Bone Forging

Dark clouds drifted across the sky, moonlight poured down, illuminating Lu Wangchuan's icy face. The last man to see Lu Wangchuan instantly had his pupils contract. Every hair on his body stood on end, and his heart began to race.

Hadn't Lu Wangchuan always been trash on the path of martial cultivation? He had trained for two and a half years and still had yet to pass Blood Coagulation.

But the strength he displayed at this moment had likely already surpassed Blood Coagulation.

Was this guy playing the pig to eat the tiger?

But this was no time to think about that. He immediately fell to his knees and begged for mercy.

"Young Master Lu, spare my life! Young Master Lu, spare my life! I was only muddleheaded for a moment when I came here with them. I still have an eighty-year-old mother to support. I swear I won't tell anyone about what happened today. Spare—"

Bang!

Before he could finish, Lu Wangchuan shattered his throat with a punch, sending him flying several meters away. When he hit the ground, his throat bones were completely crushed. He twitched a few times, then his eyes bulged wide as he died unwillingly.

He was the one who had said he would cripple Lu Wangchuan's third leg.

Killing someone for the first time made him feel somewhat sick, but Lu Wangchuan knew that the moment he came to this world, he could no longer escape this trial.

The strong killed; the weak were killed!

If he had not studied diligently and trained hard, then even if he did not die today, he would have been crippled for life.

He had to become stronger. Only then could he protect himself!

At that moment, Xiao Wu and Xiao Yue were also startled awake. They crawled out of their room, and at the sight before them, they could not help covering their mouths.

"Y-Young Master, this is...?"

"Do not make a sound."

Lu Wangchuan said coldly:

"You two, get some cold water and wash the bloodstains off the ground."

Then, he grabbed the corpses and leapt over the wall, racing toward the moat under cover of night.

He did not sleep that night. The next day, Lu Wangchuan went to the Martial Hall as usual to train.

When he arrived at the Martial Hall, he saw a crowd gathered at the entrance, wailing and crying. Several corpses lay on the ground beneath white cloth.

"What happened?"

Feigning calm, he stepped forward to ask. One of the Martial Hall disciples replied:

"Some disciples from our Martial Hall were murdered. Their families are begging the Martial Hall to step in and help find the true culprit."

"Why not report it to the authorities?"

"People die in Jianghai City every day. How could the authorities possibly handle it all? Otherwise, why would they come begging the Martial Hall? Come to think of it, these guys bullied you yesterday, and today they're dead. You ought to thank the murderer properly for venting your anger."

Left with no choice, the Martial Hall could only assist in the investigation.

These men caused trouble all day long and had offended many people. The Martial Hall questioned several people, Lu Wangchuan naturally among them. But he had long anticipated this and answered smoothly.

"Everyone in the entire Martial Hall knows that I, Lu Wangchuan, have trained for two and a half years and am still trash. You're even questioning trash like me? Do you have any humanity left?"

"You aren't merely insulting me—you're insulting these senior brothers as well!"

The reason was so convincing that no one could possibly suspect him.

Thus, Lu Wangchuan was decisively removed from the Martial Hall's list of suspects.

When good fortune came, one's spirits soared; lunch called for extra soup.

However, when Lu Wangchuan returned home, he unexpectedly found that the day's dishes were mostly vegetarian. The only meat dish was stir-fried pork with peppers.

"Why are there so many vegetable dishes today?"

Xiao Yue lowered her head uneasily.

"Young Master, the household's expenses have truly been too great these past three months. If we keep buying meat, sooner or later we'll run out of food."

Lu Wangchuan froze, having nearly forgotten about that.

Ever since he transmigrated here, he had constantly been raising his vitality and blood. As his cultivation rose, his appetite had also steadily increased. Meat was far from cheap in these times, and Body Strengthening Soup consumed money like flowing water. The household's silver had quickly begun to run dry.

He could not help sighing.

"The poor pursue letters, the rich pursue martial arts. Martial training really burns money."

Without gold and silver to support it, he could not rapidly increase his vitality and blood. Was his road to becoming stronger going to end here?

Just then, Xiao Wu suddenly ran in holding a letter from home.

"Young Master, there's a letter from Miss."

Lu Wangchuan's gaze shifted. It was from his elder sister, the devoted sister who had married into a wealthy family.

He took the letter. Several rather ungraceful characters were written on the envelope.

"To My Dear Brother Wangchuan."

Opening the envelope, he found a letter and three banknotes inside.

Lu Wangchuan took out the letter. The handwriting was just as immature as that on the envelope.

"Little Brother, didn't expect this, did you? Your sister has learned to write now, so I can write to you often from now on."

"Are you doing well? Your sister misses you so much."

"I'll secretly tell you a secret: you're going to be an uncle."

The letter went on at great length. There were several misspelled characters, and the sentences were extremely awkward, yet every line revealed an elder sister's longing for her younger brother.

That sincere affection made Lu Wangchuan's nose sting slightly. He had had an elder sister in his previous life as well, and they had been very close. But they would likely never meet again.

"The banknotes Miss sent this year came earlier than usual."

Xiao Yue spoke with delight. Simple-minded as she was, she was not greedy for money. Rather, with money, Young Master would no longer have to live so frugally and could eat meat again.

If Young Master was happy, she was happy.

Lu Wangchuan put away the family letter, but he was not particularly pleased.

Having lived two lives, he was not as naive as the original owner of this body. It was not easy to become the wealthy wife of a great household. His sister had married in as a commoner, so her days might not be joyful at all. She might very well have been treading on thin ice.

But there was nothing he could change right now. He could only become stronger. Once he was strong enough, he could become her unyielding support and repay this familial love.

He gave one of the banknotes to Xiao Yue for daily food expenses, along with two taels of loose silver, telling her to go to the merchant association that afternoon and send a reply to his sister. The remaining banknotes were kept for purchasing medicinal ingredients to brew Body Strengthening Soup.

In the beginning, high-nutrition medicinal soup like Body Strengthening Soup was difficult to digest. Lu Wangchuan might need to practice the Eight Section Brocade several times to digest it completely. But as Lu Wangchuan's cultivation grew stronger and the level of his technique rose, he digested it faster and faster. Now, one round of the Eight Section Brocade could digest half a bowl of Body Strengthening Soup, and silver was vanishing like water.

But Lu Wangchuan would not slow his pace because of this. Gold and silver were merely worldly possessions; only cultivation truly belonged to him.

With cultivation, it would be easier to obtain gold and silver. He could not put the cart before the horse.

And so, time flashed by. In the blink of an eye, several more months passed.

One evening, Lu Wangchuan practiced the Eight Section Brocade in the Training Room.

More than half a year of uninterrupted bitter cultivation had brought earth-shaking changes to Lu Wangchuan compared to when he had first transmigrated.

Not yet fifteen years old, he was already nearly one meter seventy-five tall. His sweat-soaked clothes clung tightly to his body, and the explosive lines of his muscles were breathtaking.

If not for the childishness that had yet to fade from his face, no one would have doubted he was an adult.

As his entire skeleton erupted in a series of crackling pops, his cultivation successfully broke through to the third level of the Physical Body Realm—Bone Forging!