Chapter 65 Crippling the Hairy Corpse
He intended to cripple the hairy corpse rather than kill it, a task far more difficult than finishing it off outright.
An intangible aura of ominous foreboding closed in, slightly chilling and sluggish within his veins.
Roar!
With a fierce roar, his foot stamped into the ground as supreme dominance surged into his bloodline. His abundant, roaring vitality surged forth, scattering the congealed bloody mist.
Arcs of electric current danced across his skin, expelling wisps of black qi from his body. The steel whip smashed heavily onto the hairy corpse's shoulder, driving its body downward.
Yet its bones were remarkably resilient; this whip strike failed to fracture its scapula.
No matter. Ao Xin's other hand, whose dragon claws had already pierced the flesh of its arm, slashed downward viciously, the dragon talons scraping closely along the bone of the hairy corpse's arm.
Its skin and flesh were torn apart by the dragon claws, leaving a deep gouge even on the arm bone.
Stripped of its flesh, the hairy corpse felt no pain, yet pure instinct fueled its rage.
A muffled, guttural growl rose from its throat as it reached out to claw at Ao Xin's chest.
Having already fought one hairy corpse previously, Ao Xin was intimately familiar with their capabilities.
Refusing to block, he allowed the hairy corpse's twin claws to lunge straight for his chest. With a steel whip in one hand and the finger-gun technique executed by his dragon-clawed other hand, he sought to trade blows in a life-or-death gamble!
Yet, in truth, he had no intention of genuinely risking his life against the beast.
Just as the hairy corpse's claws were about to tear into his chest, his muscular torso unnaturally contracted backward.
It was the supreme flexibility forged through the Paper Arts, allowing him to evade alongside the shifting air currents.
Still, being human, he could never achieve the utter pliability of an owl. After his chest muscles retreated slightly to dissipate a portion of the hairy corpse's momentum,
His chest suddenly swelled forward, hardening to the consistency of steel!
"Iron Body!"
Reinforced with Armament Haki and augmented by the tough dragon scales across his skin, his chest collided with the hairy corpse's sharp claws like an indestructible diamond!
Three dragon scales detached, leaving a slightly reddened swelling on his chest.
Yet that was the extent of it.
The hairy corpse's all-out assault had completely failed to pierce his defense!
Meanwhile, his own counterattack offered no mercy. The steel whip struck the exact same shoulder position once again. Unable to move dynamically while maintaining the Iron Body, he relied entirely on the momentum generated prior to hardening the technique.
Bang!
The hairy corpse was beaten nearly to its knees by the blow.
His dragon claw pierced the throat of the hairy corpse, penetrating the flesh to press directly against its larynx.
By sheer coincidence, this single finger strike landed precisely within the gap between the laryngeal bones!
Wrapped in Armament Haki, the sharp dragon claws drove halfway inside. When he released the Iron Body, his dragon claws curled, retracting the fingertips from within the bone gaps and completely tearing through the flesh of its throat.
The dragon claws plunged completely into its throat, directly grasping the cervical vertebrae within.
Hah!
Ao Xin let out a sharp shout, lifting the entire body upward.
In the distance, a panting young girl peeked out from behind a large building, watching the battle in utter shock.
"Holy cow! This big bro is way too hardcore!"
Tang Yingying covered her small mouth in astonishment as the rampaging Azure Dragon hybrid form grabbed the hairy corpse by the neck and smashed it repeatedly against the ground.
"His physical strength is insane!"
She hurriedly activated the recording function of the Divine Gift Space to capture this magnificent spectacle.
Though not particularly powerful herself, Tang Yingying could clearly see that despite its desperate struggle, the hairy corpse remained utterly trapped within the grasp of the dragon claws.
As other zombies closed in around them, Ao Xin used the hairy corpse itself as a weapon, swinging it directly into the oncoming horde.
The head of the hairy corpse acted like a heavy, indestructible hammer, effortlessly shattering the bones of any ordinary zombie it struck.
Even mutated ghouls, upon taking a direct hit, were left with fractured bones at the very least.
