His back slammed heavily into the stone wall of the dark alley, and he slid to the ground.
His left arm hung limply, seemingly dislocated.
"A Four-Star Dou Zhe dares to play with poison in front of me?"
Zhao Tu advanced step by step, his Dou Qi and killing intent glimmering faintly in the rainy night.
Although he had been poisoned, his foundation as a peak Nine-Star Dou Zhe was enough to let him forcibly suppress the sluggishness in his Dou Qi.
He split his mouth into a grin, revealing his ghastly white teeth.
He raised his short blade, ready to deliver the killing blow.
Lu Ze leaned against the stone wall, his chest heaving violently, and swallowed the sweet, metallic taste in his throat.
He had deliberately exposed an opening, trading a dislocated left arm for the chance to draw Zhao Tu close.
The conditions for unleashing the Grass Character Sword Art were extremely demanding. In terrain as cramped as this dark alley, he had to lure his enemy deep inside and bring the distance within three feet.
He slowly raised his head, rainwater running down his cheeks, his gaze as calm as a pool of dead water.
Zhao Tu sneered.
"You're from the Myriad Medicine Pavilion, aren't you?"
Yet at some point, another black pill had appeared in Lu Ze's dangling left hand.
The previous one had actually been nothing more than a diversion.
"Bang!"
The second wax pellet burst at Zhao Tu's feet.
This time, the distance was barely half a foot.
Thick, vicious purple-gray poison splashed straight over Zhao Tu's face.
The highly concentrated toxin instantly penetrated his gauze robe, which had thinned as his Dou Qi stagnated, and seeped into his skin.
Zhao Tu's movements abruptly froze, his eyes bloodshot.
The Dou Qi inside him surged wildly like floodwater bursting through a dam.
Enduring the searing pain in his left arm, Lu Ze abruptly drew the Emerald Water Sword with his right hand. His remaining four-star Dou Qi flooded madly into the blade along the gray meridian pathways.
Without even half a foot of radiance or a sharp whistle through the air, a thread of transparent white light silently slashed toward Zhao Tu's throat.
The white light swept through the curtain of rain. Zhao Tu turned his wrist and swept his short blade upward, trying to block Lu Ze's attack.
Yet the instant the refined steel edge met the sudden white light, it snapped soundlessly, as though the light were slicing through rotten wood.
Rather than weakening, the white light intensified, slashing straight toward his vital throat.
Zhao Tu's body suddenly froze.
He clamped both hands desperately over his neck. Dark red blood squeezed between his fingers, washing over his earthen-yellow Dou Qi Gauze Robe.
He stared at Lu Ze, his lips moving, before finally falling stiffly into the muddy water.
Lu Ze followed through with his left hand, clamping it over the crown of his head.
[Drinking the Blood of the People].
A cold, domineering power of plunder surged into his palm. The Nine-Star Dou Zhe blood Qi that had yet to dissipate within Zhao Tu instantly turned into strands of blood-red Dou Qi.
Forcibly extracted from the corpse, it poured into Lu Ze's meridians. His dried-out meridians were nourished, and the agonizing pain of his dislocated left arm was instantly suppressed.
Lu Ze braced his left joint with his right hand and shoved sharply. A crack rang out.
[Killed a peak Nine-Star Dou Zhe, plundered cold blood Qi essence, Deduction Points +12]
He released his grip and deftly took the storage ring and money pouch from Zhao Tu's waist.
Then he crushed the last poison-mist wax pellet in his clothes and tossed it onto the corpse.
The thick purple-black mist mixed with Zhao Tu's own virulent poison, reacting violently in the narrow alley with sizzling sounds of corrosion.
In less than half an incense stick's time, Zhao Tu's face and clothes had dissolved into a foul-smelling puddle of black liquid that seeped into the gaps between the bluestone paving slabs.
Lu Ze threw the bamboo basket into an abandoned sewer, lowered his bamboo hat, and turned to melt into the rainy night.
Half an hour later, on the hill behind the Wolf Head Mercenary Group's compound.
The autumn rain washed the iron caltrops until they gleamed.
