Shu Capital.
The Military Dependents Compound.
Lin Xiaoxiao sat cross-legged on her bed.
She followed the posture her brother had taught her, struggling to steady her breathing.
She had practiced every day for the past two weeks.
She found it boring, but she still listened to her brother.
Suddenly.
Lin Xiaoxiao felt a faint warmth three inches below her navel.
It felt like she had swallowed a sip of hot tea, leaving her pleasantly warm.
Then.
The warmth began to flow through her body.
Lin Xiaoxiao's eyes flew open.
She could make out the veins on the leaves outside her window.
She could hear a police siren clearly on a distant street.
Even the air seemed unusually fresh. One breath left her feeling good all over.
"Is... is this martial arts?"
Lin Xiaoxiao stared wide-eyed and murmured to herself.
She remembered the stern look on her brother's face before he left, then thought of the soldiers filling the streets these past few days.
The girl might usually be mischievous, but she was no fool.
She immediately shut her mouth and told no one.
"Bro."
"What big thing are you mixed up in...?"
Southwest Military Region.
Inside Exclusive Cultivation Room No. 3.
Lin Yuan sat cross-legged.
He had long since taken off his shirt, revealing sharply defined muscles.
The Spiritual Energy Tide!
Su Qingxue had warned him again and again that he absolutely could not miss this tremendous opportunity.
During ordinary cultivation.
Aura was like a stream. He had to guide it carefully, drawing it into his body strand by strand.
But now.
Aura was like a river bursting through a dam, pouring into every one of Lin Yuan's pores.
Pain.
Excruciating pain.
The muscles in Lin Yuan's face twitched, and his clenched teeth chattered.
A Second-Tier Martial Artist was at the Flesh Tempering stage.
He had to use True Qi to scour his muscles, tearing apart the original fibers before rebuilding them.
With each reconstruction, his muscles' density and resilience increased exponentially.
It was a long and painful process.
But the Spiritual Energy Tide compressed that process immensely.
"Hiss, hiss, hiss—"
Tiny beads of blood kept seeping through Lin Yuan's skin.
The moment they appeared, the heat evaporated them into a blood-red mist.
The Second Layer of the Heavenly Dipper Qi Refining Formula was running at a frantic pace.
Break through!
Lin Yuan roared inwardly.
His raging True Qi surged like an army and smashed straight through the barrier of the Early Second Tier.
Boom!
A muffled explosion sounded inside his body.
His bones rang out together, and his muscles swelled as though inflated.
Mid-Second-Tier Stage!
He had broken through.
Only ten minutes had passed.
But Lin Yuan was not satisfied.
He could clearly feel the concentration of Aura around him still rising.
It wasn't enough.
Not nearly enough.
Only one week remained before the Beast Tide erupted.
According to Su Qingxue.
The Beast Tide near Shu Capital would be led by an Ironclad Mad Ape at the Peak Second-Order Stage.
Ferocious Beasts were naturally far tougher than human martial artists of the same tier.
A Ferocious Beast at the Peak Second-Order Stage had defenses comparable to an armored vehicle.
He might be a prodigy, but if he failed to raise his level high enough, he could still lose.
He didn't just have to win. He had to crush it!
Because behind him stood Shu Capital—and his parents and sister.
Keep going!
Lin Yuan seemed to become a black hole for Aura.
The Aura between heaven and earth formed a vortex directly above his head.
Time passed, second by second.
Half an hour.
Forty minutes.
Fifty minutes.
A dark-red layer of hardened skin appeared on Lin Yuan's body.
It was a protective membrane that formed when his muscle density reached its limit.
It rose and fell with his breathing.
The hardened layer radiated a pressure that made the heart tremble.
Fifty-five minutes.
Lin Yuan felt the flow of Aura into his body begin to slow.
That fierce, surging influx was rapidly fading.
The tide was about to end.
Don't you dare slip away!
A fierce unwillingness rose within Lin Yuan.
He sprang to his feet and took the opening stance of the Broken Rock Fist.
If absorbing Aura while seated was too slow, he would move.
