A Mere Parlor Trick

Whoosh~

A wave of heat rolled over him as sand and wind surged, swallowing the world.

On the ochre-yellow Gobi stretching to the horizon, Wu Dao covered his face with black cloth to shield himself from the sandstorm. He crouched beside a bandit who was barely clinging to life and asked the question on his mind.

"Panshui Town... Strange Treasure appeared..."

The bandit spat up a mouthful of blood and struggled to utter that one sentence. He had no other information.

He was already hanging on by his last breath.

A Strange Treasure?

A treasure, or...

Something strange?

Wu Dao narrowed his eyes, interest kindled.

Now he was like a hungry beast that had tasted blood, keenly alert to any information about the strange.

If this were an ordinary world, he wouldn't care much about a Strange Treasure. At most, it would be gold, silver, and jewels.

But this was a world of the extraordinary!

Anything connected to the strange could hardly be an ordinary trinket.

"No wonder..."

Wu Dao rose and crushed the barely breathing bandit's skull beneath his foot. He casually rubbed the flesh and blood off his shoe, and his earlier doubts were settled.

These people probably weren't bandits at all. They were martial artists on their way to Panshui Town to hunt for treasure.

Passing through here, they saw him alone with a bulging bundle on his back, and greed got the better of them. One wrong step, and they'd lost their lives.

"Panshui Town, is it?"

Wu Dao pulled a sheepskin map from his clothes and studied it.

In the upper-left corner of his route, he found the crescent-shaped marker for Panshui Town. It was roughly seventy or eighty li from this stretch of Gobi, in the opposite direction from Qingyuan County, his original destination.

"If I keep going straight, I'll reach the border of Qingyuan County in another dozen or so li..."

Wu Dao hesitated, but only for a moment before deciding to make a detour to Panshui Town first.

Though the Four Seas Gang was closely connected to the strange, its strength was nothing to scoff at either.

It was a major power that dominated an entire prefecture.

There was no way its upper ranks were all the likes of Meng Qingshuang.

Even if he went to Qingyuan City now, he'd have to keep to the shadows and plot in secret. He wouldn't be able to make much progress in the short term.

Rather than aim too high and waste time,

he might as well seize the gains right in front of him.

The average strength of these bandits wasn't low.

Wu Dao had gauged their strength after only a few exchanges, comparing them to the progress of his Potential Liberation in the Beast King Realm at its peak, which corresponded to the Divine Strength Realm at its pinnacle.

None of them were Divine Strength experts, but most were skilled fighters in the Rigid-Soft Realm, and their leader had even reached the Inner Strengthening Realm.

Something that a group of such strong fighters called a "Strange Treasure" couldn't be simple. Perhaps it could propel him all the way into the Heroic Domain.

After resting on the Gobi for an hour,

the sandstorm finally subsided.

Wu Dao's stamina had also returned to its peak.

Glug, glug~

He took the large waterskin he'd seized from the bandits off his waist and drank half of it in one go, filling his belly with water.

Inhale~ Exhale~

He adjusted the rhythm of his breathing.

Then he stepped out from the mountain's shelter, which had shielded him from the wind and sun, entered the empty-minded state of Stealing Heaven's Secret, and prepared for another long-distance desert run.

Seventy or eighty li was neither far nor near for him now. The blazing sun and harsh conditions made it an ideal place for Extreme Training of the body.

Whenever he had the chance, he couldn't afford to slack off on the path of human evolution. It was a habit he'd always maintained in his previous life.

Hm?

But just as Wu Dao bent down and prepared to push off with his legs, his brow furrowed.

Something felt wrong!

Very wrong!

As if a lump of dog shit were stuck to him, or a thorn were lodged in his flesh—an unbearable irritation, both physical and mental.

His right arm!

Whoosh!

Wu Dao's gaze sharpened. He abruptly rolled up his sleeve and carefully examined his savage right arm, its muscle fibers roped together like coiled dragons.

Couldn't see it with the naked eye?

But something was definitely there, making him deeply uncomfortable.

Invisible?

Wu Dao's expression turned cold. He shut his eyes, his breathing thundered, and a fiery red glow surrounded him as he entered the God-Ghost Heaven state.

Hum!

In an instant, it was as if his body had been thrown into a furnace. He burned fiercely, squeezing the energy stored within him until even the water he'd just drunk seemed to drain away.

