Old Xu's Ultimate, Fully Ascended Final Killing Move!

After Wu Yankun left, Huo Yuanhong returned to the Practice Room and continued training Baji Quan's other two great killing moves:

King of Hell's Three Strikes! Fierce Tiger Climbs the Mountain!

King of Hell's Three Strikes consisted of three blows: King of Hell's Door Slam, Impermanence's Throat Lock, and Judge's Brush Stroke.

The first strike, King of Hell's Door Slam, was an upward hooking blow from the heel of the palm, striking the triangular area beneath the collarbone and instantly jolting the nerves, causing the opponent's body to stiffen.

Then came the second move, Impermanence's Throat Lock, also known as Palm Strike Severing the Soul. The edge of the palm on the little-finger side chopped at the carotid artery; when force was exerted, the wrist rotated inward at a certain angle, mimicking the trajectory of a sickle's chop.

The third strike was Judge's Brush Stroke, also known as Double Peaks Piercing Ears!

Back when a foreign boxing champion came to Jin Gate to provoke them, a Baji Quan expert boldly accepted the challenge. He used King of Hell's Three Strikes—a hooking palm that shattered the foreign champion's sternoclavicular joint, a palm chop that severed his carotid artery, and finally a fist that pierced both ears to deliver the killing blow!

Three palms killed the barbarian chief, and it made the newspaper's front page!

A patriarch had once annotated it: The three points are not merely three points—they are the Calamity of Heaven, Earth, and Man. Once the palm is unleashed, it judges yin and yang. A martial artist must keep the heart of a Bodhisattva's Gentle Gaze before wielding the hand of Vajra's Wrathful Gaze.

After spending more than two hours completely mastering this killing move, which normally took months to achieve, Huo Yuanhong gained an insight in his heart and truly understood the patriarch's annotation.

With the sacred conception of the Buzhou Mountain Fundamental Diagram as his foundation and the Fist Intent of heaven and earth collapsing as its form, he unleashed King of Hell's Three Strikes and blasted the humanoid wooden dummy into three sections!

"A killing move is not for slaughter, but for protection—to stop war with martial prowess, to protect the path in one's heart, and to protect those one cares about!"

"Yama resides within the fist; Bodhi remains within the heart!"

"This is the true meaning of King of Hell's Three Strikes!"

"Ground-Shattering Cannon is an all-out eruption that pursues the ultimate in power, while King of Hell's Three Strikes uses speed against speed and can be unleashed with almost no buildup. They perfectly complement each other!"

"Next comes the final move—Fierce Tiger Climbs the Mountain!"

Fierce Tiger Climbs the Mountain condensed the essence of Baji Quan's "hard opening, hard striking."

Back then, Baji Quan's founding patriarch combined Shaolin boxing with battlefield killing techniques to create this move for breaking the Japanese pirates' heavy armor. With it, he entered Shaolin Temple three times and broke its staff formations, earning the reputation of the "Divine Spear"!

The core of its technique was to break the opponent's vision with a face-splitting palm, follow with a Top Elbow Strike to shatter the breastbone, and finally stomp the knee to break the lower limbs.

At several hundred times the speed of ordinary martial training, by the middle of the night Huo Yuanhong had mastered this move as well. Without using the Tiger in the Cage or Ape in the Mind, he sparred in his ordinary state with the Martial Arts Hall's sole remaining Transformation Strength master.

They fought five bouts. At the beginning, that Transformation Strength master had only used the strength of Heart-Mind Unity. If his reactions had been any slower, Huo Yuanhong would have nearly beaten him to death on the spot!

In the second bout, the master raised his strength to around the middle stage of Intent-Qi Unity, thinking that should be enough. Yet under Huo Yuanhong's King of Hell's Three Strikes, his carotid artery was nearly split open, breaking him out in a cold sweat!

So, after that...

The Transformation Strength master had no choice but to raise his strength to the peak of Intent-Qi Unity before they could trade blows evenly!

A monster—he truly was a monster!

At this moment, the Transformation Strength master somewhat understood why Old Xu, despite having clearly retired, still dragged his aged body along to secretly protect Huo Yuanhong, keeping those pinnacle masters, Transformation Strength experts, and Dark Force experts from daring to show themselves.

With his eyesight, he could naturally tell that Old Xu truly could not fight now. His whole body was like a powder keg that would explode at the slightest spark, desperately squeezing out his remaining vitality to nurture his final killing move!

Old Xu was close to death. Especially in this state of gathering strength—he could originally have lived another ten years by cultivating himself and refraining from fighting, but now he likely could not even last half a year! And this state could not be interrupted. Unless a legendary Martial Immortal intervened, no one could save Old Xu!

But before his body truly collapsed, no one dared receive the ultimate, fully ascended final killing move of this pinnacle master on the verge of death!

Though a hero had reached his twilight years, he could still cow a pack of wolves!

Especially a ruthless figure like Old Xu, who had once been considered formidable even among pinnacle masters!

Even Two Heroes like Mo Wuji were unwilling to take this final killing move. Even if the Three Peaks joined forces, they still did not want to take it, fearing that one moment of carelessness would see Old Xu drag them along the road to death!

Old Xu had already declared that if any Dark Force or Transformation Strength expert dared lay a hand on Huo Yuanhong, he would certainly drag that person's pinnacle master along the road to death with him!

