Chapter 157: Nen and Evolution (Double Feature)

Normally, Baitang Jing maintained his Nen ability, [Nen: Spirit Absorption], at a low-power state to make daily life convenient.

He would only ramp up the output when entering a state of intense cultivation.

The sudden surge in power just now, which absorbed a wave of ambient heat, was meant to "ignite" the Tokyo Godzilla blood slumbering within his body.

The fully developed energy organs of the Tokyo Godzilla functioned essentially as a biological thermonuclear reactor.

The very process of generating energy naturally released massive amounts of radiation and heat.

As someone who possessed both orthodox Godzilla blood and Nen abilities, however...

As long as his dragon-blood internal energy could activate the Tokyo Godzilla blood inside him, setting the energy in his veins into motion, even though the output would inevitably fall short of a fully developed thermonuclear reactor, the resulting heat and radiation would still be enough to fuel the growth of the orthodox Godzilla blood as well as his Nen absorption.

The zone of freezing frost expanded outward with Baitang Jing at its center.

Frost-like white crystals began to cling to the exposed muscles of the young man's upper body.

Within his eyes, interwoven rays of purple and blue light rotated across his pupils.

From the corners of his eyes, fine, web-like cracks spread outward, as if his skin could no longer contain the overwhelming surge of energy.

Beneath those fissures, a blue-purple radiance gleamed, resembling molten lava flowing beneath jagged rocks.

The cracks continued to multiply, spreading so rapidly that they threatened to merge into a single, intricate pattern.

Yet, it seemed the energy intensity was still insufficient.

The flickering blue-purple brilliance gradually calmed, and the cracks ultimately froze into a chaotic, scattered array.

"Julius, I have been very careful not to use this power during our fight."

Baitang Jing's expression was resolute as his fingers casually slashed through the air in front of him.

The moisture in the air immediately condensed into white mist due to the plunging temperatures.

"Because I know very well that given the sheer magnitude of your vitality, you would master this power shortly after coming into contact with it. Even if you don't understand how to use it and merely pile up your life force blindly, the destructive might would still be terrifying."

Suddenly, Julius vanished from where it stood in the distance, reappearing the next instant right before Baitang Jing!

Its massive claws descended, poised to crush him from above!

Ever since it succumbed to bestialization, it had completely lost any capacity for "patience."

Especially now, viewing through its current visual organs, it could see that after the opponent activated this "freezing" mode, the Titan genes within his body were developing at a ferocious speed.

It was utterly impossible for it to wait any longer!

Baitang Jing met Julius's descending claws head-on with both hands.

"Boom!"

A deafening shockwave of colliding flesh echoed across the heavens.

The ground, already softened and pulverized by their prolonged battle, was instantly blasted upward into a curtain of mud and debris ten stories high.

Dozens of tons of sand and earth quickly settled back down, revealing the scene beneath.

Man and monster stood locked in a stalemate, their hands pressed against one another in a test of pure physical strength.

Baitang Jing's posture was visibly strained, placing him at a disadvantage.

His palms were being crushed and deformed within the grip of the beast's claws.

To withstand the terrifying momentum of the impact, he had lowered his center of gravity to the absolute limit.

Yet within Julius's yellowish, bestial pupils, apart from the raw tyranny of a wild beast, the only discernible emotion was sheer frenzy.

Just minutes ago, it had been able to send this frail, monstrous human flying with a single punch!

Yet mere minutes later, it was being held to a dead standstill in a direct clash of strength?

What Julius found even more unacceptable was that this profound transformation had occurred right under its very eyes!

Moreover, through its Godzilla-inherited energy perception, it could sense an unknown energy invading its body precisely where Baitang Jing's hands were being crushed.

The brute-force contest caused the arms of both man and monster to tremble violently, emitting a grating, creaking sound.

Baitang Jing looked up at Julius's hideous, contorted face with a faint smile, finishing the words he had left unsaid.

"Now, I've made up my mind, Julius."

The blue-purple glow emanating from the organs within the young man's chest grew increasingly brilliant, bright enough to illuminate his jaw even in the harsh daylight.