Fortunately,

Wu Dao wasn't fighting, so his tissues didn't need to be repaired by the Myriad Healing Fluid. The side effects of God-Ghost Heaven weren't severe, and he could ignore the backlash for a short time.

Clang, clang, clang!

As he entered the God-Ghost Heaven state, one shackle after another snapped open deep within his mind. His physique and mental perception surged, and he seemed to gain a rudimentary ability to see within himself.

Wu Dao focused his heightened spiritual perception on his right arm. At last, beneath the skin of his forearm, he "saw" a faint, blurry Snake Mark.

A mark?

Meng Qingshuang... Snake demon...

Wisdom shimmered in Wu Dao's eyes, as divine and saintly as a god's. Images flashed through his mind, information flowed, and in an instant he understood the cause and effect.

Whoosh~

He exhaled a breath of hot air,

then left the overloaded state of God-Ghost Heaven. The strange sensation throughout his body disappeared, and he narrowed his eyes at the mark on his right forearm.

A moment later,

he gave a grim smile, opened his huge mouth lined with triangular shark teeth, and tore the Snake Mark—and the skin and muscle beneath it—from his right arm. He chewed it up and swallowed it.

With his physique at the peak of the Beast King Realm, his regenerative ability was already approaching the inhuman.

In just a few minutes,

the hole he'd bitten into his right arm stopped bleeding and formed a thin scab. That was all, though. He didn't have enough energy to grow new flesh and fill it in.

"Evolution Point +0.76."

"Evolution Point: 29."

A moment later, a message appeared in his mind.

The discomfort vanished without a trace.

And it had brought him to a nice, even number of Evolution Points.

"Heh, a mere parlor trick. Not even worth a bite."

Wu Dao licked the blood from the corner of his mouth and sneered. He paid no mind to the pain in his right arm.

Still, the incident had given him a warning—

After fighting the extraordinary beings of this world, he had to check himself over immediately.

Otherwise,

he wouldn't even know when someone seeking revenge had crept up behind him!

To be safe,

he took off the clothes he'd looted from Meng Qingshuang's residence and found a clean set of clothes among the corpses.

While he was at it,

he used their waterskins to wash himself thoroughly, then checked his body carefully. Only after confirming that nothing was wrong did he decide to set off.

"Looks like I won't have to worry about missing Panshui Town before nightfall."

Feeling the hot lump of flesh and blood in his stomach, Wu Dao grinned. He entered the state of Extreme Training and sprinted toward Panshui Town, kicking up a trail of sand behind him.

His physique had reached the limit of the Beast King Realm.

His body itself was a Great Medicine, its flesh and blood packed with medicinal power. The energy from that mouthful of meat in his stomach was enough to sustain him through a long stretch of extreme exercise.

Panshui Town.

It belonged to Yanhe County and lay in Crescent Oasis on the edge of the Black Stone Desert, with the great desert to the front and a sea of forest behind.

Because it was remote and hard to reach, it had been a lawless den beyond the reach of the law since ancient times. Its people were fierce and vicious, hostile to outsiders and fond of bullying the weak. The town's infamy had spread far and wide.

But recently,

the residents of Panshui Town, who had always lorded it over the place like petty emperors, had found themselves suffering day after day.

The reason

went back to a bizarre incident five days earlier, deep within Canyun Mountain on Crescent Isle—

The town chief's youngest son had gone up the mountain to sightsee with three friends. They didn't return that day, and when they were found in the mountains the following day, all four were dead!

It wasn't the work of wild beasts or bandits.

Nor had they fallen off a cliff.

Their deaths were simply too bizarre—the bones in three of the bodies had vanished, while the remaining flesh had turned like dough left to ferment.

Their limbs and necks had been stretched into long strands of dough, tied to tree trunks and running from one end of the forest to the other.

The scene was horrifying beyond belief.

A hunter out in the mountains had been scared out of his mind. He ran all the way back to town, screaming at the top of his lungs.

He only managed to name the place.

Right before everyone's eyes, the hunter's neck stretched out like dough, his head dropped to the ground, and he died on the spot.

News of such a bizarre incident quickly spread throughout Yanhe County, and it even showed signs of reaching the surrounding areas.

Rumors flew, and everyone had something to say.

Some claimed the mountain god was angry, others blamed evil spirits, while still others said a treasure had appeared and ordinary people had suffered a backlash for lacking the fortune to claim it.

The more the story was repeated, the more versions there were.

