Verification, Surge

After bidding Gong Jie farewell and leaving the Escort Agency gates, Jiang Qinghe did not head straight back to the Martial Academy. After a moment's thought, he walked due north.

Now, he no longer feared that Li Mu would jump over the wall in desperation and launch a daytime assassination.

Since reaching Minor Accomplishment in the Levitation Technique, Jiang Qinghe's speed and footwork had nearly doubled.

Such a terrifying improvement greatly enhanced his ability to preserve his life and escape.

From what he had learned these past days, movement techniques were rarer than offensive martial skills in Lin'an County, and far more difficult to cultivate to a breakthrough.

Ordinary people already spent the overwhelming majority of their time and energy cultivating offensive martial skills. Few achieved anything in movement techniques.

If he faced Li Mu now, their martial strength was evenly matched, perhaps differing by only a hair.

But if he wished to retreat, it would be as easy as turning his hand, and he could do so without the slightest rush.

The Medicine Hall lay directly north of the Escort Agency, roughly the distance of an incense stick's walk.

Jiang Qinghe now needed to verify the feasibility of cultivating the Panshi Jue alongside his current cultivation, while also preparing for the later stages of the Muscle Tendon Strengthening realm.

Auxiliary items such as pills were indispensable.

He still had the five gold leaves and twenty taels of patterned silver he had found after killing Liao Hu and the others.

They had no other use for the time being, so he might as well exchange them all for pills, then use whatever remained to purchase some daily necessities.

"I wonder how long the pills bought with these seventy taels of silver will last. Can they hold out until the end of this month..."

Jiang Qinghe felt deeply moved. Once upon a time, seventy taels of patterned silver had been an enormous sum he could scarcely hope to see in an entire lifetime.

After all, once ordinary people married and had children, their expenses surged.

The moment their monthly wages arrived, they might be spent clean, leaving little to save.

Yet now, this enormous sum was merely one month of his expenses—and perhaps not even enough...

Before long, Jiang Qinghe saw the familiar storefront.

When he entered, the one behind the counter was not Elder Zheng from before.

Instead, it was a young medicine apprentice, lowering his head over whatever he was busy with. Hearing footsteps, he immediately looked up at the newcomer.

"Honored customer, what do you need?"

"Three Bear Tendon Pills."

"That will be sixty taels of silver."

Jiang Qinghe took the pills and left the Medicine Hall.

Without stopping, he went to the market and approached a craftsman's stall.

He bought an inconspicuous gray cloth cloak and an ancient-looking Nuo opera mask.

Only after stuffing everything into his bundle did he set off on the road back to the Martial Academy.

After leaving Anren Ward's jurisdiction, Jiang Qinghe's gaze drifted, seemingly casually, toward several people in the distance.

Though they wore the ordinary garb of woodcutters and blended into the crowd without seeming out of place, Jiang Qinghe still felt as if he were being watched. Only after he finally entered the Martial Academy gates did that sensation completely vanish.

"Li Mu of the Iron Saber Gang really clings like a ghost that refuses to disperse."

As time passed, a month slipped by in the blink of an eye.

Jiang Qinghe's life could be said to consist of two points and one line, shuttling between his small courtyard and the dining hall.

After eating, he trained. When he was tired from training, he ate.

When Gong Jie had still been around, he would occasionally go to the training grounds to verify their skills against each other.

Now, he only showed himself once every half month when instructing the Martial Disciples. At all other times, he cultivated and trained diligently alone.

Jiang Qinghe discovered that his body's greatest talent was its resistance to medicine.

Compared to others, it could be called terrifying.

During the body-tempering stage, he had used Blood Activating Powder for a medicinal bath every two or three days.

After ordinary Martial Disciples used it once, they needed at least ten-odd days for their bodies to absorb it completely before they could use it again.

Upon reaching the Muscle Tendon Strengthening realm, the difference became even greater.

Senior Brother Zhao Guangyi had now just entered Bone Forging, yet when he had been in the Muscle Tendon Strengthening realm, he had only taken a Bear Tendon Pill once every eight or nine days.

Jiang Qinghe, meanwhile, had used up ten of them in this single month.

The results, however, were impressively displayed on his current panel.

[Realm: Muscle Tendon Strengthening (Beginner)]

[Techniques: Tiger Form Muscle Tendon Strengthening Technique (Beginner—15/50), Panshi Jue (Beginner—0/2), Iron Shirt Skill (Perfected), Wood Splitting Skill (Perfected)]

[Martial Skills: Levitation Technique (Minor Accomplishment—3/50), Rock Crushing Palm (Minor Accomplishment—5/10)]

[Potential Points: 62 (0–2 points gained daily)]

Elder Ping had once said that after body tempering reached perfection, one's skin and flesh would solidify and adapt to the qi and blood circulation route of one's main cultivation technique.

If one forcibly cultivated another body-tempering method and introduced an entirely new, completely different circulation route,

there was a ninety-nine percent chance that it would violently clash with the original technique, tearing the skin and flesh apart and damaging the body.

Therefore, Jiang Qinghe had only brought the Panshi Jue to the Beginner stage during this time, no longer cultivating or circulating it.

