His scabs hadn't all fallen off yet, and his new skin was tender as a freshly peeled egg, but beneath it hid iron-hard muscle. Li Yuan paced around the courtyard several times. The restless energy in him didn't ease; it only grew fiercer. The meals and Medicinal Bath in Class A Room were like another armload of dry kindling thrown into a blazing furnace, crackling and popping.
No, he had to get out.
Not to the training ground. There were too many rules there, and he couldn't cut loose. He needed somewhere empty, where he could properly gauge the sinews and bones he'd just Smelted.
Before dawn had fully broken, he tucked the increasingly sharpened Iron Rod into his clothes and silently vaulted over the martial hall's back wall. Morning mist hung from the bare branches like torn cotton. He avoided the main path, picking his way along narrow trails trampled by wild beasts that hugged the mountain ridges, deeper into Black Mountain Forest.
The farther in he went, the taller the trees grew and the dimmer the light became. The stench of rotting leaves and animal musk thickened, too. Before, he would have been on edge, wary of every little thing. Now, he felt only... exhilarated. The layer of humus beneath his feet was soft, yet when he stepped down, he could feel the firm ground pushing back. His arm occasionally brushed saplings as thick as bowls, making their trunks shudder and their leaves come fluttering down.
He stopped in a small clearing and drew in a deep breath of icy air. His lungs expanded, and the crisp scent of grass and trees sank straight into his heart. He took a stance, not following any fixed technique, simply summoning the heavy, hot Qi and Blood within him as he pleased.
He threw a punch at nothing in particular, just to let off steam. His fist ripped through the air with a short, muffled whoosh. He shifted his feet, snapping the dead branches underfoot. His movements grew faster and faster as he darted around the clearing, sometimes like an old bear ramming a tree—steady and fierce—and sometimes like a vicious serpent rolling over, crafty and deadly. The newly Smelted Qi and Blood flowed more smoothly than any single cultivation art he'd practiced before. The instant he willed it, the strength was there.
At the peak of his exhilaration, his ear twitched.
It wasn't the wind or the roar of a beast. It was the faintest rustle of cloth against leaves, mingled with a repressed chant, its cadence strangely rhythmic.
Li Yuan instantly stopped and drew every trace of his presence inward. Like a rock suddenly drained of life, he slipped soundlessly behind an ancient tree wide enough for two people to wrap their arms around, his sharp gaze fixed on the sound.
Through gaps in the layers of bushes, he saw several indistinct figures in a lower patch of forest not far away. They all wore near-black-green cloaks, almost blending into the moss and shadows around them. They stood in a small circle. On the ground at its center was a twisted symbol drawn in something dark red. It looked like an eye without eyelids. Stuck upright in the middle was a pitch-black object that resembled the leg bone of some kind of bird, with a cloudy bead embedded in its tip.
In the air, that faint, chilly aura that made the "Crimson Sun" within him stir uneasily emanated from the symbol and the bone.
The Netherworld Cult!
Li Yuan's pupils narrowed. He recognized the symbol. It looked a little like the one he'd seen at the underground Altar, only cruder.
He held his breath as one of the cultists picked up a battered leather pouch and poured its viscous, dark red contents over the symbol. Blood. The chanting suddenly rose, charged with a fervor that made his scalp crawl. The symbol on the ground seemed to come alive, glowing faintly as it drank in the blood. The chill aura abruptly intensified.
Li Yuan could even feel goosebumps rising over his newly formed skin. It wasn't fear, but the instinctive revulsion of something violated. The "Crimson Sun" in his dantian seemed to have been splashed with cold water, sending him a clear sense of rejection...and a trace of hunger.
Just then, he accidentally stepped on a completely dry twig.
Crack.
In the dead silence of the forest, the sound rang out like a scream.
The chanting stopped abruptly.
All the green-cloaked figures whipped around. Several cold, wary gazes shot from beneath their hoods, fixing on the spot where Li Yuan was hiding.
"Who's there?!"
The nearest cultist barked, reacting in a flash as he sprang forward. A gleam of green flashed beneath his cloak—a short blade, its edge coated with poison, stabbed straight at the far side of the ancient tree!
Li Yuan knew he couldn't stay hidden.
Instead of retreating, he stepped out from behind the tree and straight toward that glint of steel! He neither dodged nor flinched. His left hand shot out like lightning, five fingers hooking around the attacker's knife-wrist with pinpoint precision.
The cultist felt as if his wrist had been clamped in red-hot iron tongs. Pain stabbed to the bone, and the short blade slipped from his grasp with a clatter. He looked up in shock and met Li Yuan's eyes, terrifyingly bright in the gloom.
