"!!"
Guo Fenglin felt that his spear had struck Zhao An, but Zhao An was somehow completely unharmed!
It was already too late. A long blade swept through a crescent arc, slashing from left to right!
Hot blood sprayed as a huge head flew through the air.
Zhao An drew another breath, turned, and engaged Guo Fenglin, the spearman, again.
Even though Guo Fenglin was badly wounded, his strength was still far above Zhao An's!
His mastery of the spear was battle-hardened and murderous, domineering beyond compare!
His Internal Breath was even strong enough to almost crush Zhao An!
By Zhao An's rough estimate, Guo Fenglin's Internal Breath exceeded five hundred strands. That left Zhao An completely unable to face him head-on.
After just a few thrusts, Zhao An was already in mortal danger.
Zhao An drew a deep breath. The closer he came to danger, the calmer he became.
At his current level of strength, this fight was unwinnable!
He immediately seized an opportunity and swiftly put some distance between them.
Meanwhile, in the Soul Pool, three Soul Slaves were practicing blade techniques together.
Their period of enslavement had not yet ended; the harvest was not due until the day after tomorrow, at the earliest.
But Zhao An couldn't wait any longer.
With a slight shift of intent, he grabbed all three Soul Slaves and refined them in an instant!
Three Karma Fruits fused into him, bringing with them a flood of blade-technique insights, poured into his mind year after year.
Zhao An's mind did not grow muddled. Instead, his eyes gleamed, and he became like a peerless blade drawn from its sheath!
Or like a ferocious tiger striding over mountains!
His essence, energy, and spirit all transformed in that instant!
Guo Fenglin held his spear, his gaze shifting, but he gave it no more thought and thrust upward again.
The spear shot through the air, its piercing whistle sharp and cold, its momentum like a charge of iron cavalry, suffocating to behold.
Zhao An endured the "hunger" wracking his body. He knew that extracting the Karma Fruits so recklessly would quickly drain him. Without medicinal tonics and meat to replenish him, he wouldn't last long.
He couldn't afford to drag this fight out!
He charged forward and swung his long blade!
Clang!
Metal rang against metal as Guo Fenglin's Internal Breath surged into his Iron Spear.
But Zhao An used exquisite blade technique to forcibly deflect the force without suffering the slightest injury. He sprang up and brought his blade down in a heavy slash, straight at Guo Fenglin's face.
Roar!
The intent of the blade burst forth as a tiger roared through the mountains and forests, exploding beside Guo Fenglin's ears and making his mind shudder.
He raised his spear to block and used his Internal Breath to resist, yet Zhao An's strike still felt heavy as a mountain.
His Internal Breath was clearly several times stronger, but that one slash nearly knocked him off balance and sent him crashing to the ground!
The breath Zhao An had gathered in his chest had not yet dissipated. He kept attacking, the cold gleam of his blade swiftly joining into a single sheet that swept toward his opponent.
"This brat was holding back just now!"
Zhao An's blade technique had now reached the pinnacle, without a single flaw!
Anyone with an eye for it could recognize a blade technique perfected to its utmost!
Even Zhao An himself had not expected the three Soul Slaves' combined practice to perfect the Fierce Tiger Blade Art outright, just when he was at death's door!
"He's no more than twenty, yet he's perfected a blade technique! Did he start practicing in the womb?!"
Guo Fenglin could hardly believe it, but he had no time to dwell on it.
The situation was changing in an instant. His Internal Breath was powerful, but Zhao An repeatedly countered his moves with a flawless, perfected blade technique.
For a time, even he could do nothing to Zhao An.
Most importantly, he couldn't drag this out either.
His wounds were worsening, he had lost too much blood, and his stamina was running low.
If this went on much longer, the brat might well wear him down to death.
Sand and stones flew through the courtyard as Guo Fenglin seized an opening and thrust his spear with ferocious resolve.
Overlord Spear!
That thrust gathered most of his essence, energy, and spirit. It could pierce heavy armor and smash through thick shields; it could even overturn war chariots and horses!
Its momentum was as mighty as a thousand troops sweeping across the land, carrying the power to shake mountains!
