Longevity by Grinding Skills

Chen Tiangang roared with laughter. "I taught you all of your Martial Arts. I know every supposed flaw like the back of my hand."

With that, he fearlessly thrust his hand toward Ning Wuque’s chest, his fingers like talons. With vicious power, he tore directly through Ning Wuque’s skin and muscle.

Ning Wuque felt a searing pain in his chest, as if he had been brutally seared by a red-hot branding iron. Blood sprayed out like a fountain.

Horrified, Ning Wuque felt the blood in his veins suddenly begin to churn like boiling magma, his vessels threatening to burst from the force.

Chen Tiangang began to laugh maniacally. The sound, like the shriek of a night owl, echoed throughout the entire sect, carrying a bone-chilling madness.

Laughing, he used some unknown method to rip a dark golden mass of blood from Ning Wuque’s chest. The mass seemed alive, twisting and struggling in his palm before bizarrely condensing into the shape of a cicada.

"True Blood, True Blood! Thirty years of plotting, and I’ve finally waited for this Blood Cicada to mature! I wonder which True Immortal’s bloodline this is."

Chen Tiangang’s laughter grew even more maniacal, his voice filled with the excitement of his imminent success.

Those who possess True Blood have the ability of Celestial Human Transformation. They can purge toxins, purify the body, alter their Constitution, and even regenerate severed limbs.

He had waited for this moment for a very, very long time.

’Now, I’ve finally brought Ning Wuque to maturity.’

"My dear disciple, my efforts to provoke you all these years were not in vain. But your gentle nature truly troubled me for a long time, which is why I had to find that girl Chu Xuan and bring her here."

"Father!?"

Her face pale, Chu Xuan stared in disbelief at the utterly crazed Chen Tiangang.

Having collapsed weakly to the ground, Ning Wuque stared death at Chen Tiangang, his deathly pale face holding a fierce expression as he ignored the gruesome wound on his chest.

"General Cui, are you not going to act?"

Chen Tiangang snapped his head up. From the direction of the sect entrance below the Martial Arts Arena, a tall Scale Horse was charging toward him.

Sitting upright on the horse’s back was a burly figure as massive as a mountain, clad in black Heavy Armor. The Heavy Armor seemed to be made of hard Profound Iron, emitting a cold gleam.

He held a Yanyue Saber in his hand. As the horse ran, the saber bounced, its blade dragging on the ground, kicking up a shower of sparks and carving a deep groove in the earth.

"Noisy."

A deep voice, like muffled thunder, boomed out. The next moment, the Cavalry General had charged in front of Chen Tiangang. The Yanyue Saber he had been dragging suddenly moved, swinging upward from below.

As the Yanyue Saber swung rapidly, its fierce friction with the air turned the blade red-hot, like a crimson dragon wreathed in an incomparably ferocious power.

A blast of hot air rushed forward, and the searing heatwave forced everyone nearby to retreat several steps.

"A Treasure Artifact?"

Chen Tiangang’s expression instantly became grave. A step above a Sharp Blade Level weapon was a Treasure Artifact. When powered by Blood Qi, it could unleash Blade Qi.

Beneath his skin, blood-red patterns like the veins on a cicada’s wing spread rapidly.

The tips of his toes tapped the ground several times in an irregular rhythm. His body, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings, retreated rapidly in a strange, zigzagging path.

The saber strike missed. A fiery blade aura shot out from the edge, slamming heavily into a nearby house. The entire building instantly collapsed and was swiftly consumed by fire.

Missing his first strike, a flash of surprise appeared in the Cavalry General’s eyes. His Yanyue Saber cut an arc through the air as he abruptly pulled it back. Then, he dug his legs into the Scale Horse’s belly. The horse neighed and once again charged towards Chen Tiangang like lightning.

"Heh..."

Chen Tiangang had no intention of fighting him. He was only concerned with the dark golden mass of blood in his hand. With a series of quick movements, he swiftly disappeared into the sprawling buildings of the sect.

Seeing this, General Cui had no choice but to rein in his prized steed and stop his pursuit.

