Skin-and-Flesh Realm

"Hurry up and bow."

Lai Quan's urging voice came from behind him.

"To hell with it. I've got the Creation Furnace backing me up anyway!"

Lin Nan steadied himself. Without the slightest hesitation, he strode forward and respectfully bowed to the statue of the Blessed Life Mother.

Hiss!

The instant he bent at the waist, his entire body suddenly shuddered for no apparent reason. Streams of icy, sinister aura seemed to appear from nowhere and burrow straight into his mind.

The next moment, he seemed to hear chanting beside his ear.

"All worldly fortune and prosperity are but illusions. Only boundless Blessed Life is true emptiness..."

Washed over by the chanting, his eyes grew unfocused, and his vision became increasingly blurred, as though he were drunk and the world was spinning around him.

Through his hazy vision, he actually saw the statue of the Blessed Life Mother move. Its face twisted without end, and a faint gaze seemed to travel toward him from an immense distance...

Buzz!

Just as he was about to lose himself, Lin Nan suddenly felt a buzzing in his mind that pulled him back to reality.

The Creation Furnace was reacting!

[Sinister aura has entered the body. Refine it?]

[Yes!]

The moment Lin Nan made his choice, the sinister aura within him receded like a tide and was all fed into the [Creation Furnace]. The furnace flames flickered, converting it into pure yin energy points.

[Yin energy points obtained: +0.5]

A wave of pleasure washed over Lin Nan.

It was sinister aura!

Lin Nan was overjoyed.

Bowing to a god could actually earn him sinister aura!

When he looked back at the platform, the statue was still nothing more than a clay-and-wood figure, utterly motionless, as though what had just happened had been nothing but an illusion.

"Very good. You have now passed the three trials. From this day onward, you are a disciple of our cult."

Lai Quan looked thoroughly pleased.

"Get up now."

"The yin energy points are gone just like that?"

Lin Nan was unwilling to accept it. He rose and turned toward Lai Quan.

"Elder Lai, when I bowed just now, it felt as though I heard someone chanting scriptures beside my ear."

"You heard correctly. At the moment of worship, we form a fleeting connection with the Blessed Life Mother. So long as we worship enough times, the Blessed Life Mother's protection over us will grow ever stronger. It can even greatly aid our martial cultivation."

Lai Quan spoke with emotion.

—That was a lie.

Whether it helped martial cultivation or not, Lin Nan did not know. But he knew that without the [Creation Furnace], the sinister aura coming from the statue would have coiled around every inch of his body and turned him into the Blessed Life Mother's shape.

"I wonder how many times one can worship in a day?" Lin Nan asked.

"At most three times a day. Any more than that, and a person cannot bear—"

Before Lai Quan could finish, he saw Lin Nan smoothly turn around, kneel on the prayer cushion, and begin bowing over and over like a chicken pecking at grain.

"Y-you... what are you doing?"

"After hearing Elder Lai's words, I was deeply moved. I only wish to bow a few more times and grow closer to the Blessed Life Mother."

"Enough, enough! Stop bowing already!"

"My heart is sincere. Elder Lai need not dissuade me further!"

"No, I mean if you keep bowing, the paint on the statue is going to come off! Get up right now!!"

White Snake Martial School, inside a room.

"What Blessed Life Cult? This is practically the Gospel Cult."

Looking refreshed, Lin Nan opened the information on the [Creation Furnace].

[Furnace Master: Lin Nan]

[Age: Twenty]

[Art: Spirit Serpent Stance (Beginner 110/200)]

[Art: Origin-Revering Stance (Not Initiated)]

[Fist Art: White Snake Fist · Serpent-Transforming Force (Mastered)]

[Usable yin energy points: 6.]

Yesterday, Lin Nan had squeezed a full six yin energy points out of the Blessed Life Cult's three initiation trials.

If the Blessed Life Mother's wooden statue had not cracked in the end, he would have kept squeezing.

Squeezing wool was always satisfying. The more he squeezed, the better it felt.

Moreover, to Lin Nan's surprise, the Blessed Life Cult's rules were extremely lax. Once the initiation ceremony was complete, Lai Quan lost interest in him.

He only instructed Lin Nan to regularly cooperate with the cult's charitable work, return to worship on a regular basis, and complete the tasks issued by the Blessed Life Cult.

