Manifesting Divinity Before Others

Li Zhengyang carried Old Zhou and jogged down the slope, with Xing Feng stumbling along behind him.

His phone chimed.

Su Jin sent back a voice message. "The hide is intact and the quality is excellent. Seven hundred thousand has been transferred. Check it."

The deposit notification arrived right after it.

Li Zhengyang ran more than three hundred meters before finding a stone bench and setting the man down.

Dragon Lizard roars came from the direction of West Mountain behind them. Even from across half a mountain, they were still chilling.

Xing Feng leaned against a rock, panting, his face waxy yellow.

"We can't outrun them." Li Zhengyang didn't look toward the mountain. He lowered his head and checked his phone.

Bank balance: 700037.

He stared at the number. The broken bones in his left ribs were still grinding against flesh. It hurt.

Seven hundred thousand. Seven thousand Blood-Qi Value. Added to his existing 25,628, that made 32,628.

The threshold for the Martial Spirit Realm was 30,000, and each rank required 5,000 Blood-Qi Value.

It was enough, with more than two thousand points to spare.

Li Zhengyang did not hesitate.

Recharge: 700000. Confirm.

[Recharge successful!]

[Recharge amount: 700000]

[Blood-Qi Value gained: +7000]

[Current Blood-Qi Value: 32628]

[Blood-Qi Value has exceeded the threshold]

[Realm breakthrough: Eighth-Rank Great Martial Master → First-Rank Martial Spirit!]

First-Rank Martial Spirit.

The instant those four words appeared, heaven and earth changed.

In a fraction of a second, Li Zhengyang's five senses expanded to an absurd range.

The sound of a grasshopper kicking its legs three hundred meters away, the vibrations of underground water flowing through rock five hundred meters away—all of it flooded into his mind.

Blood Qi was no longer a liquid flowing through his meridians. It seeped into every cell of his body.

His bones were reshaping. The three broken ribs on his left side crackled as they rejoined at a visible speed.

Within minutes, his injuries had healed.

Martial Spirit Rank regeneration was ridiculous to that extent.

But the greatest change was not his body.

It was Astral Qi.

A Great Martial Master's Astral Qi could be released outward, but its range and power were limited.

A Martial Spirit's Astral Qi had already begun to resonate with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

The textbook said: A Martial Spirit can draw upon the power of heaven and earth for their own use.

Put simply, when throwing a punch, it was no longer just one's own strength. One could borrow strength from heaven and earth.

Li Zhengyang stood up and clenched his fists.

His bones no longer hurt. His ribs were whole. Every inch of muscle in his body surged with immense power. He was completely different from ten minutes ago.

Xing Feng sat on the ground, his expression spectacular.

He was a scout, and his senses were sharper than those of ordinary Martial Warriors.

The aura that had erupted from Li Zhengyang just now had nearly crushed him into suffocation.

"You just... broke through?" Xing Feng's voice was dry.

"Yeah."

"A Martial Spirit?"

"Yeah."

Xing Feng opened his mouth, then swallowed the rest of his words.

He had watched this young man in his early twenties step from Great Martial Master into the Martial Spirit Realm with his own eyes.

He had only ever seen such things in the talent profiles of top-secret military files.

In the blink of an eye?

What a joke.

"Watch him for me. I'm going to take care of something."

Li Zhengyang picked up the Mountain-Piercing Spear from the ground.

"Where are you going?" Xing Feng asked.

"To kill the Dragon Lizards."

Xing Feng: "..."

He watched Li Zhengyang's retreating figure run up the mountain with his spear, his mouth hanging open for a long while.

Halfway up West Mountain.

The Male Dragon Lizard had gone mad.

It crawled out of its cave and sniffed all over the mountain, searching everywhere for the prey that had escaped.

The Female Dragon Lizard followed behind it. Its molt was not yet complete, and half of its old armor still hung from its body. It limped as it walked.

Just as the two Dragon Lizards met atop a massive boulder, the atmosphere changed.

The Male Dragon Lizard's vertical pupils suddenly contracted.

A pressure it had never felt before rose from below the slope.

The source of that pressure was a person.

He carried a spear on his back and walked quickly. He did not conceal his aura, nor did he adopt any stance of battle preparation.

He simply walked straight toward them.

The Male Dragon Lizard instinctively sensed danger.

It lowered its head and let out a hissing warning from its throat.

Li Zhengyang looked up at it.

An eight-meter-long body covered in intact metallic scales. The Fourth-Rank Magic Beast whose tail had snapped three of his ribs earlier.

Half an hour ago, he would have had to run.

Now, he did not.

He took the Mountain-Piercing Spear off his back, gripped the butt with one hand, and planted the spear tip on the ground.

Blood Qi poured into the spear.

It was different from before. Previously, his Astral Qi had covered the surface of the spear in a layer. Now, the Astral Qi seeped into the weapon's structure itself. The spear shaft trembled, emitting a low-frequency hum.

The Male Dragon Lizard did not run.

The pride of a Fourth-Rank Magic Beast would not allow it to flee.

It opened its jaws, arched its body, kicked off the ground with its hind legs, and charged straight at him.

It was faster and fiercer than it had been in the cave.

Li Zhengyang met its charge.

Cloud-Shocking Steps.

His figure traced an arc before the Male Dragon Lizard.

The Dragon Lizard's bite missed, and its four claws gouged four deep tracks into the rock.

Mountain-Splitting Spear Art, Collapse Formula.

The spear cut in from the side, aimed at the side of the Dragon Lizard's neck.

One thrust.

It pierced through.

Martial Spirit Rank Blood Qi combined with Mysterious Rank spear techniques. The spearhead drilled through a gap in the scales, shattered its cervical vertebrae, then burst out through the other side.

