Breaking Through to Dark Strength!

Night hung like a curtain.

Outside Rain Listening Pavilion at Lake Heart Pavilion, a hunched figure, almost blending into the dim shadows, lay quietly in wait beneath the eaves of a nearby Water Pavilion.

Jiang Ye had long since resumed his usual aged, wooden expression. He had tucked away the true essence of Spirit Ape Thousand Changes and once again become the unremarkable old gatekeeper. Only his eyes remained unusually clear in the gloom.

He had been keeping watch here for nearly an hour.

He had watched the candlelight inside the room go out completely, and listened as the heart-wrenching sobs gradually dwindled into stifled crying, before finally giving way to deathly silence.

He had saved them from falling into Zhang Xu's clutches, but everything that happened afterward... had plunged him into an even more complicated mire.

At last, after that agonizingly long wait, the door was gently pushed open a crack.

Two graceful figures emerged stealthily from within, supporting each other with extreme caution, their movements colored by the fearful wariness of startled birds.

They were Liu Yiyi and Su Yan.

Liu Yiyi's face was still frighteningly pale, her eyes swollen and red. But the hollow despair she had first shown was gone; in its place was a cold composure and vigilance.

Su Yan was hardly in better shape. Tear tracks still marked her face.

The warm, bright smile she had worn in the past had vanished completely, replaced by forced calm and deep exhaustion. She clung tightly to Liu Yiyi's arm, her gaze sweeping constantly over their surroundings, on guard against the slightest disturbance.

They finally came out...

Jiang Ye secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The tension in his mind, taut as a bowstring, eased just a little.

What worried him most was Liu Yiyi's nature: cold on the outside, unyielding within, and fiercely proud.

The girl had seemed different from a young age. She rarely showed her emotions, as if nothing could truly disturb her frozen heart, and she cared deeply about her chastity.

Jiang Ye was genuinely afraid that after such a calamity, despair might swallow her whole and drive her to do something irreversible.

Su Yan came from a wealthy family and had been raised under strict discipline. Naturally, she cared just as much about her reputation and chastity.

The heartbroken sobs from inside the room had just now proved as much.

Now that he saw both women seemed relatively composed, with no inclination to take their own lives, the massive stone in Jiang Ye's heart finally fell.

Then I should head back and break through to Dark Strength.

Jiang Ye silently considered this, then slowly drew back his gaze.

Liu Yiyi and Su Yan were at their most sensitive and vulnerable just then. Like startled fawns, they might notice even the slightest added attention or pursuit.

Besides, with Liu Yiyi's Dark Strength, there weren't many people in Anxi County who could threaten them, apart from those Transformation Strength experts.

He cast one last deep look at the two slender figures, a complicated emotion flashing through his aged eyes.

Then he lingered no longer. His figure seemed to dissolve into the pitch-black night as he soundlessly slipped from the eaves. After a few leaps, he was already far from Lake Heart Pavilion.

"Ah... I'm dying... Why... does it hurt so much..."

Su Yan's brows knitted tightly, and she bit down so hard on her lower lip that it nearly bled.

With every step she took, the burning, strange pain grew more distinct, drawing fine beads of cold sweat across her forehead.

It even made her legs feel weak and shaky.

She stole a glance at Liu Yiyi beside her. Though she still held her back straight and her face remained cold, her pale lips were pressed tightly together, and every step she took was unusually slow and heavy.

Clearly, she was in no better shape.

The two walked one ahead of the other. They weren't supporting each other, but kept an unspoken distance between them, as if moving closer would let them see their own present misery and humiliation reflected in the other.

About the time it took an incense stick to burn, they finally managed to leave Lake Heart Pavilion and step onto a secluded path leading to the shore of Mirror Lake.

"Hm?!"

Liu Yiyi, walking ahead, suddenly stopped. Her cool eyes narrowed as they fixed on a spot along the distant shore. "There seems to be someone over there..."

At her words, Su Yan forced herself to focus and followed her gaze.

Sure enough, on a stretch of rocks not far from the water, a figure lay sprawled on the ground, motionless. Half his body was submerged in the shallows, swaying gently with the ripples.

The two exchanged a glance, then decided to go over and take a look.

When they finally drew near and saw the face of the person lying there—

The blood in their veins seemed to freeze in an instant.

Then, like a dormant volcano erupting, boundless fury and bone-deep hatred surged through them like magma.

Because the figure sprawled on the shore was none other than Zhang Xu!

But there wasn't the slightest trace of the Zhang Family's second young master's usual arrogance and swagger left in him.

Dark red blood and mud caked his lips, and bloody froth kept escaping with his faint, labored breaths.

