Meanwhile, on the other side.
Lu Ding successfully arrived at the foot of the resettlement complex building.
Carrying the suitcase filled with boulder fragments, he looked up at the complex he'd lived in for five years, a wave of sentimentality washing over him.
"Hard to let go, honestly. The environment's nothing special, but finding a one-bedroom apartment for three hundred bucks a month? Where else would you find a deal like that?"
Lu Ding was preparing to move out.
Due to his special circumstances as an orphan coupled with his outstanding academic performance, the social assistance department had arranged this three-hundred-yuan-a-month, one-bedroom resettlement apartment for him after he left the orphanage.
He'd lived here ever since.
Earlier, it was because he had no money. Now he had money, and wouldn't lack for it in the future. Lu Ding naturally wouldn't keep occupying state resources.
The apartment should be left for someone who truly needed it.
After all, resettlement housing was scarce and in high demand.
Plenty of people needed a place like this.
Lu Ding also needed a better place to live.
Tonight would be his last night. Carrying this mixed feeling, he returned to apartment 1503.
He changed his shoes, took a shower to wash away the fatigue, and finally opened the suitcase, taking out the boulder fragments for a closer look.
Apart from the lingering traces of bloodstains, they looked pretty much like ordinary stones.
"What could these be used for?"
"Medicine? Forging?"
These two answers surfaced in Lu Ding's mind. Beyond that, he couldn't think of any other purpose. Staring until his eyes watered wouldn't make them magically transform.
So.
Lu Ding gave up.
He stood up and went to the balcony to start packing his clothes, preparing for the move tomorrow.
His peripheral vision inadvertently caught something outside the window – a figure seemed to be standing in the bamboo grove behind the complex. As Lu Ding looked, it looked back.
Their gazes collided in the air.
Before Lu Ding could even register anything wrong...
He saw the figure in the bamboo grove raise its hand, pointing from low to high in Lu Ding's direction, counting bit by bit.
That gesture.
Instantly made Lu Ding understand.
*This guy... is counting which floor I live on!!!*
*No way!*
*He just unlocked his golden finger!!!*
*So brazen?!*
Counting his floor right out in the open? What was the meaning?
Coming to pick a fight? Robbery?
The thought made Lu Ding instantly furious. He'd just unlocked his golden finger; was he going to be intimidated?
He threw the clothes in his hands down.
"Stop fucking counting! I'm in 1503! Got the guts? Come up!!!"
He'd just been worrying about how to test the power of his Way of the Carriage-Cleaver, and here was a delivery! Asking to die?
But the next moment.
Lu Ding instantly felt he might have misjudged. *This thing wasn't human!!!*
That made Lu Ding even more excited!!!
As soon as he shouted, the figure in the bamboo grove immediately started running towards Lu Ding's building. Its speed was terrifying – several meters covered in a single stride. Under the faint light, Lu Ding even saw long hair floating up from its body.
Seriously, how could a human grow hair that long?!
As the long-haired monster vanished into the building's rear entrance,
Lu Ding's blood boiled.
"Fuck! Don't show up for years, not a single hair! Then two pop up in one night! Are you all insane?! If your density is this high, why make me wait nineteen fucking years!!!"
Staying inside the apartment was out of the question; the space was too cramped.
Lu Ding quickly put his shoes back on and went out into the corridor. He needed to draw the fight to the stairs or hallway.
He positioned himself at the stairwell entrance and looked down.
A dark shadow was ascending the stairs at a horrifying speed.
Motion-sensor lights flickered on floor by floor.
Tenth floor. Eleventh. Twelfth. Thirteenth.
Lu Ding's adrenaline spiked. The fourteenth-floor light snapped on.
He raised his hand and unleashed a cutting strike.
A sensation of extreme sharpness erupted. An invisible force shattered the iron handrail like mud, leaving deep, axe-hewn gashes in the mottled old walls.
The light illuminated everything.
Lu Ding turned his head to look.
On the central landing of the stairwell, the monster had slammed against the wall, dislodging chunks of plaster. A deep, blade-like gash marred its chest, running from the shoulder down to the ribs. No blood flowed; no bone or flesh was visible. Instead, vines intertwined, and countless tiny tendrils writhed within the wound.
Only now did Lu Ding see the monster clearly.
Jet black, over two meters tall, its entire body shrouded in long, black hair. Yet it wasn't bulky; it was strangely slender. Its face resembled a dried mask, with two bulbous eyes glowing a sickly yellow. Fierce, ugly, but... manageable!
The monster slowly lifted its head, locking eyes with Lu Ding.
Excitement burned in both their gazes.
"Thought you were tough? Just rushing here to die! Let's see if your neck is as hard as your chest!"
Another cutting strike, unleashed without preamble, shot forth.
The monster sensed it, ducking low, but not fast enough. Half its skull cap was sheared off.
A bestial roar shook all fifteen floors.
It also startled the 749 duo who had just arrived at the complex searching for him.
Hearing that sound, they exchanged a glance.
"That roar... *Wangxiang*!!!"
"Shit!!"
They stomped down, cracking the pavement tiles, and covered the distance from the complex gate to the building entrance in two powerful strides.
At that exact moment.
A dark shape plummeted from the sky and crashed heavily onto the ground.
They looked: the monster, covered in black hair, was also crisscrossed with blade wounds. The once-ferocious creature now lay gasping, more air going out than coming in. Its body twitched, struggling to rise and flee, as if something utterly terrifying beyond compare lived within.
"Run? Now you want to run? Where the hell were you going earlier?! I said RUN!"
Another cutting strike lashed out. The monster, staggering to its feet, instantly collapsed. Severed at the waist, its upper torso tumbled away, leaving its legs behind.
The duo below instinctively looked up.
A small black dot was visible high above, using balconies as stepping stones, flipping and twisting through the air before landing lightly on the ground.
A breeze picked up.
It stung their faces like tiny knives scraping their skin.
Looking back at the monster's upper half, they saw it had been cross-cut into four large pieces lying on the ground.
Lu Ding felt a surge of new power within him.
**[Monster Contained: Wangxiang]**
**[Containment Reward: State of Formless Unity]**
**[State of Formless Unity: Qi flows to the Celestial Window (crown of the head), forgetting self and others, achieving Unity of Heaven and Man.]**
The name triggered another memory.
*Wangxiang.*
Daoist texts, *Huainanzi*, *Analects* – all had records, though they differed. *Huainanzi* and the *Analects* described *Wangxiang* as aquatic evil spirits or mountain/rock demons that devoured humans.
Daoist texts, however, described it as a *state*: the spirit wandering to the Celestial Window (the crown of the head, the fontanelle), the image of emptiness, the state of forgetting form – the Unity of Heaven and Man.
And this reward, the "State of Formless Unity," was precisely that Unity of Heaven and Man! With this skill, Lu Ding could consciously enter this state!
What was uncontrollable for others, he could activate manually.
This was a massive win.
The two people who had come looking for him were utterly stunned.
If containing the Southern Mountain Boulder was dumb luck, then brutally dismembering the *Wangxiang* was pure, undeniable strength.
Moreover, it was something even *they* couldn't have accomplished easily.
Sure, the *Wangxiang* looked like a helpless chick under Lu Ding's assault, slaughtered at will.
But if it had been them... it would have been a vicious battle.