Coiling Dragon Stance Art Reached Mastery

"Captain Zhao, did Senior Qiao succeed in breaking through?"

During the morning roll call, Lu Chen asked Zhao Yiting.

Several days had passed since Qiao Yuan entered seclusion.

Yet no news had come.

Zhao Yiting did not answer Lu Chen. "Just guard the compound properly. Don't ask about anything else."

But from Zhao Yiting's reaction, Lu Chen glimpsed the answer.

Clearly, Qiao Yuan had failed.

Otherwise, with such joyous news, Wang Firm would never have remained so calm.

Peak Blood Moving.

That was power enough to change the balance of Scarlet Cloud County.

Once Qiao Yuan stepped into Peak Blood Moving, Wang Firm would surely stir up a storm and reclaim everything it had once lost.

But now, Yam Herb Shop showed no sign of movement at all.

Lu Chen withdrew his gaze, his fingers slowly clenching.

Even a Blood Moving Completion martial artist like Qiao Yuan, aided by a Foundation-Stabilizing Pill, had failed to break through.

Sure enough, the further one advanced in martial arts, the harder it became.

On the way to the pill room to change shifts, Lu Chen ran into Liu Heng.

"I didn't expect to be on duty with him today."

Lu Chen felt rather helpless.

He had no desire to deal with him and walked straight ahead.

But Liu Heng sidestepped and blocked the road.

"Kid."

Lu Chen raised his eyes at him. "What is it?"

Liu Heng gave a cold sneer. "Dare to have a wager match?"

Lu Chen frowned slightly. "A wager match?"

Liu Heng pulled a money pouch from his robes and weighed it in his palm. The silver inside clinked together with a dull sound.

"I'll put up twenty taels."

As he spoke, he opened the pouch, revealing the gleaming silver within.

"You and I fight. If you win, these twenty taels are all yours."

"If I win, I only want one of your arms."

Lu Chen looked at Liu Heng and rolled his eyes.

Twenty taels, and he wanted to wager one of his arms?

Who did he think he was?

He did not voice those thoughts, merely saying flatly, "Not interested."

With that, Lu Chen went around Liu Heng and continued toward the pill room.

Liu Heng's expression immediately turned ugly.

Twenty taels of silver was no small sum for a martial artist at the initial Blood Moving realm. It was equivalent to half a year of Liu Heng's wages.

He had thought that upon hearing twenty taels, Lu Chen would be tempted no matter what.

Yet Lu Chen had not even spared it a second glance.

That disregard only infuriated Liu Heng further.

"What?"

Liu Heng caught up, his voice abruptly rising. "Going to be a turtle hiding in its shell?"

"Are all you people from Hidden Dragon Martial Hall turtles?"

Lu Chen did not slow his steps. He had no intention of stirring up another conflict with Liu Heng.

The less trouble, the better.

Seeing Lu Chen ignore him so completely, the fury in Liu Heng's chest burned ever hotter.

"Lu Chen, I give you face, but you refuse it."

"Hmph. Sooner or later, I'll make you kneel and polish my shoes!"

Evening.

After his shift ended, Lu Chen did not linger in the pill room. He went straight back to his quarters.

From the bottom of a wooden chest, Lu Chen took out a small porcelain bottle.

This was the Blood-Qi Powder supplied to him by Wang Firm this month.

Dark-red pills lay quietly inside the bottle, giving off a pungent, heavy medicinal fragrance.

Lu Chen looked at it, his gaze steady.

Master Ge Ye had said that ordinary martial artists at the initial Blood Moving realm were best off taking one Blood-Qi Powder every ten days. Yet last time, Lu Chen had used only seven days to completely refine the pill's potency, and had even cultivated a new strand of qi and blood.

Now, his Coiling Dragon Stance Art was already nearing mastery.

This was the perfect chance to press ahead and accelerate his cultivation.

Lu Chen did not hesitate. Tilting back his head, he swallowed the Blood-Qi Powder.

The pill slid down his throat, bringing only a faint bitterness at first.

But within mere breaths of reaching his stomach, it exploded like a ball of fire.

Boom!

The tyrannical medicinal power instantly surged toward his limbs and bones.

