Now, Can I Go In?

The light at the cave entrance was completely blocked by six figures.

Six steel Armor Piercing Crossbows, strings drawn, glinted with a ghostly blue poison sheen as they remained trained on the depths of the dark bear cave.

"Fire!"

Scarface, the leader, did not dare underestimate his opponent and bellowed.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Six armor-piercing bolts instantly tore through the air and shot into the cave.

But the next second, there was no movement inside.

No screams, nor the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground.

"Where is he?" A hunter raised his torch and leaned a step forward.

The instant the firelight illuminated the rock wall.

A huge hand, as though cast from pig iron, suddenly reached out from the shadows and seized his throat!

"Kacha!"

Before he could even scream, the hunter's throat bone was crushed. His head drooped limply.

"He's here! Shoot him!" The leader turned pale with fright and immediately swung his crossbow around.

But it was too late.

Having stepped into the Late Bone Forging Realm, Sun Yu's speed and explosive power had already surpassed the understanding of these lowly hunters.

Sun Yu casually hurled the corpse in his hand forward as a shield, his body crashing into the crowd like a cannonball fired from its barrel!

"Bang!"

The corpse slammed into two men, and the tremendous impact sent them flying out of the cave.

Sun Yu drew his blade with the momentum.

In the wind and snow, the blade light stretched into an incomparably frigid streak.

There were no flashy moves, only pure speed and strength.

"Splat!"

Two heads shot into the air. Before the scalding blood could spray onto the ground, the Extreme Cold aura carried on Sun Yu's blade instantly froze it into dark-red ice shards!

The Internal Breath's chill, born after the Cold Toad Breath Swallowing Technique reached Major Accomplishment, was incomparably tyrannical.

The remaining leader was scared out of his wits and frantically pulled the trigger of the repeating Armor Piercing Crossbow in his hand.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

Several bolts struck Sun Yu's chest and shoulders, only to be deflected by that layer of Dark Gold skin membrane.

Expressionless, Sun Yu closed in. His left hand clenched into a fist as he drove a punch into the leader's chest.

"Boom!"

The leader's chest instantly caved in. The fur coat on his back violently burst open with a huge hole, shattered ribs and chunks of flesh spraying out from behind him.

One punch through!

In the span of three breaths, all six desperadoes who had spent their lives licking blood from blade edges were utterly annihilated.

Sun Yu shook the blood from his woodcutter's blade and sheathed it.

He crouched down and quickly searched the six corpses.

A moment later, Sun Yu frowned.

Between the six of them, there were fewer than thirty taels of loose silver—not even a single silver note.

The Armor Piercing Crossbows were decent, but unfortunately too large and cumbersome to carry.

"Poor bastards."

Sun Yu stuffed the loose silver into his clothes.

He tore off a thick bearskin coat from the leader's body, one that was still relatively intact, and draped it over himself.

The heavy snow continued to fall.

After getting his bearings, Sun Yu stepped into snow deeper than his knees and plunged without looking back into the vast depths of Black Crow Mountain, racing toward the Icefall Black Market a hundred li away.

Three days later.

At the edge of Black Crow Mountain lay an enormous, exceptionally concealed gorge.

Massive icefalls hung upside down from both sides of the gorge. The freezing wind howled through it like the wails of ghosts and the cries of wolves.

This was the Icefall Black Market, the gathering place for every bandit, desperado, demonic cultivator, and black-market merchant within a hundred li.

There was no law, no order.

So long as one had sufficient strength and silver, anything could be bought here.

Wrapped in a thick bearskin coat, Sun Yu wore a battered conical hat that concealed most of his face.

He blended into the stream of people entering the valley, trudging slowly through the muddy black snow.

The air was thick with the pungent stench of blood, the reek of cheap liquor, and severed limbs scattered everywhere.

By the roadside, several skin-and-bones wild dogs were gnawing on a frozen corpse.

Yet the people passing by did not so much as blink.

At the entrance to the gorge stood two enormous pillars of ice, serving as its gates.

A tiger-skin grand chair had been placed before them.

A Brute nearly two meters tall, with muscles bulging all over his body like slabs of rock, sat sprawled imposingly in the chair.

Bare-chested, he had a bleeding wolf tattooed across his chest and was idly toying with two exceedingly heavy mountain-splitting axes.

He was a minor boss from one of the gangs on the outskirts of the black market, specifically assigned to collect tolls at the entrance.

"Stop!"

The Brute planted one foot on the wooden chest before him, which was filled with gleaming silver fragments.

He raised his eyelids and swept his gaze over Sun Yu's tattered bearskin coat and patch-covered cotton boots, a trace of disdain flashing through his eyes.

