[Child's Play]

Whoosh, whoosh~

Heatwaves slammed into his face, and rolling sandstorms engulfed the world.

On the yellow, horizon-stretching Gobi desert, Wu Dao covered his face with a black cloth to block the grit. He crouched down and asked the dying Sand Bandit on the ground about the doubts in his heart.

"Panshui Town... Strange Treasure revealed..."

The Sand Bandit coughed up a mouthful of blood and spat out a single sentence with great difficulty; other than that, there was no more information.

Because he only had a single breath left hanging in his chest.

Strange Treasure?

Wealth and treasure, or...

An anomaly?

Wu Dao's eyes narrowed, and his interest was ignited.

He was now like a thirsty beast that had tasted blood, extremely sensitive to information regarding "anomalies."

If it were a Strange Treasure in an ordinary world, he wouldn't pay it much mind—it would just be gold, silver, or jewelry at best.

But this was a supernatural world!

Anything that could be linked to an anomaly could not be a common, vulgar object.

"No wonder..."

Wu Dao stood up and crushed the skull of the dying Sand Bandit with one foot, casually scraping the flesh and blood off his sole. His previous doubts were resolved.

Most of these people were not Sand Bandits at all, but martial artists heading to Panshui Town to hunt for treasure.

Passing through this place, they saw he was alone and carrying a bulging pack, so they developed malicious intent. One wrong step, and they lost their lives.

"Panshui Town, is it?"

Wu Dao pulled a sheepskin map from his breast pocket to examine it.

He found the crescent-shaped landmark for Panshui Town to the upper left of his route. It was about seventy or eighty miles from the Gobi desert where he stood, and it was in the opposite direction of his intended destination, Qingyuan County.

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

Wu Dao hesitated, but only for a moment before making his decision: he would go to Panshui Town first.

Although the Four Seas Gang had intricate links to anomalies, their strength was not to be underestimated.

They were a major power that dominated an entire prefecture.

The strength of their upper echelons, no matter how he thought about it, couldn't all be on the level of Meng Qingshuang.

Even if he went to Qingyuan City now, he would have to hide and skulk, plotting in the shadows; it would be impossible for him to achieve much growth in the short term.

Rather than aiming too high and wasting time, it was better to seize the benefits right in front of him.

The average strength of this group of Sand Bandits was not low.

Based on the progress of his Potential Liberation corresponding to the peak of the Divine Strength Realm, he had gauged their strength after just a few exchanges.

Although there were no Divine Strength experts, they were basically all skilled fighters in the Rigid-Soft Realm, and their leader had even reached the Inner Strengthening Realm.

A thing that could be called a "Strange Treasure" by such a group of tough men could not be simple; perhaps it could allow him to transform into the Heroic Domain in one go.

After resting in the Gobi for an hour, the sandstorm finally subsided.

Wu Dao's physical energy had also been readjusted to its peak state.

Glug, glug~

He took the large waterskin he had snatched from the Sand Bandit off his waist and drained half of it in one go, filling himself up with water.

Hoo~ ha~

He adjusted his breathing rhythm.

He stepped out from the foot of the hill that had shielded him from the wind and sun, entering the clear and bright state of Stealing Heaven's Secret, preparing for another desert long-distance run.

Seventy or eighty miles was neither short nor long for him now. With the scorching sun and the harsh environment, it was the perfect setting for Extreme Training of the physical body.

As long as there was an opportunity, the path of human evolution could not be neglected for even a moment; this was a habit he had maintained since his previous life.

Hm?

But just as Wu Dao crouched down and his legs prepared to exert force, his brows furrowed.

Uncomfortable!

Extremely uncomfortable!

It was as if a lump of dog shit was stuck to his body, or a thorn was jabbed into his flesh; both physically and mentally, he felt incredibly repulsed.

In the area of his right arm!

Swish!

Wu Dao's gaze sharpened. He violently rolled up his sleeve, carefully scanning his savage right arm, where corded muscles coiled like crouching dragons.

Invisible to the naked eye?

Yet, something was undeniably present, causing him extreme discomfort.

Is it invisible?

Wu Dao's expression turned cold. He closed his eyes, his breathing thundering like a storm, his body glowing fiery red as he entered the God-Ghost Heaven state.

Hum!

In an instant, his body felt as if it were placed in a furnace, burning frantically, squeezing out the energy stored within his tissues. The water he had just consumed in his stomach vanished rapidly, as if leaking out.

Fortunately.