Lu Ze pressed himself into the shadows of the Wolf God Temple's outer wall. His hands formed the seals of the Earth Filth Pillar, and his consciousness penetrated the rock.
The stone slab beneath Mu Li's bedroom bed was extremely thin. There was no space beneath it; instead, it connected to three exceedingly fine pipes carrying a viscous liquid that gave off a pungent, bloody sweetness.
It was highly concentrated bone-dissolving venom. If someone pried up the slab and triggered the mechanism, the entire bedroom would turn into a poison gas chamber.
Lu Ze withdrew his consciousness and shifted his perception beneath the ancestral hall.
After passing through rock twenty zhang thick, he clearly sensed a presence mingling scorching heat with metallic sharpness.
The real treasury lay beneath the Wolf God Shrine. He vaulted over the courtyard wall and landed soundlessly.
Inside the ancestral hall's courtyard, exceedingly fine threads of Dou Qi covered the ground.
[Do Not Investigate Me]
As he released this divine ability, Lu Ze raised his foot and stepped onto a thread of Dou Qi. The thread sank slightly but did not break.
Do Not Investigate Me reduced his body's physical presence to a minimum; even the Dou Qi threads treated him as air.
He slipped across the courtyard like a night prowling cat and pushed open the wooden doors of the ancestral hall's main chamber.
The room was empty, with a huge bronze wolf-head incense burner standing in the center.
Lu Ze walked up to the incense burner and pressed both hands against its rim. Following the guiding pathways of the Earth Shaman Pillar, he channeled his Dou Qi into the formation nodes beneath it.
A heavy mechanical rumble sounded as the mechanism turned.
The incense burner moved aside, revealing a dark opening, and scorching air rushed into his face.
Lu Ze leaped inside. The spiraling passage ran extremely deep, and the rock walls grew hotter and hotter. After he descended the final step, the space before him suddenly opened up.
It was an underground stone chamber a hundred zhang across, with more than a dozen redwood chests piled in the center. Embedded in a rock wall at its deepest point was a stone-sized piece of ore emitting a dark red glow.
Red rock gold-copper ore. On its surface, a drop of dark red, viscous liquid slowly condensed and dripped into an iron cage below.
A Crimson Flame Lizard was imprisoned in the cage. This early second-rank fire-attribute magical beast was firmly chained to the rock wall by four iron chains as thick as arms, threaded through its shoulder blades.
Its whole body was covered in crimson scales. At that moment, it was raising its head in agony as that precious drop of fire spirit marrow fell into its open mouth. The Crimson Flame Lizard's body trembled violently, and wisps of black smoke seeped between its scales.
Mu Li was using its body to filter and purify the violent fire poison in the fire spirit marrow.
Only after being refined within its body and dripping from the vent beneath its tail into a jade bowl did it become truly mild, pure fire spirit marrow that could be absorbed directly.
Lu Ze walked over to the redwood chests and placed his hand on the storage rings lying on them.
Twelve third-rank Magic Cores and more than forty second-rank Magic Cores.
There were also several high-grade medicinal herbs preserved in jade boxes.
After examining them for a while, he swept them all away.
Then he approached the cage. Just as he came within five zhang, the Crimson Flame Lizard stopped trembling.
Its slit pupils abruptly contracted as it fixed its gaze on Lu Ze.
"Hiss."
A suppressed growl rose from its throat. It had caught the scent of a living stranger.
The Crimson Flame Lizard began struggling madly, making the chains clatter as it pulled them taut. Blood streamed from the wounds where they pierced its shoulder blades.
The Fire Attribute Dou Qi within it began running completely rampant with pain and fury. The surrounding temperature abruptly rose, and the red rock gold-copper ore on the wall, stimulated by the heat, emitted a piercing red glow.
If it were allowed to go completely berserk, the fire spirit marrow would evaporate in the heat, and the resulting explosion would alert the guards above.
Lu Ze's hand merely reached toward the Emerald Water Sword at his waist. I can't use the Grass Character Sword Art, or the Sword Qi will detonate the ore vein.
I can't use the Great King Heaven-Prisoning Finger either. The crushing gravity would make this magical beast instantly detonate its own Dou Qi.
Before you continue