As Xu Yunfan crouched on the roof of a supply wagon wiping the handle of his hammer, he casually slipped two bags of hemostatic powder into the bundle of a timid boy who was passing by, gathering scattered grain. The boy’s shoulders, raw from carrying arrow crates, reminded him of the refugee who had died from the Incense and Candle Sect’s poison pills outside Dingbei City in Wuzhou.

He had personally hammered the man to death.

From the thick smoke of a still-burning supply wagon in the distance, the sharp sound of heavy scale armor scraping together suddenly rang out.

Xu Yunfan wiped the rain from his face. The downpour was growing heavier, showing no signs of stopping.

He slowly stood up, the gilded handle of his Thunderfire Qilin Hammer growing faintly warm in his palm.

Half of a broken halberd was submerged in the mud at his feet. The dark red patterns on its shaft were identical to the Tiger-Headed Swallowing Mouth Heavy Halberd he had sundered three days ago. The markings were also just like the carvings on the belt of Tuoba Lie, the man he’d slaughtered.

He had encountered this several times in the past few days. He knew what was going on.

A specific faction was tracking his movements.

"The Tuoba Family’s dogs are all cut from the same cloth."

Before the words had even faded, the mud suddenly exploded in seven splashes.

A sound of tearing air, wrapped in the downpour, came crashing down on him. Xu Yunfan retreated, his feet plowing through the ground, as the characteristic cracks of his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body popped along his spine.

As the heavy halberd grazed past the tip of his nose, he clearly saw the inverted wolf on the blade. It had three more blood grooves than Tuoba Lie’s vicious halberd.

"You killed my brother and destroyed my supply lines."

The heavy halberd dragged a fan-shaped curtain of water behind it as the general in Profound Armor strode through the rain. A bloody mist steamed from his body, and the faint sound of his heart beating like a war drum could be heard. As his iron boots moved, they easily crushed the arrows littering the ground. "Xu Yunfan, I will hang your head on the flagpole at Divine Weapon Ridge to dry in the wind."

Looking at the cold, murderous figure before him, Xu Yunfan instantly determined that his opponent was a True Blood expert comparable to someone at the Great Success of the Blood Exchange Realm.

’So, a real powerhouse has finally shown up,’ he thought, his heart tightening.

Outwardly, Xu Yunfan frowned and said, "I am Su Zhenhe of the Profound Daoist Sect. Who’s Xu Yunfan?"

"Hmph. A buffoon."

A cold expression appeared on the general’s face. "My name is Tuoba Li, commanding general of the Daqian’s Greed Wolf Camp. I have come to take your life."

The Thunderfire Hammer suddenly swung sideways. A muffled CRACK, like shifting rock strata, came from Xu Yunfan’s shoulder blades.

The hammerhead scraped against the crescent blade of the heavy halberd, striking sparks, as the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength spiraled up from his waist and hips.

Tuoba Li’s heavy halberd was knocked slightly aside, its tip plunging deep into the bluestone by the path.

"You people from the Tuoba Family..." Having attacked first, Xu Yunfan tensed the arches of his feet like drawn bows, the rippling fascia shaking mud from his pant legs. "...sure do love to run your mouths, huh?"

A trace of disdain flashed across Tuoba Li’s face. ’Just someone comparable to the fourth step of the True Blood realm, yet he dares to swing a hammer at me.’

His heavy halberd suddenly pried up an entire bluestone slab, lifting the weight of over ten thousand jin with ease.

Xu Yunfan took half a step back. His heavy hammer roared as he swung it from bottom to top. The sharp sound of his Profound Steel Body shedding the force mixed with flying stone fragments as a burst of strength instantly shattered the massive flying slab to pieces.

The muscles beneath Tuoba Li’s armor were gnarled like an old tree. As he swung his heavy halberd, it actually carved a vacuum through the torrential rain.

Xu Yunfan’s pupils shrank. ’His opponent’s True Blood seems to have been developed and refined to a new stage.’

Over the past few days, he had naturally learned about the Daqian’s True Blood System. It sought to develop the power within one’s bloodline, cultivate True Blood, and ultimately return to one’s origin, matching the power of the original True Ancestors.

The Great Zhou called them Human Immortals; the Daqian called them True Ancestors.

But the Daqian’s True Ancestors were not necessarily human.

As the two vicious weapons collided for the third time, the muddy ground suddenly caved in.

Xu Yunfan bent his right knee slightly, sending his Red Flood Dragon Force down his tibia and into the earth veins. The stagnant water in a three-zhang radius suddenly began to boil.

Tuoba Li’s heavy halberd sank half an inch into the mire. In that fleeting moment of delay, the Thunderfire Hammer was already smashing toward his face, whistling with armor-piercing wind.

"Earth Dragon Flipping Over?" Tuoba Li roared like thunder and actually leaped into the air in a single step.

His combat boots shattered the shockwave from the hammerhead as he drove his knee straight for Xu Yunfan’s throat. "Insignificant tricks!"

A Profound Steel gleam instantly appeared on Xu Yunfan’s neck, but he was still knocked staggering by the immense force.

As a coppery, sweet taste surged in his throat, he violently twisted his waist and spun his hammer, the qilin-swallowing mouth at the end of the handle precisely striking the butt of the heavy halberd.

