Wang Hongshi’s expression twisted in a snarl. His body began to rapidly expand, growing larger, taller. His robes tore apart as his skin turned a faint, ghastly green.

Lines of muscle bulged like steel cables, wrapping around his entire body.

In less than two seconds, he transformed from his previous five-foot-ten frame into a towering, muscular giant of seven-foot-eight.

"Power... so much power... it’s surging out of me endlessly!" Wang Hongshi stared at his open hands in shock, feeling as if he could shatter anything with a single slap.

"The True Body Seal is a power you can only obtain through your heartfelt recognition of Qingfeng Temple," Lin Hui instructed. "The boost should be at least fifty percent. As for the actual increase in combat strength, you’ll need to go back and experiment on your own."

"Fifty percent?! And I can experiment with it more? This Secret Technique... aren’t you afraid of side effects?" Wang Hongshi was stunned.

"This technique has no side effects," Lin Hui nodded.

Upon hearing this, Mingxia’s jaw dropped. She wondered if she had misheard.

"Such a powerful Secret Technique with no side effects? Who are you trying to fool?!" she couldn’t help but retort.

"Whether it does or not will become clear later. Now, next." Lin Hui withdrew his hand and said calmly.

The others exchanged glances. Qiu Yiren immediately stepped forward.

"I’ll go!" She wasn’t afraid that the Observatory Master would harm her. It could be said that if anyone in this world understood Lin Hui best, it was her.

After all, no one else would spend their free time every day running off to the side to secretly watch him.

The Observatory Master’s preferences, his daily routines, his character—she knew them all by heart.

Therefore, among everyone present, she was the least worried.

"I have an injury that hasn’t healed yet, I wonder if that’s okay?" She stood before Lin Hui, unabashedly showing off her somewhat, but not overly, curvaceous figure.

"It’s fine." Lin Hui smiled slightly, raised his hand, and pointed a finger forward.

CHFF.

*

*

*

HISS...

「Huangjia Town.」

Xia Si stared at the figures opposite her, drew her sword with one hand, and tossed the scabbard aside.

"Who are you people?"

She narrowed her eyes, sizing up the three of them.

"This is a hunting formation. Are you... planning to hunt me?"

"You can choose not to fight. The one we want is behind you." The leader, a man in full-face armor, raised his hand and pointed at Liu Xiao.

"Me?!" Liu Xiao’s expression changed. She strode forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Xia Si.

"Who are you? I am Liu Xiao, a presiding Priest of the Rain Palace’s Yuanming Hall! How dare you! Do you dare lay a hand on a Rain Palace Priest?!" Her beautiful eyes were sharp, staring daggers at the armored leader.

She could faintly feel an inexplicable sense of pressure from him, a feeling she had only ever encountered from a High Priest like her elder brother.

Clearly, these three had come prepared. And with their identities so thoroughly concealed, they were surely people of status whose actions couldn’t see the light of day.

"Of course we know who you are. But it doesn’t matter. As long as everyone here is dead, no one will be running to the Rain Palace to report it," the armored man said flatly.

"Dead?! Who the hell do you think you are, saying something like that to my face?!" Liu Xiao immediately crushed the warning jade token at her waist, sending a distress signal to the Rain Palace.

With her status, position, and strength, any call for help would surely bring a High Priest to her aid.

The Tuyue Rain Palace currently had at least four High Priests in residence. ’As long as one of them gets the message and comes to our rescue, we’ll be...’

Before the thought could even finish, Liu Xiao’s eyes suddenly locked.

She saw the armored man opposite them grip his saber with one hand and raise it horizontally before him.

"Stacked Peaks Divine Decision."

He flicked the flat of the blade with a finger, producing a clear, crisp sound.

"Rumble of a Thousand Peaks!"

HUMMM!!

The next second, an invisible, transparent soundwave erupted from the saber, instantly expanding in all directions.

Everyone present, everyone within a one-kilometer radius, felt their Heart and Spirit tremble as the soundwave washed over them.

"This is... the Fushan Sect...?!" Just before her vision blurred, Liu Xiao recognized the origin of this technique.

The ultimate art of the Fushan Sect, one of the Inner City’s Three Sects—the Stacked Peaks Divine Decision!

The next instant, everyone—all the disciples of Qingfeng Temple—felt their breath catch in their throats.

They looked up in horror to find that a massive, dark, translucent mountain of jagged rock had appeared above them. It was plummeting from the sky, crashing down to crush them all.

WHOOSH!

The immense wind pressure made it difficult for anyone to breathe.

They watched as the giant mountain grew closer and larger, until it filled their entire field of vision.

Irresistible.

Unstoppable.

Unthinkable.

Everyone could see the mountain’s translucent quality. Some clung to the hope that it was just an illusion and didn’t summon the resolve to face it head-on.

But Liu Xiao, who knew a little about it, understood that this was the most dangerous aspect of the Fushan Sect’s Stacked Peaks Divine Decision.

If an opponent dismissed it as an illusion and failed to resist with all their might, the result would be having their Heart and Spirit’s defenses shattered by the illusory mountain, plunging them into a catatonic stupor.

But at this moment, amid the tremendous wind and roaring sound, she tried to scream a warning, but her voice was completely drowned out.

No one could hear her warning; no one could hear her shout.

Except for one person.