In truth, the hairy corpse's raw strength was roughly on par with Ao Xin's, but drawing upon his memories and experience from his past life, Ao Xin repeatedly exploited the micro-intervals between the creature's attacks, using technique to disrupt its momentum.
Robbed of any chance to apply its strength, the monster was reduced to mere plaything in his hands.
Bang!
The hairy corpse was slammed violently into the pavement once more. Half-crouching, Ao Xin planted one foot on its head while his steel whip smashed mercilessly into its shoulder.
Suddenly, the dragon claw buried deep within the flesh of the hairy corpse's neck went slack, momentarily losing all strength.
Prolonged, point-blank contact with the corpse had allowed the ominous miasma to seep in, tangling the dragon tendons within his claws to the point where even his surging vitality failed to immediately clear it away.
Deprived of strength in his claws, the hairy corpse broke free from his grip and lunged upward with a desperate leap. Unable to withstand the immense force, Ao Xin's foot slipped off the monster's head, causing him to stumble back two steps.
He shook his left hand as Armament Haki coated it once more, driving his internal vitality through repeated circulatory shocks until the knotted tendons finally unraveled.
"Such a pain!"
Muttering a complaint, he lunged forward once again.
By now, the hairy corpse presented a wretched sight: the flesh on its neck had been almost entirely stripped away, exposing the bleached cervical spine beneath, marred by the gouges left by the dragon claws.
Roar!
The hairy corpse let out an enraged shriek before snatching up a nearby zombie carcass to devour its flesh.
Yet how could Ao Xin permit it to feed and recover?
Soru!
In a flash, he materialized directly before the hairy corpse and brought his whip down.
The monster attempted to parry with its fist, but the repeated, devastating blows from the steel whip had already cracked the bones in that arm.
Though devoid of pain, its body was still bound by the laws of physics.
A fracture-ridden arm suffered drastically reduced reaction speed and output capability compared to its prime.
The steel whip met its fist head-on. The force transferred directly into its shoulder, sending the feeding corpse flying backward.
Under the kinetic impact, its already-fractured shoulder tore clean through the skin, exposing the joint to the open air.
Soru!
Before the airborne corpse could steady itself, the dragon-man figure reappeared directly before it. Ao Xin grabbed its throat with one hand while wrapping his dragon tail tightly around its torso.
The steel whip struck that same shoulder yet again.
The scapula finally shattered completely, causing an entire arm to detach and drop to the ground.
Dropping the zombie flesh instantly, the hairy corpse bared its fangs and lunged to sink its teeth into Ao Xin's throat.
This sudden, desperate lunge possessed formidable force. Fortunately, Ao Xin's grip on its throat held firm, halting the stinking, gaping maw right in front of him, unable to advance another millimeter.
Another blast of Roaring Thunder erupted, striking the zombie squarely in the face and shattering both of its eyes with electrical fury.
With a powerful constricting sweep of his dragon tail and a swift flex of his left dragon claws, Ao Xin flipped the hairy corpse around so its back faced him, thoroughly immobilizing it.
Clutching its neck tightly, he began smashing it into the ground, blow by heavy blow.
Yet the concrete pavement was no match for the durability of its skull; even as the pavement fractured into a massive crater, the hairy corpse's forehead remained entirely unblemished.
Though much of its flesh had sloughed off, its ferocious nature remained undiminished, and it snarled as it struggled to rise and counterattack.
Yet stripped of an entire limb by Ao Xin, it no longer held any hope of victory.
The steel whip rained down relentlessly, first snapping the hairy corpse's spinal column and then systematically shattering the bones of all four limbs.
Even so, being fundamentally a corpse, its flesh retained mobility despite the broken bones; however, lacking skeletal support, its output strength was reduced to a negligible fraction.
Lifting his foot from its head, Ao Xin drove a dragon claw into the creature's back to seize its spine, before transforming into an Azure Dragon and soaring into the sky.
"Is the big boss done already?"
Watching from her hiding place, Tang Yingying felt a lingering sense of unfulfillment. The epic showdown she had imagined never materialized; from the moment she arrived, she had witnessed nothing but a one-sided beating of the hairy corpse.
"Oh! The big boss is leaving, I'd better hurry back too!"