingzhu didn't speak, but silently unfolded the sealing scroll in his hand, tore off a piece, and stuck it to his wound.
"Actually, before that fat bastard arrived, I was prepared to die together with you..." Shen Qingzhu said calmly while applying pressure to his wound.
"In a vacuum, the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the human body causes microbubbles in the blood vessels to expand, producing foamy blood that can clog the vessels. However, if there are numerous wounds on the body's surface, this pressure difference can accelerate blood flow..."
The man, carrying an axe, listened to Shen Qingzhu's words with a bewildered expression, seemingly unable to understand what he was saying.
"You are in the 'Chuan' realm. Although the wounds I left on you before cannot threaten your life, in a vacuum, those seemingly shallow wounds will become real death warrants."
"Originally, you had injuries, and so did I. If we were both in a vacuum, I could only use my own life to drag you to your death... But now, the situation is different."
Shen Qingzhu covered all his wounds with the Sealing Scroll, then calmly put it back in his pocket. "With the Sealing Scroll, I can completely isolate my own air pressure from the outside world, so I have no risk of dying from blocked blood vessels..."
"Didn't you think the previous vacuum environment wasn't exciting enough?"
"Since that's the case... then I'll show you what real [Qi] is."
Shen Qingzhu took a deep breath, stretched out his hand, and snapped his fingers in mid-air!
Smack!
A crisp sound rang out, and all the air within a radius of 300 meters was instantly sucked out, turning the hemisphere centered on him into an absolute vacuum!
An unprecedented feeling of suffocation filled the man's entire body.
He grinned, seemingly unconcerned about the minor suffocation, took the axe from his back, and rushed towards Shen Qingzhu at lightning speed!
At that moment, Shen Qingzhu did not hesitate at all and turned to run in the opposite direction!
At the man's speed, it would have only taken him a few seconds to reach Shen Qingzhu. However, with Shen Qingzhu running at full speed, the original problem of reaching his instantly became a problem of chasing him. But the man didn't seem to care about the distance, and the smile on his face remained ferocious.
Even if Shen Qingzhu were running, he could catch up with him in ten seconds at most. This is the confidence of a "Chuan" realm expert.
However, after running for eight seconds and just as he was about to touch the body, something seemed wrong.
His steps grew heavier and heavier, his vision began to blur, and his entire body felt as if it were filled with lead, making his movements increasingly sluggish...
He looked down at his chest, where countless tiny wounds had turned a deep crimson, with foamy blood seeping out continuously. The man began to feel dizzy and lightheaded.
He frowned, glanced at Shen Qingzhu, who was only a dozen meters away and whose running speed had also slowed down, gripped the axe in his hand tightly, and swung it out with all his might!
The axe swept silently across the room, and Shen Qingzhu remained unharmed in the distance.
In a vacuum, there is no medium to transmit the immense force a man exerts when swinging his axe. To expect to cut through rocks from a distance with a single axe strike, as before, is simply wishful thinking.
The man finally realized that something was wrong and turned around to run wildly in the opposite direction from Shen Qingzhu!
He had to leave this vacuum, otherwise... he really would die!
But Shen Qingzhu would not let him have his way. This vacuum domain was originally centered on him. As long as he could catch up with the man before he broke through the boundary, the man would never be able to escape this vacuum!
Shen Qingzhu turned around and chased after the man in the direction he had run!
The roles of prey and hunter are instantly reversed!
Just as Shen Qingzhu said, the numerous wounds on the man's body became his death warrant in the vacuum environment. If it were an ordinary person, he would have died long ago, but as a strong person in the "Chuan" realm, his physical condition was abnormal, which is why he has been able to hold on until now.
However abnormal he may be, he is still a "human". If he is in a vacuum environment for a long time, he will definitely die!
This is a race against time; whoever can survive longer in a vacuum environment will survive.
The man's speed had slowed down considerably, and he was no longer as fast as before. Now, he was just like an ordinary person, staggering forward step by step.
As the oxygen concentration in his blood decreased and he lost a lot of blood, his consciousness began to blur and his body began to sway.
Shen Qingzhu, who was chasing behind him, was not having an easy time either. Although he didn't have to worry about changes in blood pressure, the feeling of suffocation was very real. Even so, he still followed the man step by step...
He wasn't fast, but he always kept pace with the man. He could have been faster, but he didn't want to.
He wanted to make the other person taste despair little by little!
He was smiling.
Finally, the man's grip on the axe loosened, and the heavy axe fell silently to the ground. He staggered and knelt down, barely supporting himself with his hands, with only a sliver of clarity remaining in his eyes...
He opened his mouth wide, desperately wanting to breathe, like a drowning victim with eyes full of terror.
He's dying.
Shen Qingzhu's smile widened. He slowly walked forward, bent down, and picked up the axe that had fallen to the ground...
He walked up to the man, grabbed his hair, and forced him to look up and meet his gaze.
In those cloudy, dull eyes, Shen Qingzhu saw the fear in his heart.
"—Your brain is cooked too."
Shen Qingzhu opened his mouth, his lips moving silently, and weighed the axe in her right hand...
A single axe blow!
The gushing blood splattered onto Shen Qingzhu's black military overcoat. He expressionlessly dropped the axe, and the vanished air slowly returned...
In cases of extreme oxygen deficiency, inhaling a large amount of oxygen at once can also cause changes in the air pressure inside the body, and may even lead to cerebral palsy.
In the thin air, Shen Qingzhu's consciousness gradually blurred, a consequence of prolonged oxygen deprivation.
He silently raised his head, looking at the gray sky. A light drizzle slid down his cheeks. He reached out, as if trying to grasp something…
"Li Jia... your brother Shen has avenged you..."
A hoarse voice came from his throat, and the tension that had been pressing down on him suddenly eased, causing him to collapse to the ground.
A deathly silence fell over the desolate wasteland.
After a long while, a fat man covered in mud stumbled over from a distance. When he saw the scene before him, he was stunned for a moment, and then quickly ran to Shen Qingzhu's side.
After confirming that Shen Qingzhu was still alive, Baili Pangpang breathed a sigh of relief and then turned to look at the headless corpse next to him.
"Brother Shen... is awesome!" he muttered to himself.