Xia Si stood at the very front, raising her Longsword.

Facing the crushing pressure of the enormous mountain, her face showed no fear. Instead, a strange smile touched her lips.

A hint of savagery seemed to hide within that smile.

Through her blurry vision, Liu Xiao thought she saw Xia Si’s lips moving, whispering something. But she couldn’t hear it.

The next moment, Liu Xiao’s eyes flew wide open.

She didn’t even notice that the corners of her eyes had torn and started to bleed from the strain.

Because right beside her, she was watching—truly watching—Xia Si, this pretty junior sister she had previously thought was just a talented disciple of Qingfeng Temple.

She watched as Xia Si’s face, right before her very eyes, cracked open.

Like a peeled orange revealing the true fruit beneath.

So it was with Xia Si now.

The skin on her face split completely apart, and a thick, greyish-white, bone-like mucus surged out from underneath.

The countless strands of mucus swirled rapidly, enveloping her entire body, reshaping it, and then hardening.

In the blink of an eye, it formed a tall swordsman over three meters high, seemingly composed of greyish-white bone.

Greyish-white flames ignited in the skeletal swordsman’s eye sockets. Its right arm fused directly with the Longsword, transforming into a giant bone sword four or five meters long and as wide as a door.

SWISH!

The skeletal swordsman leveled its blade.

A gale howled and swirled around it, letting out a matching roar.

The next instant, it gripped the sword with both hands and swung it upward, bringing with it a hurricane of air currents, and slashed toward the sky!

"KILL!! HAHAHAHAHA!!"

In that moment, Xia Si took Lin Hui’s Gale Swordsmanship to a whole new level.

Countless translucent air currents condensed into a giant blade tens of meters long, which slashed across the sky.

The transparent blade flew horizontally, colliding head-on with the descending mountain.

With a deafening BOOM, the blade and the mountain exploded together, shattering into countless points of transparent light that rained down upon the earth.

Liu Xiao’s vision cleared. When she came to her senses, she saw Xia Si in the clearing ahead, sword in hand, clashing directly with the armored man from the Fushan Sect.

Saber and sword clashed. Every impact released a terrifying, explosive sound, like peals of thunder.

Xia Si was in her human form again, as if the previous scene had been nothing but a hallucination.

But Liu Xiao had a strange feeling that that form, perhaps...

BOOM!!

The next moment, Xia Si brought her sword down in a powerful slash, forcing the armored man into a difficult block and blasting a massive crater more than ten meters in diameter beneath his feet.

Countless bits of stone and dirt were blasted outward by the immense pressure, scattering and peppering the onlookers like bullets.

Many were injured on the spot from that alone.

Liu Xiao wanted to go and help, but was horrified to find she could no longer even follow the speed of their movements.

’Void Power! Why can Xia Si fight against a High Priest’s Void Power?! And the Time-Sense Divine Art?!’

’Just who is she?!’

"Gale! Pulverize him!!" Xia Si’s wild roar came again.

The wind swirling around her grew even more exaggerated, the high-speed air currents emitting a shriek-like howl.

From a distance, it looked as if she were standing in the middle of a grey tornado, each sword strike bringing immense pressure down on the armored man.

Empowered by the gale, Xia Si’s strength and speed grew ever faster, ever more urgent. This was the signature trait of the Gale Swordsmanship, now displayed to its fullest in her hands.

No one else around them could intervene; they could only watch from afar.

Those who had tried to get closer before had been seriously injured in the last collision.

’Unafraid of Void Power, unafraid of the temporal arts... Xia Si... Lin Hui, just what are you...?!’ Liu Xiao was feeling more and more that something was very wrong with Qingfeng Temple.

Before, when she was with Lin Xiaoliu, she often heard her little sister say that Qingfeng Temple was full of monsters and she was scared.

At the time, she had assumed that people at Qingfeng Temple were just dressing up as monsters to scare a child.

But now, it seemed...

*

*

*

「The rear courtyard of Qingfeng Temple.」

Lin Hui finished bestowing the True Body Seal upon the last Core Disciple.

Looking at the shocked and delighted crowd, he simply smiled and told everyone to go and acclimate to their newfound power.

「After everyone had left.」

Mingxia still hadn’t moved.

She narrowed her eyes, staring at Lin Hui. Now, only the two of them remained in the courtyard’s training field.

As for the so-called Secret Technique from before, only she could see most clearly just how bizarre its core truly was.

In the eyes of an ordinary Martial Artist, it might really be just as Lin Hui said—a Secret Technique, a secret of the Martial Dao.

With Extreme Martial Arts, any kind of Secret Technique wasn’t all that surprising.

But in the eyes of a top-tier Palace Master like her...

’That seal...’ Mingxia stared intently at Lin Hui.

’In her eyes, Lin Hui had originally been just a talented genius who could create valuable Martial Arts of his own.’

’A genius like that, with a good background and potential... in the future, she might even have been able to borrow his seed, bear a few descendants to improve her lineage’s aptitude.’

That had been her original plan.

Until just before he bestowed the seals, that was what she had thought.

But... after the bestowal...

Lin Hui’s once-clear face now seemed to grow increasingly blurry in her eyes.

The once-shallow pond of Qingfeng Temple had, in this moment, transformed into a bottomless, frigid abyss.

She couldn’t see what was hidden within it at all...