Ten Million Sensation Points! This Marrow Cleansing Pill Packs Quite a Punch!

Jinghai City State Security Bureau, temporary base.

The ashtray was stuffed with cigarette butts, and the room reeked of tobacco.

Sun Lixin picked up the strong tea on the desk and gulped down a mouthful, barely suppressing his irritation.

The screen before him occupied half the wall, displaying hundreds upon thousands of surveillance feeds in split-screen.

"Team leader, we've checked every Skynet surveillance camera at all 327 intersections within fifty kilometers, plus the dashcams of 4,500 ride-hailing cars."

"Nothing. A complete blank. That man seemed to evaporate into thin air. No trace of where he landed, and no vehicles picking him up."

The officer handling the technical investigation rubbed his aching neck, his voice hoarse.

Sun Lixin said nothing, his fingers tapping unconsciously against the desk.

A living, breathing man had flown around ten thousand meters up, then vanished into thin air over the outskirts of Jinghai, right under the noses of radar and fighter jets.

Who the fuck would believe that?

But the top-secret footage in his hands was delivering solid slaps to his face.

Sun Lixin grabbed the red secure telephone on the desk and dialed the direct line to Jinghai Military Region Command.

"Commander Gu, our investigation has hit a dead end," Sun Lixin said without preamble. "The target's counter-surveillance capabilities... no, I should say the target left no conventional physical traces whatsoever. It's as though he really evaporated off the face of the earth."

At the other end, Gu Changshan fell silent for two seconds.

"If you can't find him, switch to a covert investigation for now." The old general's voice was steady as iron. "We can barely keep a lid on public discussion online anymore. We can't let this keep brewing."

Gu Changshan paused.

"Notify the internet monitoring department. Impose a complete information blackout. Take down every related video and post. Force it off the trending searches. Classify this as a publicity stunt using special effects by a film crew."

"Understood." Sun Lixin hung up and let out a long, heavy breath.

He turned toward Jinghai City's glittering nightscape outside the window, his gaze sharp.

A sword immortal, huh?

As long as you're still breathing somewhere in Jinghai, I'll drag you out sooner or later.

Two in the morning.

Room 502, men's dormitory building three, Jinghai University.

Fatty Wang's snores shook the heavens. On the lower bunk, Liu Chen occasionally rolled over and mumbled, "Fucking idiot jungler."

Lin Bei lay flat on his bed, staring at the translucent pale-blue panel only he could see.

The numbers on it were ticking upward noticeably more slowly.

The waterfall of notifications from that afternoon had dwindled to a "+10" or "+5" popping up every so often.

They work pretty fast. Lin Bei knew exactly what was going on.

The state machinery must have stepped in.

With the videos deleted and trending searches removed, ordinary people had no fresh content to see, so the growth in sensation points naturally plunged off a cliff.

But he was not worried in the slightest.

Because the golden number at the top of the system panel, representing his total sensation points, had already passed ten million.

[Current sensation points: 10002500]

These were points earned through blood and sweat, enduring fierce winds at forty below and freezing in the stratosphere.

"System." Lin Bei snapped his fingers in his mind. "Start that god-tier draw for me!"

The instant he finished speaking.

The system panel erupted with dazzling golden light, and a massive virtual wheel spun wildly before Lin Bei's eyes.

Lin Bei held his breath.

This thing had cost ten million sensation points. If he drew a "Thanks for participating," he would dismantle this lousy system on the spot.

"Ding!"

The wheel stopped dead.

A string of crisp system notifications exploded in his mind.

"Ding! Congratulations, host! Obtained: Taiyi Divine Needle Inheritance!"

"Ding! Congratulations, host! Obtained: Heavenly Sound Zither Heart Inheritance!"

"Ding! Congratulations, host! Obtained: one Marrow Cleansing Pill!"

"Ding! Congratulations, host! Obtained: ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones!"

A bumper harvest!

Before Lin Bei could celebrate, a sudden buzz rang through his head.

An ocean of information became an almost tangible torrent, pouring madly into his brain.

Countless diagrams of human meridians and acupuncture points, densely packed theories of ancient Chinese medicine, methods governing how medicinal properties complemented and counteracted one another.

Interspersed with guqin fingerings, musical resonance, and the score for "A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix."

These things whirled madly through his head like a revolving lantern.

Veins bulged on Lin Bei's forehead, and cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

Only after a full five minutes did the swelling pain that threatened to split his brain slowly recede like the tide.

Panting heavily, Lin Bei released the corner of his quilt, leaving teeth marks in it.

He closed his eyes and briefly recalled what he had learned.

The complex, obscure knowledge of Chinese medicine and musical techniques was as clear as though engraved in his bones.

Whenever he wished, he could condense Spiritual Power into invisible Taiyi Divine Needles or casually play a guqin piece that would draw a hundred birds.

"That suffering wasn't for nothing." Lin Bei wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

With a thought, a little jade bottle appeared in his palm out of thin air, along with ten fingernail-sized stones giving off a faint glow.

He put the spirit stones into the System Space first.

Lin Bei's gaze locked onto the little jade bottle.

