For twenty long years, the Xu Yunfan he remembered had consumed countless elixirs, nurturing his Strength until it saturated his very flesh and blood. Once it was full to overflowing, his Strength broke its barrier and melted into his body.

Blood Exchange!

Xu Yunfan raised his hand. With a mere thought, the Dragon Scale Armor on his elbow began to spread, layer by layer, stopping only when it had crept up to his shoulder.

He gazed at the Dragon Scale Armor clinging to his shoulder. Suddenly, the blood vessels beneath his skin began to glow with a gilded sheen.

As his will flowed, a searing heat that lay dormant in his flesh shot up his spine, as if thousands of molten streams were pouring into his veins.

He suddenly realized that the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength that had been circulating in his flesh was now surging through his blood vessels in a different form.

This was the true Qi Blood Power of the Blood Exchange Realm.

He could clearly feel every inch of his meridians vibrating. The potent Strength that had once occupied his muscles had lost its sharp edge, transforming into a long, heavy, crimson-gold torrent that roared like thunder as it surged through his blood vessels.

What once required a conscious effort to channel power from his muscles and bones now felt as natural as breathing. With every beat of his heart, an immense power like a slumbering dragon flowed through his entire body with his blood.

He tapped a finger lightly on his armguard. The Dragon Scale Pattern on it flickered, pulsating in time with his blood.

Xu Yunfan suddenly understood. This strange armor that had appeared with his breakthrough wasn’t an external object. It was a materialization, formed at the moment of his Blood Exchange when the Strength that had seeped into his blood over twenty years of hard cultivation resonated with his newborn Blood Qi.

When the gilded blood lines spread past his Jianjing acupoint, he heard a roar from within his body like a river bursting its banks.

It was the sign that his Strength had completely fused with his Essence Blood.

The dark red, old blood was being replaced by Strength-infused Blood Qi. Each circulation made his blood gleam with a jade-like luster.

Old, hidden injuries that had once required elixirs to soothe were now healing at a visible rate. The legend of a Blood Swapping Martial Artist’s single drop of blood weighing over a thousand pounds was now manifesting as real, tangible power within his meridians.

After entering the Blood Exchange Realm, Xu Yunfan spent a day or two consolidating his power. Looking around, he saw that only a few pitifully thin wisps of Spiritual Mist were left in the air.

Xu Yunfan couldn’t help but let out a breath and looked up, gazing into the distance.

Using Seeking Dragon and Distinguishing Veins, he saw seven pillars of purple qi at varying distances, like Flood Dragons coiling around pillars as they shot straight into the heavens.

Around these nodes where the mountain’s ley lines and Spiritual Qi converged, swirled the murky Dirt Qi of Demon Fiends, similar to the one at the Old Ape Cave.

The closest Spiritual Energy Node was merely sixty miles away.

As the morning light pierced the clouds, Xu Yunfan stood on the sheer cliffs of Broken Dragon Cliff, staring at the Spiritual Energy Node, which emanated a somewhat dense Evil Qi.

He weighed the situation in his mind. Convinced he could handle what lay ahead, he stopped hesitating.

To someone in the Blood Exchange Realm, sixty miles was a journey of a mere Hour. The fascia in the arches of his feet pulsed as if an Earth Dragon was Flipping Over. The Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength spiraled up from his ankles, and each step he took left inch-deep cracks in the solid rock.

"Rise!"

Following a thunderous low shout from his throat, the fascia in his arches suddenly contracted into a crescent moon shape.

His heels sank and shifted as if an Earth Dragon was Flipping Over, and the force from his snapping great tendons shattered the entire slab of granite into a spiderweb of cracks.

As the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength surged from within his blood, Xu Yunfan finally understood the true, terrifying power of the Blood Exchange Realm.

The Strength that had once required conscious activation now felt as if it had transformed into thirty-six Red Flood Dragons. They coiled and twisted on their own within his muscles, bones, skin, and membranes, generating immense power as they flowed spontaneously with his blood.

His first leap carried him across a three-hundred-foot mountain gorge.

An unconscious burst of Strength caused the Thunderfire Qilin Hammer on his back to leave a purplish-red afterimage as he moved at high speed. The Thunder Fire coiling around the hammer’s head grated violently against the air, letting out a sharp screech like a dragon’s cry.

