Immortality starts from the liver proficiency

Chapter 311 You want me dead?

But at this moment, he could only bite the bullet and reply, "Your Majesty, I have already ordered men to strengthen patrols of the examination hall. If any unusual activity is detected..."

"Patrol?"

The Empress chuckled, and her bone staff suddenly slammed into the ground with a thud.

The floor tiles of the entire Ziji Hall immediately revealed dense, dark red patterns. These patterns were magic arrays drawn with cinnabar mixed with dragon blood, which could gather spiritual energy and nourish blood essence.

At this moment, the magic array fluctuated slightly, and Pei Jian and Guo Lang groaned simultaneously, with thin streaks of blood seeping from their seven orifices.

Cao An suddenly cried out in a shrill voice, "Your Majesty! This old servant just received a secret report that the Dao Sect's newly accepted disciple..."

Before he could finish speaking, the Empress's cloudy eyes suddenly turned to him, startling the old eunuch into silence.

"Xu Yunfan, I know him."

The Empress slowly uttered the name, a strange smile curving her lips. "A disciple of the Heavenly Craft Cave, achieving the Great Perfection of the Marrow Cleansing Realm in three months... cough cough... that old ghost Bi Yuan really struck gold. These sect cancers... their luck is truly inexhaustible."

The empress's withered fingers suddenly opened, and a terrifying suction force burst forth from her palm.

The bronze lamp stand, ten feet away, emitted a mournful metallic groan as it succumbed to the unbearable weight. The gilded dragon pattern crumbled inch by inch under the immense, invisible force, and the entire lamp stand collapsed into a fist-sized metal block in the blink of an eye, like dough being kneaded by an invisible hand.

Her palm pulsed with true energy, and the ball of bronze transformed into golden-red sand with a piercing hissing sound, shimmering with an eerie luster as if it had been tempered by an invisible fire.

Golden sand fell softly onto the eye-shaped gem at the tip of the bone staff, and the gray-white eye suddenly trembled violently, its pupil shrinking to the size of a pinhead.

The surface of the staff was covered with dense, blood-red patterns, which greedily devoured the gold dust like awakened blood vessels.

As the last wisp of golden-red light disappeared into the staff, the bone staff suddenly emitted several strands of dark red vitality. That aura, like a living thing, burrowed into the Empress's cracked skin, and a strange flush appeared in her sunken eye sockets, while her shriveled chest swelled slightly.

But this chance of survival was fleeting.

The eyeball on the bone staff turned gray again, and the wrinkles that the Empress had just smoothed out quickly collapsed back into place. Only a drop of gold dust remaining at the corner of her mouth proved this desperate act of plunder.

Her face was flushed with a sickly flush and looked tired.

"Do you think I don't know? The Dao Sect wants to use the imperial examination to test the waters in Yujing. There are those Taoist priests in Jiannan Road, those bald monks in Amitabha Temple, and other sects..."

Her words stopped abruptly.

Suddenly, hurried footsteps came from outside the hall, and a golden-armored guard stumbled in, his helmet nowhere to be seen.

"Report! An anomaly has been discovered in the southeast corner of the Examination Hall; it's suspected someone has disturbed the earth's veins..."

The six underground dragon veins within Yujing City converge, corresponding to the six directions of the Great Zhou Dynasty. Naturally, no one is allowed to disturb them in the slightest. This is the foundation of the Great Zhou Dynasty and an important cornerstone for its resurgence as ruler of the world.

The empress suddenly burst into laughter, which was mixed with a chilling coughing sound of blood.

Her withered face flickered in and out of the shadows of the imperial palace, like a skeleton wrapped in human skin: "Alright... everyone's coming to join the fun..."

She stood up shakily, and the eye-shaped gem on her bone staff suddenly opened wide, its pupil reflecting the sky in the direction of the examination hall, where dark blue and black energies were intertwined into a vortex.

"Issue the decree." The Empress's voice suddenly became exceptionally clear, each word like a knife carving on bronze, "One month from now, I will personally attend the Martial Arts Grand Ceremony."

