His eyelids felt unusually heavy. Xu Yunfan slowly closed his eyes and sank into a deep sleep.

As Xu Yunfan’s breathing grew long and steady, the surface of the Extreme Dao Relic Shell he had carefully tied into a vest began to show fine, dense, scale-like patterns.

The supposedly lifeless husk suddenly seemed to come alive, emitting a fluorescent glow like moonlight. The entire Relic Shell began to squirm like an earthworm, and the knots Xu Yunfan had tied loosened with incredible smoothness, as if soaked in oil.

The Relic Shell unfurled completely, resembling a human silhouette, and silently pressed itself flat against Xu Yunfan’s body.

The sleeping Xu Yunfan was completely unaware. The Pure Yang Inner Breath, dormant deep within the flesh of his abdomen, began to stir. As if triggered by some unknown force, it formed a trickling stream, flowing continuously into a dark-red scab over the heart of the Relic Shell.

Immediately after, the husk produced wisps of silver threads that extended into Xu Yunfan’s nostrils.

Xu Yunfan opened his eyes, looking at his surroundings in a daze.

He was standing on a snow-covered mountain path.

A bone-chilling Gang Wind, carrying Ice Crystals, swept across his cheeks, making his body tense slightly. But as his steaming Blood Qi began to circulate, his body quickly warmed up again.

Suddenly, Xu Yunfan sensed something. He instinctively looked up and saw a figure in white standing atop a towering cliff ahead.

The woman was barefoot, standing on blades of ice as thin as a cicada’s wings. Her wide, flowing sleeves were adorned with tiny specks of starlight, and her long black hair drifted with the cold wind. It seemed that with a single lift of her foot, she could ride the wind and fly away.

When Ice Crystals came within ten yards of her, they condensed into snow butterflies. As they flapped their wings, they scattered an azure, phosphorescent dust, like points of starlight. It was an incredibly beautiful sight.

"Defeat me, and I will let you go."

Her clear, cold voice carried a tremor that echoed off the snowy peaks. Before Xu Yunfan could even see how the woman turned, the air before him exploded with a sky full of ice lotuses.

The figure, in robes whiter than snow, stepped on the lotus petals and arrived in an instant, her slender, frost-covered fingers aiming straight for his throat.

’True Qi?!’

Xu Yunfan’s pupils contracted. The muscles all over his body instinctively tensed, making a sound like a bowstring snapping taut.

CRACK!

The crisp sound of his throat shattering exploded at the same time as a bone-deep chill.

Clutching his throat as it spurted shards of ice, Xu Yunfan staggered back several steps before steadying himself. He stared in disbelief at the snowflakes drifting from the woman’s sleeves. That wasn’t True Qi at all. It was a frigid aura so intense it froze the very air into solid form.

His eyes blazed. The muscles around his Adam’s apple began to squirm like tiny snakes, pulling his shattered windpipe back into place. Then, the fascia covering it bunched up, locking it down.

Under the scouring of his Pure Yang Inner Breath, the fragments of his shattered throat bones began to re-fuse with continuous cracking sounds, like a red-hot iron billet being hammered by an invisible blacksmith.

The fascia, pulled by the stretching Great Tendons on the side of his neck, forcibly pried open his collapsed trachea by several inches.

Although fracture lines remained, it no longer hindered his normal movements.

Only then did he feel a breath escape from his windpipe.

The woman in white, her eyebrows like frost, raised one slightly. She tapped the ice lightly with her toes.

Xu Yunfan had just inhaled half a breath of icy air when a hexagonal ice flower bloomed before his eyes.

Through the refraction of the Ice Crystals, that white figure split into seven afterimages. Her slender fingers transformed into seven ice blades of different shapes: an Emei Needle, a Mandarin Duck Halberd, a Meridian Hairpin... Every single strike was aimed at the vital point of his regenerating throat.

"Cough!"

The instant Xu Yunfan leaned back, Pure Yang Qi spontaneously surged into his shoulders and neck.

His gnarled back muscles bulged suddenly, pulling his cervical spine into a bizarre arch.

Five ice blades scraped past his newly-reconnected Adam’s apple, easily slicing bloody gashes into his skin.

’Got her!’

