Planet Pulverizer: A Mortal's Ascent-Chapter 441: Despair

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

Li Pin stood like an immovable reef against a tsunami. The scorching flames and terrifying heat of the Divine Radiance Beam raged on, but he remained steadfast, his fists pounding relentlessly.

Until... even Li Pin himself couldn't recall how many punches he had thrown.

At some point, a force, nurtured to its peak, suddenly erupted. Like a torrent breaking through, it struck the Divine Radiance Beam, causing a momentary halt for the first time.

In the area where the beam stagnated, the once dazzling brilliance abruptly dimmed slightly.

Zhao Kunwu, who had been watching Li Pin's every move, quickly sensed something was off. "What's happening...?"

Scenes from Li Pin's life flashed through his mind—defying death to turn the impossible into reality.

Driven by his unwavering goals and beliefs, he broke through his limits, surpassed himself, and elevated his being amidst the life-and-death struggle, achieving ultimate freedom and a monumental leap in the realm of life!

This situation....

"This can't continue!" Zhao Kunwu growled. "Your Majesty, let me take control of the Divine Radiance Beam! Push it to its limit!"

Ji Xuanyuan also realized the situation—Li Pin was using their pressure to temper his martial path.

"You..."

"Great Shang can survive without me. If I fall, you can lay all the blame on me to buy Great Shang some time to recover. But no matter what... Great Shang cannot lose you, Your Majesty!"

Zhao Kunwu's voice was firm. "Reconfigure the formation!"

Ji Xuanyuan looked at Zhao Kunwu, who nodded resolutely in response.

After a brief silence, Ji Xuanyuan made a decisive gesture.

In an instant, the starlight realigned, and the primary control of the Divine Radiance Beam shifted from Ji Xuanyuan to Zhao Kunwu.

As the power converged upon Zhao Kunwu, he took a deep breath.

Dazzling golden light continuously flowed into him through golden threads.

Under his command, the Divine Radiance Beam brightened. Though its diameter remained the same, its golden hue intensified into a blazing gold.

The brief moment of stagnation in the Divine Radiance Beam ended abruptly, and it plunged down with overwhelming might.

Li Pin's fists, moving faster than before, could not block the divine light entirely. Large amounts of divine light still illuminated his skin, surpassing the defensive limits of the Celestial Magnetic Field and burning his flesh.

Any spot the divine light touched would rapidly turn red and then become charred black.

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Before the charring could spread further, Li Pin shifted his position, using another part of his body to take the blow. The charred areas quickly grew new tissue.

The newly formed flesh broke through the burnt remnants like seedlings sprouting from the ground, rejuvenating his body.

As these areas healed, something deep within Li Pin also broke free.

If he had been like a treasured sword forged in the raging flames before, now was the moment when the divine weapon, forged through countless trials, was ready to emerge.

For its radiance to fully shine upon the world, only one final step remained—drawing the blade.

Li Pin, his skin still burning from the aftereffects of the Divine Radiance Beam, suddenly laughed out loud. "Hahahaha! Burn, my inner spirit!"

With his laughter, the inner spirit power he had barely shaped exploded fully.

As the power ignited, his spirit and will soared to unprecedented heights. He saw the stars, constellations, galaxies, and the vast universe.

It was an indescribable sensation.

As this awareness reached the farthest corners of the cosmos, his elevated inner spirit and will began to descend at an astonishing speed. From the universe, to planets, to life, to cells, to genes... until it reached... atoms.

Fueled by the eruption of his inner spirit, Li Pin achieved a leap in genetic evolution, his first foray into the atomic realm. As his inner spirit burned, he sensed the atomic domain trembling.

With another punch, the Atomic Disintegration Technique began like an ant hole breaking open on a dam, triggering a violent and sweeping disintegration of the entire atomic domain.

It spread like a chain reaction. One atom's disintegration triggered another, and another, creating a cascading collapse at the atomic level. This microscopic upheaval extended into the macroscopic world.

The most dramatic change was that, within the void, a large-scale atomic fission seemed to unfold. However, just as atomic fission began, it quickly evolved into atomic annihilation.

The power of annihilating atoms was theoretically countless times greater than that of atomic fission. Even the smallest collapse, once observable at the macroscopic level, carried catastrophic destructive force capable of annihilating everything.

But in reality... the annihilation power formed an eerie, dark vacuum.

It was as though the end of his punch suddenly struck out a patch of darkness, an absolute blackness, an utter void—a black hole.

Everything inside the black hole was completely erased. Matter, energy, life, atoms... all were reduced to nothingness as that area shattered, annihilating everything into oblivion.

Zhao Kunwu's eyes widened in shock. "This is... Vacuum Pulverizer!"

Buzz, buzz!

The starlight trembled as the infinite brilliance of the Divine Radiance Beam was swallowed up by the darkness born from Li Pin's punch. For the first time, a fracture appeared in the Divine Radiance Beam, like a river being cut off or a tsunami reversed.

Zhao Kunwu roared in disbelief, "Impossible! This Astral Formation... It's said to be capable of exhausting even Legends! How could this be...!"

At this moment, he disregarded the limits of the astral energy his body could bear, frantically drawing in all the golden radiance from the alternate dimension. His power surged tenfold compared to before stepping into the Astral Formation.

The scorching brilliance of the blinding white Divine Radiance Beam erupted from him.

As he wielded this radiant power, half his body was incinerated into ash, scattering into starlight.

