Squish!
The sound of a blade piercing flesh rang out.
Jin Sheng had just raised his saber to block, but it was already too late.
"Cough, cough!"
Blood spilled from Jin Sheng's mouth. He looked down at the saber driven into his throat in disbelief. A dignified martial artist of the Second Grade of the Acquired Realm like him had actually died at the hands of someone who knew nothing but brute force.
Shhk!
Li Dao abruptly pulled out his blade and flicked the blood off the Black Iron Saber.
The system's voice sounded in his ears right on cue.
[One enemy killed. Attributes gained: 1.54]
As expected of an expert, even one-tenth of his attributes amounted to one and a half times those of an ordinary person.
If killing so many guards at the start hadn't given him all those extra attributes, he might genuinely have been unable to handle this captain of the guards.
Jin Sheng's death left the surrounding guards like headless flies. They looked at one another, utterly at a loss over what to do.
Run!
Moments later, that was the only thought left in their minds.
But how could Li Dao let these morsels delivered right to his mouth escape?
Raising the Black Iron Saber, he began mercilessly slaughtering the remaining guards around him.
Against these Northern Barbarians, he would show no mercy even if they abandoned all resistance.
Although Li Dao had merely been a wastrel count in the imperial capital before his memories returned, he still knew something about the Northern Barbarians, Great Qian's sworn enemies for generations.
Among the Northern Barbarians, men and women, young and old alike hated the people of the Great Qian Dynasty. Every year, countless people along the dynasty's borders were plundered by them. Since virtually every Northern Barbarian was a soldier, it was hardly unfair to lay a share of that sin on each of them.
"Spare me!"
"I have a wife, children, and elderly family at home. Please!"
"Don't kill me! I surrender!"
At that moment, Li Dao's heart was as cold as the Black Iron Saber in his hand.
An incense stick's time later.
Only corpses littered the ground around him. Not a single living person remained.
Meanwhile, his previously depleted available attributes had been replenished considerably.
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 18.07 (Transformation available)] [Available attributes: 4.63]
"Allocate points."
Looking at the note beside his physique, Li Dao tried allocating points, only to discover that his available attributes didn't go into his physique as usual.
Instead, the words "Transformation available," which had suddenly appeared beside his physique earlier, flashed once.
Do I need to complete this transformation first?
But a transformation sounded like no simple matter. He couldn't undergo it here.
"I'll deal with it once we're back."
Closing the status panel, Li Dao prepared to look for Xu Hu and the others.
His fight with Jin Sheng had taken him far away, so he didn't know how things were going over there.
Still, they should have been fine. Although Xu Hu and Little Madman were both seriously injured, once he had drawn away the strongest opponent, the captain of the guards, they should have had no trouble protecting themselves against the remaining guards.
"Old Ghost, did you drain them all to death?"
Shen San watched the last guard suddenly weaken and stop breathing, his face full of surprise.
As Old Ghost contentedly put away his gains from this outing, he replied, "I never kill anyone. I left them all a breath of life. They simply failed to make anything of it."
In any case, as far as he was concerned, it didn't count as killing unless he directly drained them to death.
How they died afterward had nothing to do with him.
After spending some time with Old Ghost, Shen San understood his temperament and was no longer surprised.
He kicked the Third Prince of Falling Cloud to the ground and said, "Why not drain this fellow too? We came to kill him anyway."
"Him?"
Old Ghost merely glanced at him before saying, "This fellow is riddled with problems and steeped in every vice. He looks young, but excessive indulgence has already hollowed out his body completely. He's not worth my attention. Do what you like with him."
"All right."
Looking at the Third Prince of Falling Cloud, Shen San said bluntly, "Well, it's time to send you on your way. But don't worry. I'm not fond of torturing people like Old Ghost is. One swipe of this little knife, and I guarantee you'll go quickly and cleanly."
The Third Prince of Falling Cloud was on the verge of breaking down. He wanted to live, not die quickly and cleanly.
Watching the dagger approach, he dropped to his knees and began begging. "Spare me! I'm the Third Prince of the Northern Barbarians' Falling Cloud Tribe. If you kill me, my father won't let you get away with it!"
Hearing that, Shen San chuckled. "Your Highness, do you know who we are?"
