Great Strength Vajra Palm and Great Strength Vajra Leg

"Golden Bell Shield, Hundred Years of Cultivation. I've now reached the pinnacle of the Accumulation Realm."

Zhou Shan felt the Internal Force within him brimming to the fullest, already having reached its limit.

The realm after the Accumulation Realm was the Aperture-Opening Realm. By opening the body's one hundred and eight apertures, one could contain Internal Force and Internal Qi. Thus, these one hundred and eight acupoints were also called qi apertures and qi cavities.

Closing the panel, Zhou Shan immediately circulated the Golden Bell Shield's Hundred Years of Cultivation and launched an assault on the first qi aperture in his body.

Before long, Zhou Shan encountered the barrier of the qi aperture. But with his Hundred Years of Cultivation, the vast Internal Force flowing through his body was like a heaven-swallowing flood, instantly smashing through the aperture's barrier.

For a martial artist with Hundred Years of Cultivation, breaking through to the Aperture-Opening Realm was only natural.

Rumble—

With a deafening boom, Zhou Shan broke through the barrier of the first qi aperture.

There were one hundred and eight qi apertures. For every one opened, one could cultivate an additional year of Internal Force.

Therefore, if all one hundred and eight qi apertures were opened, one could possess two hundred and eight years of Internal Force.

Under normal circumstances, an Aperture-Opening Martial Artist could only open one qi aperture per year.

But for Zhou Shan, he could open one qi aperture in a single day.

At one aperture per day, he would need only one hundred and eight days to reach the pinnacle of the Aperture-Opening Realm.

Having opened the first aperture, Zhou Shan officially became an Aperture-Opening Martial Artist.

An Aperture-Opening Martial Artist could be considered a top expert even across an entire commandery.

Aside from its commandery city, Qingyang Commandery had twenty-five counties: six large counties and nineteen small ones. Among those nineteen small counties, the strongest martial artist in many counties was merely a First-class Martial Artist. For example, in Ye County, where the Iron Palm Gang Zhou Shan had eradicated was located, even the three great families only had First-class Martial Artists.

Only the stronger small counties had Superclass Martial Artists holding the fort.

For example, in Hengshan County near the West Ridge Iron Mine, the strongest factions had Superclass Martial Artists stationed there, though the number of such martial artists usually did not exceed the fingers on one hand.

Even in a large county, a Superclass Martial Artist could dominate the land.

An Aperture-Opening Martial Artist, however, was the stabilizing pillar of a faction and would not act lightly.

After breaking through to the Aperture-Opening Realm, Zhou Shan took out the manuals for the Great Strength Vajra Palm and Great Strength Vajra Leg and began cultivating them.

These two martial arts shared the same origin as the Golden Bell Shield. Or rather, the Golden Bell Shield ranked above the Great Strength Vajra Palm and Great Strength Vajra Leg, so the Golden Bell Shield's Internal Force could be used to drive both techniques.

If it were the other way around, and one used only the Internal Force of the Great Strength Vajra Palm or Great Strength Vajra Leg to execute the Golden Bell Shield, its power would be greatly diminished. Hundred Years of Cultivation might only unleash the Golden Bell Shield's power at the level of fifty or sixty years of cultivation.

What Zhou Shan needed to cultivate were the moves and force-generating techniques of these two martial arts.

In the television dramas of his previous life, there had been a martial art in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils called the Lesser Formless Skill. Once one possessed this skill, as long as one knew the moves of other martial arts, one could rely on its boundless power to imitate others' ultimate techniques, even surpassing the original.

When Heavenly Manor's young manor lord, Yi Shaofeng, had set up his arena in Qingyang City, he had displayed more than twenty different sword arts. Yet the cultivation he used had all come from the Heavenly Heart Sword Canon, and the power of the different styles of swordsmanship had not been affected in the slightest.

The Golden Bell Shield was one of the Vajra Sect's sect-defending Cultivation Techniques, so all Vajra Sect martial arts could be driven by the Golden Bell Shield's Internal Force.

After reading through the Great Strength Vajra Palm once, Zhou Shan immediately circulated the Golden Bell Shield's Internal Force through his body according to the Great Strength Vajra Palm's circulation route. The match was perfect, without the slightest obstruction.

Arriving in the courtyard, Zhou Shan struck with his palm at a decorative boulder more than ten meters away.

A mighty palm force erupted in an instant and slammed into the decorative boulder over ten meters away.

With a loud boom, the decorative boulder immediately exploded, sending shattered stone flying in every direction.

