He looked up at the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the wooden window-there was less than two hours until noon, and he had to report to the Listening to Rain Pavilion that afternoon.
"I can't wait any longer! Delay breeds trouble. If Zhao De's or Xiao Yuxuan's men come sniffing around to seize the pill, I'll be in trouble. Only when it's in my belly and turned into strength in my fists will it be real power that nobody can steal!"
Chen Xuan drew a deep breath. Without the slightest hesitation, he tilted his head back and tossed the scorching, crimson Blood-Gathering Pill straight into his mouth!
Gulp!
The pill needed no chewing. The instant it touched his saliva and slid down his throat, it exploded at the Shanzhong acupoint in his chest!
It did not dissolve with gentle warmth. It was like a bucket of boiling molten iron poured straight onto a frozen lake!
BOOM!!
In an instant, Chen Xuan's eyes became bloodshot and crimson. His skin turned the color of a boiled shrimp, and wisps of white heat visibly steamed from the top of his head!
Savage! Overbearing! Sweeping everything before it like rotten wood!
The medicinal potency of the hundred-year-old blood ginseng and the demonic beast blood essence contained in the Blood-Gathering Pill became more than a dozen uncontrolled torrents of magma, rampaging through the meridians throughout his limbs and body! Had an ordinary slave truly without any foundation in martial arts swallowed this pill whole, the first savage surge of medicinal potency alone would have ruptured his fragile blood vessels into a sieve, making him bleed from all seven orifices and die on the spot!
In the neighboring stall, the intelligent bay horse sensed the terrifying heat and vicious presence emanating from Chen Xuan. Frightened, it scrabbled with all four hooves and desperately shrank into the farthest corner of its enclosure, snorting heavy, terrified puffs of white breath.
"Hiss... what overbearing medicinal potency! Refine it for me!!"
Chen Xuan clenched his back teeth so hard that blood seeped from his gums. He dropped into a cross-legged seat deep in the hay, formed a hand seal before his dantian, and frantically drove the two cultivation techniques within him!
The Qi and blood of the Boulder Art had originally been thick and steady, but drenched in the Blood-Gathering Pill's savage medicinal potency, they instantly became the raging, roaring waves of the Yellow River, washing over his skin, muscles, and bones again and again. Meanwhile, the spark of the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang deep within his dantian was like a primordial fire dragon scenting blood, opening its gaping, blood-red maw to gulp down the scorching medicinal potency flooding his internal organs!
At that moment, the resonance between the two techniques soared to an unprecedented multiplier!
The bones throughout Chen Xuan's body let out a dense succession of cracks like beans popping in a pan. His pores opened wide, and the overbearing Qi and blood forcibly squeezed out countless traces of black, foul-smelling, sticky blood from old internal injuries, along with impurities from his body, staining a large patch of hay beneath him black.
Deep within his mind, the two lines of golden fate text were jumping and soaring at a terrifying, dizzying speed:
[Catalyzed by the Blood-Gathering Pill's savage medicinal potency, Heaven Rewards Diligence's dual-technique resonance efficiency has increased tenfold!] [Boulder Art: Minor accomplishment (350/1000)... (480/1000)... (650/1000)... (820/1000)!] [Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang: Initiation (275/500)... (340/500)... (410/500)... (470/500)!]
Fast! Far too fast!
Proficiency that normally took days of bitter effort to grind out was now shooting upward by dozens, even hundreds of points with every breath under the Blood-Gathering Pill's burning effects!
Chen Xuan could clearly feel his muscle fibers tearing apart inch by inch, then rebuilding themselves into a denser, more explosive form under the nourishment of the vast blood essence. The strand of Yang Gang True Qi in his dantian, originally only as fine as a hair, had now swollen to the thickness of a chopstick, crimson as fire and incomparably overbearing!
Nine hundred and fifty points... nine hundred and eighty... nine hundred and ninety-nine!
Just as both techniques approached the ultimate limit of perfection at the same time, with the Qi and blood inside Chen Xuan boiling like thunder, at the critical moment when he was about to break through the barrier to the Middle Stage of Ming Jin in one stroke-
Tap, tap, tap...
A burst of disorderly, furtive footsteps, accompanied by the thunking of a wooden stick striking the ground, suddenly came from beyond the stable courtyard's gate!
Chen Xuan's tightly shut eyes flew open, a flash of crimson-gold light flickering through them!
He was at the crucial point of breaking through and cleansing his marrow, the Qi and blood inside him surging like floodwaters through opened sluices. If anyone pushed open the door and saw his crimson body and the white steam rising from his head, the disguise of a "worthless nobody below even the lowest rank" that he had painstakingly maintained would collapse completely in an instant!