Li Yuan gave him no time to react. He yanked the captured wrist toward himself, and his right fist shot up like a cannonball, slamming into the unprotected pit of the man's stomach!
Pfft!
The muffled impact sounded like a sledgehammer smashing a sack full of grain.
The cultist's eyes bulged. His body folded like a shrimp, and the punch lifted both his feet off the ground, sending him flying into a tree trunk behind him. He slid limply to the ground, silent.
It all happened in the blink of an eye.
The remaining cultists were both shocked and enraged.
"You're dead!"
"Kill him!"
Two rushed him at once. One threw a punch straight at his face, its force laced with a chill, while the other silently circled around his flank, fingers curled like claws as he struck for Li Yuan's kidney.
Li Yuan advanced instead of retreating. He met the incoming fist head-on and, without dodging or flinching, slammed his own forehead into it!
Thud!
The fist struck his brow with a dull, teeth-grinding impact. The cultist who'd thrown it felt as if he'd hit red-hot pig iron. Pain shot through his knuckles, and a wave of searing heat surged back, numbing his entire arm. His face went white with shock. Before he could understand what had happened, Li Yuan's knee came up like a sledgehammer, smashing into his groin.
His scream cut off the instant it began.
At almost the same moment, the vicious claw from the side struck home. Li Yuan's abdominal muscles clenched, as if covered in a slick layer of rubber. The claws dug in, but the attacker's fingertips felt as though they were grabbing oil-soaked rhinoceros hide. They couldn't get a grip and slid aside.
Li Yuan drove his elbow backward with the movement!
Crack!
The sound of a bone breaking rang out clearly. The attacker's ribs caved in, and he collapsed to the ground, spitting blood without even a groan.
In an instant, three men were down.
The last one—the one who had led the ritual from the start—had a pale, terrified face beneath his hood. He stared at Li Yuan as if he were a vicious beast crawling out of hell. He abruptly pointed the black bird bone, its bead embedded in the tip, at Li Yuan and chanted a shrill incantation.
A visible stream of Gray-Black Airflow, thick with decay and malice, shot toward Li Yuan like a venomous snake!
Li Yuan's pupils contracted. He could feel how vicious the force was. Almost instinctively, the newly Smelted Qi and Blood within him surged wildly. His muscles swelled, his frame growing subtly larger, and the dark-red sheen beneath his skin suddenly brightened!
He didn't dodge. With a low growl, he threw a punch straight into the Gray-Black Airflow! Qi and Blood steamed over his fist, carrying a scorching, savage, masculine force!
Sss—
The Gray-Black Airflow hit his fist and vanished like snow under boiling water, hissing as it Melted Away, then evaporated! The remnants of its icy energy tried to burrow into his arm, but the solid barrier Smelted beneath his skin held firm. At last, his surging Crimson Sun Qi and Blood swept over it, scattering and devouring it completely.
Li Yuan felt only a slight numbness in his fist, which soon returned to normal. Instead, the "Crimson Sun" in his dantian seemed to have grown just a hair more solid.
The cultist leading the ritual was completely dumbfounded. The hand gripping the bird bone trembled like a leaf in the wind. His strongest incantation had actually...actually been smashed apart by the other man's fist?!
Li Yuan gave him no second chance. He pushed off, sinking the ground slightly beneath his feet, and shot toward the man like a gale. He opened his hand and clamped it around the cultist's throat, cutting off the rest of his incantation.
"What are you doing here?" Li Yuan's voice was low, carrying the bloody stench of fresh slaughter as it poured into the man's ears.
The cultist's eyes rolled back as Li Yuan choked him. His throat made a gurgling sound. Face-to-face with Li Yuan's monstrous, knotted muscles and the undisguised, predator's ferocity in his eyes, the cultist's mental defenses crumbled in an instant.
"I'll tell you...I'll tell you...it's... it's a marker...to locate...for the 'Sacred Sacrifice'..." He stammered, words spilling out in a disjointed mess.
Li Yuan furrowed his brow. Sacred Sacrifice? A marker?
He was about to press for details when a sudden premonition made him jerk his head toward the depths of the forest. An even stronger, heart-chilling aura was rapidly approaching!
His eyes turned cold. He didn't hesitate.
His fingers tightened.
Crack.
After a crisp snap of breaking bone, the man in his hand fell silent. Li Yuan tossed the limp corpse aside as casually as a sack of trash.
He glanced at the sinister symbol still glowing faintly on the ground, then sensed the powerful aura closing in fast. He had no intention of lingering. Turning, he took off. After a few leaps, his figure vanished into the dense forest, leaving only a bloodied mess and corpses cooling on the ground.
The forest fell silent once more. Only the wind threading through the treetops let out a mournful howl, as if playing a funeral dirge for the brief, bloody encounter.
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