Her hunched back appeared exceptionally small in the beam of light cast by the palace gate, but her next words plunged everyone into an icy abyss: "Since they all want to see how I die... then let them see it clearly."
-
Yujing Road, Hedong Prefecture, on the way to Yujing Prefecture.

In late spring, the official road east of the river was bathed in the warm golden morning light. Wild apricot blossoms were in full bloom along the roadside, and their pink and white petals fluttered down onto the bluestone slabs in the wind, only to be crushed into fragrant dust by the wheels of the carriages.

The caravan, bearing the banner of "Jiangnan Silk," moved slowly forward. The twenty awning carriages were covered with ordinary linen, but the interiors were made of black iron.

This was a disguised convoy meticulously designed by the Dao Sect. Although they moved very fast, their purpose was not to rush to their target.

Inside the third carriage, Xu Yunfan sat cross-legged, surrounded by ten streams of energy of different colors.

These various kinds of energy were what he had just refined, which also marked that he had completely entered the Ten Extremes Martial Arts.

These energies, like swimming dragons, traversed his internal organs, each containing martial arts energy with distinct characteristics.

Within the lung cavity, with the Triple Burner Sword Nourishing Technique as a prerequisite, at this moment, the sword energy condensed by the "Empty Bright Sword Cleansing Technique" transforms into thousands of fine threads, tempering the alveoli until they are as sharp and transparent as a sword edge.

Deep within the heart meridian, the blazing true fire of the "Pure Yang Qi Gong" burns fiercely, each heartbeat unleashing a roar like forging in a furnace. In the spleen area, the blood and qi formed by the "Nine Luminaries Swallowing Qi Technique" are transformed and purified, crushing and refining all the medicinal power along the way. Meanwhile, the jade marrow and golden bone power of the "I Ching Marrow Cleansing Gong" is like a blacksmith's hammer, striking the bones and internal organs with the sound of metal striking metal.

The most astonishing change was in the liver meridian. The dragon and tiger energies cultivated by the Xuanzhen Sect's "Dragon and Tiger Elixir Technique" were tearing each other apart with the Buddhist qi of the Amitabha Temple. Each collision caused fine cracks to appear on the four walls of the carriage.

Blood seeped from the corner of Xu Yunfan's mouth, yet a hint of joy appeared on his face.

This is the "Ten Extremes Clashing" secret technique taught by Dugu Jiu, which uses the power of mutual generation and restraint of top-level techniques to form a miniature furnace between the internal organs.

He cultivated the unique strengths of various schools of martial arts within his body, integrating and utilizing them for his own purposes.

Although the Ten Extremes Martial Arts are powerful, they require meticulous control of one's strength. If Xu Yunfan did not have an attribute panel, he would not have dared to so recklessly send various kinds of energy into his internal organs and begin to slowly temper them.

"Brother Xu, why is your internal energy like boiling molten copper?"

Li Haomiao lifted the carriage curtain, letting in a few willow leaves covered in morning dew, causing the jade pendant at his waist to sway slightly.

The seemingly ordinary mutton-fat jade pendant at Li Haomiao's waist actually concealed a secret: a five-clawed dragon pattern was faintly visible on the jade surface, making it the "Hidden Dragon Pendant" unique to the Great Zhou royal family.

This item can only be worn by the crown prince, as it contains a wisp of true dragon purple energy and is a symbol of the legitimacy of imperial power.

As the only surviving prince of the Great Zhou royal family, Daozong deliberately pushed him to the forefront this time, precisely to act under the guise of "Fengtian Jingnan" (a campaign to quell the rebellion of the emperor), using the royal lineage as a banner, so that he could legitimately intervene in the chaos in Yujing and deter those warlords with ulterior motives.

Xu Yunfan did not answer, but suddenly pointed his fingers into a sword and pointed at the falling willow leaf.

The leaf mysteriously split into three in mid-air. The first leaf was shredded into dust by the sword energy, the second leaf became stagnant as if trapped in a quagmire, and the third leaf burst into golden flames.

This is a sign that the Ten Extremes Martial Arts are beginning to take shape. A single strike contains three layers of force, combining hardness and softness, and yin and yang in harmony.

Li Haomiao was startled by this.

(End of this chapter)