"The light enveloping the young girls was moving at an incredible speed. Even after tapping into his Blood Energy, Li Ke found himself unable to catch up, forcing him to take a desperate gamble. The air screamed past his ears, a violent friction that threatened to peel the very skin from his bones as he pushed his physical limits into the red.
'I hope this works!'
Li Ke took a deep breath as his heart began to thrum violently, reaching twice the speed of a normal person. He immediately activated Life Return and Blood Manipulation to shield his blood vessels and fragile nerves, simultaneously fine-tuning the flow of blood throughout his body. He could feel every capillary straining like over-tightened guitar strings, the metallic tang of his own power coating the back of his throat as he forced his biology to adapt or break.
He manually diverted blood from his brain, using his twin techniques to decelerate the flow in that region to ensure his 'suicidal' maneuvers didn't cause his vessels to rupture instantly. In truth, during his training for this technique, he had frequently caused his own veins to explode. However, through relentless persistence and surviving countless near-death experiences, he had finally mastered it.
Li Ke's speed surged once more. While he was currently unable to maintain this state during actual combat, it was more than sufficient for rapid travel. His vision blurred into a tunnel of light and shadow, the world around him becoming a smear of irrelevant background noise as he focused entirely on the flickering radiance ahead.
Where he once had to climb the steps one by one, he was now leaping through them. As he unleashed his full burst of speed, Li Ke realized that a single light hop propelled him three meters into the air. Running along the cliff face felt less like sprinting and more like continuous flight. The sheer, intoxicating freedom of the movement sent a jolt of adrenaline through his system that nearly overwhelmed his concentration.
Am I really this powerful now?!"
As Li Ke leaped forward in a rapid blur, he couldn't resist glancing down at his feet. In a mere ten seconds, he had ascended nearly fifty meters! Given that the mountain itself was only a few hundred meters high, his progress was staggering.
Leaping and sprinting at high speeds, feeling the constant buffet of the wind, Li Ke was overwhelmed by a distinct set of emotions—the thrill of unbinding his inner power and a primal urge pushing him to go faster and faster. The fear of heights, of falling, of his own mortality—it all evaporated, replaced by a cold, calculating clarity that saw the mountain not as an obstacle, but as a mere stepping stone to his goal. Finally, he reached a broad plateau at the summit. From here, the neighboring peaks still looked dauntingly high, yet the fear he once felt for them had vanished from his heart.
He wanted to roar with laughter, but as he watched the "Falling Stars" descending toward the earth, the laughter died in his throat. Instead, he forced his blood to circulate with even greater intensity.
His body was heating up, literally burning. The genetic memories etched into his DNA screamed that he was breaking past his limits. Overwhelming amounts of dopamine and adrenaline flooded his system, ensuring that the sheer agony of his movements would not hinder his ability to fight.
This biological failsafe—designed by nature to keep a human fighting in their final moments—was now providing Li Ke with an incomparable sense of euphoria!
This is it! I can go even faster!
As his Blood Energy continued to burn, Li Ke's spirit grew increasingly emboldened and his brain entered a state of hyper-arousal. Yet, despite the frenzy, his cognitive speed became sharper and faster than ever.
He had never felt so alive. It was a sublime sensation of transcending physical boundaries and shattering genetic shackles.
Unlike the temporary buffs from the 7 Days to Die world, Li Ke knew with absolute certainty that this was his own power—strength forged through relentless, grueling cultivation.
This is magnificent!
Li Ke's speed continued to ramp up. To any outside observer, it appeared as though he was actually catching up to the falling meteors streaking down from the heavens.
However, just as Li Ke reached the far side of the summit, the radiant meteors suddenly accelerated. Their shimmering trails flickered past his outstretched hand, just out of reach.
Too late!
Instinctively, Li Ke lunged forward in a desperate leap, but he still missed them by a hair's breadth.
In the next instant, Li Ke stumbled, losing his balance toward the downward slope. The trajectory of the falling stars was now locked, plummeting relentlessly toward the valley below.