Of course, that was only because it was him.

If it had been an ordinary martial artist, even an expert at the third stage of the Skin-and-Flesh Realm like the three true disciples of White Snake Martial School, they would probably have been completely reshaped into the Blessed Life Cult's form after being cleansed by the sinister aura during the three initiation trials.

Who knew how many martial artists they had secretly transformed through that "sinister aura."

There was definitely something seriously wrong with this cult!

And it was deeply connected to evil entities.

Lin Nan even suspected that the so-called Blessed Life Mother was actually a particularly powerful evil entity.

The only problem was that there was still no evidence of how the Blessed Life Cult was connected to the missing girls' case in the city.

"It's time to advance to the Skin-and-Flesh Realm."

Now that he had enough yin energy points, Lin Nan faced no more obstacles.

He converted all six yin energy points. One point became one hundred proficiency points, all of which he added to his stance art.

[Spirit Serpent Stance (Beginner 110/200)] immediately changed.

It became [Spirit Serpent Stance (Level 1 10/500)].

In an instant, countless memories of tempering skin and flesh day after day surged into Lin Nan's mind. He felt his skin and flesh growing tighter and firmer as endless amounts of qi and blood seeped into them like grains of sand, turning his body into something like drumskin.

First stage of the Skin-and-Flesh Realm, Softening—complete!

"Keep grinding!"

Lin Nan gritted his teeth and converted the remaining five yin energy points into five hundred proficiency points, pouring them all into the Spirit Serpent Stance!

Buzz!

Lin Nan's vision blurred. The skin and flesh over his entire body continued evolving from drumskin, while the stance-art qi and blood accumulated from his earlier White Snake Stance surged into his flesh.

It felt as though countless iron hammers were pounding and forging his skin and flesh, making them increasingly solid. Several dozen breaths later...

Ding!

Second stage of the Skin-and-Flesh Realm, Hardening—complete!

He looked at the information in his mind again.

[Furnace Master: Lin Nan]

[Age: Twenty]

[Art: Spirit Serpent Stance (Level 2 10/800)]

[Art: Origin-Revering Stance (Not Initiated)]

[Fist Art: White Snake Fist · Serpent-Transforming Force (Mastered)]

[Usable yin energy points: None.]

Lin Nan touched his skin. The first thing he felt was its resilience. He picked up a small fruit knife from the table and lightly drew it across his arm.

It left only a pale mark, like one made by a fingernail.

It was comparable to a martial artist in the Qi and Blood Realm who specialized in hard-body techniques.

He turned and performed a set of White Snake Fist. As his fists cut through the air, they produced sharp cracking sounds.

Previously, using force energy with his third level Qi and Blood Realm cultivation had been as strenuous as a calf pulling a heavy cart, and he could not use it more than twice a day.

Now that he had reached the Skin-and-Flesh Realm, force energy adhered to his skin and flesh. When he circulated it, he felt as though he possessed inexhaustible power, wielding it as easily as his own limbs.

If he faced Zhong Jing again—

He would not even need to ambush him. In actual combat, he could probably defeat Zhong Jing head-on in a single move.

Over the next month,

Neither the Martial Alliance nor the Blessed Life Cult contacted him again.

Lin Nan returned to the courtyard a few times and looked for Lai Quan, hoping for another chance to squeeze some wool.

But the courtyard gates were tightly shut. Lai Quan seemed to have gone off to handle other matters, which left Lin Nan deeply regretful.

Life returned to peace and quiet.

Lin Nan was happy to have the tranquility. Every day, he trained his stance art in the courtyard and accumulated qi and blood, while sparring with Liu Feng and Yu Qianqian to improve his practical combat skills.

Martial cultivation and real combat ability were not always directly linked. Lin Nan had heard of martial artists who shut themselves away to train, only to prove incapable in real fights and be killed by opponents of lower realms.

While the Spirit Serpent Art continued to improve, Lin Nan also kept trying to figure out the secrets to initiating the Origin-Revering Stance.

Inside the martial training ground, numerous disciples came and went.

Lin Nan practiced each move against a wooden training dummy, completely immersed in martial techniques, to the point that he seemed to forget even the noisy sounds around him.