If he did not know which family they belonged to, then he would randomly pick one of Mo Wuji's three-man group and drag him along the road to death! Whoever got picked was simply unlucky! And if, with his aura locked onto them, any of the three dared run off first, Old Xu, with his terrifying movement technique, would still chase him down and drag him along the road to death. It was the equivalent of nailing them to Jin Gate and using them to indirectly restrain the other forces there!

There were too many lower-level experts to kill them all, and it was not worth the effort anyway. So he simply used his life to threaten the leaders at the very top! Whenever something happened, he would go all out against the one at the summit!

This madness made Mo Wuji and the others' scalps tingle. After all, even with a one-in-three chance, the odds of being chosen were quite high!

All three of them still had years to live. Even the oldest, the Wu Family Patriarch, had at least another twenty years of lifespan left. Naturally, none wished to be dragged down the road to death by Old Xu, who had little time left to live!

It was precisely because of the threat posed by Old Xu, this powder keg that could explode at any moment, that the situation in Jin Gate could maintain a certain degree of restraint.

Those Dark Force and Transformation Strength experts at most dared watch from afar. Whoever dared personally step in would receive a slap from Mo Wuji and the others! They feared being dragged down to death by them!

As for the Martial Persons from those gangs, in this Transformation Strength master's judgment, Old Xu had most likely deliberately allowed them as trials so that Huo Yuanhong could grow as quickly as possible and survive even after he no longer had Old Xu's protection. He hoped Huo Yuanhong would rapidly mature through one life-and-death struggle after another!

Otherwise, even if he could no longer act himself, Old Xu could have completely used his life to force Mo Wuji and the others to intervene and stop them!

Of course, even without Old Xu's threats, those high-status Dark Force Martial Masters cherished their lives greatly. Very few truly dared lay hands on Li Shuxing's disciple.

One had to know that in some ordinary small counties, one might not even find a single Dark Force Martial Master!

In ordinary prefectures, Dark Force practitioners were already Martial Arts Grandmaster-level figures, as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns! Their identity and status rivaled those of Jin Gate's Transformation Strength masters!

Even the fairly famous Ten Tigers of Guangdong were merely Dark Force Martial Masters!

Even in Jin Gate, where several pinnacle masters stood at the apex of the entire Celestial Empire and where vast resources had gathered experts from all across the Celestial Empire, Dark Force Martial Masters were still not common!

They were all prominent figures with families and estates to their names, and they cherished their lives dearly!

As for Transformation Strength, there was even less need to mention it. Outside Jin Gate, they could be honored as Grandmasters or even Great Grandmasters! They were unquestionably the leaders of their own schools!

It was also because the transformation from Manifest Strength to Dark Force was so immense—a fundamental transformation—that training Dark Force was terrifyingly difficult! Hard as climbing to heaven! It was even more difficult than advancing from Dark Force to Transformation Strength! After all, Transformation Strength was simply Dark Force trained into every corner of the body; its essence was the same as Dark Force. Unlike the leap from Manifest Strength to Dark Force, which was a transformation from an ordinary person into someone extraordinary!

The chance for a peak Manifest Strength practitioner to reach Dark Force was far lower than the chance for a Dark Force practitioner to reach Transformation Strength!

Training Dark Force had three stages: Heart-Intent Harmony, Intent-Qi Harmony, and Qi-Strength Harmony! They corresponded to the three aspects of spirit, qi, and essence! Only by raising all three—essence, qi, and spirit—could one transcend the limitations of the old body, transform from an ordinary person into someone extraordinary, and become a Dark Force Martial Master, a Martial Arts Grandmaster—someone regarded as a major figure wherever they went!

The Carriage Shop Owner and Old Six's lifelong pursuit was merely the hope that, after some years, the Chauffeur's Association might produce a Dark Force Martial Master and become a force acknowledged by the authorities!

"With your current strength, even if you run into those Qi-Strength Harmony fighters from the martial world or the gangs, you'll be able to protect yourself."

Old Xu assessed.

Heart-Mind Unity, Intent-Qi Unity, and Qi-Strength Unity were too much of a mouthful. Like Old Xu, many people still preferred the simpler terms: Intent Harmony, Qi Harmony, and Strength Harmony!

"Thank you, Old Xu. Thank you, Master Shen!"

After Old Xu and that Transformation Strength master left, Huo Yuanhong sat down as well and carefully reviewed his own strength.

With the advantages of two extra minor realms—Manifest Strength at its limit and Intent Harmony at its limit—on top of the formidable Fist Intent cultivated through the Buzhou Mountain Fundamental Diagram, the Peak Expert Combat Method of the Baji lineage, and his killing moves...

Without using Tiger in the Cage or Ape in the Mind, he was already able to trade blows evenly with a Transformation Strength master whose power had been suppressed to the peak of second-stage Qi Harmony. That meant he could absolutely crush those at the peak of Qi Harmony who came from the gangs.

And if he used methods like Tiger in the Cage and Ape in the Mind, comparable to the forbidden art Heavenly Demon Dismantling, doubling his qi and strength, doubling his willpower! Even against the strongest gang fighters at the final stage of Strength Harmony, he had a chance to blow them apart!

By then, those gangs would truly be slaughtered until their courage froze; they would never dare provoke him again!

Those youths who had become orphans would no longer have to huddle ten or more to a room, cowering uneasily in harsh conditions!

Besides...

"With my talent for absorbing medicinal effects hundreds of times faster, theoretically, so long as the Nourishing Supplements I use are good enough—good enough to offset the consumption of Tiger in the Cage and Ape in the Mind—I can completely use this beyond-the-limit burst technique as an ordinary method!"