"N-no."
"If even you don't know us, how do you expect your father to? Once we kill you, nobody will know we did it."
The Third Prince of Falling Cloud: "..."
Suddenly, inspiration struck him, and he hurriedly said, "Wait! Hear me out."
"You don't look like government men. You're people of the martial world, aren't you?"
"So what if we are?"
"If you were government men, I'd have nothing to say about dying. But if you're people of the martial world, someone must have offered you something to kill me."
"What exactly are you trying to say?"
Seemingly catching sight of hope, the Third Prince of Falling Cloud hurriedly said, "Whatever they offered you to kill me, I'll pay doub-no, ten times as much! As long as you spare me, I'll pay you ten times the price. How about it?"
Shen San was about to speak when a voice suddenly came from nearby.
"Do you have fifty lives to give us, then?"
Shen San turned around, delight spreading across his face. "Boss?"
Seeing that Li Dao was alone, he hurriedly asked, "Is that expert dead?"
"He's dead."
"Haha! I knew you could do it, Boss. That bastard really screwed me over earlier."
Shen San couldn't help bursting into laughter.
Meanwhile, the Third Prince of Falling Cloud trembled inwardly at Li Dao's words.
Until then, he had clung to the faint hope that Jin Sheng might fight his way back and rescue him. Now, he was utterly despairing.
Li Dao glanced at Xu Hu and Little Madman nearby and paused when he saw that their injuries had largely healed.
When he noticed Old Ghost beside them, he immediately understood who was responsible.
He couldn't help saying, "Old Ghost, your medical skills are much more reliable than your poison skills."
Old Ghost wasn't embarrassed by the teasing. He said frankly, "My medical skills have always been more reliable than my poison skills."
Li Dao nodded, then turned toward the Third Prince of Falling Cloud. "This is the mission target?"
Shen San nodded. "I was just about to finish him."
Shhk!
The next instant, the Black Iron Saber sank into the Third Prince of Falling Cloud's chest.
The Third Prince of Falling Cloud looked down at the blade in his chest in disbelief. He had still wanted to negotiate. How could he be dying just like that?
But it was already too late. He could feel his life slipping away.
A few breaths later.
[One enemy killed. Attributes gained: 0.06]
Li Dao: "???"
He glanced at the dead Third Prince of Falling Cloud in confusion.
Just how useless did this fellow have to be to give him so few attributes? He was even worse than Li Dao's original constitution.
Forget it. Even a mosquito is meat, however small.
It wasn't as though he could return the attributes.
Beside him, Shen San finally came to his senses and froze. "You just killed him?"
Li Dao countered, "What else? Keep him around for New Year?"
Shen San: "..."
The next moment, he suddenly walked over to the Third Prince of Falling Cloud's corpse and began rummaging through his clothes.
"What are you doing?"
Shen San's actions startled Li Dao.
The fellow already looked sleazy enough. Could he be a cut sleeve too?
Without looking back, Shen San chuckled. "Looting the dead after killing them. Can't let things go to waste."
After a little rummaging, he removed a string of beads from the Third Prince of Falling Cloud and looked up. "Boss, these beads are pretty good quality. Want them?"
Only then did Li Dao realize that Shen San was falling back into his old habits.
"Keep them for yourself."
Shen San didn't stand on ceremony. He promptly stuffed the beads into his robes and continued searching the Third Prince of Falling Cloud's corpse.
Li Dao glanced at Old Ghost and the other two. "Let's rest for now. We'll return to Changgu Town in an hour."
With that, he found a clean spot, sat down, and began resting.
After killing so many people, it would have been a lie to say it hadn't weighed on him mentally. He wasn't a born murderous fiend, after all.
He needed to settle his emotions to avoid truly becoming one.
An hour passed quickly.
Before dawn broke, Li Dao led the others back to Changgu Town.
Inside the main command tent in Changgu Town.
Wei Yun stared at the five people before him, dumbfounded. "You killed the Third Prince of Falling Cloud's entire party?"
He had only told them to find a way to assassinate the Third Prince of Falling Cloud, not wipe out his entire party. Did they really have to take it that far?
