That night, word that the blacksmith shop had received an order for a Thirty Refinements Weapon reached the Black Tiger Gang's headquarters.
"Hm? The Li Family Blacksmith Shop has a decent reputation around here. If they dared accept the order, they must be confident they can deliver... Maybe Li Tie will personally take on the job this time."
Wu Heng's first reaction to the news was surprise and suspicion. As he thought it over, a flash of delight crossed his eyes.
The Black Tiger Gang's leader, Zhao Xuan, would celebrate his birthday in two months. Wu Heng had been racking his brains over what to give him, and now the perfect gift had practically come knocking at his door.
A fine weapon was a valuable thing to a Martial Artist; it could significantly boost their combat strength.
"But what excuse should I use this time?"
As Wu Heng pondered, the sound of porcelain smashing came from outside, followed by a maid's panicked cry. His train of thought broken, Wu Heng's face turned murderous. He shoved open the door and strode out.
The maid saw Wu Heng, and her face went deathly pale. She swallowed hard and hurriedly dropped to her knees.
"Master, please spare me this once. I-I didn't do it on purpose."
The maid frantically kowtowed and begged for mercy.
Wu Heng glanced at the broken bowls and plates on the ground. A flash of inspiration struck him. He reached for the saber at his waist. The long blade had been forged by the Li Family Blacksmith Shop, and it had come out of the forge only last month.
Shing!
Wu Heng drew the saber. At the glint of cold light, the maid shuddered all over and kowtowed until her head was bloody.
"The Li Family Blacksmith Shop seems to have taken on a new blacksmith with remarkable skill lately... This saber he forged really is quite good. Heh."
Looking at the saber in his hand, Wu Heng found himself an excuse to cause trouble. He bared his teeth in a grin, his jowls quivering as he let out a chilling laugh.
"These medicines for dispelling dampness and driving out parasites really are useless."
Su Mu had gone home the previous night, boiled the medicine, and taken it. A whole night had passed without the slightest reaction. It had no effect at all.
To be honest, even now Su Mu knew very little about the poison inside him.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
As two forging apprentices worked the bellows with all their might, blue flames flickered from the furnace. Word that Su Mu would be forging a Thirty Refinements Weapon had spread through the smithy the day before.
Today, Li Tie assigned two forging apprentices to assist Su Mu with all their strength. As they pumped the bellows, both apprentices kept their eyes fixed on Su Mu as he swung his hammer. Respect showed on their faces as they tried to learn something from his technique.
Clang!
"The furnace isn't hot enough. Put your backs into it."
"Yes, Master Su."
Su Mu swung his hammer without pause. The early stages of forging a Thirty Refinements Weapon—the repeated hammering and folding of the iron billet—were especially important. Only after tempering the steel a hundred times could it be forged into a weapon.
As he hammered the billet, Su Mu alternated between Tiger Subduing Fist and Rock Shattering Fist. With his strength behind every blow, each strike made the entire anvil shudder and ring. The two apprentices watched, swallowing hard again and again.
"Could Master Su have been born with divine strength?"
With his plans in place, Su Mu's days were utterly fulfilling. Ten days later, another peaceful evening arrived.
Beneath the dusky sunset, Su Mu practiced Five Animal Frolics as usual, loosening the muscles he had worked all day at the forge. His youthful body moved through the poses, bringing the five creatures—the tiger, deer, bear, ape, and bird—to life.
Each movement flowed seamlessly into the next, gradually taking on an unusual grace. The poses were still simple, but in Su Mu's hands they possessed a beauty that seemed to return to nature itself.
A villager passing by glanced over casually, then stopped in his tracks, captivated. He did not come to his senses until night had completely fallen over the land.
"How strange. What came over me?"
After muttering in confusion, the villager looked again. The Su family boy was still the same Su family boy, practicing the same old set of moves. There was nothing remarkable about it—except that he seemed more like the birds and beasts of the mountains than he had before.
After the villager left, Su Mu remained immersed in a mysterious state beneath the night sky. Every inch of his flesh and blood was utterly relaxed. He felt as though he were floating, and as his strength circulated, his muscles and bones trembled. His body slowly underwent a transformation.