Wu Dao was not in a combat state; his bodily tissues did not require the Myriad Healing Fluid for repairs. The side effects of God-Ghost Heaven were not severe, and he could ignore the backlash for a short time.

Clang, clang, clang!

Upon entering the God-Ghost Heaven state, shackles deep within his brain were unlocked. His physical constitution and mental perception soared, faintly granting him a rudimentary ability for Internal Vision.

Focusing his surged mental energy on his right arm, Wu Dao finally "saw" a vague Snake Mark beneath the skin of his forearm.

A mark?

Meng Qingshuang... Snake demon...

Wisdom flickered in Wu Dao's god-like, saintly eyes. Images and streams of information flowed through his mind, and in a heartbeat, he understood the cause and effect.

Hoo~

Exhaling a puff of hot air, Wu Dao exited the overloaded God-Ghost Heaven state. The abnormalities around his body vanished, and he narrowed his eyes, staring at the location of the mark on his right forearm.

A moment later.

He smiled grimly, opened his blood-red maw filled with triangular shark-like teeth, and tore off the Snake Mark on his right forearm along with the skin and muscle. After chewing, he swallowed it into his belly.

With a Beast King peak constitution, his self-healing ability was already becoming inhuman.

Within a few minutes.

The hole he had bitten into his right arm stopped bleeding and formed a thin scab, though that was all; he lacked sufficient energy to grow new flesh to fill the void.

Evolution Point +0.76.

Evolution Point: 29.

A moment later, a message appeared in his mind.

That sense of unease vanished without a trace.

And it had just happened to round his Evolution Point up to a whole number.

"Heh, a petty trick, not even worth a snack."

Wu Dao licked the blood clean from the corner of his mouth and scoffed, completely indifferent to the pain radiating from his right arm.

However, this incident served as a reminder—

In the future, after battling the transcendent beings of this world, he must inspect himself immediately.

Otherwise.

He wouldn't even know when someone seeking revenge had snuck up behind him!

To be safe.

He stripped off the clothes he had scavenged from Meng Qingshuang's residence and found a relatively clean set of clothes from the pile of corpses to wear instead.

By the way.

He used their water skins to wash his body thoroughly and conducted a mental check. Only after confirming there were no abnormalities did he decide to set off.

"At least now I don't have to worry about not reaching Panshui Town before dark."

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

With his Beast King Realm extreme physique.

His own body was a Great Medicine; his flesh and blood contained astonishing medicinal power. The energy provided by that mouthful of meat was enough to sustain him through long periods of extreme exertion.

Panshui Town.

Subordinate to Yanhe County, it was located in the Crescent Oasis on the edge of the Black Stone Desert, facing the vast desert in the front and backed by a sea of forests.

Due to its remote location and inconvenient transportation, it had been a lawless "three-don't-care" zone where filth and crime were hidden since ancient times. The people living here were mostly fierce and vicious, xenophobic, and bullies of the weak, earning the town a notorious reputation.

But recently.

The residents of Panshui Town, who had always acted like local tyrants, had been living in dire straits every day.

The reason for this.

Traces back to a bizarre and mysterious incident that occurred five days ago within Canyun Mountain, deep inside Crescent Isle—

The youngest son of the Panshui Town mayor went hiking in the mountains with three friends, but they failed to return by nightfall. When they were discovered in the mountains the following day, they were all dead!

It was not the work of wild beasts or strongmen.

Nor was it a case of falling off a cliff.

Their cause of death was far too bizarre—the bones within the three corpses had vanished entirely, leaving the remaining flesh to turn into something resembling fermented dough.

Limbs and necks had been stretched into long, thin strands of gluten, tied to tree trunks and strung from one end of the forest to the other.

The sight was exceptionally horrific and terrifying.

A hunter who had entered the mountains to hunt was frightened out of his wits on the spot, screaming as he ran all the way back to town.

He only managed to blurt out the name of a location.

Before the eyes of the crowd, the hunter's neck stretched out just like dough, his head dropped to the ground, and he died instantly.

Such a bizarre and eerie occurrence quickly spread throughout Yanhe County, with a trend of spreading even further to the surrounding areas.

People talked and gossiped, fueling the rumors.

Some said the mountain god was enraged, others claimed it was the work of evil spirits, and some even suggested that a terrestrial treasure had manifested, and that the commoners lacked the fortune to bear it, leading to a backlash.

The rumors grew wilder, with a hundred different versions circulating.

Some feared it like a tiger, changing color at the mere mention of it, while others were determined to get to the bottom of it, their eyes gleaming with greed.

In just a few short days.