His chest and abdomen burned, his muscles tightened, and even his skin swiftly reddened as if scalded by hot water.

This medicinal power was far more violent than a medicinal bath.

A medicinal bath was like warm water slowly seeping into the body, while Blood-Qi Powder was like a fierce horse, charging wildly the moment it entered his body.

Lu Chen felt the two strands of qi and blood in his heart suddenly startled, growing somewhat restless.

He dared not delay and pushed open the door, heading to the training ground outside.

When the night wind blew over him, the heat in his body did not lessen. Instead, it grew more intense.

Lu Chen spread his feet apart, his five toes gripping the ground. His knees and hips sank slightly, his waist and back slowly twisted together, and his spine rose and fell in a steady rhythm, like an Azure Dragon Coiling Body.

The moment he assumed the stance, his entire aura sank at once.

The medicinal power rampaging through his body seemed to suddenly crash into an invisible net.

When he inhaled, Lu Chen drew the medicinal power back into his chest and abdomen bit by bit.

When he exhaled, he guided the heat to slowly spread through his muscles.

One cycle, two cycles, three cycles...

Guided by the stance art, the medicinal power merged into his limbs and bones. While nourishing his sinews and skeleton, it also strengthened Lu Chen's qi and blood.

Sweat soon beaded on Lu Chen's body.

Droplets ran down his cheeks and fell onto the blue bricks, shattering into tiny splashes.

Who knew how much time passed.

Lu Chen's body suddenly trembled slightly.

It was not a tremor caused by external force, but a resonant quiver from deep within his flesh and blood.

At first, only his shoulders and back trembled faintly.

Then his chest, abdomen, waist, hips, legs, and arms all began to quiver finely, as though drawn by an invisible force.

Lu Chen felt every muscle in his body tighten at once, then relax at once.

The sensation was exceedingly strange.

It was as if an invisible giant hand had reached out from deep within his body, remolding every muscle in him.

Then, an incredibly familiar yet utterly unfamiliar sensation surged from the depths of his body.

Countless scenes of himself practicing the Coiling Dragon Stance Art appeared before his eyes.

Scene after scene, frame after frame, continuously enlarged in the depths of Lu Chen's pupils.

Only when the trembling of his muscles ceased did every image before his eyes flood into his mind.

Then, like a flood dragon transforming into a true dragon, Lu Chen's body completed a thorough transformation.

A translucent light screen appeared before him:

[Coiling Dragon Stance Art: Mastery]

[Progress: 0/1000]

Light gleamed brilliantly in Lu Chen's eyes.

"Stance art mastery!"

He lowered his head and looked at his body, carefully sensing every change within it.

Moonlight fell across his arms.

The muscles on his arms seemed as though they had been deliberately sculpted by a craftsman, their lines clear yet not exaggerated. They were not thick and bloated, but compact, smooth, and brimming with resilient strength.

With the slightest movement of his forearm, the muscles rippled like swimming dragons beneath the water.

The soreness and stiffness in his shoulders and back, left behind by his boxing practice, had completely vanished. His shoulders were steady, his spine stretched open, and his entire backbone was like a drawn iron bow, faintly storing force.

His physique also seemed to have been polished anew.

He had become as agile as a dragon.

Lu Chen clenched his fist, and qi and blood swiftly gathered in his palm along his meridians.

He could feel that power now flowed through his body more smoothly.

At the slightest thought, his feet, waist, back, shoulders, and arms naturally linked into a single line.

The joy in Lu Chen's eyes deepened.

After the stance art reached mastery, its reshaping effect on the body was especially obvious.

His body now was like a piece of iron repeatedly hammered and forged. Its impurities had been knocked out bit by bit, while its shape had gradually taken form.

Stance art was not a martial art of slaughter, yet it was the foundation of a martial artist.

No matter how powerful one's fist techniques were, without stance art to support them, they were nothing but flowery forms.

Moreover, after his stance art reached mastery, Lu Chen's efficiency in circulating qi and blood improved once more.

From now on, whether it was meat, medicinal baths, or Blood-Qi Powder, all of it could be converted into qi and blood more quickly.