Amidst agonizing pain, the bones in his hands snapped back into place and healed with a teeth-gritting crunch.

Frost crawled rapidly up from the youth's hands onto Julius's claws.

Locked in the stalemate, Baitang Jing wore a fierce, chilling smile as he brought his face close to Julius's eyes.

"Either you master this power first and kill me, or I beat you to death before you can learn it."

"Such a simple choice."

Even though it still held the upper hand in raw physical conditioning, facing that harrowing smile, a flicker of inexplicable panic flashed through the monster's feral pupils.

"I won't gamble! I'm going to eat you!"

Its massive maw, lined with razor-sharp fangs, swung wide open as it lunged forward to bite down on Baitang Jing.

Instead of retreating, Baitang Jing burst into laughter.

Seemingly driven by the hyper-activation of the Tokyo Godzilla blood within him, he could no longer hold back either.

"If you have the ability, come and get it!"

With a ferocious upward kick launched straight from his core, the youth drove his foot squarely into Julius's lower jaw!

The explosive kinetic force surged upward from the jaw all the way to the crown of the beast's head!

It tore through the air above the monster's skull, transforming into a violent shockwave.

This time, even muscles of unimaginable density failed to completely shield its brain.

From its emergence to the present day, Julius had always maintained an overwhelming, crushing advantage in combat against humans; yet now, it suffered a brief moment of disorientation.

"This isn't right..."

Those three words echoed endlessly within its ravaged, beast-driven mind.

The amplification of this power was abnormally massive!

And... it was still continuously growing.

The shattered bones in Baitang Jing's hands knit and healed under the dazzling radiance of the blue-purple light.

Following the healing was a sensation akin to breaking and rebuilding—an even greater gripping strength!

The human hands actually reversed their grip, seizing the monster's claws in return!

This was the formidable evolutionary capability inherited from the Tokyo Godzilla.

It wasn't just the bones in his hands; ever since he had intentionally used his dragon-blood internal energy to vitalize the Godzilla blood within him, triggering rapid growth, every single muscle fiber in Baitang Jing's body was being reshaped amidst a torment akin to being torn apart.

Enduring the agonizing pain, he clenched Julius's claws tighter and drove his knee upward.

The target remained the beast's lower jaw.

The difference this time, however, was that the attack was shrouded in dense, condensed Nen!

[Nen: Ken]!

The surface area of human skin is roughly 1.6 square meters.

Given that Baitang Jing's physique far surpassed that of an ordinary person, one could estimate it at around 2 square meters.

According to the operational logic of [Ken], gathering the Nen distributed across those 2 square meters and concentrating it entirely into the confined space of less than 30 square centimeters on his knee—

Just how massive would the amplification of destructive power be?

—The answer was 667 times!

Of course, that was merely an ideal scenario.

The overlaying of Nen was subject to diminishing returns; the more layers accumulated, the less effective each subsequent accumulation became.

Yet no matter how diminished the returns, it would not fall below... 100 times!

"Boom!"

The mere sound wave swept across the entire expanse of Tokyo!

A violent gale, roaring from bottom to top, abruptly whipped through the high-rises within a radius of one kilometer!

High above Julius's head, a circular depression suddenly formed in the thick, pristine white clouds.

Immediately afterward, sunlight that had been blocked by the cloud cover beamed down through the opening, enveloping both the man and the monster down below in Tokyo.

Deep inside the underground research facility, General Pentecost, who had been constantly tormented by the guilt of "slaughtering civilians," could not leave his post due to his duty to defend the base.

Yet from beginning to end, he had kept his eyes glued to the monitors observing the surface above.

When he saw the stray monsters being intercepted, he couldn't help but let out a breath of relief.

When he saw the blue light radiating from Julius's spine while the instrument's energy readings abruptly spiked to terrifying heights, he couldn't suppress his self-blame either.

Even so, he had never truly despaired.

It was true that Julius was a monster a full generation ahead of enhanced human fighters.

However, human society was not yet entirely helpless against it.

