Chapter 138: Bone-Melting Soft Palm

After defeating Lawrence, Lin Mu didn’t pause for a second. He turned and darted over to Kroeyer. With a light pull, he grabbed the exhausted Ding Han and gently tossed him to the side.

Facing Kroeyer’s enormous incoming fist, Lin Mu spun around and met it with a palm strike. Robust zhenqi surged into his arm instantly as he solidly intercepted the punch.

The palm seemed light and weak, without much force. Yet when it slapped against Kroeyer’s fist, even the tough guy couldn’t hold back a howl of pain.

Accompanied by an awful sound of snapping bone, Kroeyer’s powerful right arm was shattered by Lin Mu’s palm. Every bone broke, leaving the limb limp and useless, hanging lifelessly at his side.

Staggering back several steps, Kroeyer stared at his right arm in disbelief. He couldn’t believe Lin Mu had inflicted such damage with a single strike.

Kroeyer knew better than anyone just how strong his physical body was. Enhanced by his superpower, it had reached a fearsome level.

They had even tested it once. After strengthening, his body could briefly withstand a barrage from an MP5 submachine gun. That was an astonishing resilience.

In these modern times where firearms were advanced, even Lin Mu wouldn’t dare to block bullets outright. Yet, Kroeyer had achieved this with his superpower-enhanced body – albeit against the weaker submachine gun.

But this very same, formidable physique was effortlessly shattered by Lin Mu’s palm. It hadn’t even offered any resistance, defeated cleanly and instantly.

The disbelief in Kroeyer’s eyes slowly transformed. A web of bloodshot veins appeared in his dim pupils. His pride, his newfound dignity as a newly advanced fourth-level superpower user, would not allow him to fall so easily here.

Suddenly, he roared. His energy fluctuation surged abruptly. A silvery-gray light began to flow wildly all over his body, a dazzling and chaotic dance.

“No! Kroeyer! Stop this now!” Lawrence, collapsed nearby, saw this and yelled in panic. He tried to struggle up, but a stab of pain in his chest sent him crashing back down.

Kroeyer seemed utterly deaf to Lawrence’s words. The silvery light intensified. His limp, useless right arm suddenly began to twist in an utterly bizarre way.

Awkward cracking sounds came from within, as if the bones were snapping back into place. Within seconds, the shattered arm seemed whole and functional once more.

Slowly raising his right arm in front of him, Kroeyer clenched his fist violently. He squeezed so hard, the air inside his palm popped audibly. The restored arm seemed even mightier than before.

This sudden, strange transformation instantly divided the chaotic battlefield between the Dragon Protection Corps members and the Supernatural Ability Group members. Dragon Protection Corps members wore looks of deep wariness, while the Supernatural Ability Group members’ faces were etched with panic.

Vivian, caught up in another fight nearby, abruptly disengaged. She flashed over, letting out a sharp cry. Incredibly, the potent sound wave was directed at Kroeyer, a clear warning that his actions were growing dangerous.

Kroeyer merely glanced at Vivian, offering a cruel smirk before turning his gaze back, locking fiercely onto Lin Mu. “You’re strong,” he growled. “Strong enough to force me to this point. Now, show me your true power!”

The energy fluctuation radiating from him had more than doubled. Its brutal intensity made even Lin Mu narrow his eyes, finally taking this huge opponent seriously.

Lin Mu knew this sudden power-up probably couldn’t last long – otherwise Kroeyer wouldn’t have held it back until now. But the Dragon Protection Corps had many wounded; he couldn’t afford to stall.

Back when he was watching Ding Han fight Kroeyer from upstairs, Lin Mu had already spotted Kroeyer’s weakness. But Ding Han, limited by his own martial arts style, lacked the means to exploit it. So, Lin Mu hadn’t transmitted the idea mentally.

A faint smile touched Lin Mu’s lips. While others might find Kroeyer a nightmare to deal with, it wasn’t a big problem for him. He’d found the gap in the armor.

Indeed, the metalization superpower drastically amplified physical strength, covering every inch of the body without a single weak point.

Strength, speed, endurance – Kroeyer’s abilities were elevated across the board, turning him into something akin to a super-flexible robot.

Yet, during his observation, Lin Mu realized the superpower heavily fortified muscle power but provided surprisingly less enhancement to the body’s internal structures.

Otherwise, when their palm met Kroeyer’s fist moments ago, Lin Mu wouldn’t have shattered the arm bones so easily. His zhenqi had penetrated the alien energy layer shielding Kroeyer’s body surface and wreaked overwhelming destruction inside with little resistance.

That had happened even when Lin Mu used the intensely yang Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms. If his goal was specifically to destroy internal structures… well, there was a famous, highly sinister martial art known as the Bone-Melting Soft Palm.

Practiced to an extremely high realm, this technique could melt all the bones inside an enemy with a single palm strike. Its destructive power against internal structures was terrifying.