At the mention of this, Shen San perked up. "That was all thanks to the boss. He wiped out nearly a hundred guards single-handedly and killed their captain, an expert of the Second Grade of the Acquired Realm. The four of us were mostly just along for the ride."
Hearing this, Old Ghost curled his lip. As if it wasn't obvious who had contributed the least. Still, at his age, he couldn't be bothered to say certain things.
"Oh!"
Wei Yun looked at Li Dao in astonishment. "You could even handle an expert of the Second Grade of the Acquired Realm?"
Li Dao said casually, "Maybe he was just a fraud."
As he spoke, he also glanced at Old Ghost nearby. After all, this fellow was a Houtian First Grade.
Old Ghost: "???"
Wei Yun replied, "Even if he was a fraud, your performance was already impressive."
"Among Houtian Martial Artists, anyone who can defeat a hundred armored soldiers alone is already a fairly powerful expert."
"Although the men you faced weren't regular armored troops, they couldn't have been that bad if they were chosen as guards. There's no need to be modest."
Li Dao shrugged and said no more.
In his view, the lower a profile he kept, the better.
Seeing that Li Dao didn't want to elaborate, Wei Yun didn't want to awkwardly prolong the conversation either. "After such an eventful night, the five of you must be tired. Go get some rest."
Shen San spoke up. "Commander Wei, don't tell me that by resting, you mean sending us back to the Death Prison?"
"Of course not. You've all done me a great service. I'll give each of you a separate tent to rest in."
Shen San smiled in satisfaction. "That's more like it."
The five left the main command tent and, led by a soldier, soon arrived before five adjoining military tents.
Shen San and the other three instinctively looked toward Li Dao.
"Pick whichever you like. Get a good rest so we can complete the next two missions."
With that, Li Dao entered the tent in the middle.
The remaining four exchanged glances, then each chose a tent and went inside.
Entering his tent, Li Dao saw a bed and a table beside it laden with food.
Rather than approaching the food, he went to the bed and sat down cross-legged.
He silently called out, Status panel.
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 18.07 (Transformation available)] [Available attributes: 4.63]
After glancing at the words "Transformation available," he hesitated only briefly before decisively confirming with his mind.
The next second, he felt his entire body shudder.
An inexplicable tearing sensation arose within him.
It wasn't merely his flesh tearing. It felt as though every cell inside his body had begun ripping apart, a sensation utterly beyond description.
At the same time, information about the transformation of his physique appeared in his mind.
According to the information in his mind:
Once a person's physique reached a certain level, it would hit a limit. To break through that limit, they had to increase their body's potential.
When cultivators reached such a limit, they could rely on true qi to break through it and undergo a rebirth, much like breaking through a major cultivation realm.
But Li Dao was different. He couldn't possess true qi, so there was none within him to help him break through his limits. He therefore had to rely on his physique itself to do so.
Ordinary people found it difficult to reach this point, but with his system, breaking through his limits was easy. He only needed to allocate points. All he had to do was endure the pain of his physique breaking through its limits.
If he couldn't even withstand the pain, he had no business possessing the system.
Though this method of transformation was extremely painful, it also offered benefits ordinary people didn't have.
With every transformation, one particular bodily function would undergo a special transformation of its own, bringing him unexpected benefits.
Once he understood what the transformation entailed, Li Dao gritted his teeth and began to endure it.
The system was his secret, and he had no desire to let anyone discover anything unusual about him.
Yet the tearing pain grew ever more intense, until his entire body gradually went numb.
Time slowly passed.
Li Dao had no idea how long it had been before he finally felt the pain begin to recede.
At the same time, he noticed changes beginning to occur in his body.
It was as though... the transformation had begun.
Was this... his skin?
Li Dao keenly sensed that it was his skin undergoing the changes.
At that moment, his skin seemed to be getting remodeled, undergoing changes even he could not understand.
Still, whatever those changes might be, they should be a good thing for him.
Had anyone else been present, they would have seen the skin all over Li Dao's body gradually darkening.
A little over ten minutes later.
The pain inside Li Dao's body had completely disappeared, and he knew his transformation was complete.
"This is..."
Li Dao looked down and discovered that his skin had turned completely black. While he was still reeling in surprise, he realized that this seemed to be merely a layer of dead skin, with his real skin beneath it.