As long as someone could stall it for a while—not even long, just half a minute—

Nuclear weapons possessed more than enough power to erase it from the face of the earth.

Yet, when he witnessed Baitang Jing unleash an attack capable of piercing ten thousand meters straight up into the sky and punching a hole clean through a cloud layer weighing at least a hundred tons, he still fell into an inescapable, heavy silence.

"General... is this truly a power created by our own hands?"

The soldier operating the monitoring equipment swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he spoke.

He had assumed Baitang Jing was just another enhanced operative who had undergone experimental procedures at the facility.

Pentecost simply stared blankly at the display screen, utterly speechless.

On the battlefield:

Because he was gripping Julius's claws and thrusting upward with a knee strike, their balanced center of mass prevented the two combatants from being blasted into the upper atmosphere.

Baitang Jing gazed at Julius across from him.

Even with a physique that skipped a generation ahead of ordinary enhanced humans, reaching the third tier of colossal beast power and capable of generating Titan energy—

Under this single blow, Julius's lower jaw was reduced entirely to a pulpy mess of shredded meat.

Only a few tattered fragments hung loosely from its face.

The monster's visage, large enough to cover half a human's torso, had its entire left side caved in by the sheer kinetic impact!

Cheekbones, eyeballs, brow ridges... all completely obliterated.

Yet Baitang Jing did not lower his guard because of the opponent's gruesome state.

Considering the creature's absurdly resilient vitality and defense, it was still unclear whether this Nen-infused blow constituted "damage" or "assistance" to it.

Sure enough.

The single remaining eye of Julius showed no concern whatsoever for its catastrophic injuries.

Instead, it radiated a trace of astonishment!

Followed instantly by wild euphoria!

"BOOM!"

Through eyes enhanced with [Gyo], Baitang Jing saw a massive, pale-blue pillar of Nen shoot tens of thousands of meters into the clouds, erupting outward from Julius's body in a single instant!

Its aura nodes, initially exposed to a superficial brush with Nen during their grappling contest, had now been blasted wide open by a knee strike packed with high-density Nen!

A seasoned, high-level human Nen user could deploy [En] to project their aura into a spherical domain spanning a three-kilometer radius.

As for Julius, while it possessed no martial techniques whatsoever, its sheer pool of raw Nen was so vast that its mere presence functioned as a terrifying weapon!

Across the entire expanse of Tokyo, the consciousness of every living creature felt as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer.

Though that malice-laden Nen surged straight toward the heavens, the mere overflowing pressure was already enough to cause numerous ordinary humans to die of sheer terror, forgetting how to breathe!

At the same time, however, a considerable number of martial artists looked thoughtfully in the direction of the battlefield.

"GWAH HA HA! Magnificent! Baitang Jing! Truly—Boom! Aaargh!"

Before Julius could finish speaking with its partially regenerated jaw, Baitang Jing unhesitatingly delivered another punch infused with [Ken], smashing it straight into the ruined flesh!

As he warped Julius's skull to the side with the blow, the shockwave of his fist completely demolished a sixteen-story residential building standing in its path.

"Boom, boom, boom!"

Every single punch employed [Ken].

Every single punch landed mercilessly on Julius's most fatal vitals!

His own body weight of over a ton felt like weightless down feathers compared to the destructive force of their blows.

With every strike, Julius was sent flying backward, shattering countless architectural ruins amid sonic booms and roaring shockwaves, only to be overtaken by Baitang Jing and blasted in a completely different direction amidst rolling plumes of smoke and dust.

Since he had declared that he would beat the monster to death before it could master Nen, he had no time for idle chatter!

Yet even with Baitang Jing pressing the attack so relentlessly, fighting tooth and nail with ferocious offense—

Backing by colossal beast strength a full tier higher, Julius remained alive.

Gradually, it began to realize that the unknown energy radiating from its own body was effectively blunting Baitang Jing's lethality against it.

"Boom!"

A soundless concussion—

It was Julius howling with wild laughter, maniacally venting the life energy within its body even more frantically!

