Seeking Death

That night, a convoy of escort wagons quietly departed from the back gate of the Peaceful Reach Escort Bureau.

Several crates of medicinal herbs and bolts of cloth were loaded on the wagons as a smokescreen. The real "cargo" was the two people walking beside them.

Wang Haowen was among them. He had been assigned to Ma Guobao's wagon, told it was a short nighttime escort run and that they would be back by dawn.

After traveling for more than an hour, they stopped to rest beside a secluded riverbank. Ma Guobao took two leather flasks from his robes, handed one to Wang Haowen, and tipped the other back for two swigs.

Wang Haowen accepted it and drank a few mouthfuls. The taste was somewhat bitter and astringent, but he did not think much of it.

Before the time it took to drink half a cup of tea, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. The firelight and tree shadows before him gradually blurred, his head seeming to be wrapped in a layer of thick cotton. In the end, he could not even see Ma Guobao's face clearly, and his whole body slid down along the wagon boards.

Ma Guobao crouched beside him and watched Wang Haowen close his eyes. After remaining silent for several breaths, he tucked the flask back into his robes and waved at the others. "Follow me."

Cheng Yang had no idea that Haozi had already met with disaster.

That evening, he practiced his stance on the stone courtyard behind the martial hall until the moon stood high in the sky.

The night wind slipped through the cracks in the courtyard walls. Cheng Yang stood in the middle of the stone yard, maintaining the Great Dragon Stake posture for nearly two hours.

He remained there until halfway through the Hour of the Pig, when the numbers on his panel crossed the final line.

[Great Dragon Stake: Perfection]

At that instant, a deep hum sounded from the depths of his spine, as though a string that had slept for many years had finally been plucked.

The tremor began at his tailbone and traveled upward through his vertebrae, section by section. Each bone gave off a fine, crisp crack—not the sound of breaking, but the sound of finely crafted parts clicking together after being recalibrated.

The Perfection of the Great Dragon Stake was unlike the completion of any stance art he had practiced before.

When the Through-Back Stance reached Perfection, his blood and qi burst outward. When the Wild Bull Stance reached Perfection, they sank downward. When the Rock-Still Stance reached Perfection, they drew inward.

But when the Great Dragon Stake reached Perfection, his entire spine felt like a fully drawn bow. Its string was stretched to the limit, storing a power ready to burst forth, needing only the right opportunity to be released.

Cheng Yang knew what that opportunity was.

He slowly adjusted his breathing, simultaneously mobilizing the blood and qi accumulated by the four Perfection stance arts—Through-Back, Spirit Crane, Wild Bull, and Rock-Still—and pushed them toward his spine.

Four currents of blood and qi with differing properties converged at the entrance to his spine, tangling and churning like four great rivers of different colors rushing into a narrow channel at once.

It was not a pleasant sensation. His meridians swelled painfully, as though something inside his bones were constantly expanding and squeezing them apart.

He gritted his teeth and endured the swelling pain, continuing to pour blood and qi into the depths of his spine.

With the Great Dragon Stake at Perfection, his spine was no longer merely a load-bearing structure. It became a furnace capable of compressing, tempering, and refining the blood and qi of his entire body. Once the accumulations of the four stance arts were pushed inside, they churned violently within his spine like molten iron repeatedly hammered in a casting mold.

Then, he felt the change.

Starting from his lumbar vertebrae, an extremely faint golden hue began to seep out from within his bones, like the last sheen surfacing as molten iron cooled.

That golden layer was not dazzling—one could even call it restrained—but it carried a quality entirely different from Silver Bone. It was heavier, denser, more substantial, like refined iron folded together after being hammered a thousand times.

The gold spread upward from his lumbar vertebrae—to his thoracic vertebrae, cervical vertebrae, shoulder blades, every rib, and every finger bone.

The bone structure throughout his body transformed at a speed invisible to the naked eye. The old color was gradually covered and replaced from within by the new, as though a vessel had been recast from the inside out.

When the final bone completed its transformation, the "bowstring" within Cheng Yang's body finally loosened.

A warm, solid power flowed along his spine and throughout his body, flooding into the tips of his limbs. A faint golden gleam washed over the surface of his skin, vanishing in an instant.

Cheng Yang slowly opened his eyes and lowered his head to look at his hands.

He clenched his fist. The collision of his finger bones produced a clear, solid sound, carrying an echo like clashing gold and iron that rippled through the night wind before drawing back in.

The foundation piled up by five Perfection stance arts, guided by the Great Dragon Stake in its perfected state, had finally forced open the door to Gold Bone.

Every time Cheng Yang swung a fist, it brought a whistling sound of air tearing apart.

The explosively increased power in his body gave him, for a moment, the illusion that he was invincible beneath heaven.

"Is this the martial foundation that only geniuses of the prefectural city can possess?"

Cheng Yang examined himself.

The foundation of Gold Bone was still far from the limit this body could bear.

Only the peerless Divine Bone said to have been attained by Qin Wudi was worthy of being his goal.

No!

As a peerless genius, how could he submit beneath another?

What he wanted was to surpass Qin Wudi!

On the path of the three views of Foundation Establishment, he would take one step farther than Qin Wudi.

He would become the foremost in history!!

After the rush of hot blood faded, Cheng Yang began to consider reality.

"There are still twelve days until the Ascending Dragon Conference."

Judging by his current speed of stance training—

He had needed only three days to cultivate the advanced stance art, Great Dragon Stake, to Perfection.

Minor Accomplishment on the first day, Great Accomplishment on the second, and Perfection on the third.

If he practiced a mid-grade stance art, then his speed might rise another level.

He could bring a stance art to Perfection in just two days.

If others learned of that speed, they would probably doubt their entire lives on the spot...

So, in the twelve remaining days before the Ascending Dragon Conference, he could at the very least add the blood and qi of four more Perfection stance arts to his foundation...

By then, at the Ascending Dragon Conference, he would truly be dealing a crushing blow from a higher dimension against everyone else.

What favored contenders for the championship?

They probably would not be able to withstand even two punches from him.

I wonder whether my current strength is enough to knock a Force Tempering Martial Master like Master flat on the ground...

Cheng Yang licked his lips.

"I really want to find someone and have a good fight..."

As for now?

Now definitely would not do.

It was already past halfway through the Hour of the Pig, around ten at night. Though it was still early for him, it should be time for his master to sleep.

But the key was that he and his master now lived under the same roof, and his master always waited until Cheng Yang returned to his room before going back to sleep.

That gave Cheng Yang quite a headache, so whenever he went on nighttime raids against others, he did so during the Hour of the Dog, between seven and nine in the evening.

I could just move back into the dormitory now. There is no need to keep sleeping with Master...

Otherwise, whenever he needed to act, it was simply far too inconvenient...

The next day.

"Senior Brother Cheng, your letter..."

A disciple handed Cheng Yang an unopened letter.

"A letter? Who would send me one?"

Cheng Yang quickly opened the letter and immediately saw a line of writing.

"Wang Haowen is in my hands. Come alone to the old cellar yard west of the city during the Hour of the Dog today. If you bring anyone else, you will never see your good brother again..."

After reading it, Cheng Yang expressionlessly folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and tucked it into his clothes.

"Someone is always looking to die..."