Bone Tempering Golden Marrow

Hearing this, Xia Xuan and the others had no choice but to bite the bullet and head downstairs.

As the one who had met Jiang Ran a few times and even spoken to him, Xia Xuan naturally took the lead.

He stepped forward, intending to say something, but he hadn't expected Jiang Ran to simply point toward the street behind him and say calmly, "Pick a few carcasses to take back if you want."

Lying there were the many monster corpses Jiang Ran had killed along the way.

With that, Jiang Ran ignored them further and, dragging the corpse of the Zhi, headed toward the street behind him.

In truth, Jiang Ran had noticed Xia Xuan and his group halfway through the battle.

However, Jiang Ran had previously performed a Psychological Profiling on Xia Xuan and understood the man's character.

He was cautious, principled, and knew how to keep his distance.

That was why he hadn't bothered with them.

Xia Xuan and his two companions were stunned when they saw Jiang Ran walk away immediately after speaking...

Zhao Feng, standing behind him, leaned in closer and whispered, changing his address to "Captain Xia," "Captain Xia, you know him!?"

Xia Xuan snapped back to reality upon hearing this, forced himself to remain calm, nodded, and said softly, "Yes, we've met a few times. Let's go, grab a few carcasses to take back; it's not safe to linger here."

After speaking, Xia Xuan and Zou Yue immediately followed in Jiang Ran's footsteps, and Zhao Feng, realizing what was happening, hurriedly followed suit.

The three of them walked down the debris-strewn street.

Looking at the scattered monster corpses on both sides, they realized that before fighting the Zhi, the man in black had already gone through a round of intense combat.

In the end, Xia Xuan chose a relatively intact Bone-Spike Cat Monster, while Zhao Feng and Zou Yue each dragged one.

They didn't dare take too many, simply tying the carcasses up to prepare for their return to the Safe Zone.

Before leaving, Xia Xuan looked back one last time.

Jiang Ran was already a hundred meters away.

Dragging the mountain-like corpse of the Zhi with one hand, his silhouette in the black hoodie seemed to merge into the deepest darkness before dawn.

Zou Yue followed his gaze and said softly, "Captain Xia, we should go."

"Yeah." Xia Xuan withdrew his gaze, turned around, and said, "Let's head back."

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Inside the office building that overlooked the battlefield.

The drone returned silently to the window.

The man who had launched the drone initially—a young programmer wearing black-rimmed glasses and a plaid shirt—immediately cut the power as soon as the drone flew through the window, letting out a long breath as if he had only just dared to start breathing again.

His back was drenched in cold sweat, and his fingers were still trembling slightly.

That footage just now... it was too terrifying.

He removed the memory card from the camera under the drone, plugged it into the laptop beside him, and began to slowly upload the video he had just captured.

The forum interface refreshed, and he created a new post, hesitating for a few seconds over the title before typing:

[This has to be the strongest Transcendent yet, right!?]

For the body of the post, he only wrote one sentence:

"Just filmed this in the Feng City business district; one man solo-killing an Ancient Exotic Beast. The video is a bit shaky, my apologies."

He then attached the twenty-minute-long video.

He clicked publish.

The upload progress bar began to climb slowly.

The man slumped into his chair, watching the scene of the black-clad figure blasting the giant beast away with a single punch over and over, muttering to himself, "This world... is truly about to change."

Jiang Ran, out on the street, had not noticed the drone.

Because it was the middle of the night and some streetlights had been destroyed, objects high in the air were extremely difficult to detect under the cover of darkness.

At this moment, Jiang Ran was simply quietly cleaning up the aftermath.

Only now, as he calmed down to take stock, did he realize... he had driven his sports car for a full twenty or thirty kilometers, and the number of monsters he had cleared along the way far exceeded his estimates.

The monster corpses along this route represented resources in the early stages, and Jiang Ran naturally couldn't let them go to waste.

Fortunately, he had the Heavenly Net Pouch.

Storing them wasn't difficult, just a bit time-consuming.

It took Jiang Ran nearly two hours to walk from one end of the street to the other, collecting every single monster corpse.

By five in the morning, the sky was still pitch black.

Jiang Ran stood at the end of the street, looking around one last time.

The night's battle had been worth it.

There were over a hundred corpses of ordinary monsters, plus that Zhi.

Even if Jiang Ran did nothing else, the harvest from this trip was already more than enough.

However, the priority now was to find a safe place.

He needed to see what was inside the head of that Zhi.

Jiang Ran turned around, his figure merging into a nearby alleyway, and he activated the Eight-Step Cicada Chase to depart rapidly.

It was only after Jiang Ran had left that several people slowly emerged from the surrounding buildings that were still intact.

They were clearly not from the same group, each maintaining a safe distance and remaining wary of one another.

Yet, everyone's attention was fixed on the chaotic scene across the street.

After a long silence.

A middle-aged man wearing sportswear, clutching a steel bar as a weapon, spoke in a low voice: "It's all over... what's the point of coming out now, everyone?"

His tone carried a hint of self-mockery.

Beside him, a young man in his early twenties with dyed yellow hair snorted and retorted disdainfully: "Then why didn't you come out just now?"

Hearing this, everyone fell silent.

Go out and face that existence head-on?

How was that any different from seeking death...

No one dared to be the leader.