Some feared it like a tiger and turned pale at the mention of it, while others were determined to get to the bottom of things, their eyes gleaming.

In just a few days,

the little town of Panshui had become the talk of Yanhe County. Martial artists from all walks of life, treasure hunters included, streamed in, stirring up trouble and turning the place into a miniature martial arts gathering.

The residents of Panshui Town bore the brunt of it.

Martial artists were mostly powerful and overbearing, quick-tempered and fond of using force to make their point.

On top of that, the imperial court was rotten, and the law was all but nonexistent. Drawing a blade and killing someone over a disagreement was practically an everyday occurrence.

Over the past few days,

the residents of Panshui Town had finally learned what it meant when bad men met their match.

Their little tricks of swindling, cheating, and fleecing people were a joke compared to the martial artists' bloody, brutal methods.

Quite a few residents of Panshui Town had been beaten to death or crippled for no reason in just a few days.

But all they could do was swallow their anger and keep their heads down, living in fear and praying the trouble would end soon.

"Sigh, when will this all be over?"

Under the gate tower of Panshui Town,

Li San, a guard, gazed at the red sun sinking behind the desert beyond Crescent Lake. He looked as if he'd just lost his mother, heaving sigh after sigh.

In the old days, guarding the gate had been a cushy job. He'd trained a keen eye since childhood and had become a master at judging people and serving them according to their station.

In just a few days, he could usually line his pockets and head to the county seat for a good time. Life had been as carefree as a god's.

But now, disaster had struck.

Ever since the town chief's second uncle's unlucky relative had met with disaster in Canyun Mountain, life had gone from bad to worse.

Forget lining his pockets—when he ran into one of those bad-tempered martial artists, even a moment's delay in answering earned him a slap across the face. The swelling there never went down.

If there weren't still a few easy marks among the ordinary people who came to gawk, people he could squeeze for a little money to get by, he'd have quit on the spot.

"Just hang in there. I reckon this'll last a while yet. Didn't you hear? That thing went on another rampage last night. I was so scared I didn't dare sleep a wink."

Beside him, Zhao Si, dark circles under his eyes, nervously echoed him.

"Come on, it's bad enough there being a monster in the mountains, but there really are ghosts in town too?"

At Zhao Si's words, Li San shivered despite the heat, clutching his wooden spear and rubbing his gooseflesh. "I always thought those martial artists were behind it."

"Who knows? That corpse was twisted into a pretzel. Didn't look like a person had done it, anyway..."

Still shaken, Zhao Si sighed. "The old saying was right after all: times of chaos breed monsters. When the world goes bad, all kinds of filthy things crawl out. Let's wait another couple of days. If it's still like this, I'm running for it... Uh."

Before he could finish,

Zhao Si suddenly looked like a duck caught by the throat. His face filled with horror, and he stared ahead with dead-fish eyes, trembling like a sieve.

"Damn it, are you possessed?!"

Li San had no idea what was going on. Zhao Si's theatrics made him curse, but his eyes still followed Zhao Si's gaze.

The next moment,

his face turned as pale as gold paper too. He stammered, "S-so tall. Where did this barbarian come from?"

The Golden Crow sank toward the west, the dying sun blazing like fire.

Under the blood-yellow light, a towering, broad-shouldered shadow strode down the road, kicking up sand like a fiendish beast from the primordial wilds.

His massive, nearly nine-foot frame was draped in a black robe. He had a leopard's head and round eyes, a broad face and heavy jaw, a tiger's back and waist, and arms thick enough to race a horse. His eyes held an empty desolation, and he exuded an awe-inspiring presence even without showing anger!

He looked like the chief seated on a tiger-skin chair in Black Wind Stronghold, or the King of Ten Thousand Beasts roaming the untamed wilds.

His fierce, domineering aura came roaring from far away, freezing their blood and leaving them as if they'd fallen into an abyss.

The Southern Frontier was a land of brocade mountains and embroidered rivers.

Men and women alike were, for the most part, handsome and graceful, refined and delicate. As the saying went, a man stood seven feet tall—and even among martial artists who specialized in Hard Qigong, few reached that height.

(One foot was about thirty centimeters.)

That was the common understanding.

So it went without saying how oppressive Wu Dao's hulking, brutish nine-foot frame was.

He only had to stand in a crowd, and it was like a savage muscleman had barged into a refined academy. The whole scene looked completely different.