Name: Zhou Shan

Talent: Nine Breaths Assimilation

Cultivation Technique: Golden Bell Shield (Hundred Years of Cultivation) Traits: Poison Resistance, Rebounding Shock, Internal Force Body Protection, Rigid and Soft Harmony

Great Strength Vajra Palm (Hundred Years of Cultivation) Traits: Doubled Strength, Impervious to Blades and Spears, Striking Objects from Afar

Eagle Claw Iron Shirt (Sixty Years of Cultivation/Complete) Traits: Bronze Skin Iron Bones, Pierce Stone Through Metal

With a thought, Zhou Shan opened the panel and checked his status.

The Great Strength Vajra Palm had appeared on the panel, and the cultivation displayed for it had also reached one hundred years, calculated entirely according to the Golden Bell Shield's cultivation. It also possessed three major traits: doubled strength, imperviousness to blades and spears, and striking objects from afar.

The Great Strength Vajra Palm was famed for its fierce force and unmatched dominance. Once cultivated to Hundred Years of Cultivation, shattering gold and iron with one's palm was effortless; one could even knead iron into mud in one's grasp.

The doubled strength trait was exactly what its name implied. When the Great Strength Vajra Palm was driven with full force, the power it unleashed would double.

Impervious to blades and spears meant one could ignore ordinary weapons such as swords and sabers.

Striking objects from afar was what Zhou Shan had just displayed. Even from more than ten meters away, a single palm strike could blast a huge boulder into Four-Part Fragmentation. If it struck a person, it could instantly pierce through their five viscera and six bowels—unbelievably fierce.

Zhou Shan tested it. When driving the Great Strength Vajra Palm with Hundred Years of Cultivation, its greatest killing power lay within a range of twenty meters. Beyond that, the farther away the target, the weaker its destructive force became.

Beyond one hundred meters, the force of the palm wind could only knock down leaves.

After familiarizing himself with the Great Strength Vajra Palm's moves, Zhou Shan began cultivating the Great Strength Vajra Leg.

Name: Zhou Shan

Talent: Nine Breaths Assimilation

Cultivation Technique: Golden Bell Shield (Hundred Years of Cultivation) Traits: Poison Resistance, Rebounding Shock, Internal Force Body Protection, Rigid and Soft Harmony

Great Strength Vajra Palm (Hundred Years of Cultivation) Traits: Doubled Strength, Impervious to Blades and Spears, Striking Objects from Afar

Great Strength Vajra Leg (Hundred Years of Cultivation) Traits: Doubled Strength, Impervious to Blades and Spears, Explosive Speed

Eagle Claw Iron Shirt (Sixty Years of Cultivation/Complete) Traits: Bronze Skin Iron Bones, Pierce Stone Through Metal

Very quickly, Zhou Shan mastered the Great Strength Vajra Leg, and this martial art also appeared on the panel.

The Great Strength Vajra Leg possessed three traits: doubled strength, imperviousness to blades and spears, and explosive speed. The first two were the same as those of the Great Strength Vajra Palm, while the final trait, explosive speed, could increase his own speed.

With my current strength, so long as I don't provoke factions guarded by top Aperture-Opening Martial Artists with two hundred years of cultivation or Half-step Grandmasters, basically no one can threaten me anymore.

Zhou Shan thought to himself.

In Qingyang Commandery, there was only one Martial Dao Grandmaster known publicly.

That was Fang Yuan, commander-in-chief of Qingyang Commandery's Black Armored Army.

As for Qingyang City's city lord, he was merely a Half-step Grandmaster who had opened the twelve regular meridians and six of the eight extraordinary meridians.

Zhou Shan's current mission was to lead two hundred Black Armored Army soldiers in suppressing bandits within Qingyang Commandery. He was basically unlikely to encounter top Aperture-Opening Martial Artists. Among the bandits of Qingyang Commandery, even Superclass Martial Artists were exceedingly rare.

Only in Liangzhou to the north were there great bandit chiefs who had reached the Aperture-Opening Realm or Half-step Grandmaster level.

There were even colossal bandit chiefs who plundered the world.

That place lay on Great Jin's border. The tribes living on the great grasslands to the north often rode south to plunder, and it had always been incomparably chaotic, with bandits running rampant.

Now that the Great Jin Dynasty had fallen, Liangzhou had become even more chaotic, practically turning into a bandits' paradise.

After resting for a day in Qingyang City, Zhou Shan led two hundred Black Armored Army soldiers out of the city and continued his campaign against the bandits.