Diamond Skill

"Expert!"

"An expert!"

Xu Yang's scalp prickled, and every pore on his body snapped shut.

Though he had already been on guard, he hadn't expected the person before him to be an expert—at the very least, someone at the Qi Gathering level.

Was this an accidental encounter, or had the man been lying in wait for him?

A sharp gust of force hit him in the face. The man's five fingers were like eagle talons, his nails razor-sharp. If they got hold of him, they would probably punch five bloody holes in his neck.

At the critical instant, the sinews throughout his body tensed, and his bones cracked like firecrackers.

Just as the man's fingers were about to seize his neck, he deliberately offered one hand for the man to grab, avoiding the fate of having his throat torn open.

At the same time, his other hand swung up with ferocious force, like a bear king sweeping its arm. As his muscles bulged, he drove a punch toward the man's armpit.

It was a mutually destructive move. Even if the other man tore through one of his hands, this punch would still break his ribs.

"Huh?"

Xu Yang quickly realized something was wrong.

The man's strike had been as fast as lightning, and the wind it brought with it was fierce, but his fingers had little force behind them. Xu Yang's palm hadn't been pierced as he'd expected.

He felt only a slight sting in his palm before the man ran out of strength. It didn't seem like he was trying to kill him so much as capture him.

"Bang!"

Even so, Xu Yang didn't hold back. He still had no idea what this man wanted, so he could only kill him first and ask questions later.

His fist slammed into the man's armpit, followed by a sharp crack in his ears.

The man screamed and flew backward.

"What a hard body!"

Xu Yang stayed on guard. If that punch had hit an ordinary person, it would have killed him on the spot, pulverizing his internal organs. Yet this man could still scream.

It felt as though his punch had struck a stubborn boulder. Without true qi reinforcing his fist, his hand would have been injured by the impact.

"Die!"

He didn't stop there. He launched into a Bear Pounce, the soil beneath his feet bursting apart. He shot after the man like a bolt of lightning and threw another punch.

True qi surged from his dantian like a rising tide, gathering ceaselessly in his fist.

In the dark of night, Xu Yang's fist seemed to glow as it tore through the air.

"Brother, this is a misunderstanding!"

The man flying backward shrieked, blood spraying from his mouth in great gulps. He looked utterly horrified.

Only then did Xu Yang see that the man had already been injured. His robe was stained with blood and marked with several palm prints, as if the blows had sunk into his bones. His abdomen was ripped open, revealing a ragged wound with flesh turned inside out.

He struggled to raise both arms to block Xu Yang's punch, but he barely had any strength left.

"Crack!"

Xu Yang's fist blasted through his arms like a hot knife through butter and slammed into one of the palm prints. Blood spurted out, exposing jagged white bone.

The man's eyes rolled back, and he screamed as he flew even faster.

"Bang!"

His flying body crashed into a tree, finally coming to a stop.

The tree shuddered, and a shower of leaves fell.

Xu Yang caught up. Though the man was barely breathing and his body had gone limp against the tree, Xu Yang still swung his fist and struck again, aiming straight for the vulnerable throat.

"Crack!"

The sound of breaking bones rang out. Under the force of his punch, the man's neck twisted grotesquely, then snapped in two.

"Phew!"

Xu Yang let out a heavy breath. The man's eyes were wide open, seemingly filled with bewilderment and unwillingness.

As Xu Yang pulled back his fist, the corpse crumpled to the ground.

"He must have mistaken me for an ordinary person..."

The man had already been grievously wounded and was on the verge of death. He had probably passed out here, and when Xu Yang happened to appear, he must have taken him for an ordinary person and tried to subdue him. He hadn't expected Xu Yang to be a martial artist too, which was why he had shouted, "Misunderstanding!"

Xu Yang had no way of knowing whether his guess was right. The man was dead, so there was no way to verify it.

But he had undoubtedly been an expert, at least at Major Success in Qi Gathering. If his true qi hadn't been depleted and he hadn't been injured, Xu Yang would have been the one to fall.

Of course, if the man hadn't been injured, they probably wouldn't have fought at all.

Xu Yang crouched down and began searching the corpse. First, he found a money pouch filled with loose silver. It looked like eleven or twelve taels.

It wasn't much, but it wasn't little either. It was equivalent to two months' wages at the Liu Mansion.

With his expenses exceeding his income, that sum was important to him. He could keep up his martial arts training without having to pinch pennies.

He continued searching. Soon, he felt something hard sewn into the man's trouser leg. It felt somewhat like a book.

"Could it be a manual?"

Xu Yang ripped it open with both hands. With a loud tear, a book with a blue cover appeared before him. Three forceful characters were written on it: "Diamond Skill."

"It really is a manual!"

His heart pounded wildly as he warily swept his gaze around.

The man had been carrying something like this while badly wounded. Perhaps he had been hunted down over the manual and injured this severely.

He quickly tucked the manual into his robe, then hoisted the corpse and hurried toward the nearby mountains.

"I'm back!"

Xu Yang pushed the door open. Little Xu Qing was still writing by the oil lamp.

"Brother, why are you home so late today?" Xu Qing looked up.

"The family head had something come up, so I was delayed."

As he spoke, he leaned over to see what Xu Qing was writing.

"You're not allowed to look!" The little girl hurriedly covered the things on the table with her hands.

"Your handwriting's so ugly, it's only right to hide it."

Xu Yang laughed. Xu Qing's face flushed bright red. She really had been hiding it because her handwriting was ugly.

After chatting with Xu Qing for a few more moments, he returned to his room and shut the door. By the light of the oil lamp, he took out the Diamond Skill and began reading.

"After ordinary people reach Qi Gathering, their true qi has no special properties. Whether used for offense or for tempering the body, its effects are mediocre.

"The Diamond Skill is a method for cultivating Diamond True Qi. It can transform ordinary true qi into Diamond True Qi. Once Diamond True Qi is cultivated, the purity of one's true qi increases greatly. Not only are its attacks peerless, but once it enters an opponent's body, it is difficult to expel. Its effect on tempering the body also changes dramatically.

"If one tempers the body with Diamond True Qi year after year, the body can become as hard as diamond."

This was actually a body-tempering technique for cultivating Diamond True Qi.

No wonder the man's body had felt abnormally hard. He must have cultivated the Diamond Skill too.

[Diamond Skill · Not Yet Initiated (0/100)]

After he finished reading, a faint glimmer flickered before his eyes, and the Status Panel popped out.

Xu Yang was a little moved. The proficiency required to initiate the Mountain-Shaking Bear Fist seemed to have been only 10. This was a full ten times as much.

"But that makes sense!"

He recalled the book's description. It said that talent had little to do with cultivating this kind of body-tempering technique. What mattered was slow, steady effort and unwavering persistence over the years.

Whether one was gifted or not had little effect on the progress of the technique.

"The first step in cultivating the Diamond Skill is to cultivate Diamond True Qi..."

He had spent the entire day patrolling and hadn't done much training, so he still had plenty of energy.

After hiding the Diamond Skill manual, Xu Yang closed his eyes and began his first session of Diamond Skill cultivation.