’You...’

After a long moment, a muffled thunderclap erupted from Xu Yunfan’s throat. An arrow of condensed white mist shot thirty feet through the air.

A Qi Mass the size of a pigeon’s egg suddenly bulged beneath his ribs, slithering like a living snake along the muscles of his body.

Wherever it passed, his muscles knotted like thousand-year-old vines coiling around an iron pillar. Nourished by the Pure Yang Aura, the Red Flood Dragon bloodline on his spine transformed into writhing red patterns that spread across his entire body.

As his bones and tendons trembled, the roars of dragons and tigers suddenly rang out.

The once-separate Pure Yang Inner Breath and Red Flood Dragon Force were now slowly merging within the flow of his flesh and blood.

The twenty-four vertebrae of his spine suddenly exploded like a string of firecrackers, every joint spewing a crimson, bloody mist.

All two hundred and six of his bones took on a metallic sheen. His spine straightened and lengthened, vertebra by vertebra, like an enraged dragon raising its head.

The muscles in its path twisted like old vines wrapping around iron. The Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength emerged from his core back muscles as fine, bloody threads that spread out just beneath his skin.

"Hm?" Xu Yunfan was a little surprised.

The Pure Yang Inner Breath cultivated from his Pure Yang Qi Skill was merging with the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength.

Or rather, the Pure Yang Inner Breath nurtured by his Pure Yang Qi Skill was merging with the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength—something he had never expected.

It seemed that he had stumbled upon the correct way to use the Pure Yang Qi Skill by sheer accident.

In that instant, before Xu Yunfan could investigate further, a notification message suddenly floated into his field of vision.

’Your Pure Yang Qi Skill has reached the Great Success Realm.’

’You have entered the Flesh Refining Realm.’

Xu Yunfan trembled as immense, python-like waves of scalding warmth surged out of nowhere and flooded his entire body.

His muscles began to vibrate uncontrollably, and his shoulder blades spread three inches like an eagle’s wings.

The muscles of his chest and abdomen formed a pattern of fine, dense scales. As the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength circulated, it actually produced the sound of wind and thunder.

The Great Tendon of his spine suddenly tensed like a full-moon bowstring, pulling on his joints and causing them to pop thirty-six times in succession.

A bloody mist suddenly erupted from the Yongquan Acupoints on the soles of his feet. His toes, like iron plows, tore through his boots and clawed cracks into the bluestone slabs.

The muscle fibers in his arms wove themselves into a spiral pattern, and his elbow joints made a metallic, grinding sound as they rotated.

As the warmth continuously cleansed the Strength within him, his Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength rapidly merged with the now-abundant Pure Yang Inner Breath. A massive amount of new Strength began to circulate throughout his body. Even his pores couldn’t fully close, unable to contain such a vast quantity of power. They vented a Pure Yang Aura, which now swirled with the Red Flood Dragon’s bloody mist to form a three-inch layer of Gang Qi around him.

Xu Yunfan raised a palm and pushed it forward through the air. Nearly eighty percent of his Strength poured out, and a stone lock thirty feet away exploded violently. The flying debris ignited into a crimson blaze mid-air; his flesh-and-blood Powerful Qi was now imbued with the Red Flood Dragon’s True Flame.

At the Flesh Refining Realm, one could manipulate their internal Powerful Qi and project force from a distance.

But it was nothing like what Xu Yunfan was doing. He was producing an effect almost akin to Internal Energy or True Qi. Most at this realm merely generated wind pressure from the explosive force of their movements, a result of an extremely powerful physique. Who else but Xu Yunfan could unleash an attack with elemental properties in a single palm strike?

He felt the Strength that had integrated his skin, bones, and tendons as it spontaneously delved deep into his flesh and blood. Everywhere it passed, his skin, bones, tendons, and muscles underwent subtle, continuous transformations.

The way his Strength now flowed was even more suited for the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique. Even the physical fortitude he had developed through the Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body had broken through to the next level.

At that moment, a long stream of memories regarding the cultivation of the Pure Yang Qi Skill began to surface in his mind.

Xu Yunfan felt a sharp pain on his skull. In a daze, he saw himself kneeling on a bluestone slab at the edge of a cliff.