Little Panshui Town became the center of a storm in Yanhe County, as gold-digging drifters from all walks of life gathered, stirring up trouble and chaos—it was practically a miniature martial arts assembly.

This made life miserable for the residents of Panshui Town.

Most of these martial artists were powerful, overbearing, and short-tempered, preferring to use force to subdue others and violence to meet violence.

Coupled with the fact that the imperial court was corrupt and the laws were essentially non-existent, drawing a blade to kill over a single disagreement had become a common occurrence.

Over the past few days.

The residents of Panshui Town finally understood what it meant to have an even bigger villain to deal with one's own villainy.

Their usual tricks of swindling and cheating money out of others seemed like a joke when faced with the bloody and dark methods of these martial artists.

In just a few days, quite a few residents of Panshui Town had been beaten to death or crippled for no reason.

But they could only swallow their bitterness and broken teeth, not daring to seek revenge, living in constant fear and praying for the incident to subside soon.

"Sigh, when will this life ever end?"

Beneath the gate tower of Panshui Town.

The guard Li San gazed at the setting sun over the desert at the end of Crescent Lake, sighing with the look of someone whose mother had just died.

In days past, his gate-keeping job was a lucrative post; having honed a pair of Fiery Golden Eyes since he was young, his ability to judge people and treat them accordingly was second to none.

Often, in just a few days, he could make enough to grease his palms and head to the county seat to live it up, feeling as carefree as an immortal.

But now, he had run into bad luck.

Ever since that unlucky cousin of the mayor's uncle's family met with misfortune on Canyun Mountain, his life had gone from bad to worse.

Forget about greasing his palms; whenever he ran into those short-tempered martial artists, a slow response would result in a slap to the face, and the swelling on his cheeks had never once subsided.

If it weren't for the fact that there were still some easy-to-bully commoners coming to join the fun, from whom he could squeeze a bit of profit to make ends meet, he would have wanted to quit long ago.

"Just hang in there. I reckon this will go on for a while. Haven't you heard? That thing committed another atrocity last night. It scared me so much I couldn't sleep all night."

Beside him, Zhao Si, with dark circles under his eyes, chimed in suspiciously.

"Wait, so it's not just demons and monsters in the mountains—there's really something ghostly in town, too?"

Hearing Zhao Si's words, Li San, even in the sweltering heat, hugged his wooden spear and shivered, rubbing the goosebumps on his skin. "I had been thinking all along that it was just those martial artists doing it."

"Heh, who knows? The corpses were twisted like dough. Either way, it doesn't look like something a human would do..."

Zhao Si said with lingering fear, sighing, "The old saying is right: in chaotic times, demons and monsters abound. Once the world turns bad, all sorts of filth crawl out. Let's watch for two more days; if it doesn't get better, I'm running... uh."

Before he could finish his sentence.

Zhao Si suddenly acted like a duck with its neck being throttled, his face turning pale with horror. He stared forward with dead-fish eyes, his body trembling like a sieve.

"Damn it, are you possessed?!"

Li San, not understanding what was happening, cursed at Zhao Si's sudden outburst, but his own eyes could not help but follow his gaze.

The next moment.

His face turned as white as gold leaf in an instant, and he stammered, "So... so tall. Where did this barbarian come from?"

The sun hung low, the afterglow like fire.

Under the dim, blood-like sunlight, a hulking demon-like figure, resembling a savage beast from the wilderness, strode toward them from the end of the road, kicking up dust and sand.

An imposing physique nearly nine feet tall was shrouded in a black robe. He had the head of a leopard and ringed eyes, a broad face and heavy jaw, shoulders like a tiger and a waist like a bear, with arms built for riding and war. His eyes were filled with an empty, cold indifference, carrying an inherent, terrifying majesty!

He looked like the chieftain sitting on the tiger-skin chair in Black Wind Stronghold, or the King of Ten Thousand Beasts roaming the wild lands.

An aura of fierce, tyrannical dominance surged over from a distance, suppressing the blood and breath of those nearby, as if they were falling into a bottomless abyss.

The Southern Frontier is a land of picturesque mountains and embroidered waters.

Whether men or women, most are handsome and graceful, refined and delicate; the common saying of a seven-foot stature is rarely reached, even by martial artists who specialize in Hard Qigong.

(Taking one foot as approximately thirty centimeters)

Under such a common perception.

One can imagine how much of an oppressive presence the savage, rugged nine-foot frame of Wu Dao brought.

Standing in the crowd, he was exactly like a barbaric muscle-man who had bargaded into a refined scholarly garden, causing the entire aesthetic to shift instantly.