Looking back, there was no one left standing from the Celestial Cicada Sect in the entire Martial Arts Arena. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

General Cui glanced at Ning Wuque lying in a pool of blood, sneered, and waved his hand.

"Forget it. Go to the other areas. Kill them all—leave no one alive! As for that old dog, leave him to me."

Squad after squad of the Hu Ben Profound Armor poured like a flood into the Celestial Cicada Sect’s buildings. In the Martial Arts Arena, apart from a dozen or so soldiers on guard, only a ground littered with dismembered limbs and corpses remained.

Xu Yunfan appeared silently beside Ning Wuque and Chu Xuan, looking on, struck speechless, at the two who still clung to life.

’He’d been watching from the side for a long time. He hadn’t expected Chu Xuan to choose to face life and death with the Celestial Cicada Sect at the critical moment.’

’What did her usual ’green tea’ act matter now?’

’How laughable.’

Having lost his True Blood, Ning Wuque stared blankly at the sky, his eyes lifeless. His mouth opened and closed, as if he couldn’t believe he had come to such an end.

Seeing Xu Yunfan appear, Chu Xuan suddenly began to struggle, a final burst of energy animating her violent movements.

"Kill him, Junior Brother... help me, kill him! He betrayed the sect and became a dog of the Court!"

Her voice was hoarse with anger and pain, almost a shriek.

Chu Xuan’s heart was filled with the flames of hatred.

Ning Wuque deserved to die, and so did Chen Tiangang.

Looking at the barely breathing Ning Wuque, Chu Xuan’s mind was flooded with images of laughter and joy from past days at the Celestial Cicada Sect, and the faces of her fellow disciples lying in pools of blood.

She only hoped that Xu Yunfan would strike immediately and end Ning Wuque’s life.

Xu Yunfan remained silent, with no intention of bringing down the Drumming Jar Golden Hammer in his hand. The two were merely pawns of Chen Tiangang. Even someone as hard-hearted as him found the tragedy he had orchestrated lamentable.

’Their injuries were now beyond recovery; he didn’t want to waste his energy.’

"Who goes there!"

A Squad Leader shouted. A dozen or so Profound Armored Soldiers drew their sabers and glared, looking as if they would charge at any moment.

Xu Yunfan moved first. The instant the arch of his foot shattered a bluestone tile, the muscles in his calves tightened like steel cables.

His scapular muscles tensed like a bowstring. As the Jar Gold Hammer tore through the air, it created a visible vortex. Before the hammerhead even struck, the resulting wind pressure blew away a banner thirty feet away.

BAM!

The pupils of the first Profound Armored Soldier to bear the brunt of the attack had just contracted to pinpricks when his iron-inlaid helmet shattered like an eggshell.

Fragments of skull and brain matter splattered in a radial pattern. The headless body, not yet fallen, still maintained its saber-raising posture, and the column of blood jetting from its neck cavity painted a warhorse twenty feet away crimson.

Xu Yunfan twisted his waist and hips, his spine cracking loudly, section by section, like a string of firecrackers.

The Heavy Hammer drew a full-moon arc. The second soldier’s chestplate caved in like a bowl. Amidst the crisp sound of his sternum shattering, arterial blood sprayed out in a fan shape, drenching the ground within five paces a dark red.

"Formation!"

The Squad Leader’s roar was already trembling.

Twelve Horse-Cutting Sabers chopped down simultaneously, but their blades only produced sparks upon contact with the muscles of Xu Yunfan’s waist and ribs. In that instant, all the muscles in his body had contracted into a single, iron-hard plate.

The recoil tore open the webbing between the soldiers’ thumbs and forefingers, but Xu Yunfan had already spun around for a horizontal sweep.

Wherever the Jar Gold Hammer passed, four saber-wielding arms were severed at the elbow, the detached limbs flying through the air in a shower of blood.

One soldier was grazed on the side of the face by the wind from the hammer; half of his facial skin was instantly peeled away, exposing the stark white of his gums.

As the last soldier was impaled through the abdomen by the hammerhead and pinned to an earthen wall, the muscles all over Xu Yunfan’s body bulged, taut and defined. Beneath his skin, dark red lines of blood snaked about like living things, and his bulging veins writhed like tiny green serpents.