In the morning mist, a green-robed Daoist flicked his sleeve, pulling the nascent purple clouds of the eastern sky into seven fine threads. "At 3:45 AM, press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Tap your teeth twenty-eight times, corresponding to the Stars. When you swallow the air, you must visualize your qi and blood vibrating to form a Melting Furnace..."

The scene shifted abruptly to the dead of winter. The frost gathering nearby reflected the weathered lines at the corners of his eyes. He now stood naked atop a snowy peak.

Purple qi drilled into his nostrils like a living creature, shrouding his body in a violet haze—the very image of the East Coming Purple Qi.

Thirty years...

As he processed these new cultivation memories, Xu Yunfan’s expression turned incredibly strange. He never imagined that, in these memories, he had practiced the Pure Yang Qi Skill diligently and without pause, spending a full thirty years to finally reach Great Success.

Xu Yunfan straightened up, his spine letting out a series of cracks. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The Flesh Refining Realm...

Feeling the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength instantly spread from his back muscles throughout his body with a single thought, he immediately picked up the Thunderfire Qilin Hammer and began to practice the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique.

Xu Yunfan’s five fingers gently gripped the handle. The Thunderfire Qilin Hammer, weighing nearly 440 pounds, spun lightly in his grasp three times. As Strength pulsed from his palm, nine molten patterns spiraled up the thick handle to the head. The trailing tail of Thunder Fire from the hammerhead hummed in the air, causing the airflow to roil violently.

When he tapped the ground with his toes, the muscles on his back rippled like waves, and twelve streams of Red Flood Dragon Qi Force shot down his spine and into the hammer.

Amidst a flurry of afterimages, he suddenly swung the hammer up with one arm in an inverted hook. The hammerhead hovered three inches off the ground for a full breath.

The dark red hammer, reflecting the morning glow, shimmered with a purple light. The bluestone ground undulated with the wind from the hammer, forming thirty-six concentric depressions as if it were the surface of water.

The final move, "Ten Thousand Mountains Pay Homage to the Sect," should have been a powerful downward strike like Splitting Huashan. Instead, Xu Yunfan leaped into the air, casually flinging the Heavy Hammer. It transformed into a Chain Hammer and crashed heavily to the ground.

The bluestone-paved ground of the entire courtyard rippled like an ocean tide, the waves spreading outward from the point of impact.

BOOM!

With a sound like muffled thunder, the courtyard was smashed beyond recognition by this single strike.

Every move of the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique required coordination with the Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body to disperse the force and the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength to guide it. When the hammer fell, his shoulder blades shifted like tectonic plates, and the fascia of his arches rose and fell like a Dragon Vein. The power was overwhelmingly hard and fierce, yet he always held back a fraction of it to allow for Dissipation.

After finishing his practice, Xu Yunfan casually plunged the Heavy Hammer into the bluestone bricks.

As the handle sank into the ground, a visible shockwave of air exploded outward.

A master of the Flesh Refining Realm could, with a burst of Strength, lift a ten-thousand-jin bronze cauldron with one arm and shatter a cow-sized boulder thirty feet away with the force of their fist.

When striking a mountain wall with their full power, their fist imprint could sink seven inches into the green rock, with spiderweb cracks spreading for three meters. With a special Cultivation Technique, they could even trigger a small-scale Mountain Collapse.

A Martial Artist of this Realm had already transcended the limits of ordinary mortals. In an army, they could tear down a city gate with their bare hands. In the Mortal World, they could cross a great river using only their physical body.

However, on the path of the Martial Dao, this was merely touching the threshold of "shedding mortality." The next step—Blood Exchange and Washing Marrow, transforming the internal organs to achieve a body of jade and glass—could be called ascending from the Extraordinary to the Enshrined.

"Junior Martial Uncle Xu! The disciples from the Celestial Craft Department are complaining nonstop!"

As soon as Fu Li entered and saw that Xu Yunfan’s courtyard was a complete mess again, he couldn’t help but cry out with a pained expression.

But seeing the joyful look on Xu Yunfan’s face, Fu Li’s heart skipped a beat. He asked subconsciously, "Junior Martial Uncle, did you have a breakthrough?"

Xu Yunfan nodded slightly. "I have broken through to the Flesh Refining Realm."

Hearing Xu Yunfan confirm it himself, Fu Li’s face lit up with ecstatic joy. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking up at the sky.

"Master, if your Celestial Spirit is watching, our Weapon Casting Hall finally has someone to carry the mantle!"