This thrust would surely make the brat before him pay with his life!
But the scene Guo Fenglin had imagined—a spear passing through Zhao An's body and pinning him dead to the ground—never came to pass.
The strange shadow appeared once more around Zhao An, taking the thrust for him.
At the same time, Zhao An's blade pierced through Guo Fenglin's chest.
The sandstorm rising through the courtyard died down.
"You're a strange one, brat..." Blood spilled from Guo Fenglin's mouth. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared at Zhao An and rasped out the words.
He truly was strange. The Soul Slaves' ability to take fatal blows for him meant Zhao An had several extra lives to spend fighting this man.
"I never thought I'd die..."
Before Guo Fenglin could finish, Zhao An twisted his blade, grinding his heart to pieces and silencing him for good.
Only when Zhao An had seized Guo Fenglin's soul did Guo Fenglin understand just how strange Zhao An was—far stranger than he had ever imagined!
Zhao An gave no thought to whether his victory had been unfair. Starving all over, he wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into the flesh before him.
Fortunately, he still had enough sense to restrain himself. He pushed open the door to the inner room.
Meng Wanyi had been crouched by the crack in the door, anxiously watching over Zhao An.
Suddenly, a thick, bloody gust swept inside. Zhao An had already stumbled right into her arms, his expression frantic.
"Do you have any pills that replenish blood and vital energy?" Zhao An asked at once.
He couldn't wait for the Red Blood Root to be boiled into a tonic. Only ready-made pills could replenish what his body had lost.
"I do. I have Earth Origin Pills." Meng Wanyi hurriedly fetched the medicine case she carried with her, took out a small bottle, and put it straight into Zhao An's hand.
There were seven Earth Origin Pills in the bottle, and every one of them was top quality.
Given the Female Physician's usual miserly, money-grubbing nature, she would never have handed over pills for free so readily.
Those seven top-grade Earth Origin Pills alone were worth more than a hundred taels of silver!
But today, for some reason, she could see how desperate Zhao An was. His voice even carried a note of weakness and need.
Zhao An, who was always so composed, had never acted like this before.
"Is that enough? If not, I'll go back to the clinic and get more. There's still plenty there!" Meng Wanyi asked.
"That's enough!" Zhao An's eyes lit up. Without hesitation, he poured out two Earth Origin Pills, popped them into his mouth, and chewed them up.
"Ah! Even a Martial Master couldn't withstand taking them like that!" Meng Shao cried in alarm.
But a moment later, Zhao An swallowed two more, leaving both Female Physicians stunned in place.
They had never seen anyone eat Earth Origin Pills like candy before.
After swallowing four Earth Origin Pills, their pure, top-grade medicinal power coursed through Zhao An's body.
His whole body felt like copper and iron heated red-hot. Heat surged upward, and his sweat turned to vapor, billowing out in wave after wave.
Under the fierce medicinal power, his strength grew. The Internal Breath in his meridians began circulating through its cycles on its own, and new strands of Internal Breath formed one after another.
One strand, five strands, ten strands...
To Zhao An's surprise, his Internal Breath increased by more than sixty strands this time!
Part of that was because he had absorbed three Soul Slaves at once, combining their full fifteen years of cultivation.
But Soul Slaves had never been particularly efficient at cultivating Internal Breath. Based on his past experience, he should have gained only thirty or forty strands from this.
An increase of more than sixty strands in one go was unprecedented.
"It must be the Earth Origin Pills." Zhao An looked at the little bottle in his hand, considering the possibilities.
Earth Origin Pills were proper cultivation pills for martial artists, designed specifically for practicing Internal Breath.
They were highly effective at increasing Internal Breath.
The cheap Red Blood Root tonics he usually took had no such effect at all.
"While absorbing a Soul Slave's cultivation, taking the more expensive Earth Origin Pills can greatly boost the increase in Internal Breath."
This discovery was an unexpected delight.
After this battle, Zhao An understood that the world was vast, and powerful martial artists were everywhere!
His meager skills were nowhere near enough. He urgently needed to speed up his growth even further!
Before you continue