He pulled out the stopper.

An indescribably strange medicinal fragrance immediately wafted out.

The scent was faint, yet carried a refreshing quality that reached straight into the soul. Just one sniff considerably eased the headache the information infusion had given Lin Bei.

The Marrow Cleansing Pill.

This was tonight's main event.

The Qi Refining first layer, bluntly put, only made him somewhat stronger than ordinary people and barely able to cast a few basic spells. Against modern weapons, a single sniper bullet could still send him off to meet his great-grandma.

If he wanted to walk through this world unchallenged, his physique had to keep up.

Without hesitation, Lin Bei tipped out the emerald-green pill, tilted his head back, and tossed it straight into his mouth.

The pill melted on contact. Before he could even taste it, it turned into a warm current and slid down his esophagus.

"That's it?" Lin Bei smacked his lips. He had expected some earth-shattering reaction.

The next second.

His expression changed.

Once the warm current entered his stomach, it proved to be no gentle medicinal energy at all. It instantly transformed into a raging ball of fire!

Centered on his stomach, the fire exploded, rampaging through every limb and bone, through all eight extraordinary meridians.

"Fuck..." An extremely suppressed groan escaped Lin Bei's throat.

It hurt so much!

What fucking marrow cleansing? This was like being tossed into a meat grinder, ground to pieces, then put back together!

Lin Bei clenched his teeth, both hands gripping the bed frame for dear life.

He could clearly feel the violent medicinal energy brutally tearing apart the blocked meridians inside him.

Rupturing.

Rebuilding.

Rupturing again.

Rebuilding again.

His muscle fibers were forcibly stretched and torn, then rapidly healed under the nourishment of the medicinal energy, becoming tougher.

Every second of this torment worse than death stretched as long as a century.

Lin Bei trembled like chaff in a sieve.

Yet he stubbornly refused to make a sound.

He knew this was an unavoidable part of cleansing his sinews and marrow.

If he endured it, he would shed his old body and bones.

As the medicinal energy continued scouring him, a sticky black substance began seeping from the pores across Lin Bei's body.

These were all the toxins and waste accumulated over eighteen years of eating grains, breathing secondhand smoke, and staying up late gaming.

More and more black sludge seeped out, soon leaving his white pajamas covered in filthy blotches.

A pungent stench began spreading around his bed.

An unknown amount of time passed.

The raging, burning sensation inside him finally began to subside, replaced by an unprecedented sense of lightness and unobstructed clarity.

Lin Bei's eyes snapped open.

In the darkness, a subtle streak of azure light seemed to flash through his eyes.

He exhaled a long breath of gray-black, turbid air.

It worked.

Lin Bei looked down at himself.

"Urgh-"

His own stench nearly made him vomit.

He looked as though he had just been fished out of a filthy ditch, his body coated in a thick layer of black grime. The smell was even more overpowering than an exploding septic tank.

Lin Bei climbed quietly out of bed, grabbed his washbasin and towel, and slipped out of the dorm room like a thief, heading straight for the washroom at the end of the corridor.

The washroom was deserted at this early hour, with only the plip-plop of a dripping faucet.

Lin Bei turned on the faucet and stuck his head straight under the cold water.

As the icy tap water washed over his body, Lin Bei picked up the soap and lathered himself three full times before completely washing away the thick black sludge.

He dried himself.

Lin Bei raised his head and looked into the water-stained mirror on the washroom wall.

When he saw his reflection clearly, even he froze.

His formerly rather scrawny frame, the result of insufficient exercise, had undergone an earth-shaking transformation.

His skin was fair and fine without looking feminine, instead carrying a warm, jade-like luster.

His muscles were not the exaggerated, stiff bulk built in gyms, but streamlined and packed with explosive power.

Eight sharply defined abdominal muscles stood out, his V-lines plunging deep beneath his waistband. Every inch of muscle contained terrifying strength.

Even more astonishing were his five senses.

Standing in the washroom, Lin Bei could even clearly hear the rustling of a cockroach crawling across the floor tiles at the other end of the corridor.

He could smell the earthy scent of dew on rose petals in the flower beds downstairs.

He closed his eyes and sensed the state of his dantian.

The Spiritual Power, once only as thick as a strand of hair, had grown into a rushing stream, circulating through his meridians more than ten times faster than before.

Qi Refining first layer, perfection!

He was only one final step away from breaking through to the Qi Refining second layer.

Lin Bei opened his eyes and clenched his right fist.

Crack, crack, crack-

A string of crisp joint pops echoed through the washroom like beans bursting in a pan.

He drew a deep breath and punched fiercely into the air before him.

Without using any Spiritual Power, relying purely on physical strength.

Pop!

A crisp burst of air exploded out of nowhere in the quiet washroom.

The wind from his fist swept past, instantly dividing the moisture on the mirror in two. Even the washroom's battered wooden door swayed.

"This Marrow Cleansing Pill really packs quite a punch."

Lin Bei withdrew his fist and looked at his hand, breaking into a satisfied grin.

With his current physique, never mind fighting ten people-even if a dump truck came barreling into him, he was confident he could flatten its front end with one punch.