Xu Yunfan seized the opportunity, spinning around and whipping his elbow. His Blood Qi steamed and surged, a golden sheen appearing in the texture of his muscles. The violent Strength generated from his feet created a piercing shriek.

He slammed his elbow toward the opening under the woman’s ribs, but the moment it touched her plain robes, he was shocked to find her body as light as drifting snow.

The enervating feeling of his strike hitting empty air made him think, ’This is bad!’ A chill even more piercing than before suddenly came from his throat.

It turned out the seventh afterimage was her true self.

The woman’s left hand maintained an elegant posture, as if plucking a flower from the snow, but her right hand had already formed a Profound Ice Blade in the shape of a Yanling Saber.

The blade’s edge sliced precisely into the gaps between his contracting neck muscles, sliding along the seams of his vertebrae with the masterful ease of a butcher carving an ox.

Xu Yunfan could even clearly hear the scraping sound the ice blade made against his newly-formed neck bones.

In the instant his head spun off his body, he glimpsed that the woman’s expression remained completely placid.

Xu Yunfan’s eyes snapped open. He was still on the same mountain path, and his own headless corpse lay not far away.

’My own body!’

A jolt of horror shot through him.

He glanced at the notification that had popped up on his Attribute Panel.

You fought a life-and-death battle with an unknown expert in your dream. Your Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique Skill Level has increased.

That single notification added three points to the Skill Level!

"Who the hell are you?!"

Xu Yunfan took half a step back and assumed the opening stance of his Hammer Technique.

This time, as the woman turned, he clearly saw a vertical silver line appear on her forehead like a third eye. Within its pupil, a Dao Pattern composed of nine Ice Crystals swirled.

"Defeat me, and I will let you go."

Her answer was the suddenly collapsing snowfield.

With a light tap of her toes, all the snow on the mountain peak transformed into a monstrous wave that crashed down upon him.

Xu Yunfan subconsciously activated his Pure Yang Inner Breath, merging it into his flesh and blood. The fiercely rising Blood Qi evaporated the moisture around him, shrouding him in a swirling mist.

He roared and threw a punch to resist. The instant his scorching fist wind melted a hole through the wall of snow, he saw the figure in white shoot through the opening.

She formed a Sword Point with her fingers and thrust it at his heart. Even before the frigid air coiling around her fingertips arrived, he couldn’t help but break out in goosebumps.

His Pure Yang Inner Breath vibrated through his muscles, but even with the Qi Armor that manifested around him, he still couldn’t block this Sword Pointing technique.

Watching the Sword Point rapidly magnify in his vision, Xu Yunfan opened his mouth.

"Fuc—"

The unfinished curse in Xu Yunfan’s throat turned to ice shards and fell away. When his vision focused once more on the mountain path, gilded patterns of fire burned deep within his pupils.

When his second corpse appeared at his feet, Xu Yunfan, opening his eyes once more, wore an extremely grim expression.

You fought a life-and-death battle with an unknown expert in your dream. Your Thousand-Pound Mountain-Shaking Hammer Technique Skill Level has increased.

Another three points, but this feeling of being instantly killed was infuriating.

His opponent’s strength was beyond his imagination.

This time, he was fully prepared.

"Lin!"

A Daoist True Word exploded from the tip of his tongue. His Sea of Consciousness instantly became as clear as a mirror. Within it, his Self God slowly walked out from the mist, stabilizing his seven emotions and suppressing all worldly desires. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Xu Yunfan’s previously grim expression rapidly shifted to a state devoid of joy or sorrow. He could clearly see the path of every wisp of Inner Breath rushing through his blood vessels, hear the subtle popping of his marrow producing new blood, and feel the ferocious power, like exploding dynamite, brought on by the Linn Character Technique pushing his body to its absolute limit.

"Defeat me, and I will let you go."

Xu Yunfan’s expression was calm. He simply raised a hand.

The instant the woman turned, Xu Yunfan had already predicted that her toes would tap and shatter the seventh ice rock.

His boiling Blood Qi completed twelve applications of Stacked Force within a thousandth of a breath. The edge of his right fist cut through the air, creating a turbid white shockwave and a massive sonic boom. Wrapped in wisps of Qi Armor formed from his Pure Yang Inner Breath, it blasted toward her predicted landing spot.