System Limitations

"Quick, chase him! Don't let that brat get away! I've been watching him every day—he made several hundred taels in just a few days. Once we torture the prescription out of him, we'll be rich."

The second group in the dense forest finally caught up. The one who had shouted was Skinny Monkey, the fake Martial Arts Manual seller running in the middle of the group.

When the eight of them arrived, panting heavily, they saw five bloody corpses—and Zhong Lin standing in their midst like a demon god.

Everyone froze, staring blankly at Zhong Lin.

Zhong Lin straightened up as well, watching the group before him with a half-smile.

"Here already?"

Gulp!

Skinny Monkey swallowed involuntarily, his legs turning weak—especially when he saw the three heads at his feet, their eyes still wide in death.

It was not as though he had never seen dead people, and he had seen plenty of people get hacked down. But this was the first time he had seen someone other than an executioner who enjoyed chopping off heads.

"Brothers, get him! He's alone! Catch him and we'll be rich! Besides, he's been fighting for so long, he must be out of strength!"

Skinny Monkey shouted, and the others, their eyes blinded by greed, charged at Zhong Lin in a frenzy.

This time, Zhong Lin did not throw lime powder. He met them head-on.

They had been slower than Dong Yan's group by one step. At most, they had only just become Ranked Martial Artists. What the hell was there to fear?

The man in front appeared to have trained in martial arts. He leaped into the air and swept his right leg toward Zhong Lin's temple.

However—

Zhong Lin neither dodged nor evaded. With a crack, he caught the man's right leg in a backhand grip.

Normally, an arm could not twist against a thigh, much less take a fierce kick head-on. Yet Zhong Lin had not only caught it, but clamped down on it so tightly that the man could not move.

"A... a Ranked Martial Artist... Skinny Monkey, I'll fuck your mother!"

The instant Zhong Lin seized his right leg, the man realized a terrifying truth: the person they had come to ambush was actually a Ranked Martial Artist.

He was merely a street thug whom Skinny Monkey had sweet-talked into coming for easy money. Even if he had the guts of a bear and the gall of a leopard, he would not have dared to rob and kill a Ranked Martial Artist. Unfortunately, it was already too late.

Crack!

Zhong Lin twisted hard, and under the force of five hundred jin, he snapped the man's right leg.

"Ah... spare me... spare me."

A flash of steel. The Ghost Head Saber slid lightly across, and a life vanished there and then.

With a stomp of his foot, Zhong Lin crouched slightly and surged into the crowd like a hunting leopard. The Ghost Head Saber in his hand swept through the air. In the pitch-black night, they saw only a streak of white flash past—but after it passed came spraying blood, and another life disappeared.

The eight people before him were all unranked street thugs, at most a little stronger than ordinary people. Killing them could not have been easier.

Of course, perhaps it was not that these people were too weak, but that Zhong Lin was too strong.

An Eighth Rank Tendons Transformation Realm martial artist, possessing the strength of five hundred jin, with saber techniques and movement techniques maxed out under the system's enhancement...

For someone like that to kill a group of ordinary people was simpler than slaughtering chickens. In only a few breaths, every one of them fell beneath Zhong Lin's blade.

"Whew! Finally, some peace and quiet."

He swept his gaze around. Thirteen corpses lay scattered about, and the thick stench of blood rushed into his nose. Even Zhong Lin felt a wave of nausea.

"This is no place to linger. Now that the matter is settled, I should leave as soon as possible."

His thoughts churned as Zhong Lin hurriedly searched the bodies.

He first rifled through Skinny Monkey's group, finding only some Big Coins and broken silver. Altogether, it came to no more than three taels of silver.

"Poor bastards."

Zhong Lin cursed inwardly, though he could understand it. They were just a bunch of street thugs, and they had come to rob and kill him—why would they carry much money on them?

He did find a book on Skinny Monkey. It looked like some sort of martial skill, but Zhong Lin truly could not tell whether it was real or fake. Since this fellow specialized in selling counterfeits, he did not take it.

Dong Yan's group, on the other hand, yielded a substantial haul.

Dong Yan was an Eighth Rank martial artist, while the other four were all Ninth Rank. They were nothing like Skinny Monkey's gang of street thugs. Setting everything else aside, the weapons they carried alone could fetch a fine price.

Zhong Lin did not touch those weapons. Weapons were far too conspicuous. The previous owner of the Ghost Head Saber had merely been a street thug, so it did not matter. But the owners of these weapons had all been Ranked Martial Artists. Who knew whether they had backers, relatives, or friends? He had no desire for the little ones to bring out the old ones.

After searching them, Zhong Lin obtained sixty-five taels of silver and twelve Blood Replenishment Pills.

What excited Zhong Lin most was finding five Bone Strengthening Pills on Dong Yan's body.

"Good stuff. These are pills for tempering the bones and advancing to Seventh Rank. Too bad this guy didn't drop his Martial Arts Manual."

"True enough. In novels from my previous life, killing someone and having cultivation methods or nameless divine artifacts drop was entirely for the sake of the plot. How could reality have such good things? Who goes out carrying Martial Arts Manuals every day?"

Zhong Lin did not regret it. Taking his spoils, he hurried away beneath the cover of night.

The midnight wind blew away the stench of blood clinging to Zhong Lin as he returned home.

Little Shi still waited for Zhong Lin to return before sleeping. Zhong Lin lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

"System."

Host: Zhong Lin

Skills: Archery (Max Level), Flying Locust Stone (Max Level), Three-Dimensional Painting (Max Level), Calligraphy (Max Level), Cooking (Max Level), Iron Mountain Skill (Max Level), Instant Kill Technique (Max Level), Black Tiger Fist (Max Level), Willow Catkins (Max Level), Wind Breaking Saber Technique (Max Level), Medical Arts (Max Level), Medicine-Making (Max Level)

Skill Points: ∞

Two more skills had appeared in the skill list. The former had formed through Zhong Lin's study of medical arts, while the latter had formed when he experimented with refining pills and making medicine.

Zhong Lin had once again discovered a loophole that was not quite a loophole—medical arts, for example.

Having transmigrated from his previous life, Zhong Lin knew that the human body was an extraordinarily intricate system. Some physicians chose different directions when learning how to heal the sick and save lives, such as the internal medicine, surgery, neurology, dermatology, and colorectal departments he often saw...

Zhong Lin was not arrogant enough to believe he could master every medical method. The "Max Level Medical Arts" in his skill list was more an integration of the medical texts he had studied these days, such as Treatise on Cold Damage, Materia Medica Primer, and Essentials of Diet and Nutrition. It was also max level only with regard to those particular books.

At the same time, Zhong Lin understood that a skill's so-called max level merely meant reaching the limits of that skill's creator.

This was perhaps the rigidity of the System Panel. It could not cast off the old and bring forth the new, much less break through the limitations of the skill's creator.

Even so, it was already incredibly powerful.

As he pondered, drowsiness rose within him, and Zhong Lin sank into sleep.

Early the next morning, the two brothers got up. Rather than going out for breakfast, they cooked rice porridge at home and boiled a few eggs.

On the way to take Little Shi to Teacher Liu, Zhong Lin noticed that there were even more refugees and beggars in the city. He also encountered constables and runners from the yamen who had arrived early to maintain order.

Those fellows were usually notoriously lazy. Since when had they ever risen so early?