Xu Yunfan could clearly feel that every time the arches of his feet relaxed, the burst of Strength from his soles would create a clearly visible, ring-shaped shockwave.

This Strength, condensed from his Blood Qi and mobilized spontaneously, actually melted the rock into a glass-like state the instant it made contact, only to shatter it into radial cracks with the subsequent impact.

No wonder he’d seen that Yin Mountain Sect expert’s Iron-Melting Hand technique back at the Qingzhou Thousand Buddha Temple.

Only after stepping into the Blood Exchange Realm, when one’s Strength has entered the blood, can the true anomalies of the Martial Dao be displayed.

The mountain wind became a thunderous roar in his ears.

As his speed broke a certain critical point, Xu Yunfan’s thigh muscles bulged as he stomped down, and a ring-shaped sonic boom cloud suddenly appeared around his body.

As the muscles all over his body writhed under the effects of the Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body, the leaves of his Dragon Scale Armor opened and closed, shredding the oncoming wind pressure into wisps of turbulence.

The Tier Eight Divine Weapon he wore, the Dragon Scale Armor, had nearly doubled his speed.

He deliberately chose the rugged ridgeline for his path. Every time the Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength poured into the soles of his feet, the rocks would crumble layer by layer like crisp pastries, kicking up a hundred-foot-long wave of stone behind him.

When he passed a pool, the anomaly caused by his speed reached its peak.

Xu Yunfan leaped over the hundred-foot Cold Pool, his toes tapping the surface of the water three times.

The splash from his first step had not yet fallen back when the ring-shaped wave from his third step overtook the first, blasting the entire pool into a misty spray. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The Red Flood Dragon Mountain Coiling Strength coiled back up from the pool. After penetrating the water, the Strength carved three spiral patterns, each over a foot deep, into the rock wall on the bank.

The most breathtaking part was crossing the black pine forest.

Ancient, towering trees that would take twenty men to encircle blurred into a gray-green curtain in his vision, yet Xu Yunfan charged straight through as if nothing was there.

Whenever he was about to crash into a tree trunk, a low rumble like shifting tectonic plates would erupt from his shoulder blades, and his Profound Steel Hundred-Forged Body would wrench his torso into an unnatural right-angle turn.

Pine needles blasted into the air by the shockwaves formed a tornado a hundred meters high. The footprints left on the tree bark were three inches deep, their edges still sparking with lingering Thunder Fire.

In just one Hour, Xu Yunfan came to a sudden halt before Broken Dragon Cliff.

His seven-foot Heavy Hammer plunged into the rock to break his momentum, but it still plowed a fifty-foot-long trench in the ground.

He looked down at his feet. The combat boots formed from the Dragon Scale Armor were venting scorching air, forcing the surrounding green grass to bend low.

The mountain rock within a thirty-foot radius was covered in a spiderweb of cracks, and each of his footprints was sunken like a meteor crater.

Xu Yunfan looked up.

A three-hundred-foot-wide mountain gorge crossed his path from east to west. A black fog condensed from Dirt Qi churned along the stream, corroding the thousand-year-old cypress trees on both banks until their branches were gnarled and twisted.

The terrain suddenly dipped here, forming a valley shaped like an inverted gourd. This geography happened to gather the ley lines from all four directions into a single spot, allowing Spiritual Qi to flow down from the surrounding mountain peaks and create a Spiritual Energy Node within the valley.

Xu Yunfan took a deep breath, and the mercury-like Blood Qi unique to the Blood Exchange Realm circulated within him.

His eyes seemed to brighten slightly. His Seeking Dragon and Distinguishing Veins technique allowed him to forcibly pinpoint the location of several wisps of purple qi within the foul-smelling demonic fog. The center of the Spiritual Energy Node was deep inside a karst cave behind a waterfall.

And behind the waterfall, a pair of pupils the size of lanterns were coldly watching Xu Yunfan, the uninvited guest.

Xu Yunfan couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. ’This Demon Fiend is quite perceptive.’

BOOM!

A thirty-foot-high water curtain suddenly erupted from the gorge, and a foul wind carried a Black-Scaled Tiger Claw as it tore through the air toward him.

"Good timing!"