He reached over, gripped that layer of dead skin, and tugged.
The dead skin split open, revealing what his skin truly looked like.
Compared to before, his skin was now much fairer, though not excessively so. It had a healthy tone.
But that was not what caught his attention.
After examining it closely, he discovered that his skin was still as soft as an ordinary person's, but its texture seemed to have changed.
Toughness!
That was it. His skin had become tougher than before.
Li Dao quickly peeled all the dead skin off his body and discovered that every inch of his skin was the same.
"Status Panel!"
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 18.07] [Available attributes: 4.63]
Sure enough, the transformation was complete. The words in parentheses had disappeared, but the panel did not show exactly how he had changed.
Should he try adding some points?
With a thought, Li Dao willed it.
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 22.70] [Available attributes: 0]
There was no change. Contrary to what he had imagined, reaching a certain level of Physique did not mean he needed twice as many points to improve it. Whatever amount he added still strengthened him by that same amount.
The familiar warm current flowed through his body, remodeling his body and brain.
What was different was that, as his Physique strengthened this time, he noticed his skin undergoing changes unlike those before.
This must have been the special transformation the system had mentioned, though he had not expected it to affect his skin.
"Has it... gotten tougher?"
Suddenly, something seemed to occur to Li Dao.
He rose and picked up the Black Iron Saber he had left at the head of his bed.
Holding the Black Iron Saber, he decisively drew it across his left arm without the slightest hesitation.
Previously, even with a Physique twenty times that of an ordinary person, the Black Iron Saber was sharp enough to cut him just the same.
That was because, in his previous life, he had come across a scientific explanation concerning the strength of the human body.
Changes in a person's bodily strength had little connection to their ability to resist penetration by external forces.
In other words, someone with a powerful physique also had strong resistance, but that was mainly because their muscles provided cushioning that allowed them to withstand a certain degree of external force. They would still be injured when struck hard enough.
Someone had also calculated scientifically that, to shrug off bullets, a person would need a body at least ten thousand times stronger than an ordinary person's. (Found online, not something the author made up.)
Thus, unless bodily strength reached a truly terrifying level, a person would still be easily injured by external forces.
His next experiment was to test the changes in his skin.
As he drew the Black Iron Saber across it, he did not feel the usual sensation of cutting human flesh. Instead, it felt more like cutting tough leather with a blunt blade. The edge could not cut into it at all.
He lifted the Black Iron Saber and took a look. There was not even a white mark on his skin, only a red line. With his recovery ability, that mark disappeared within a single breath.
Sure enough, this Physique transformation had altered the strength and toughness of his skin.
Otherwise, that stroke would certainly have drawn blood from his former skin, perhaps even injured the muscles beneath.
Next, Li Dao began testing the maximum force his skin could withstand.
Even with a weapon as sharp as the Black Iron Saber, twice an ordinary person's strength was useless.
Five times an ordinary person's strength could leave a white mark on his skin, which vanished in the blink of an eye.
Ten times an ordinary person's strength could barely cut his skin, but with his recovery ability twenty times that of an ordinary person, an injury of that degree scabbed over and healed in mere moments.
In the end, Li Dao only managed to drive the blade into his muscles by chopping at his arm with the Black Iron Saber using his full strength.
Even then, his high-density muscles clamped tightly around it.
And all of this, he had to remember, was with the Black Iron Saber.
Had it been an ordinary blade, it probably would have snapped before it could hurt him.
With his skin's current strength, he could truly be called impervious to blades and spears.
And these were merely tests involving sharp weapons.
Li Dao believed that the skin produced by this transformation offered more than that. There should be even more wondrous aspects to it.
Of course, most importantly, now that his skin had undergone this transformation, its ability to resist external forces would continue to improve as his Physique grew stronger.
Then Li Dao thought of a very profound question.
What would he do if he got appendicitis in the future?
Of course, that question was merely a passing thought.
After all, he possessed a Physique twenty times that of an ordinary person. Apart from strength and other such aspects, his resistance to viruses, bacteria, and the like was also twenty times that of an ordinary person. What could possibly cause inflammation in him?
Besides, even if he did develop inflammation, his immune system would swiftly heal it. There would be no need to slice open his belly for surgery.
Before you continue