The web of Tuoba Li’s right hand, which had just gripped his weapon, split open, and the heavy halberd nearly flew from his grasp.

’This man isn’t a simple Flesh Refining Realm practitioner!’

Tuoba Li’s expression turned grim.

"No wonder you’ve been able to cause trouble in our rear for so long."

Against a formation of a hundred elite Daqian soldiers, led by a charging Vice General, an ordinary Martial Artist of the Flesh Refining Realm wouldn’t stand a chance.

Not like Xu Yunfan, who had charged in and out of the Daqian Army seven times without even catching his breath.

The downpour wove a curtain of water between the two men.

Xu Yunfan suddenly noticed lines of blood seeping from the gaps in his opponent’s armor—three of the stone fragments from the shattered slab had actually embedded themselves in the seams of Tuoba Li’s pauldrons.

As expected, a physique forged by True Blood was no match for a Martial Artist specializing in Horizontal Training. It would still bleed from the rebound of the Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body.

"Before your brother died..." Xu Yunfan said suddenly, his hammer carving an intersecting arc to block any retreat, "...his right arm was shaking just like that."

The heavy halberd suddenly exploded into a thousand-layered wave.

"You’re courting death."

Tuoba Li’s eyes turned crimson. His halberd technique was no longer a series of wide, sweeping moves; its crescent blade now slithered along the hammer’s handle like a venomous snake.

Xu Yunfan retreated seven steps in a row, the joints of his Profound Steel body cracking like firecrackers. Each step he took left a spiderweb of cracks on the bluestone slabs.

On the ninth step, his back hit the face of a cliff.

Tuoba Li’s heavy halberd was half a foot from his chest when Xu Yunfan suddenly let go of his hammer.

With the unique sound of dislocating joints from his Profound Steel Body Technique, he actually clamped the halberd’s shaft with his collarbones. Red Flood Dragon Force shot through his steel-like bones, straight toward his opponent’s wrist.

"Rigid Ribs and Sinewy Muscles?!"

Tuoba Li froze for an instant.

The moment the heavy halberd slipped from his grasp, Xu Yunfan caught his falling Thunderfire Hammer.

As the hammerhead swung upward from below, the downpour was seared into white mist.

The instant Tuoba Li’s chest plate caved in, thirty-seven streams of Red Flood Dragon Force poured through the patterns on the hammer and into his organs.

The bluestone at the cliff’s edge collapsed with a RUMBLE.

Xu Yunfan watched the figure in Profound Armor fall into the misty clouds below and shook his split-open hand.

The blood dripping from the tip of the Thunderfire Hammer bloomed in the mire, quickly washed into a faint red stream by the downpour.

’To think he could actually break the skin of my Horizontal Training Body. The Blood Exchange realm really is a bit too powerful.’

Suddenly, Xu Yunfan’s expression shifted.

The sound of bones cracking echoed up from the bottom of the cliff. Seventeen lines of blood shot up from below, piercing the mist, tearing through the rain, and stabbing into the rock wall.

When Tuoba Li scrambled back up the cliff, a three-inch, blood-colored bone blade protruded from his left shoulder blade. The sound of his heartbeat actually overpowered the raging thunderstorm.

"The fifth step of the True Blood Realm, Blood Burning?!"

Xu Yunfan took half a step back. The Profound Steel Mechanism Box on his back sprang open, revealing the Dragon Swallowing Mouth of the Gilded Mace. The nine-sectioned body of the mace did not gleam with the cold light of metal, but with dark golden patterns that resembled flowing lava.

At this moment, scales grew on Tuoba Li’s cheeks, and his eyes had become vertical pupils, locked onto Xu Yunfan.

"You..."

"Linn!"

Xu Yunfan’s left hand formed the mantra seal of the Linn Character Technique as his right hand instantly gripped the Gilded Mace and drew it out.

The emotion in his body receded like the tide, leaving a pool of still water. The bulging muscles all over his body actually settled down, only swelling slightly with his every move. The bulging green veins under his skin also transformed into fine blue lines of meridians, relaxing beneath the surface.

But Tuoba Li, who had just leaped up from the bottom of the cliff, suddenly felt a bone-chilling terror.

He could only feel that Xu Yunfan’s body was like a powder keg that had just been ignited.

’How is this possible?!’

’He’s just in the Flesh Refining Realm of the Great Zhou Martial Dao, and I’m clearly a whole major realm above him!’

What shook his heart and spirit even more was that his opponent had actually pulled a Divine Weapon from his back.

In the next instant, blazing fire wove through the trajectory of the Gilded Mace as Xu Yunfan’s wrist bones exploded with seven high-frequency vibrations.

This explosive force followed the cracks in the bone and burst into the chest cavity. Nine different methods of exerting strength rotated in a flash: Tearing Sinews, Quaking Marrow, Severing Meridians, Shattering Bone, Burning Qi, Locking Apertures, Halting Blood, Dissipating Force, and Returning to Void.

Under Tuoba Li’s horrified gaze, nine layers of Hidden Force—perfectly channeled through the Nine Profound Dragon-Defying Mace Technique by the Linn Character State—exploded inside the enemy’s skull with a hundred times the intensity.

*You have successfully killed a powerful enemy. Your Skill Level in the Nine Profound Dragon-Defying Mace Technique has greatly increased.*

*The Nine Profound Dragon-Defying Mace Technique has reached Great Success.*

*...*

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