Yet even with half his form dissolved, he pressed on without hesitation. Undeterred, he continued to frantically channel the Divine Radiance Beam, fully aware that it would ultimately consume him entirely.

But it was too late.

With each of Li Pin's punches, the dark vacuum before him expanded. The atomic collapse centered on him grew more pronounced. The collapses connected into one, turning the area around him into a forbidden zone where starlight could not reach.

In essence, it had become exactly that.

The great Astral God Yin Luo had fallen. Its astral energy, carried by atoms, had once manifested within this galaxy, allowing it to be sensed and observed.

Without the atoms to anchor it, it appeared to the Heavenly or Legendary beings as if the astral energy had ceased to exist, their perception too limited to sense it. And naturally, they couldn't control what they couldn't sense.

It was like making a phone call, requiring both a phone and a signal tower. The astral energy was akin to the signal tower, and the atoms were like the phone. If the phone was destroyed, even if the signal tower continued to transmit signals, without a phone to receive them, communication over vast distances would be impossible.

This was much like the "transmitting sound over a thousand miles" described in ancient times.[1]

Zhao Kunwu roared as he frantically drew on astral energy, unleashing an even fiercer Divine Radiance Beam, "This... can't be... This is impossible... Absolutely impossible..."

The sight before him shattered his understanding, defying all imagination. The shock he felt rivaled the first time humanity glimpsed the presence of the great Astral God in the boundless cosmos.

Even so, as the Supreme Expert of Great Shang, Zhao Kunwu refused to accept what was unfolding before his eyes, despite the truth becoming painfully clear.

Zhu Zhao, maintaining the Astral Formation, felt his voice turn unbearably dry and hoarse. "He... broke through?!"

He stared at Li Pin, whose relentless punches sustained the crushing vacuum state, and his form now resembled a living black hole.

Jin Taibai was in a daze. Everything felt surreal to him.

He murmured, "Time and again, he escapes death to rise stronger. Time and again, he turns the impossible into reality, surpassing himself, breaking and rebuilding anew..."

Even Ying Huo, a Heavenly Realm Expert, felt despair overwhelm him. In that instant, all his efforts seemed utterly meaningless. "How could such a monster exist in this world...?"

His mind shattered in the face of such terror. As his spirit broke, his role as a node in the Astral Formation quickly showed signs of instability, causing the blazing light of the Divine Radiance Beam to briefly falter in its operation.

Seizing the brief window of opportunity, Li Pin leaped from the torrent of destructed formed by the Divine Radiance Beam.

Rumble, rumble!

With no one in its way, the Divine Radiance Beam surged forward again—a ten-meter-wide column of destruction, like a divine sword tearing through the alternate dimension. Flames, searing heat, and explosions raged, shaking the entire realm violently.

At the moment the beam missed its target, Li Pin appeared before Jin Taibai, who was caught in a nightmarish daze.

Before Jin Taibai could come to terms with reality, a punch landed on him.

Buzz, buzz!

He shattered.

As his form collapsed, he instinctively tried to transform into starlight. However, with no atoms to carry astral energy, he couldn't sense it, let alone transform into starlight.

Fear barely had time to spread across his face before he vanished, reduced to nothingness in the fragmented vacuum.

The first Legend fell.

And his death was only the beginning of the slaughter.

The moment Jin Taibai was obliterated, Li Pin's figure blurred and appeared beside the bewildered Ying Huo almost instantaneously.

He was fast! Unimaginably fast! Having been liberated from the barrage of the Divine Radiance beam, with his neural reaction three times faster than his peak state, his speed far surpassed anything the Heavenly realm experts could imagine.

Bang!

Before Ying Huo, whose mind had collapsed, could focus his gaze, a wave of void-crushing darkness swallowed him.

By the time darkness emerged, Li Pin had already appeared beside Zhu Zhao.

"No!" Zhu Zhao screamed in terror.

He attempted to flee by transforming into starlight, but the restraining force field descended upon him, binding his starlight form into a single mass. Li Pin's void-shattering strike, powered by his inner spirit burst, caused the mass to disintegrate into nothingness.

Zhu Zhao never even had the chance to reform his body.

Not that it would have mattered. Against an attack that shattered the vacuum itself, no remains could survive.

Witnessing the three Heavenly Realm Experts fall, Ji Xuanyuan couldn't help but cry out in agony. "Noooo!"

Three of Great Shang's five Heavenly Realm Experts had fallen. The devastation was beyond description.

However, Ji Xuanyuan knew this was no time for sorrow. He surged forward at full speed, grabbing Zhao Kunwu to flee. "Run!"

Yet, before they could move, Li Pin, who had just finished obliterating Zhu Zhao, appeared silently before them and blocked their path.

The three of them locked eyes, the air freezing as if time itself had stopped.

A power capable of pulverizing the vacuum and annihilating Heavenly Realm Experts with a single blow.

A speed so great that even Heavenly Realm Experts struggled to perceive it.

A resilience that required the combined strength of five experts and the aid of the Astral Formation to breach his defenses.

And even when injured, his rapid recovery rendered most wounds inconsequential.

All of this coupled with an unceasing evolution that revealed no limits.

When all these traits were concentrated in a single individual... what he brought to his opponents was nothing but despair.

1. A metaphorical concept often found in ancient literature, where it symbolizes achieving seemingly impossible feats. In this context, it implies the absurdity of communicating long distance without a phone. ☜