The Silver Armored General frantically threw his sword, only to see the young man contort his body in mid-air. As the Thunderfire Qilin Hammer flew from his hand, the qilin-tail spike at the end of the handle accurately pierced the general’s throat.

Amidst the great rout triggered by their commander’s death, Xu Yunfan planted a foot on the Silver Armored General’s still-standing corpse, raised his blood-soaked hammer toward the southeast, and gazed at the crumbling Daqian Army.

Zhan Yan slammed his pair of Heavy Hammers onto the ground. "Cathartic! Much more cathartic than teaching a little whelp like you back in the day!"

Xu Yunfan was just about to speak when his gaze flickered upward.

Time seemed to freeze.

The moment the Ten-foot Ink Spear pierced the curtain of rain, Xu Yunfan’s pupils reflected nine overlapping afterimages of its vibrating tip.

The True Blood General’s beastified right arm, empowered by his burning Essence Blood, was covered in black scales. The friction between the spear shaft and the air ignited an eerie, blue Ghost Fire.

"Careful..."

Zhan Yan’s warning dissolved into a bloody gurgle in his throat.

The Ink Spear drilled into his left shoulder blade like a venomous dragon. The Spiral Force within the spear shaft erupted, shredding the gnarled muscles into pulp.

As his nearly three-hundred-pound frame was hoisted off the ground, the old man, once sturdy as iron, seemed as light as a ragdoll.

The stone tiles beneath Xu Yunfan’s feet exploded into dust.

Pushing his Linn Character State to its absolute limit, the world in his eyes faded to black and white.

The beads of blood spraying from Zhan Yan’s wound hung suspended in the air; he could see the glint of firelight reflected in every single drop. The vein on the True Blood General’s neck throbbed seven times, matching the unique Dharma Gate for circulating Canglang Force. The spot where the Jiao Horse’s iron hooves were about to land was the perfect point to unleash the Cloud-Breaking Moon-Splitting Form of the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique.

The muscles in Xu Yunfan’s right arm suddenly bulged. As his Blood Qi seethed, his Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength swelled his arm to nearly three or four times its normal size, transforming it into a misshapen, giant limb.

The Thunderfire Qilin Hammer shot from his hand, but not toward the enemy.

The Armor-Piercing Spike on the hammer’s pommel locked perfectly into the scaled pattern of the spear shaft. His knuckles, glowing bluish-gold from the power of his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body, wrapped around the hammer’s handle as he single-handedly caught the Ten-foot Ink Spear that held Zhan Yan aloft.

"You overestimate yourself!"

The True Blood General sneered and tried to pull his spear back, the muscles on his beastified right arm swelling threefold.

Xu Yunfan used the momentum to launch himself into the air. Compressing his Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength to the limit in the arches of his feet, he unleashed it with a bang, actually running up the shaft of the spear! Each step rang out with the clang of metal on metal, leaving seven deep footprints indented in the spear’s body.

"Let go!"

The Ink Spear began to vibrate at a high frequency, and a blinding blue light erupted from its wolf-head guard.

Xu Yunfan’s right sleeve disintegrated. Sparks flew from the collision between his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body and the Canglang Force, tracing a hundred-foot-long fiery dragon across the night sky.

But his grip on the hammer didn’t budge. Instead, he used the recoil to spin and swing it.

At that moment, he achieved a breakthrough in the twelfth stance of the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique: Silk-Wrapping Marrow-Piercing.

The instant the hammerhead struck the spear shaft, his Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength split into nine streams of Spiral Force and bored into the metal, spiderweb cracks spreading across the spear forged from Meteorite Iron.

The True Blood General’s mount shrieked and reared up as the general swatted at the young man’s skull with his beastified right palm.

Xu Yunfan didn’t dodge or evade. The muscles in his neck strained like drawn wires, and the bulging veins crisscrossed like a nest of serpents. He met the palm strike head-on with his forehead.

The True Blood General was forced back three steps, his Ink Spear carving a deep furrow in the ground.

Xu Yunfan’s face was flushed a deep crimson, but he had absorbed the full force of the blow using a technique from his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body. Stepping forward, he seized the opportunity to pull Zhan Yan free.

As he spun around, his Thunderfire Qilin Hammer had already clashed with the thrusting Ink Spear seven times. Each impact unleashed a ring of concussive force that sent all the corpses within a hundred-yard radius flying.

"You’re courting death!"

The Beastification General swung the Long Spear upward with both hands, its passage through the air tearing the sky with a piercing shriek.

