To make sure his breakthrough went smoothly, Lin Hanzhou asked the town chief for a few days off.
Alone, he ventured deep into the mountains behind Peace Town, where few people ever set foot.
He found a valley with relatively dense spiritual energy and sat cross-legged on a massive slab of bluestone.
He began the most important breakthrough since his transmigration.
"Nine years of preparation. Success or failure—all comes down to this!"
Lin Hanzhou slowly closed his eyes and sank his mind into his dantian.
He could see that the vortex formed from concentrated spiritual energy within his dantian had grown to its absolute limit.
It spun furiously, and with every rotation, the walls of his dantian hummed as if they might burst at any moment.
The moment for his breakthrough had arrived.
Lin Hanzhou stopped suppressing it. With a thought,
he began to circulate the method for "opening a Qi Sea" in the Luo Heaven Art with all his might.
"Boom!"
The vortex in his dantian seemed to have received the order to launch an all-out assault, and in an instant, it unleashed unprecedented power.
The incomparably surging spiritual energy was like floodwaters bursting through a dam, crashing fiercely toward the center of his dantian!
Opening a Qi Sea meant using one's spiritual energy as a foundation to forcibly carve out an "inner space" in the dantian, one capable of holding even more spiritual energy.
For the vast majority of martial artists, this process was fraught with danger.
The slightest misstep could shatter their dantian and leave them with no cultivation at all.
But for Lin Hanzhou, everything fell into place as naturally as water flowing into a channel.
The accumulation he had built up over the years was simply too immense.
His foundation was rock-solid!
More importantly, he had the Martial Arts Prodigy talent to bolster him.
The power of this talent was plain to see. Opening a Qi Sea was well within its capabilities.
That mighty torrent of spiritual energy eventually carved out a tiny space—the embryonic form of a Qi Sea.
Then, more and more spiritual energy poured into it without end.
The little space began to rapidly expand and evolve at a speed visible to the naked eye.
One zhang... ten zhang... a hundred zhang...
At last, an inner space that seemed to have no boundaries took shape completely within his dantian.
What surprised Lin Hanzhou most was that the Qi Sea he had opened was actually golden.
Qi Seas were ranked from lowest to highest as colorless, gray, blue, purple, and gold.
A golden Qi Sea was undoubtedly the highest grade!
This meant that both its stability and its capacity for spiritual energy far surpassed those of Grandmasters at the same tier.
Lin Hanzhou felt a rush of joy. He could sense the spiritual energy in his body undergoing a qualitative leap.
After being transformed by the golden Qi Sea, his spiritual energy, once gaseous, became purer, and its power was on an entirely different level.
Just like that, he successfully broke through to the third-tier Qi Sea Realm.
An unprecedented sense of power filled every limb and bone, giving him a profound feeling of security.
Lin Hanzhou felt that if he unleashed his full strength, he could level all of Peace Town.
Compared with the power he had displayed before, it was like night and day.
His five senses had also improved to a terrifying degree.
With only a slight focus of attention, he could sense every stir of wind and grass within dozens of li.
The chirping of insects and birds, even the sound of water flowing in a stream, all seemed as clear as if they were right beside his ears.
After experiencing the earth-shaking changes in his body, Lin Hanzhou didn't hurry to get up and test his strength.
He knew that he had only just broken through, and his realm was not yet stable.
His most pressing task was to spend some time properly consolidating it.
So he remained seated cross-legged and began to examine his changes more closely.
Meanwhile, on a mountain road a dozen or so li from Peace Town,
dozens of fierce-looking burly men were hurrying along.
Any martial artist from the jianghu who saw them would have been stunned.
Every one of these men was a trained martial artist, and the weakest among them was third-rate.
There were even several first-rate martial artists among them.
At their head was a burly man with a savage scar slashing across his face.
Judging by the aura he gave off, he was unmistakably a Martial Master.
They were none other than a band of marauders who had recently become infamous throughout Qing Prefecture.
They had originally served as soldiers in the Great Gan Dynasty's border army in Qing Province. After the army was defeated there, they fled south to Qing Prefecture.
Along the way, they had relied on their formidable cultivation to burn, kill, rob, and commit every manner of crime.
Any village or town that fell into their clutches was left with almost no survivors.
They extorted money and abducted women, having long since lost every shred of humanity.
Now, they had set their sights on a new prey: Peace Town.
"Boss, the scout reports that the town up ahead is called Peace Town."
"It's a remote little place with nothing worth taking, but it doesn't have any decent experts either."
"The town's able-bodied martial artists were all conscripted by the imperial court. All that's left are the old, the weak, the sick, and the disabled."
A sharp-faced, simpering man spoke ingratiatingly to the scarred leader.
"Hahaha! Good! Excellent!"
At his words, the scarred man let out a cruel burst of laughter.
"Brothers, pick up the pace! We have to get there before noon!"
"Listen up: the women and grain in town go to whoever grabs them first!"
"Get there late, and all you'll get is what's left for you!"
"Ooh!"
The bandits under him let loose a string of excited, lecherous howls.
They all sped up, greed and lust shining in their eyes.
None of them wanted to be left with nothing but scraps.
Unbeknownst to them, a pair of cold eyes watched their backs from high in the sky.
It was Lin Hanzhou, who had just broken through to the third tier and stabilized his realm.
Originally, he had only wanted to experience the feeling of a third-tier martial artist flying through the air.
But as he flew, his extraordinarily keen senses picked up on this group.
And just now, he had heard every word of their filthy conversation.
"Bandits, huh..."
Lin Hanzhou hovered in midair, his gaze growing colder by the moment.
He had heard rumors about this gang of bandits back in Peace Town.
They had caused such an enormous uproar that, reportedly, no fewer than three towns had already fallen victim to them.
The authorities had tried several times to send people to wipe them out, but each attempt had ended in failure.
He hadn't expected the bandits to show up here now, with Peace Town in their sights.
Lin Hanzhou had always shown no mercy to scum who turned their blades on innocent civilians.
He wasn't exactly a good person, but he had a scale in his heart and a line he would not cross.
This band of marauders had undoubtedly crossed that line.
They all deserved to die!
The killing intent in Lin Hanzhou's eyes nearly took on tangible form.
In the next instant, his figure blurred and vanished from the sky.
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