Now, he would verify what he had previously imagined.

Max out the technique, directly obtain its final effect, and avoid the negative effects that might arise during the circulation process.

Jiang Qinghe stared at the panel with expectant eyes. With a turn of his thoughts, he added the Potential Points.

[Techniques: Panshi Jue (Minor Accomplishment—0/5)]

He let out a muffled groan, then felt an entirely new force begin to surge.

Like the pulse of the Great Earth, it gently washed over and strengthened his skin membrane.

A moment later...

After an incense stick's time...

After a while...

A long time passed, yet none of the conflict or tearing sensation Elder Ping had described appeared.

Feeling his increasingly resilient skin membrane and the new strength within him, Jiang Qinghe was ecstatic.

"Continue improving!"

[Techniques: Panshi Jue (Major Accomplishment—0/15)]

"Beep—"

That steady force suddenly surged, like a roaring river.

His skin and flesh were tempered again, emitting a resonant hum.

His sense of defense and strength both soared another level.

"Again!"

[Techniques: Panshi Jue (Perfected)]

"Boom—"

It was as though a massive rock had exploded inside his body. Jiang Qinghe's muscles bulged all over, his skin instantly flushing blood-red as a vast sense of power filled his entire body.

His face reddened as he repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the changes in his body.

"It really works!"

Jiang Qinghe vaguely sensed that this skin and flesh of his had already reached an ultimate state.

The Panshi Jue had brought him an additional six hundred jin of strength, allowing him to possess fifteen hundred jin of force while merely at the perfected body-tempering realm.

Even Qin Wu's innate Copper Skin Iron Flesh physique could not compare after tempering.

Adding the Wood Splitting Skill and the gains from a month of cultivating the Tiger Form Muscle Tendon Strengthening Technique—

Two thousand eight hundred jin of enormous strength!

An ordinary martial master at Major Accomplishment in Muscle Tendon Strengthening only possessed around three thousand jin of strength.

Yet he had already approached that threshold.

"Only 22 Potential Points were consumed."

After calculating it, Jiang Qinghe felt incomparably satisfied.

It seemed that raising another new body-tempering method required only half the Potential Points of the first one.

"There are still 40 points left. Then, Tiger Form Muscle Tendon Strengthening Technique and Rock Crushing Palm, rise!"

"Thump—"

In an instant, an overbearing torrent of qi and blood erupted from the depths of his limbs and bones, surging through his tendons with explosive power.

Every inch of tendon was reforged, stretched, and compacted by this torrent, producing dense crackling sounds like beans being fried.

Jiang Qinghe's skin also faintly reddened, sweat steaming from him like mist.

At the same time, countless fragments of Rock Crushing Palm knowledge flooded into Jiang Qinghe's mind, as though he had practiced it hundreds or thousands of times in an enclosed space.

Jiang Qinghe slowly opened his eyes, spread his five fingers slightly, and gently pressed the bluestone beside him.

He did not appear to exert any force, yet the stone surface silently sank inward.

A moment later, cracks appeared across the bluestone, spreading outward like a spiderweb.

"So that's how it is! At Major Accomplishment, Rock Crushing Palm's force can not only penetrate completely inside, but also linger without dispersing."

A sharp gleam flashed in his eyes. "And my palm feels not the slightest recoil."

Rigid and supple in harmony, penetrating without scattering. Compared with the Minor Accomplishment realm of Rock Crushing Palm, it was far stronger!

"However... Master once said that strengthening the tendons by a full ten parts counts as Minor Accomplishment in Muscle Tendon Strengthening. I seem to have only strengthened them by around nine parts."

Feeling the toughness of his body's major tendons, as well as the nine hundred jin of strength brought by Minor Accomplishment in the Tiger Form Muscle Tendon Strengthening Technique, Jiang Qinghe shook his head with a bitter smile.

"It seems that after reaching perfection in Muscle Tendon Strengthening, I'll also need to find an appropriate opportunity to seek out another technique and try it."

"Even so..."

Jiang Qinghe looked at the updated panel:

[Realm: Muscle Tendon Strengthening (Minor Accomplishment)]

[Techniques: Tiger Form Muscle Tendon Strengthening Technique (Minor Accomplishment—0/80), Panshi Jue (Perfected), Iron Shirt Skill (Perfected), Wood Splitting Skill (Perfected)]

[Martial Skills: Levitation Technique (Minor Accomplishment—3/50), Rock Crushing Palm (Major Accomplishment—0/30)]

[Potential Points: 0 (0–2 points gained daily)]

He quietly pondered:

With my current physical strength of three thousand four hundred jin, Major Accomplishment Rock Crushing Palm, and the Levitation Technique at my side, I can suppress anyone at Minor Accomplishment in Muscle Tendon Strengthening with a flip of my hand. Against martial masters at Major Accomplishment in Muscle Tendon Strengthening, I am evenly matched and may even defeat them.

If I encounter someone at perfected Muscle Tendon Strengthening, even if I cannot defeat them, I can still Withdraw Safely.

"It's time..."