He planted himself in a bow stance, clenched his fist, and poured all the internal energy in his body into it before slamming it down viciously.
"Boom!"
The thick stone wall shook violently. A large chunk of rock burst free, and his blow left a crater more than ten centimeters deep and thirty to forty centimeters across in the heavy stone slab.
"Boom, boom!"
When the third thunderous boom erupted, the thirty-centimeter-thick stone wall was punched straight through. Amid the clouds of dust, several massive crossbow bolts shot out. One struck the edge of the irregular hole in the stone wall, while the other two hit the long saber Lin Xiao held across his chest, the sparks bursting from the impacts especially conspicuous in the gloom.
After fighting so many battles, he had accumulated plenty of experience. There would definitely be a mechanism behind a door like this.
After using several punches to widen the hole in the stone door, he slipped through the smoke and pressed himself against the edge of the stone wall, avoiding two waves of crossbow bolts. He arrived in an underground chamber, where several bandits were operating three large crossbows positioned at the exit. Several of Black Cloud Village's leaders were moving things behind them. This underground chamber was where they hid their treasure, and there was another exit at the very back, presumably leading outside the village.
Seeing him barge in, the bandit chief's expression changed drastically when Lin Xiao swiftly killed the men operating the crossbows. He dropped to his knees and said neatly, "Young hero, as long as you spare me, all the treasure here will be yours."
Seeing that Lin Xiao's expression did not change in the slightest, he gritted his teeth and said, "I also know a secret related to King Lanling. If you spare me, young hero, I'm willing to tell you."
"Hmm?"
Lin Xiao furrowed his brow slightly and asked, "What secret?"
"You have to swear that you'll let me go."
Lin Xiao's brow twitched. His figure flashed and vanished, and then two screams rang out in the underground chamber. The heads of the two men standing to the right of the village chief flew straight up, spraying blood all over him.
"I'll talk! Young hero, I'll talk!"
The village chief's face went white with terror. But Lin Xiao flashed again, killing everyone in the underground chamber except the village chief with several consecutive slashes. Even the second and third leaders were dealt with in a single stroke.
Only after killing everyone did he cut a piece of cloth from a corpse and leisurely wipe the blood from his saber. He raised a brow and looked at the chief coldly. "Tell me, and I'll spare your life."
Such ruthless methods terrified the usually ferocious bandit chief into not daring to waste a single word. He hurriedly said, "A year ago, another young hero came here to uphold justice, but he wasn't as skilled as you. Afterward, I took a map from him. It marked the location of King Lanling's treasure vault. I heard that, apart from the many treasures King Lanling had amassed, he also hid the peerless martial art he cultivated inside."
"Hmm! Where's the treasure map?"
The village chief hurriedly took a piece of hide of unknown origin from the bundles packed behind him. A crooked map had been drawn on it, with a red dot at its very center. That was the famous treasure vault of King Lanling.
This King Lanling was not the same King Lanling who was said to be one of the Four Great Beauties of ancient times. He was a tyrannical figure from the martial world more than a hundred years ago. It was said that his Lanling Castle had dominated the Northern Martial Arts World for decades, and he himself had been a supreme martial artist. The internal cultivation method in his Lanling Treasure Codex was a peerless Two-Star Peerless Grade martial art, and the codex also contained a complete set of techniques above Two-Star High-Grade. It was one of the martial world's three supreme secret manuals.
More than a hundred years had passed, and King Lanling had long since become dust. Even Lanling Castle was gone. Yet the treasure vault he left behind had become one of the greatest treasures in the martial world, and countless martial artists—including the major factions—wanted to find it.
However, Lin Xiao looked back and forth at the map, then suddenly rolled it up between his hands and rubbed it into powder. The bandit chief stared at him in shock and pointed at him. "You... That really was a map to the treasure vault!"
"Of course I knew it was real, but I don't need it."
He pressed down with one palm. A chain of crisp cracking sounds rang out as he directly crushed the man's entire head into his chest.
Treasure hunting was far too troublesome. Besides, the map had been drawn so sloppily that he could not tell where the place was at all. With the time it would take to search for the so-called Lanling treasure vault, he would be better off exterminating bandits everywhere and collecting Potential Points. If he wiped out a dozen bandit dens like Black Cloud Village, he could accumulate several hundred Potential Points. Wasn't that far more worthwhile than searching the entire world for a treasure vault whose location he did not even know?
There was a pile of treasure Black Cloud Village had looted in the underground chamber, probably worth several thousand taels of silver. Unfortunately, he was not short of money now and had no use for it. The currency commonly used in the Primordial Gate was not silver either, so taking it would be pointless.
Most importantly, he had no storage space on him. He had nowhere to put anything he took, so he could only pick through the pile to see whether there were any valuable items that were easy to carry.
He searched the entire underground chamber from top to bottom and actually found some good things. The bandits might once have robbed a medicine merchant, because one of the chests contained several brocade boxes. Inside, they were lined with bright yellow silk, and several century-old wild ginseng roots and fleeceflower roots were laid within. One of the largest ginseng roots had medicinal potency of more than three hundred years.
Lin Xiao was rather surprised. He chewed and refined all the medicinal ingredients right there in the underground chamber. This batch alone brought him fifty-six Potential Points. Adding the extermination of Black Cloud Village, his Potential Points had now broken through one hundred, reaching a total of 104.
"Sure enough, growing is much faster after leaving the organization."
He had only been out for a short while, yet he had already exterminated several bandit strongholds. The Potential Points Lin Xiao had gained had surpassed the total he had obtained in the Great River Gang.
Now that his Potential Points had exceeded one hundred, he naturally had to use them. He did not need to go anywhere else. He would stay here and block the exit, and then he would be safe.
He tossed the corpses aside, sat cross-legged on the bloodstained floor, and opened the attribute panel. It displayed—
Lin Xiao.
Yang Fiend Scripture (Two-Star High-Grade), Eleventh Layer. (Mastered)
Yin Fiend Scripture (Two-Star Mid-Grade), Ninth Layer. (Mastered)
Flying Heaven Steps (Two-Star Low-Grade), Sixth Layer.
Three Rivers Heart Method (One-Star High-Grade), Second Layer.
Three Rivers Saber (One-Star Mid-Grade), Fourth Layer. (Mastered)
Dark Cloud Saber (One-Star Mid-Grade), Fourth Layer. (Mastered)
Riptide Saber Technique (One-Star Mid-Grade), Fourth Layer. (Mastered)
Potential Points: 104.
With enough Potential Points and no need to consider the order, his intent first settled on Flying Heaven Steps. With a thought, thirty whole Potential Points vanished and transformed into an invisible force that surged into his body.
In an instant, countless phantoms appeared before his eyes, each one practicing Flying Heaven Steps. Every phantom performed the footwork from a different angle and in a different manner. These experiences flooded into his mind like a rising tide, and the experience of every illusion was simultaneously burned into his body's memories, as if all those countless phantoms were him.
In less than a minute, the phantoms vanished completely. Lin Xiao opened his eyes, a flash of clarity passing through them, and another him appeared out of thin air to his right. Two Lin Xiaos stood in the stone chamber.
When he turned his head to look at the place where he had been sitting, that figure faded away like a dream or a bubble.
Flying Heaven Steps—mastered!
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