Leaving

Inside the room, candle flames flickered. Warm yellow halos spilled across the floor, stretching the seated youth's shadow long beside the table. The qi and blood within Lin Qing's body thunderously awakened at this moment.

Buzz—

Lin Qing's body suddenly shuddered. His spine snapped straight, and his clothes billowed faintly without wind. A thin crimson mist rose from him, winding around his body in layer upon layer, hazy and lingering. The mist condensed without spilling over, forming a pillar of qi that swayed amid the candlelight and shadows.

Blood Qi Wolf Smoke!

Countless martial artists who had been stuck at the Second Tier for years found it impossible to take this step in their entire lives. Yet Lin Qing had only just broken through to the Second Tier, and at the very moment of his breakthrough, he had directly condensed Blood Qi Wolf Smoke!

Dense, rich qi and blood circulated through his body, washing over every inch of bone, flesh, and skin. Every gesture brimmed with power at its fullest.

Once his emotions settled, Lin Qing willed it and opened the panel.

[Host: Lin Qing]

Realm: Muscle-and-Bone Realm (breakthrough time: 400 days)

Fused cultivation arts: Origin-Returning Body-Tempering Stance, Bone-Nourishing Tendon-Tuning Stance (expand)

Recorded cultivation arts: Lunar Visualization Art (261/9000), Solar Visualization Art (102/9000), Qi-Consolidating Essence-Fixing Stance (5/400), Breath-Steadying Foundation-Fixing Stance (0/400), Body-Calming Qi-Steadying Stance (0/400), Thick-Earth Root-Bearing Stance (0/400), Still-Standing Essence-Nurturing Stance (0/400)

Body control rating: Yellow-Rank Low Grade

Recorded martial arts: Mountain-Sinking Bone-Shattering Fist (0/80), Drifting-Cloud Wind-Breaking Steps (0/80), Falling-Wood Wind-Cutting Saber (0/80), Pure-Shadow Fresh-Heart Sword (0/80), Soft-Cloud Gentle Palm Form (0/80)

So the Second Tier for martial artists was called the Muscle-and-Bone Realm.

Lin Qing's gaze then fell upon the 400-day breakthrough time, his expression calm.

Four hundred days sounded long, but it was actually calculated solely from the cultivation arts he had already begun to cultivate automatically. Once he cultivated every Third-Tier Cultivation Art in his possession to perfection, this breakthrough time would shrink drastically.

Closing the panel, Lin Qing retracted the crimson qi and blood rising around him and began taking stock of the gains from this trip.

First came the money. He had previously possessed nine thousand taels in gold notes himself, equivalent to ninety thousand taels of silver. The banknotes looted from the Demon Hunting Team members this time totaled another forty thousand taels.

Ordinary savage beasts often weighed over a thousand jin. A single jin of First-Tier savage beast meat alone was worth roughly one tael of silver, and the flesh and blood of one First-Tier savage beast could sell for a high price of a thousand taels. Beyond that, their hides and bones could also be sold. As for Second-Tier savage beasts, their prices rose another tenfold.

That Demon Hunting Team had been led by a Second-Tier Martial Artist, while the rest were all at least First Tier. They roamed forests and mountains all year, hunting savage beasts. After deducting their own expenses, having forty thousand taels of silver left over was fairly reasonable.

Adding his own remaining money to what he had looted from the Demon Hunting Team, Lin Qing's total assets had now reached one hundred and thirty thousand taels.

After counting the money came the treasure, Earthheart Marrow. After several previous rounds of cultivation, he had only a little over thirty drops remaining. This time, he had collected another seventy or eighty drops in the karst cave. Combined, the total had reached one hundred and ten drops.

That was already more than the total Sun Shaoping had given him back then. It should be enough to support him until he left the Summer Kingdom.

Finally, there was the new treasure gained from this expedition.

Several dozen porcelain bottles of varying sizes sat upon the table. Their mouths were sealed, and they contained a mysterious liquid black as ink and viscous in texture. Its sheen was dim, and it felt faintly cool to the touch. Altogether, the bottles contained roughly eight or nine hundred drops.

According to the Demon Hunting Team captain's conjecture, this was a precious medicine specifically for tempering the physical body.

He took the smallest jade bottle and tilted it slightly, letting a single rice-grain-sized drop of black liquid fall into his mouth.

The medicinal liquid slid down his throat, and a warm sensation spread through his entire body. His flesh, skin, tendons, and bones all went numb and itchy, as though countless tiny currents were washing over his muscles and polishing his bones.

After taking the liquid, Lin Qing rose to his feet, planted them firmly, lowered his waist into a horse stance, and performed the Qi-Consolidating Essence-Fixing Stance once.

After the time it took to burn an incense stick, he finished the routine and opened the panel.

The Qi-Consolidating Essence-Fixing Stance's progress on the panel had increased by only one point. This black liquid truly had no effect on increasing cultivation art proficiency.

Lin Qing did not investigate further. He washed up simply, shed the dust of travel from his body, and fell into a deep sleep.

The night was tranquil, while the medicinal power continued to circulate slowly within him, steadily tempering his body.

At daybreak the next day, the sky had only just begun to brighten.

