Once his intention was set, a scorching heat ignited deep within his marrow. The heat surged through his entire body with a thunderous rush, flooding straight into his mind.
Lu Jue felt his consciousness tremble faintly, as though some indescribable change had taken place throughout his body.
"So this is the Heart of the Savage Bull—dulling pain and strengthening willpower?"
After thinking for a moment, he went to the stove and lit a flame. Without hesitation, he brought his finger close to it.
The nerves in his fingertip immediately sent back the sensation of being seared by intense heat.
It hurt, but it was not the piercing agony that made one instinctively recoil. It felt more like a piece of "information" that needed to be handled.
His finger remained as steady as a boulder above the flame, utterly motionless. Three breaths, five breaths—until his skin was lightly scorched and the smell spread through the air, only then did he slowly withdraw his hand.
His fingertip felt numb with burning pain. The injury was real, yet the suffering that would have been enough to make an ordinary person collapse had been transformed by the Heart of the Savage Bull into a "phenomenon" he could calmly examine.
"An injured body will still transmit signals of damage as normal, but at least forty percent of the pain contained in those signals has been filtered out!"
"But that is only a temporary 'forty percent.' If this ability can continue to improve, what if it filters out sixty percent, eighty percent, or even completely cuts off pain?"
Lu Jue's breathing quickened slightly. Merely imagining that scene was enough to make his heart surge like the tide.
What a terrifying presence would a martial artist who felt no pain at all, yet retained complete combat awareness and explosive power, be on the battlefield?
It meant that in future battles, he would become a monster that knew nothing of pain. Severe injuries would not distort his movements, broken bones would not make him scream and collapse. So long as his will did not break, his body could fight until its final breath!
"Then let's test my current strength."
The tree that had taken a single person to wrap their arms around had already been ruined during his last strength test.
Lu Jue stepped out of the house and found another tree outside the courtyard, one that took two people to encircle. Standing before it, he neither gathered strength nor adjusted his breathing. He simply drew his fist slightly back, then punched out like a flung steel whip!
"Bang!!!"
Where his fist struck, the trunk exploded as if smashed by a giant hammer!
Wood chips sprayed backward like a torrential rain. The thick trunk snapped in the middle, and its upper half flew several yards away beneath the impact of that overwhelming force, accompanied by a string of teeth-grating tearing sounds. It crashed heavily to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Even more alarming was that the lower half of the stump, its tangled roots buried deep underground, had also been shaken by the residual force of that punch!
The soil swelled inch by inch. Countless gnarled roots were torn apart by brute force, and half the stump stood crookedly in place. Splinters jutted from the break like savage fangs, as though silently proclaiming the might of that punch!
"Force works both ways. Even if I could strike with this much power before, the rebound from the trunk would have been enough to make me suffer badly."
"And now, with the Iron Bone Stance perfected, my bones are as hard as refined steel and can withstand the recoil. On top of that, the Heart of the Savage Bull dulls pain."
"In other words, even if my target is a wall of steel, I can unleash my full strength again and again without a single reservation!"
Lu Jue slowly withdrew his fist and silently flexed his finger bones, feeling the vibration between his joints after forty percent of the pain had been filtered away.
The power contained in his fist was probably several degrees stronger than Li Zhanting's had been after taking the Crimson Blood Pill.
If they fought again, he was confident that one punch would be enough to blast through Li Zhanting's skull.
He glanced down at his phone. The screen showed that it was already one-thirty in the afternoon.
Tomorrow's Quota Competition would use phone-based drawing, so there was no need to rush back. He planned to wait for his father to return and say goodbye to him in person.
Just then, a forum notification popped into view—
"Reliable news! Tianhai City's East Gate has been sealed!"
Lu Jue quickly opened it.
The attached images showed several distant shots of the East Gate. The iron barricades had come down, and soldiers stood in dense ranks.
The poster claimed to frequently conduct business with the inner city. This morning, he had prepared a batch of medicinal herbs to transport there, only to be informed that Tianhai City's only route to the inner city—the East City Gate—had been closed!
No one inside the city was allowed to leave!
"The East Gate has been closed?"
Lu Jue's pupils shrank as his fingers rapidly scrolled down the screen.
The comment section had already exploded. Panic and speculation spread through the chaotic messages, but one piece of information seized his gaze in an iron grip:
"It's probably true! A friend of mine works at a martial hall. He let something slip while drinking last night—an expert at the Divine Strength level from their hall secretly headed to Yunyuan City two days ago."
Others below chimed in as well, saying that their fathers were Gang Strength martial artists who had likewise secretly rushed to Yunyuan City the day before yesterday.
Lu Jue tapped to turn the page, intending to keep reading the later posts, but the page suddenly froze. Then a cold notice appeared—
This post involved false information and has been deleted by the administrator.
East Gate closure. Yunyuan City.
Yunyuan City lay right beside Tianhai City. Both were key nodes along the western defense line.
His eyelids twitched violently as a sense of foreboding rose in his heart.
At this moment, all the unreasonable clues from before were threaded together by the line called "Yunyuan City"!
Why had the Jin Kingdom introduced Student Diversion at a time like this?
Why was Tianhai City forcibly requisitioning nearly forty percent of the city's supplies, causing prices to soar?
Why had Tianhai City sealed the East Gate and forbidden everyone from heading to the safer inner city?
Why were Divine Strength experts secretly heading to Yunyuan City?
This was likely the prelude to something enormous breaking out!
And the core location was probably in neighboring Yunyuan City!
Could a massive beast tide be approaching?
That was the only possibility Lu Jue could think of.
The massive beast tide ten years ago had flattened five cities on the same level as Tianhai City.
In this world, the regions between outer cities and inner cities like Tianhai City were called safe zones, but that was only because the Jin Kingdom government regularly cleared out Calamity Beasts above Tiger-grade.
Within safe zones, low-level Calamity Beasts still bred and wandered in the shadows like weeds that could never be fully cut away. There was even no shortage of high-level Calamity Beasts that had slipped through the net.
Trade between cities and countries came with thresholds.
That was also why commoners in this world found it so difficult to rise. Nearly all cross-border trade was controlled by the Power Elites and Great Families, and more than ninety percent of commoners would never leave their city in their entire lives.
Therefore, Tianhai City's tightly sealed East City Gate was not meant to stop commoners. It was meant to prevent the influential clans and great families who controlled more than half the city's strength from fleeing at the first sign of trouble, causing the morale on the front lines to collapse and the defense line to crumble before battle was even joined!
Thinking this, he drew a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his emotions.
When the sky fell, there were tall people to hold it up. No matter what happened, his current focus was tomorrow's Quota Competition.
According to the agreement he had signed with the martial academy, "If outstanding performance is shown during the sponsorship period, rewards may be granted according to the circumstances, or the time spent serving as an instructor may be reduced."
And Zhao He's scheme in this Quota Competition was obvious. He wanted to gather all the top-ranked commoner students into his own hands, using them to control the right to speak in the first round of future Martial Arts Examination selection.
No matter what, this threatened the martial academy's original purpose and interests.
What Lu Jue needed to do was tear a gaping hole in Zhao He's plan, claim the martial academy's reward, and swiftly turn it into real, tangible strength.
Only strength was reliable capital amid these undercurrents and the looming collapse of a great building!
Before you continue