After a long while, the youth exhaled deeply into the darkness. His eyes shone bright.
"Five Animal Frolics has reached perfection!"
Su Mu understood. After more than a year of arduous practice, he had finally brought his first skill to perfection.
"My body seems to have changed somehow?"
Su Mu slowly extended his right arm. As his flesh shifted, his arm gradually thickened a little, its muscles sharply defined as if carved by a blade and chisel, radiating strength.
Smack!
Su Mu threw a fierce punch. He had not even drawn on the strength within him, yet the blow still stirred the air. A crisp crack rang out across the open space.
"This feels a little like Twin Tiger Stack, but I haven't activated Twin Tiger Stack... I see. Once the Five Animal Frolics created by Divine Physician Hua Tuo reaches perfection, it greatly improves my control over this body. Now my control is almost perfect."
"That means I can adjust my body to its peak condition whenever I want. I can even temporarily break through my limits, like with Twin Tiger Stack, and bring out more of my body's potential."
"I'll call this move 'Limit Break' from now on... In the Limit Break State, the power of my fists and feet should increase by at least half."
Su Mu threw several more punches before stopping. He quickly realized that the Limit Break State was indeed quite similar to Twin Tiger Stack. The difference was that Twin Tiger Stack placed an enormous strain on his body. After just a few punches, he could barely keep going and would even lose the ability to fight.
By contrast, after reaching perfection in Five Animal Frolics, he could maintain the Limit Break State and keep fighting for quite a while, with greatly reduced side effects. Twin Tiger Stack essentially pushed beyond Su Mu's control over his own body, while Limit Break remained entirely under his command.
Thinking this over, Su Mu looked pleased and surprised.
"Tomorrow's my day off. I should visit Qingyun County."
Qingyun County was the center of the surrounding area, governing thirteen towns, including Qingshui Town. It lay seventy li north of Qingshui Town, nearly a hundred li from the village.
Ox carts ran between Qingshui Town and the county seat, charging two hundred copper coins per person for a trip. They left town at dawn and, if all went well, arrived at the county seat around noon the following day. In rainy weather, they might not arrive until evening.
Compared to ox carts, merchant caravans traveled much faster, but even they needed a whole day to cover seventy li.
Dongbian Village had dozens of households and more than a hundred villagers, yet only a handful had ever visited the county seat. The sights and stories from a single trip there could keep a villager talking for a lifetime.
"I'll set out early tomorrow. A hundred li shouldn't take too long."
Before the rooster crowed, the waning moon hung high in the sky. Su Mu tucked several Silver Notes inside his shirt, put on a straw rain cape and bamboo hat, and left the village.
A figure streaked along a mountain path, leaving afterimages in his wake. Gravel flew, and the force of his passage sent the mountain weeds thrashing wildly.
Su Mu, with Five Animal Frolics perfected, three Ninth Rank martial arts under his belt, and a long-term regimen of Three-Complete Body Strengthening Soup, possessed an astonishing physique. Even an ordinary Martial Artist at the Refined Strength stage was nowhere near his equal.
His powerful physique gave him long-lasting breath and strong internal organs. With the near-perfect control over his body granted by Five Animal Frolics at the perfected level, Su Mu could run for dozens of li at a hundred-meter pace that surpassed the limits of the human body in his previous life.
In less than an hour, just as a sliver of dawn showed on the horizon, Su Mu reached the outskirts of Qingyun County.
The county walls stood nearly twenty meters high. Qingyun Army soldiers in leather armor and carrying spears patrolled along the top. From a distance, the county looked like a gray beast sprawled across the land.
It was still early. A Qingyun Army guard at the gate glanced at Su Mu's coarse linen clothes and casually asked him a few questions. After Su Mu answered, he paid fifty copper coins and entered the city.
As he passed through the gate, the din of the city reached his ears. The broad streets opened up before him, wide enough for three or four carriages to ride abreast. Merchants and pedestrians flowed through them, and the tall walls surrounding grand courtyards on either side made Su Mu look twice.
"What a fine county seat!"
Su Mu exclaimed. Qingyun County was several times more prosperous than Qingshui Town. Compared to the county seat, Qingshui Town was little more than the countryside.