Lin Mu recalled seeing a eunuch in a famous TV drama use this very palm technique. Unexpectedly, the U-drive Lu Shouyang gave him contained a secret manual for it.

Since Lin Mu rarely returned to the Dragon Protection Corps base in Donghai for cultivation, Lu Shouyang wasn’t sure which path Lin Mu was pursuing. So, Lu Shouyang had simply given him manuals covering various martial art types.

The idea was to let Lin Mu pick the ones suitable for him. But Lu Shouyang never anticipated that Lin Mu could master so many techniques with utterly contrasting natures, cultivating them without causing his inner zhenqi to violently conflict.

For anyone else, simultaneously practicing intensely yin and intensely yang martial arts would cause uncontrollable zhenqi chaos, reversed meridians, and ultimately death.

Lin Mu knew this flaw well. In the cultivation world too, techniques of opposing attributes could never be practiced together carelessly. The consequences ranged from total loss of cultivation power to self-destruction.

However, after his body was refined by a sliver of spiritual energy passed through the Ninth True Tribulation, Lin Mu discovered to his amazement that the zhenqi he cultivated could shift its attributes.

This pleasant surprise was later confirmed as he practiced various martial arts. While he didn’t yet grasp the core reason, it didn’t hinder his cultivation.

For the situation at hand, the Bone-Melting Soft Palm was the perfect answer for Kroeyer. Against an opponent whose body surface was incredibly hardened by a metalization superpower, no other martial art was likely more effective.

A strange thought even flickered across Lin Mu’s mind: maybe the master who originally created the Bone-Melting Soft Palm centuries ago had encountered someone with skills like Kroeyer’s.

“You wanted to see my true power? Fine. As you wish.”

With a slight smile, Lin Mu’s body instantly flickered right before Kroeyer. He sent out another deceptively light palm strike, seemingly identical to the earlier one.

Kroeyer sneered. Last time, a moment of carelessness had cost him his broken arm. Now, flooded with surging energy, he felt no fear facing Lin Mu’s forceful palm technique.

Muscle coiled along Kroeyer’s arm like surging waves as powerful strength accompanied his fist, meeting Lin Mu’s incoming palm.

Seeing they were about to clash, the people around them hastily scattered backwards, afraid of another massive shockwave. But what happened next left everyone dumbstruck.

There was no shockwave, no concussive blast. Barely even a sound. Fist and palm simply touched, pressed together, as if neither was exerting any real force.

Except they were. Now, it was a direct contest of energy. The insidious, yin-soft zhenqi of the Bone-Melting Soft Palm battled against the superpower energy of Kroeyer’s metalization.

At the point where their strike met, the two energies clashed relentlessly, each attempting to overwhelm and penetrate the other’s defense.

Kroeyer’s energy intensity, amplified by his secret technique, had risen substantially. Even for Lin Mu, penetrating his body’s energy shield now presented some difficulty.

Time was critical. Lin Mu made several attempts and realized he couldn’t breach Kroeyer’s surface defense quickly through sheer force.

Instantly formulating a new plan, Lin Mu brought the fingers of his left hand together in a sword posture. He jabbed rapidly seven times across his own chest and abdomen, stabbing concentrated, needle-sharp zhenqi into seven major acupoints.

Bloodshot webbed his eyes. His inner zhenqi suddenly exploded in intensity. Simultaneously, the destructive force within his Bone-Melting Soft Palm surged, breaching Kroeyer’s energy shield in an instant.

This abrupt shift caught Kroeyer off guard. By the time he tried to rally additional energy to counter Lin Mu’s strange force, it was already too late.

The moment the invading energy touched bone, it zipped deeper inside with a chilling whoosh. Traveling up the bone, weaving through the gaps, it fragmented every inch of bone it passed with terrifying efficiency.

Sensing the catastrophic damage unfolding within his right arm bone, Kroeyer let out a maddened roar. A violent blast of energy erupted from him, forcibly separating him from Lin Mu. He flashed backward several meters.

“What is this?!”

Even separated, Kroeyer could still feel that bizarre, destructive force crawling upwards along his bones, rapidly approaching his shoulder.

In desperation, knowing it was too late to block it with energy, Kroeyer’s eyes hardened with cold resolve. His left hand shot out, gripped his own right arm, and with monstrous strength, ripped the entire limb clean off his body!

Severed from Kroeyer, the superpower could no longer sustain the arm. The limb, tossed like garbage, quickly reverted to its normal appearance.

Well… almost normal. Lying on the ground, the right arm resembled a huge, formless sausage of meat. No longer shaped like an arm at all – every bone inside had been shattered into fragments.

This was Lin Mu’s first time unleashing the insidious Bone-Melting Soft Palm, and its lethality was terrifying. Everyone witnessing it felt their eye twitch uncontrollably.

After a horrified glance at Lin Mu, everyone present, including the Dragon Protection Corps members, instinctively reached up and felt their own arms, a chill running down their spines.