At every second, life energy sufficient to drain an ordinary human dry was squandered into the wind.

Yet for a physique that had pushed colossal beast power to its third tier, this was merely a drop in the bucket.

Its physical foundation was simply too profound.

"Your fists are starting to lose their bite against me, Baitang Jing!"

Once neutralized by the monster's aura, the amplified destructive power of [Ken] at a hundredfold was correspondingly diminished.

However, having only just encountered Nen for the first time, Julius was unaware that the concentration of Nen within Baitang Jing's continuous barrage of punches was actually steadily declining.

The offensive multiplier was plummeting down from 100 times.

Yet as those fists landed on its body, it felt no difference whatsoever in the impact.

Under the influence of the Tokyo Godzilla's hyper-accelerated evolutionary blood, the physical gap between the two was closing rapidly.

The pair crashed headlong into a suite on the eightieth floor of a luxury hotel.

The opulent, gilded room was instantly reduced to ruins.

Sturdy construction materials were no different than foam beneath the physical might of two superhuman powerhouses.

At that moment, because the young man's fists lacked sufficient destructive power, their suppressing effect waned.

Seizing the opening, Julius vaulted upward, dodging the next incoming punch.

Then, a glint of tyrannical excitement flashed within its yellowish bestial pupils.

"That unknown energy only increased your offensive power, but your baseline physical stats are still a whole tier below mine! From here on, you won't even dream of touching me!"

The physical enhancement granted by colossal beast power was all-encompassing.

Speed, strength, recovery...

Pure Nen, by contrast, possessed no such intrinsic auxiliary traits.

In Julius's estimation, once it shook off the close-quarters grapple and unleashed its full speed, Baitang Jing wouldn't even be able to track its movements with his eyes!

With that thought, a tail shimmering with dreamlike plasma-blue light, carrying a portion of its surging Nen, lashed downward toward Baitang Jing!

It had already learned to vaguely manipulate its leaking life energy.

The dorsal fins of an orthodox Godzilla possessed otherworldly sharpness and blistering thermal lethality once charged with internal energy.

The monster had inherited this trait to perfection.

Enhanced fighters, whose defensive capabilities generally far outweighed their offensive ones, were as fragile as tofu beneath the edge of those spiked fins.

Using Nen as the carrier for the attack would only expand the effective radius of this tail-swipe exponentially!

Julius could hardly wait to witness the helpless, agonizing expression on the youth below as he was decapitated in a split second before he could even react.

"Swoosh—"

The Titan energy of Godzilla intertwined with Nen, the tail-whip tracing a lethal, shrieking arc downward.

In a single instant, the elongated aura extending from the tail sliced straight through everything in its path.

Over eighty stories of the building were sheared cleanly and smoothly in half.

An entire exterior wall of the hotel collapsed, and subterranean water erupted upward to the height of more than ten stories before dissolving into drifting mist.

That wasn't pressure from any ordinary municipal water pipe.

It was the Nen on the tail-whip, cutting straight down through the rock strata and striking an underground river!

Yet Julius, the author of this terrifying strike, felt no joy.

Because something was wrong.

The aura on the tail-whip should have been neutralized by Baitang Jing's own Nen the moment it cleaved through his body!

How could it have cut all the way down to the underground river?

And furthermore... where was that monstrous youth's corpse?!

Amidst the swirling clouds of cement dust, a pair of eyes glowing with a blue-purple halo, webbed with delicate cracks spreading from their corners, abruptly materialized directly in front of Julius's eyes.

"Looking for me?"

Accompanying the mildly amused voice was a palm planted squarely against Julius's grotesque, massive face!

"What?!"

"Boom!"

The colossal monster was driven downward by the hand, crashing violently through over eighty stories of the building.

Straight down to the ground.

For Julius, this didn't even qualify as a scrape.

What shocked it, however, was that throughout the entire process, Baitang Jing's Nen had merely been used to neutralize its own aura.

There was not a single trace of [Ken] being utilized!

This meant that this was... his own raw, unaugmented physical strength?!