His clothes and the metal under-armor beneath them had caved deeply inward around his chest. His breastbone was shattered.

His face was as pale as gold paper, his breath as faint as a thread. His life was clearly about to slip away.

Apparently, after the white-haired old man had punched him into the lake, the close-fitting soft armor had kept him from dying immediately. Driven by the instinct to survive, he had desperately swum back to shore.

"Good! Good! Good!"

Liu Yiyi said it three times, her voice cold as an arctic gale.

She laughed in her fury. There wasn't a trace of warmth in her smile, only murderous intent and the satisfaction of revenge. "That beast... he's still got a breath left in him! Heaven really does have eyes!"

In a fit of rage, she clenched her right hand into a fist and prepared to smash it into Zhang Xu's sunken temple.

If that punch landed, he would have no chance of surviving—not in his current state, and not even at full strength.

"Wait, Yiyi! Don't kill him yet!"

At the last possible moment, Su Yan reached out and seized Liu Yiyi's poised wrist.

Her voice was just as cold, but carried a restraint pushed to the limit, a near-cruel composure that Liu Yiyi lacked.

"What do you mean?"

Liu Yiyi's fist halted. She turned her head slightly to look at Su Yan, her gaze burning with rage and tinged with confusion and impatience at being interrupted.

"Killing him just like that would be letting him off too easily!"

Su Yan released her hand. Her gaze pierced Zhang Xu's battered body like an icicle, and her voice came low and clear, edged with a chilling coldness.

"There's a way to deal with a beast like him that would make being alive worse than being dead!"

She paused, a complex light of reason and hatred mingling in her eyes, then continued:

"And have you thought about it? If he just dies here without anyone knowing what happened, in this condition..."

"The Zhang Family will definitely turn around and accuse us of harming Zhang Xu."

"So, before this beast breathes his last, we'll take him to the Zhang Family and demand an explanation!"

"Of course, we'll leave out a lot of the details and focus on how Zhang Xu plotted to frame us..."

At her words, Liu Yiyi's boiling murderous intent cooled a little. She fell silent for a moment.

Su Yan had a point. Zhang Xu was a man of status, and his death wouldn't go unnoticed.

She stared at Su Yan and said coldly, "Then tell me, what can we do to make this beast suffer more alive than dead?"

"Dealing with a beast like this is simple!"

Su Yan's gaze suddenly grew razor-sharp, and even took on a viciousness Liu Yiyi had never seen before.

She said no more. Stepping forward, she raised her right foot, gathered her strength, and brought it down hard on his crotch.

The kick was fast and vicious. It could have shattered a rock, let alone a fragile human body.

Squish.

It sounded as though something had broken.

From that moment on, Zhang Xu was no longer a man.

Even Liu Yiyi, her murderous intent still boiling, couldn't help but freeze for a moment, her pupils contracting as if she were seeing the usually gentle and approachable eldest daughter of the Su Family for the first time.

"Hhk... hhk..."

The excruciating pain even roused Zhang Xu from unconsciousness.

Though he was gravely wounded and near death, he didn't even have the strength to open his eyes. All he could do was let out an instinctive, mournful plea for mercy.

"Please... don't kill me..."

Meanwhile.

Inside the gatekeeper's room at the Martial Academy.

Jiang Ye had already returned quietly.

He took off his outer robe, damp with night dew and smelling of the lake, changed into another equally old but clean set of clothes, then slowly sat cross-legged on the hard bed.

After a night of intense exertion, the qi and blood and Bright Strength in his body—which had already been brimming to the point of overflowing—had not weakened at all.

On the contrary, under the stimulation of some strange external force and the tempering of his own extreme emotions, they had grown increasingly condensed and pure, like refined iron repeatedly hammered to remove its final impurities, giving off a restrained yet dangerous gleam.

The breakthrough to Dark Strength happens now!

His mind was completely clear. He silently recited the words and assumed the stance of Five Animal Fist.

The energy in his body, already boiling to the limit, surged toward that invisible, unyielding barrier, making its final, inevitable charge.

Boom!

It was as if a fire dragon were coursing through his body. Jiang Ye's skin grew frighteningly hot, his breathing quickened, and every breath he exhaled was as scalding as steam.

Bright Strength manifested outward; Dark Strength sank within.

The force in Jiang Ye's body was coursing through his entire body, sinking into his marrow.

He didn't know how much time had passed.

The flush across Jiang Ye's skin slowly faded, and his breathing gradually steadied.

When he opened his eyes again, there was none of the light spilling from them as before. His gaze had become deep and utterly restrained.

Dark Strength had been achieved!