"A new face, huh?"

The Brute slapped his thigh with the flat of his axe and grinned savagely. "Do you know the rules? Fifty taels of silver to enter the black market."

The crowd waiting nearby immediately fell silent, all looking at Sun Yu with sympathy.

The black market's entrance fee had always been only two taels of silver.

Seeing Sun Yu dressed like a shabby, impoverished hunter and traveling alone, the Brute was clearly trying to extort him on purpose.

Sun Yu stopped.

He raised his head slightly. Beneath the shadow of his conical hat, his eyes were as calm as a pool of dead water.

"I'm only here to buy something. I'm not looking for trouble," Sun Yu said hoarsely.

"Buy something? Looking like that, can you even afford a coffin?"

The Brute burst into wild laughter, and several gang lackeys around him joined in.

"Cut the crap! If you can't produce fifty taels, leave one leg behind as your admission!"

The Brute's gaze turned fierce, giving Sun Yu no chance to take out any money.

Once they killed this brat, all his money would be theirs anyway.

He abruptly rose to his feet. The sixty-pound mountain-splitting axe in his right hand whipped up a shrieking gale as it slashed viciously down at Sun Yu's right kneecap!

If this blow landed, forget a leg—even an iron pillar would be chopped in two.

He intended to use this foolhardy hunter to establish his authority, while also intimidating the people waiting behind him.

The crowd drew sharp breaths. Some even turned away, unable to bear the sight of the coming bloody mess.

However.

At the instant the axe blade was about to touch his knee!

The muscles in Sun Yu's right leg abruptly tightened, and his foot smashed through the solid ice beneath it.

Bang!

Borrowing that terrifying recoil, Sun Yu's left leg became a blurred afterimage, striking after yet arriving first!

The monstrous strength of the Perfection Realm Iron Skin Bear King Skill, combined with bones in the Late Bone Forging Realm as hard as divine iron.

This kick directly tore through the Sound Barrier, unleashing an exceptionally muffled airburst!

Boom!

Sun Yu's foot struck the Brute squarely in the abdomen, which was as hard as rock!

The savage grin had not even faded from the Brute's face.

He only felt an overwhelming force, like mountains toppling and seas overturning, mixed with an incomparably cold, bone-piercing chill, surge from his abdomen into his internal organs in an instant!

Kacha Kacha Kacha!

A dense volley of cracking bones rang out.

The Brute's massive, nearly two-meter-tall body was launched backward, both feet leaving the ground!

Rumble!

The Brute's body slammed viciously into the enormous ice pillar at the gorge entrance, a pillar so thick it would take three people linking arms to encircle it.

The hard ice pillar instantly filled with spiderweb cracks before collapsing with a thunderous crash, sending ice and snow flying everywhere!

Pfft!

The Brute landed amid the shattered ice and violently spat out a mouthful of blood.

The moment the blood hit the ground, it was frozen by an eerie chill into dark-red shards of ice.

More than a dozen bones in his chest and abdomen had broken. After convulsing twice, he passed out cold.

The entire gorge entrance fell deathly silent.

The few gang lackeys who had been jeering along just moments ago were now like roosters with their necks wrung, mouths hanging wide open yet unable to make a sound.

The people in line recoiled in utter terror, forcibly clearing a large empty circle around Sun Yu.

One kick!

With nothing but pure physical strength, he had killed a mid-stage Skin Tempering Realm gang leader in a single kick!

Sun Yu slowly withdrew his left leg.

"Can I go in now?" Sun Yu asked calmly.

The lackeys around him staggered back in fright, not daring to answer at all.

Just then.

Clap! Clap! Clap!

A crisp round of applause came from a wooden building above the black market entrance.

Everyone looked up.

A gloomy-faced middle-aged man in a blazing red fox-fur robe stood by the second-floor railing, looking down at Sun Yu.

There was no anger in his eyes. Instead, they gleamed with undisguised fascination.

"What domineering Hardening Skill. What ruthless methods."

The middle-aged man vaulted over the railing and drifted lightly down onto the snow without making the slightest sound.

Great Perfection of the Bone Forging Realm! He had even faintly touched the threshold of the Viscera Refining Realm!

Sun Yu narrowed his eyes, his right thumb instinctively pressing against the hilt of the hunting knife at his waist.

"Don't misunderstand, friend."

Seeing this, the middle-aged man immediately stopped, an exceedingly courteous smile spreading across his face.

"That fool didn't know life from death and offended an expert. He deserved to die. The Icefall Black Market has always respected only the strong."

The middle-aged man gave a slight cupped-fist salute and stepped aside, clearing a path.

"Fine skills, friend. Please, come in."