That warm, numb sensation still lingered throughout his body, as the gentle medicinal power continued nourishing his flesh. It was not until everyone packed their luggage and set out in the morning that the numbness completely faded.

The black liquid's medicinal effect lasted roughly six hours.

Over the next several days on the return journey, Lin Qing maintained a schedule of taking the black liquid once every six hours. After three consecutive days of regular use, he finally figured out the black liquid's true effect from the changing data on the system panel.

The breakthrough time, originally four hundred days, had fallen to three hundred and eighty-eight days. This black liquid raised the tempering efficiency of his cultivation arts to four times its original level.

Lin Qing formally named the black liquid Body-Tempering Marrow.

During the twenty days after returning to the city, Lin Qing began cultivating Third-Tier Cultivation Arts arduously. After using forty drops of Earthheart Marrow, he pushed every cultivation art to the perfected realm.

The breakthrough time on the system panel refreshed again, dropping to one hundred and twenty days.

Regrettably, after he had perfected all Third-Tier Cultivation Arts, the medicinal effect of the Body-Tempering Marrow, like that of Earthheart Marrow, also began to diminish, leaving only a threefold boost.

Previously, the cultivation arts operating within his body had been Second Tier and below, allowing the Body-Tempering Marrow's bonus to reach fourfold. Now that the cultivation arts in his body had reached the Third Tier, its bonus had fallen to threefold.

Though the Body-Tempering Marrow's effect had weakened, his breakthrough time had also shortened. If he relied on Second-Tier Cultivation Arts to break through to the Third Tier, the total time would be four hundred days. With Body-Tempering Marrow's aid, he would consume two hundred drops to shorten that time to one hundred days.

Now that his Third-Tier Cultivation Arts were perfected, he only needed to consume another eighty drops of Body-Tempering Marrow to break through in forty days.

Yet perfecting Third-Tier Cultivation Arts brought another headache. His current consumption of savage beast meat was ten jin of Third-Tier meat a day.

Even with the discounted price provided by the Wang Lineage, his daily expense for purchasing savage beast meat still reached fifteen hundred taels.

At such a money-burning pace, even his fortune of one hundred and thirty thousand taels could not withstand long-term extravagance.

As for higher-tier Fourth-Tier savage beast meat, there were virtually no channels to purchase it among the common folk. The Martial Suppression Office's cold storage did have some Fourth-Tier savage beast meat in stock, obtained when Thousand-Household Commander Qin Cang had led a hunting and extermination operation in the past.

But Lin Qing had never entertained the thought of exchanging for it.

Time flowed on, and the years turned over.

In late December, the day of Ye Lingchuan and Wang Qingwan's wedding arrived as scheduled.

The wedding banquet was held at Cloudrest Tower. It was grand in scale, with guests filling the hall. Aristocratic families from the prefecture, martial artists of the jianghu, elders and disciples of the Azure Profound Sect, and others all arrived to offer their congratulations. The occasion was exceptionally lively.

Lin Qing prepared a congratulatory gift worth over a thousand taels and attended the feast quietly.

Several months later, he encountered Wang Qingwan again. The woman who had once been immersed in the grief of her younger brother's death, her brows and eyes haggard with sorrow, had already emerged from the shadows. Life rose and fell, joy and grief drifted and sank; in the end, one still had to look forward.

The wounds of love healed on their own, and a good match warmed the heart. After only a few months of settling herself, Wang Qingwan had not only become open and clear in spirit, but had also successfully entered the Third Tier in martial cultivation. Her talent shone in full, and her grace blossomed anew.

With Ye Lingchuan standing behind her, the Wang Lineage had also completely shaken off its previous decline. It flourished day by day, already surpassing its former scale.

And Ye Lingchuan truly was someone worthy of entrusting one's life to. The fact that he had returned to Azure Sun County to bring his family to the prefectural city for settlement the moment he broke through to the Fourth Tier was enough to show his filial heart. To establish oneself in this world, filial piety came first; a person who valued affection and filial devotion could not have poor character.

As the new year began, grass and trees sprouted buds. Spring winds swept through Cloudmist Prefecture, scattering the biting cold.

This year, Lin Qing turned sixteen.

Gentle spring morning light fell upon the gates of the Martial Suppression Office. Lin Qing walked straight to the records office, took up a brush, and neatly wrote out a letter of resignation.

His half-year career at the Martial Suppression Office had, at this point, come to a complete close.

After handing over all official duties and canceling his office rank and identity, Lin Qing took stock of all his assets.

He had less than seventy thousand taels in banknotes left on him. He then spent twenty-five thousand taels to purchase one hundred Third-Tier Blood-Qi Pills, commissioned a sealed iron box, and placed the Blood-Qi Pills, Body-Tempering Marrow, and Earthheart Marrow inside.

Once he had packed his luggage, Lin Qing stepped beyond the heavy bluestone walls of Cloudmist Prefecture. Outside the city, the spring wind surged mightily, the wilderness stretched vast and wide, and the sky for ten thousand li was clear and pure.

The youth swung onto his horse and lightly lifted the reins.

Clop, clop—

Crisp hoofbeats shattered the morning light. One man and one horse traveled alone, gradually departing from the prosperous and bustling Cloudmist Prefecture.

Half a year ago, he had entered this city alone; half a year later, he left alone once more.