Seeing that no one answered, the yellow-haired youth felt bored, clicked his tongue, turned around, and walked away quickly in the opposite direction.

He was carrying a small cloth bag that clinked as he moved.

It was clearly some scraps he had scavenged during the chaos.

Seeing this, the others also dispersed; no one wanted to linger in an area that had just witnessed a battle between gods.

Half an hour later.

Jiang Ran had moved far away from the center of the battlefield, arriving at a relatively quiet, old residential area.

The buildings here were low, the streets narrow, and signs of monsters were noticeably scarce.

Jiang Ran chose an old six-story residential building, observed it from the outside for a moment, and after confirming there were no signs of recent activity, easily picked the lock of a ground-floor apartment and slipped inside.

He locked the door and drew the curtains.

Only then did Jiang Ran's mind finally relax a little.

During the process of collecting the corpses earlier, he knew that several people had been watching him from the shadows.

That feeling of being spied upon was very obvious to someone with his keen senses.

Therefore, from the end of the battle until his departure, he had never completely let his guard down.

Only now could he consider himself truly safe.

Jiang Ran sat down on the living room sofa.

A sense of weakness surged up belatedly.

Although the battle with the Zhi had not lasted long, it had been a high-intensity, high-consumption affair from start to finish.

The drain on his blood energy, spirit, and stamina had been pushed to the limit.

It was even more severe after the state of Buddha's Wrathful Vajra ended.

Now that he had relaxed, Jiang Ran almost fell asleep on the spot.

However, the loot had not been processed yet.

He could not sleep just yet.

Jiang Ran stood up, walked to a relatively empty spot in the center of the living room, and moved his thoughts.

Hum...

The massive corpse of the Zhi appeared out of thin air, occupying nearly the entire living room.

It was fortunate that it was dead; if it had been standing, the ceiling height of this living room would not have been enough to contain it.

Even so, with its body sprawled on the floor, it still took up almost the entire space.

Jiang Ran took out his tactical knife, crouched down, and began to dissect the Zhi's skull first.

The blade cut along the gaps in the cranium, the texture feeling much tougher than he had expected; even in death, the hardness of this exotic beast's hide far exceeded that of ordinary monsters.

After some effort, Jiang Ran finally pried open the skull.

Regrettably.

Inside... there was no sign of a colored light orb.

Jiang Ran frowned slightly.

But the next second, his gaze was drawn to a few glimmers of deep blue light hidden deep within the brain tissue.

With the tip of his blade, he carefully parted the shriveled meninges, and seven or eight blue crystals, each the size of a pigeon egg with swirling nebulae inside, rolled out.

"Blue Spirit Crystals..."

Jiang Ran picked one up; it felt warm and smooth to the touch.

He assumed these must be higher-grade Spirit Crystals, so he gathered them all into his Heavenly Net Pouch.

He then turned his attention back to the corpse of the Zhi.

Having gone to such great lengths to kill this Ancient Exotic Beast from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Jiang Ran would be quite unwilling if this were all he had to show for it...

He took his knife and walked over to the back of the Zhi.

If one were to ask what made the Zhi so difficult to deal with.

Beyond its massive size and raw strength, it was the bone spurs on its back.

When those things were fired, they moved at incredible speeds with immense piercing power, and they could be fired in rapid succession; had it not been for the buffs from his Golden Bell Shield and Buddha's Wrathful Vajra, Jiang Ran would never have dared to take them head-on.

Once Jiang Ran discovered the creature possessed this ability, the first step of his combat plan had been to exhaust its supply of bone spurs before closing in for hand-to-hand combat.

The facts proved that this plan was a success.

But that did not change the fact that the creature's bone spurs had indeed caused Jiang Ran a great deal of trouble.

So, this back... there had to be something here, right?

Otherwise, how could the creature generate bone spurs in near-infinite quantities!?

Holding this thought, he began to dissect the back.

The tactical knife sliced along the midline of the spine, parting the fur to reveal the pale golden skeleton beneath.

And those bone spurs that had not yet finished forming.

Having witnessed the power of these spurs, Jiang Ran naturally knew they were valuable, so he carefully cut away and collected the stumps of the spurs that had not yet fully matured.

Only then did he continue to dissect deeper.

As the knife tip probed the gap between bone and muscle, suddenly...

"Ding."

A faint, crisp sound rang out.

The tip of the blade seemed to have struck something extremely hard.

Jiang Ran was taken aback; he applied more force, but the blade could not advance even an inch further.

He simply reached in with his hand, hooked his fingers around the edge of the hard object, and pulled it out with a surge of strength.

Riiip!

A fist-sized, dark golden stone covered in natural spiral patterns was dug out by Jiang Ran from deep within the spine of the Zhi.

The stone felt heavy in his hand, radiating a gentle warmth.

Looking closely, those spiral patterns seemed to flow slowly, with golden filaments of light faintly swimming within.

Before Jiang Ran could even react to what this was...

A pale blue panel suddenly popped up before his eyes.

[Congratulations, you have obtained a class fusion material: Bone Tempering Golden Marrow]

[Bone Tempering Golden Marrow: The marrow essence of the Ancient Exotic Beast Zhi, formed through the tempering of blood and qi, containing the ultimate energy of sharp metal.]

[Supernatural class detected: Martial Monk]

[Do you wish to initiate class fusion?]