Thunderous Sound

This pool of water looked green from the outside, and no one knew how deep it was. The last time Yi Yun had come to investigate, he had been completely unable to reach the bottom.

He had dived about ten meters when he began to feel pain in his eardrums.

The human eardrum was the most fragile part of the body. The first thing divers found unbearable when they went underwater was the pressure on their eardrums—even martial artists were no exception.

As he continued downward, the pressure on his internal organs was not yet too great, but his eardrums would rupture first. Yi Yun forcefully puffed out the air in his mouth, increasing the pressure inside it. The pressure on the inner side of his eardrums rose sharply and balanced out the pressure outside, making the pain disappear.

Yi Yun had no idea how deep he had gone. The light underwater was extremely dim. Only when he looked up toward the surface could he see the mottled sunlight filtering down.

To make it easier to draw strength from the rock in case of danger, Yi Yun kept close to the cliff wall. The wall was covered in jagged, grotesque rocks that stretched downward, growing darker and darker until they vanished completely into the darkness below. It felt like a terrifying, bottomless abyss.

Fortunately, Yi Yun had reached the Qi Long Realm, giving him extremely long breath control. With one breath, he could hold out for fifteen minutes without breathing.

On Earth, the record for holding one's breath underwater was thirteen minutes. Of course, that person had undergone professional training. If Yi Yun trained himself, he could last even longer.

The pressure grew heavier and heavier. Yi Yun felt as if his lungs were being flattened, while bodily fluids filled his chest cavity.

The ribs supporting his chest bore an especially tremendous weight. The sensation was like a giant bear stepping on his chest. Yi Yun could even hear his ribs creaking.

If he had not completed Bone Tempering earlier, his ribs would probably have broken by this point.

His abdominal cavity had completely contracted. The enormous pressure traveled into Yi Yun's body, compressing his bodily fluids and internal organs.

Slowly, Yi Yun felt that he had reached his limit.

Deep diving was an extremely dangerous activity. Once a person could no longer withstand the pressure and lost consciousness, death was certain. Their corpse would slowly sink to the bottom and be crushed completely.

On Earth, deep-diving enthusiasts had to make every possible preparation, including ropes, balloons, and other lifesaving equipment.

Yi Yun, however, had none of those things. He could only rely on himself to judge his limits.

"Thump! Thump!"

The underwater world was utterly silent. Yi Yun could hear his own heartbeat, and even the sound of his blood flowing.

The sunlight in the mountains was already dim to begin with. Combined with this depth of water, everything around Yi Yun had become pitch-black. In this silent environment, surrounded by darkness and immense pressure, the only thing he could sense clearly was the Origin Purple Crystal in his chest. Threads of coolness flowed out from it, spreading along with his blood.

That coolness was like the Fountain of Life from a myth. Although it was extremely faint, it preserved Yi Yun's vitality, allowing him to maintain basic awareness in such an extreme situation.

The feeling was like being back on Earth, when he had been trapped inside a cave beneath a collapsed mountain. The same silence, the same darkness, the same body pushed to its limits—and the same Purple Crystal accompanying him.

Yi Yun even felt that the Purple Crystal was the final refuge of his life. When his internal organs began to suffer damage under the tremendous water pressure, the Purple Crystal slowly repaired them, allowing them to recover as quickly as possible while also enduring the greatest pressure.

Yi Yun did not know how long he had stayed underwater. He continuously circulated the energy in his body according to the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist. When he felt that more than half of his breath had been used up, he began swimming upward.

A deep diver already had little remaining strength and little air in his lungs. Swimming upward consumed a great deal of strength as well. Ordinary deep divers on Earth could only rely on balloons to bring their bodies to the surface, but Yi Yun had to depend on himself.

This was undoubtedly another tremendous test of Yi Yun's heart and lungs.

Under such crushing pressure, even breathing and one's heartbeat had to withstand a hundred times the usual pressure.

Yi Yun held his breath and relied on his willpower, as well as the vitality the Purple Crystal gave him, to swim upward meter by meter until he broke through the surface!

"Splash!"

Yi Yun's head burst out of the water. He gulped down breath after breath, his face pale and his lips utterly bloodless. Even his pupils had lost their focus.

He had spent more than twenty minutes underwater and dived more than a hundred meters deep. Aside from one large rock, he had not relied on any auxiliary equipment. Yi Yun had never expected that his first attempt at cultivating Dragon Dances on the Vast Ocean would reach such a level.

Yi Yun swam out of the water. His hair was dripping wet. After breathing heavily for a long while, he faintly sensed that his body seemed different.

The Savage Power he had absorbed from the Savage Bone earlier had been completely digested. Before coming to this pool, Yi Yun had still felt an intense fullness in his body, but after this bout of cultivation, he felt ravenously hungry, as if he had not eaten anything for three or four days.

This was the effect of the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist!

The Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist, combined with the Savage Power contained within the Savage Bone, had sent Yi Yun's strength soaring!

"Really... exhilarating!"

Yi Yun could not help letting out a long howl.

"Crack, crack, crack!"

Amid his long howl, the joints throughout Yi Yun's body emitted a series of snapping sounds. They were not very loud, but they were exceptionally crisp, like steel beans popping in a pan.

"The Thunderous Sound Realm. This is the third layer of Mortal Blood—the Thunderous Sound!"

Yi Yun was overjoyed. Cultivating through the five layers of Mortal Blood was as natural as water flowing downhill, with no bottlenecks to speak of. As long as one worked hard and had sufficient energy, anyone could reach the five layers of Mortal Blood.

