Morning in Nujiang County, river mist still hung thick in the air, carrying that familiar, faintly fishy, salty dampness.
Yet the atmosphere in the Training Ground behind the Black Water Gang's Main Hall was unusually grave.
"Did you see that clearly?"
Lu Chen's voice was calm, yet it carried an unquestionable authority.
He stood in the middle of the Training Ground, one hand behind his back as the other slowly rose, his five fingers curling into claws. Without touching anything, he merely clawed through the air at a waist-high bluestone beside him.
"Hiss—"
It was as though a faint sound of cloth tearing rang through the air.
Zhao Tieshan, standing opposite him, suddenly shrank his pupils.
From where he stood, he saw no earth-shattering spectacle. He only saw a faint wisp of white frost qi, nearly invisible to the naked eye, flash past Lu Chen's fingertips.
Then—
Crack!
A deep claw mark suddenly appeared on the surface of that incomparably hard bluestone.
The mark had not been carved by some sharp weapon. Instead, it looked as though something had forcibly "gouged" a chunk out from within the stone itself.
What made one's scalp prickle even more was that the edges of the claw mark were covered in a thin layer of frost, while the surrounding stone had taken on a strange, brittle texture, as if it had weathered away over countless years.
"This... this is..."
Zhao Tieshan's eyes widened, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty, his face full of disbelief.
He too was an expert of the Meridian Connecting Realm and had immersed himself in blade techniques for many years. He considered himself capable of splitting this bluestone apart with a single slash.
But for Lu Chen to claw through the air, breach the stone's defenses, and inflict it with