"Crap!"
Li Ke realized he had let the excitement get to his head. Fortunately, the situation wasn't entirely critical; his footing remained steady. He quickly reoriented his body in mid-air, maneuvering his landing point with precision until his feet struck the correct path. Changing direction instantly, he resumed the chase toward the impact site.
At that moment, the meteors seemed to decelerate, yet their glow grew increasingly dazzling.
This slowdown was short-lived. As the radiance reached its peak, their velocity surged once more. Despite Li Ke's constant acceleration, the gap remained unbridgeable. With a violent roar that shook the very foundation of the mountain, the meteors slammed into the earth.
"I hope they're okay," Li Ke sighed, still trapped in his state of hyper-arousal. He threw himself downward like a meteor of his own, hurtling toward the crash site.
Little did he know, as the two streaks of light collided with the ground, a strange mutation began to take hold. The two figures enveloped in that light had officially made landfall on this world.
"Cough... cough..."
The silver-haired princess coughed weakly. Although the protective light had shielded her from severe injury, the turbulence of crossing between worlds—followed by the violent impact—left her body racked with intense discomfort.
"Where am I...?"
She raised her head in a daze, looking around in confusion. However, she found nothing wondrous or enchanting; instead, she was met by a swarm of monsters baring their fangs and claws.
Within the fading radiance that had carried them down, creatures wreathed in dark miasma and wearing bone-like masks began to emerge. These monsters were born from the very same iridescent light that had brought her here.
Their bodies sprouted strange tentacles that seemed to flicker between reality and illusion. One look at them sent a wave of visceral nausea through the silver-haired girl.
Worse yet, the light didn't just cough up these strange beasts; it released countless humans with hideous, distorted faces. Most bore fatal wounds and looked less like living beings and more like the walking dead.
"ROAR!!!"
The first monster to fully manifest didn't hesitate. At the very moment of its "birth" into this world, it lunged ferociously toward her and the other girl.
Having never experienced true combat, Elsa instinctively threw her hands up to shield her body. She was blissfully unaware that this obsidian beast possessed not a shred of mercy for her beauty.
Under the imminent threat of death, the dormant power within her began to erupt. But before it could—
"Bullying isn't very nice!"
A young girl suddenly stepped in front of Elsa, a confident smirk playing on her lips. She dropped into a martial arts stance and snapped a kick forward, shattering the bone mask of a lunging monster into dust.
The moment the mask splintered, the creature's gaping maw and nauseating tentacles vanished into thin air. If not for the lingering, foul stench, one might have mistaken the encounter for a mere hallucination.
However, the girl who crushed the beast didn't look pleased. Her eyes lacked any light or pupils, giving her a look that was both "cutely ferocious" and intense. Her bare feet rhythmically tapped the ground, but she received no response from the earth below.
The power she wielded was the element of Earth; in her world, people like her were known as Benders.
She was undoubtedly the elite among them. Ever since she learned Earthbending from the Badgermoles, her blindness had become irrelevant; she could pinpoint the position and movements of everyone through Qi and vibrations.
But in this strange place, she couldn't sense the "breath" of the earth at all. She was unable to command the power of the land through Earthbending and was forced to rely solely on the internal refined essence (Qi) within her body to fight using traditional boxing techniques.
Sensing the vibrations beneath her feet and the whistling wind around her, the girl in the combat stance spoke to the older girl behind her.
"Hey, stay sharp! I can't handle all these bastards at once. By the way, I'm Toph. What about you?"
This world was actively rejecting her, leaving her combat effectiveness at a mediocre level. All she could do was warn the person at her back to be careful. Toph spat on the unresponsive ground, her sightless eyes "fixed" on the wall of encroaching shadows. She could sense the vibrations of the fading light—that same shimmering radiance that had brought them here was now curdling into something foul. From the heart of those dying sparks, the bone-masked beasts were literally clawing their way into existence, born from the very power that had served as their transport. For the first time, Toph felt the terrifying weight of being an outsider in a world where even the light could turn lethal.