He would use high-intensity Martial Techniques to push his muscles to their limits and force his body to devour the last of the Aura.
Bang!
Lin Yuan threw a punch.
A piercing crack of compressed air rang out.
A visible ring of white air burst from his fist.
He had used no True Qi Projection—only the raw strength of his body.
Each step he took left spiderweb cracks across the cultivation room floor.
"Hah—"
Lin Yuan kept shifting his footwork.
The Wandering Dragon Step turned him into a blur flickering around the cramped cultivation room.
He held no spear for the Overlord Spear, but he used his arm in its place. Every strike carried a fierce, unstoppable force.
The final five minutes.
Lin Yuan pushed his body's potential to the limit.
At last.
The pale mist hanging in the air dispersed completely.
The pressure that had filled every corner receded like a tide.
The Spiritual Energy Tide had ended.
Blue Star's Aura concentration settled at a stable level.
Lin Yuan stopped moving and gasped for breath.
Sweat ran down his muscles and dripped onto the floor, where the heat instantly evaporated it.
He was like a volcano that had just finished erupting.
He had fallen quiet, but a power capable of laying waste to everything still churned within him.
"So it's over..."
Lin Yuan clenched his fist.
His knuckles crackled like beans popping in a pan.
He could feel how frighteningly strong his body had become.
He didn't need a testing machine.
He was certain one punch from him now could smash straight through the force-testing target he had used before.
With a thought.
A translucent screen appeared before Lin Yuan's eyes.
[Host: Lin Yuan] [Strength: Peak Second-Order Martial Artist] [Cultivation Technique: Heavenly Dipper Qi Refining Formula, Second Layer (Perfected Realm 55%)] [Martial Techniques: Broken Rock Fist (Minor Mastery Realm 85%), Wandering Dragon Step (Minor Mastery Realm 92%), Overlord Spear (Minor Mastery Realm 88%)] [Treasure: None]
Lin Yuan looked at the figures on the panel.
His pupils contracted, then he broke into an excited grin.
In just one hour.
He had passed through the Mid-Second-Tier Stage and Late Stage, soaring straight to the Peak Second-Order Stage.
The breakneck pace of his advancement sent a thrill through him.
Even more astonishing was his proficiency in the Heavenly Dipper Qi Refining Formula.
Second Layer, Perfected Realm: 55%.
That meant he had completed Flesh Tempering and had even reached the threshold of the Third-Tier Bone Tempering Realm.
As for his three Martial Techniques, they were still at the Minor Mastery Realm.
But his proficiency in every one of them was approaching the Mastery Realm.
Given all that.
Lin Yuan's combat ability had made a qualitative leap.
"What a shame."
"If the tide had lasted another half hour..."
"No, even just twenty minutes."
"I could've used that raging energy to break through the barrier in my bones and enter the Third-Tier Martial Artist realm."
"..."
Still.
Less than a minute after his excitement began.
A trace of regret flashed through Lin Yuan's eyes.
It wasn't that he was greedy.
The Spiritual Energy Tide had simply been that effective.
Advancing at a pace that felt almost like cheating was hard not to get hooked on.
"Oh well."
"Peak Second-Order Stage it is."
"I've never feared anyone at the same tier."
A moment later.
Lin Yuan collected himself.
He grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from his body.
Once he had finished.
He walked to the metal door of the training room and pressed the button to open it.
The heavy Alloy Gate slowly slid open to either side.
Two Guard stood outside, armed to the teeth.
The moment they saw Lin Yuan emerge, the two Guard instinctively tightened their grips on their rifles.
Lin Yuan had done nothing.
Yet the pressure radiating from him still left both soldiers struggling to breathe.
"Sir!"
Fighting back their trembling, the two Guard snapped to attention and saluted.
"Where's Commander Zhao?"
Lin Yuan nodded and drew in his aura.
He knew full well.
The Spiritual Energy Tide was over.
But the real war had only just begun.
Next came the battlefield where humanity and the Ferocious Beasts would fight for living space.
And he, Lin Yuan, would be Dragon Country's sharpest blade.
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