In a flash, Chen Xuan thrust his right hand against the ground and rolled as silently as a wildcat into the shadows of the innermost blind corner piled with hay. At the same time, he did everything he could to activate [Heaven Rewards Diligence]'s breath-concealing method, clenching his jaw to trap the low roar about to escape his throat and forcibly pressing the rampaging Qi and blood throughout his body deep into his marrow!
Bang! Bang, bang!
Someone pounded hard on the stable's wooden door from outside, shaking dust loose from the frame.
"Chen Xuan? Chen Xuan, you little bastard, are you hiding in there playing dead?! Get your ass out here and open the door!"
It was Liu San's leaky, venom-filled, cracked-gong voice!
Then another rough-labor slave, Xiao Liuzi, spoke outside the door in a low, fawning voice.
"Brother Liu San, the door's bolted from inside, but why is it so quiet in there? Not a single sound from anyone. Could that brat have tucked his tail between his legs and gone straight to report to the Third Young Miss's Listening to Rain Pavilion after collecting the First Madam's rewards?"
"Report, my ass! What the hell do you know? The old woman passing messages in the front courtyard just took half a string of coins from me and gave me the real story-the First Madam thought his horse-shit stink would dirty the inner courtyard, so she told him to get back to the stable and tend to his injuries first. He's not allowed to go to the Listening to Rain Pavilion until this afternoon!"
"Hiss... so that's it! But Brother Liu San, that brat is still the personal guard the Third Young Miss herself asked for now, and he's received ten taels of gold and a Blood-Gathering Pill. If we corner him now and he goes to complain about us to the Third Young Miss afterward, can we bear the consequences?"
"Pah! What damned personal guard? Even if he crawls through the Listening to Rain Pavilion's doors, his lifetime slave contract is still sitting at the bottom of Steward Zhao's chest. It hasn't been handed over yet! Steward Zhao just gave me the word at the passage entrance. Leaving the Blood-Gathering Pill the First Madam bestowed in the hands of trash like Chen Xuan, who hasn't gotten anywhere in three years, is no better than feeding it to a dog! Steward Zhao told me to bring some men over and force him to obediently cough up the Blood-Gathering Pill as tribute to His Lordship the Steward before he goes to the inner courtyard. As for those ten taels of gold, we brothers will split them fifty-fifty with him. Call it his tribute toward our stable's tea money!"
"Heh heh, Steward Zhao and Brother Liu San really know best! Then should we kick the door open now?"
"Kick it open? What if we alert the guards patrolling the front courtyard? It looks pitch-black through the cracks in this wooden door. Most likely, that little bastard took his reward money to secretly buy roast chicken from the rear kitchen! Come on, we're going to corner him there. Before noon, we'll squeeze every bit of gold and that pill out of the little beast!"
Outside, Liu San spat a mouthful of bloody saliva hard against the door, then turned and headed toward the rear kitchen with Xiao Liuzi, cursing as they went.
Only after both sets of footsteps had completely vanished beyond the courtyard wall did a bead of sweat the size of a bean drop from Chen Xuan's forehead onto the dirt in the blind corner of the haystack, instantly evaporating into a wisp of white vapor under the heat from his body!
"Zhao De, Liu San-what a pair you are! The First Madam has barely bestowed a lifesaving pill and gold on me, and you're already joining forces to swallow them up and rob me?!"
Chen Xuan dug one hand hard into the dirt beneath him. Listening to the sounds gradually receding beside his ears, he slowly curled his lips into a grim, cold arc:
"No hurry. I'll mark this down for now. You want this Blood-Gathering Pill, don't you? Once I've completely refined its medicinal potency into iron fists at the Middle Stage of Ming Jin and overbearing Yang Gang Qi, we'll settle this tribute account properly!"
With no more concerns holding him back, Chen Xuan completely released his suppression of the Qi and blood within him!
HUM!!
Deep within his mind, the two lines of golden numbers stalled at the final hurdle surged past the finish line like raging dragons bursting through a dam:
[Boulder Art: Minor accomplishment (1000/1000)-Advanced to: Major accomplishment (1/2000)!] [Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang: Initiation (500/500)-Advanced to: Minor accomplishment (1/1000)!] [Martial realm breakthrough: Middle Stage of Ming Jin!]
An unprecedentedly savage force of Qi, together with the fully formed crimson Yang Gang within his dantian, exploded inside Chen Xuan!