A blood-red aura ignited around him, and a phantom image of a great wolf swallowing the moon faintly materialized at his back.

This was the Anomaly that appeared when one burned their True Blood to its absolute limit.

The great dragon of Xu Yunfan’s spine let out a pained roar, unable to bear the load.

With his Linn Character State pushed into overload, he could clearly feel his muscle fibers tearing apart. Yet, he still precisely calculated thirteen openings in his opponent’s attack.

At this moment, the Thunderfire Qilin Hammer finished gathering its power, its head glowing a dim red from the high-frequency vibrations.

As the blood-red wolf phantom lunged, Xu Yunfan did something that stunned everyone. He deliberately shattered the bones in his own left arm, compressing his Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength into a cone of Qi Force that erupted from the wound!

Shards of bone and a mist of blood erupted like a sudden squall, momentarily obscuring the wolf phantom’s deadly pounce.

In the instant the True Blood General’s vision was blocked, the Thunderfire Qilin Hammer had already pierced the crimson curtain.

"Eight Desolates Return Stream."

This was the seventeenth stance of the Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique, a blow containing its ultimate power. It combined several methods of generating force, layered with a thirteen-fold Spiral Force. Before the hammer even landed, the sheer wind pressure had stripped away all the black scales from the Beastification General’s chest.

The sickening thud of the hammerhead crashing into his chest shattered every glazed roof tile for a thousand feet in every direction.

A gaping hole of blood burst open on the True Blood General’s back, spraying shattered bone and viscera across the cliff face of Divine Weapon Ridge.

His mount let out a mournful cry and collapsed, bleeding from its seven orifices as it died.

Xu Yunfan staggered as he landed, his left arm hanging limp as cotton.

The moment his Linn Character State deactivated, he heard a crisp crack from his own heart, like shattering porcelain.

But his eyes remained locked on the depths of the smoke and dust. There, a half-charred corpse was twitching in a pool of blood.

The next instant, a large, powerful hand—its skin fresh and new—emerged from the charred remains. It was followed by a powerfully built, stark-naked man, who broke free from the burnt husk as if hatching from a shell.

"I underestimated you. But I possess the True Blood of the Cang Wolf..."

He looked up at the full moon, his face twisted with the crazed relief of one who had cheated death.

"Under the full moon, my power will reach a whole new level. This time, I’ll use everything I have to... you..."

Before the True Blood General could finish, the crisp sound of a Profound Steel Mechanism suddenly echoed. The Dragon Swallowing Mouth on the Gilded Mace was ejected by the device in its Profound Steel Mechanism Box, and a heart-stopping aura instantly permeated the battlefield.

Xu Yunfan’s knuckles brushed across the Gilded Mace before he gripped it firmly.

The moment the Gilded Mace was unsheathed, the moisture in the air for a hundred meters around evaporated into a dense fog.

The nine dragon patterns coiled around the mace’s body lit up in sequence, each Dragon Eye pulsating with golden flames.

The stone tiles beneath Xu Yunfan’s feet melted into glass, and his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body glowed crimson, seared by the Divine Weapon’s ambient heat.

The words forming in the True Blood General’s throat were forced back down, his eyes bulging as if they would pop from their sockets.

"A Divine Weapon?!"

This formidable Daqian general, specially dispatched from Yanbei Dao, had just grasped his Profound Ink Long Spear when Xu Yunfan was already upon him, striding across waves of molten stone.

Before he could even complete the opening stance of the Nine Profound Dragon-Defying Mace Technique, the air within a thirty-foot radius erupted into golden flames.

"This is..."

The True Blood General’s beast-like pupils contracted. He hastily brought his Ink Spear up in a defensive wolf stance.

The first strike of the mace—the Mountain-Collapse Form—slashed down diagonally.

It was a simple vertical slash, yet it was layered with nine distinct frequencies of vibration.

The moment the mace connected with the spear shaft, the Ten-foot Ink Spear, forged from Meteorite Iron, shattered into pieces like glass.

The scales on the True Blood General’s beastified right arm were peeled back, and his finger bones disintegrated into dust from the shockwave.

The second strike, Sweeping the Six Kingdoms, followed on its heels.

Along the Gilded Mace’s sweeping trajectory, the Red Flood Dragon Force surged, and nine phantom fire dragons materialized from nothing.

The wolf-shaped smoke of True Blood emanating from the general’s body lasted for only half a breath before it was vaporized by the draconic flames.