After spending some money to ask around, Su Mu soon arrived at a quiet medical clinic in a courtyard on the county seat's eastern street.
"Cloud Crane Medical Hall. This is the place."
But the clinic's bamboo gate was shut. A small wooden sign hung on it: The master has gone traveling. The clinic is closed.
Su Mu was stunned when he read the sign. He had journeyed a hundred li to the county seat only to hit a wall. After asking around again, he soon arrived at an impressive three-story medical hall on the central avenue.
"Renji Medical Hall."
Su Mu went inside, where a young Pharmacy Apprentice came to greet him. Seeing Su Mu's coarse hemp clothes, the apprentice's smile immediately cooled. "Are you here for a consultation or to buy medicine?"
"For a consultation."
Su Mu waited for nearly half an hour before the Pharmacy Apprentice led him up to the second floor. After Su Mu described his condition, the middle-aged physician, who looked to be around forty, regarded him with suspicion.
The physician took Su Mu's pulse and ran through a series of examinations, all without result. Then he opened a packet of Silver Needles, heated them over a flame, and inserted them into Su Mu's acupoints.
Before long, the physician pulled out the first needle. Seeing that it had not changed at all, he furrowed his brow and began to wonder whether Su Mu had been lying to him.
One needle after another came out. Still, none had changed.
But when the needle between Su Mu's chest was removed, the physician's pupils suddenly contracted. The several-inch-long needle was pitch-black and gave off an unusually foul, fishy stench.
Seeing the needle turn black, Su Mu felt a surge of joy. Perhaps there was hope of curing the poison after all.
"This is Shanzhong Acupoint on the Ren Meridian, near the heart... Strange. Why has only the needle here changed color?"
The physician stared at the pitch-black needle in his hand. It was so dark and viscous that the poison could not have entered Su Mu's body only recently. Then an appalling sight unfolded: the needle began to melt before their very eyes. The physician hurriedly threw it to the floor. Black liquid splattered onto the ground, and the floor hissed as wisps of black smoke rose, corroding it into a small hole.
"Hiss, what a fearsome poison..."
The physician's face filled with alarm. Remembering the symptoms Su Mu had just described, he said gravely, "You may have been afflicted by some kind of Gu Poison. It's lodged around your heart and lungs. Gu Poisons come in all manner of strange varieties, and I haven't studied them much. Even an ordinary physician in Qingyun County might be unable to cure such a vicious Gu Poison, let alone me..."
"Perhaps only Pharmacist Lin can try. Unfortunately, you've come at the wrong time. Pharmacist Lin left on a journey yesterday."
"Physician, do you know how long Pharmacist Lin will be gone?"
"A few days at the shortest, several months at the longest. I can prescribe a few medicines to detoxify you, but I can't guarantee they'll work."
"Understood. Thank you, Physician."
After leaving the medical hall, Su Mu couldn't help feeling somewhat heavy-hearted. Still, this trip had yielded quite a bit. At least now he knew the poison inside him was likely some kind of potent Gu Poison lodged near his heart.
"I'd better head back first."
After leaving the city, Su Mu walked along the road. Six or seven li later, he came out of his thoughts and suddenly looked wary. He heard a series of strange noises coming from the woods not far ahead, but they did not sound like wild rabbits or pheasants.
Su Mu looked closely. Suddenly, the bushes shook, and a man wearing leather armor and covered in blood stumbled out of the woods.
"From the way he's dressed... Is he with the Qingyun Army?"
Someone actually dared to hunt down a Qingyun Army soldier outside Qingyun County?
Su Mu was startled. The Qingyun Army man was covered in wounds. Just then, the man noticed Su Mu not far away. His expression shifted abruptly, but when he realized the youth wasn't one of the pursuers, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Then he cried out urgently, "Get out of here, quickly!"
Su Mu immediately sensed trouble. He knew the Qingyun Army soldier meant well, but after that shout, escaping would only get harder.
Sure enough, the forest stirred, and several burly silhouettes appeared among the trees.
"Hurry, he's over there!"
The men pursuing the soldier had arrived.
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