The Male Dragon Lizard's head tilted.

Not the tilt of an injury, but the tilt of a broken neck. The inertia of its ten-meter-long body still carried it forward, while its head hung on by only a layer of flesh.

Bang.

The Dragon Lizard's corpse, weighing over eight hundred pounds, slammed into the ground, skidded four or five meters, and snapped two trees.

The Female Dragon Lizard saw it.

It let out a shrill, grieving howl, then turned and fled toward the cave.

During its molting period, it only possessed the combat strength of a Third-Rank Martial Artist. With damaged old armor hanging off its body, it ran in a swaying stagger.

Li Zhengyang pulled out his spear, shook off the blood, and gave chase.

Twenty meters, ten meters, five meters.

Twisting Formula.

The spear swept sideways, striking the Female Dragon Lizard's hind leg.

Its leg broke. The Dragon Lizard rolled onto its side and struggled to crawl forward with its front claws.

Li Zhengyang walked up to it and looked down at the Demonic Beast covered in fragments of old armor.

One thrust pierced its skull.

It was nailed to the ground.

The whole process took less than twenty seconds.

Two Dragon Lizards, one male and one female. One Fourth-Rank and one Third-Rank Martial Artist.

Both were dead.

Li Zhengyang pulled out his spear and crouched to retrieve the Beast Cores.

The Male Dragon Lizard's Beast Core was as large as a fist, dark gold, and heavy in his hand.

A Fourth-Rank Beast Core started at two hundred thousand on the market.

The Female Dragon Lizard had one too, though it was smaller.

He stuffed the two Beast Cores into his ring.

Just then, movement came from below the slope.

Footsteps. More than one person.

Li Zhengyang stood up, gripped his spear, and looked down.

Five people.

The leader was a short, burly old man in his sixties. He had a shaved head, wore a greasy apron, and had a foot-long boning knife tucked at his waist.

Four thugs followed behind him, each carrying a weapon. Every one of them was a Great Martial Master.

The short, burly old man led the way with long strides. The moment he emerged from the woods and looked up, he stopped.

A young man stood on the slope, with two Dragon Lizard corpses behind him.

One male and one female.

The male's neck was broken, while the female's head had been pierced through.

The old man examined the size of the corpses, then the color of their scales.

Fourth-Rank.

Then he looked at the young man standing beside the corpses.

In his early twenties, wearing a filthy black T-shirt, holding a silver-white spear with blood still dripping from its tip.

Diao San.

Third Master Diao, a ruthless figure in the Eastside underworld. A Fifth-grade Grand Martial Master. He had taken Boss Sun's job to hunt down Li Zhengyang.

He had brought four fully armed men and followed leads provided by informants all the way to West Mountain.

He had originally planned to surround Li Zhengyang and finish him cleanly.

Then he saw this scene.

Diao San's mind worked quickly.

"Retreat."

He kept his voice low as his body was already backing away.

The four thugs were dumbfounded, still not understanding what was happening. One of them blurted out, "Third Master, isn't that kid just..."

"Shut up. Move."

Too late.

"What are you people down there doing?"

A voice drifted down from the slope.

Xing Feng had somehow made his way up. He supported himself against a rock and raised an ID with one hand.

The emblem of the Military Special Operations Battalion.

Diao San's face went deathly pale.

Street brawls were one thing. Crossing paths with military personnel was another.

The Special Operations Battalion was not under local jurisdiction. It answered directly to the Northern Frontier Military Region. Offending them meant that not only would his own operation be wiped out, but Boss Sun's entire company would be dismantled.

"A misunderstanding!" Diao San stumbled back three steps and forced out a smile uglier than crying. "We were just passing by to scout the way. Sorry for disturbing you. Farewell!"

He turned and ran.

The four thugs chased after him, scrambling and tumbling away.

Li Zhengyang watched the group vanish into the woods, then glanced back at Xing Feng.

Xing Feng put his ID back into his pocket and shrugged.

"You're not going to ask who they were?"

"Not important." Li Zhengyang pulled out a Short Blade and began cutting open the Male Dragon Lizard's corpse. "What matters is how much valuable stuff we can strip off this thing."

Xing Feng fell silent for a moment, then came over to help peel the Dragon Lizard's scales.

After twenty minutes of work, they had stripped away everything that could be removed.

The scales, tendons, and teeth of a Fourth-Rank Martial Artist Dragon Lizard were all valuable materials, filling half a Space Ring.

Old Zhou woke up.

Xing Feng explained the situation to him.

Old Zhou sat on the ground with his injured leg stretched out, staring at the scattered chunks of Dragon Lizard and the young man beside them wiping his blade. He remained silent for a long time.

"Young man, I'm Zhou Zheng, leader of Team Three of the Special Operations Battalion."

"Li Zhengyang."

"You killed it alone?" Zhou Zheng looked at the Male Dragon Lizard's severed neck.

"Yeah."

Zhou Zheng exchanged a glance with Xing Feng.

"Li Zhengyang, do you want to join the military?"

Li Zhengyang was using his phone to do the math without looking up. "Is there money in it?"

"Have you looked into the Northern Frontier Military Region's policies for Martial Warriors?" Zhou Zheng straightened up. "There are Demonic Beast tides at the Northern Frontier Front year-round. Pay there is based on contribution—the more Demonic Beasts you kill, the more the military pays. The prices may not match those outside, but everything is settled on the spot."

Li Zhengyang's hand stopped.

"At a frontline outpost, the density of Demonic Beasts in the surrounding area is ten times that of West Mountain. With the speed you worked at today, you could make no less than several hundred thousand a day. If you get lucky and run into a high-rank one, a week's earnings could match a year's income inland."

Li Zhengyang slowly raised his head.

"How do I get to the Northern Frontier?"