However, although everyone could reach the five layers of Mortal Blood, their cultivation speeds were worlds apart.

Those with good talent not only cultivated quickly, but also built a solid foundation that far surpassed ordinary people.

Those with poor talent, on the other hand, could spend three to five years stuck at the five layers of Mortal Blood without it being anything unusual.

Yi Yun felt that his talent should not be very good. When he had crossed over, he had been an ordinary person. He was thin and weak, with little strength, barely able to lift a thirty-pound stone lock.

How could such talent be considered good? It was even inferior to Big Head, the son of the firewood-burning laborer.

But with the help of the Purple Crystal, Yi Yun's cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds. In just half a month, he had already reached the third layer of Mortal Blood.

Then was it possible for him to become a Purple Blood Warrior two and a half months later, on the day of the Tai'a Divine Kingdom's warrior selection?

A Purple Blood Warrior would be an extraordinary existence in a small clan like the Lian Clan. It would be enough to throw the entire clan into an uproar and frenzy!

Regardless of who it was, anyone who became a Purple Blood Warrior in the Lian Clan would be revered like a god!

Within the clan, he would possess the greatest prestige and absolute power over life and death.

Yi Yun checked the time. This cultivation session had already lasted until the afternoon. He had cultivated from morning until afternoon, once again going a whole night without sleep.

Having just broken through to the third layer of Mortal Blood, the Thunderous Sound Realm, Yi Yun did not feel tired at all. He followed the meditation method of the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist to regulate his breathing for about an hour, and felt as refreshed as if he had slept for four hours.

"It's about time to temper the Savage Bone. I've cultivated all day, and I'm already so hungry my stomach is stuck to my back!"

Yi Yun had not eaten anything all day. Earlier, the energy of the Savage Bone had been supporting him. Although he had felt hungry, his body's energy supply had not been affected.

Now, after the high-intensity cultivation of the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist, the energy in the Savage Bone inside his body had been completely exhausted, making Yi Yun even more unbearably hungry.

After glancing at the sky, Yi Yun saw that the sun was about to set and returned to the village.

At the grain-drying ground, the large cauldron was blazing merrily. It was now time for the shifts to change.

Seeing Yi Yun return, Big Head's father pointed at the pile of firewood nearby and said flatly, "Chop all this firewood. You did nothing the entire night yesterday. We don't support wastrels here. If you can't finish this, you won't be eating today's porridge."

Yi Yun was speechless. As if I got any of yesterday's porridge. You all swarmed in and snatched it clean. I could count the grains of rice I managed to scoop up on my fingers. By the time I finished that bit of rice water, you had already licked the iron bucket clean. It didn't even need washing.

Yi Yun sat in a corner and began chopping firewood at an unhurried pace.

Some of the logs were as thick as a man's thigh. They had to be sawed apart first and then split into evenly sized sections so that the flames used to temper the Savage Bone would burn evenly.

Without revealing anything, Yi Yun chopped wood while no one knew that the large cauldron in his field of vision had already been covered by a spread of red-and-blue energy motes.

Earlier, when Yi Yun had used the Purple Crystal to absorb the Medicinal Power from the herbs, he had left a little medicinal broth for Lian Chengyu because he was afraid that Lian Chengyu would discover something was wrong with the herbs.

But absorbing the Savage Bone this time was different. Once Yi Yun absorbed all the energy within it, his strength would inevitably soar. By then, he would have no reason to fear Lian Chengyu.

Yi Yun felt that he also owed Lian Chengyu quite an apology. He repented inwardly for a while—

"Sorry, Young Master Lian. If I can't cultivate to the Purple Blood Realm, then there's nothing I can do. I'll probably have to eat this Savage Bone clean, without leaving a scrap. All I can say is sorry."

"If I'm lucky enough to reach the Purple Blood Realm before absorbing the Savage Bone completely, then I'll... well, I'll still have to eat it clean. After all, the Purple Blood Realm is merely the starting point of the martial path, and I still have a long road ahead."

"So you'll just have to be a good person all the way to the end. I'll remember you fondly in the future."

After finishing his repentance, Yi Yun began absorbing the Savage Bone's energy.

After his body had been starved of energy to the extreme, it wantonly absorbed the Savage Power. The sensation was indescribably refreshing.

The emptiness of one's internal energy and the feeling of hunger were two different sensations, but they had much in common.

When one was desperately hungry, what could be happier than being served a feast of delicacies?

Yi Yun did not stand on ceremony with Lian Chengyu at all. He could tell that this Savage Bone would last him quite some time.

One had to understand that when Lian Chengyu used the crude method of tempering the Savage Bone, he probably extracted only half of its essence. Yet even that essence was enough for him to break through to the Purple Blood Realm.

As for Yi Yun, the Purple Crystal absorbed the energy within the Savage Bone extremely thoroughly and efficiently. Moreover, Yi Yun's cultivation was still low—he was only in the Thunderous Sound Realm. Once this cultivation speed surged, it was enough to frighten even Yi Yun himself.

The book titled True Martial World had a namesake eunuch novel on another website, which was rather helpless. Since online novels first appeared, their number had exceeded a million. Many authors had come up with a title on a whim, posted a few chapters, and then abandoned the novel, leaving the title occupied. With more than a million titles taken, the titles available to later authors grew fewer and fewer. True Martial World was a new title I had planned to use very early on, but later discovered that it coincided with the title of a novel that had already been abandoned. Uh, when reading True Martial World, please make sure to look for the author—Cocooned Cow.