Becoming an immortal from a canal worker

As dawn broke, Chen Ping was already practicing his swordplay in the courtyard.

An hour later, he sheathed his sword and stood still.

A line of text flashed across my retina.

【Vast Ocean Sword Technique】

Current progress: Mastery (1/1000)

Chen Ping sheathed Jingye's sword and went back to the house to tidy up.

I'm moving today.

Just after Chen Shi (7-9 AM), Chen Ping, carrying a bundle on his back with Jing Ye slung across his shoulder, pushed open the courtyard gate and walked towards Li Yuan.

The streets were already bustling with voices. A tofu vendor's carrying pole swayed past the alley entrance, and several canal workers squatted against the wall waiting for work, wrapped in tattered cotton-padded coats, their necks hunched over.

He turned the third corner and entered a narrow alley.

The walls on both sides are made of earth, with most of the plaster peeling off to reveal the yellow mud underneath. The ground is made of bluestone slabs, with withered grass growing in the cracks.

Halfway there, the hairs on the back of Chen Ping's neck suddenly stood on end without warning.

My hair stood on end.

Click! Click! Click! Click!

Four extremely faint cracking sounds of bones breaking erupted simultaneously from both ends of the alley.

Immediately afterwards, four streams of blood and qi surged out like raging fire, violent and scalding, exploding in the narrow alley.

There were two in front and two behind, wearing tattered cotton-padded jackets and with disheveled hair and dirty faces—the faces of the refugees he had seen countless times on this street.

Without a word, the four men flipped their wrists, and short daggers appeared in their palms. Four cold glints shot out at the same time, tearing through the air and heading straight for Chen Ping's face and vital points!

Chen Ping's eyes instantly turned cold.

He reached his hand behind him.

Soaring through the clouds, unleash your power!

Chen Ping twisted his body and managed to pass through the gap between the four daggers that flew at his face.

Clang!

The sword was drawn in the dead of night.

The blade struck with tremendous force.

Using the terrifying explosive power of his Cloud Piercing Leap, Chen Ping took three steps in a row, heading straight for the short assassin on his right.

A distance of a dozen steps, covered in an instant.

The man's pupils contracted.

Chen Ping drew his sword, and the sword's momentum surged forth, bringing an invisible pressure.

The dwarf, however, did not retreat.

He grinned maliciously, suddenly lowered his body, raised his five fingers like eagle claws, and threw a handful of pale green powder fiercely towards Chen Ping's eyes.

Chen Ping abruptly stopped in his tracks.

Power from the waist and hips, the spine moves like a dragon.

He moved like a fish, weaving through the smoke with undiminished momentum, and swung his sword, aiming straight for the man's waist.

The footsteps of the three people behind them had caught up.

One of them roared, "Hold on! You have inner armor; ordinary iron can't hurt you! Hold him off, and we'll take his head!"

The dwarf's eyes flashed with ferocity. Instead of dodging or avoiding, he charged forward aggressively, revealing a section of black inner armor with a metallic sheen peeking out from his sleeve.

Chen Ping's expression remained unchanged.

A blade cuts in!

Completely destroying everything in its path.

With that one strike, the man's entire waist, along with his inner armor, was severed in two!

"A treasure!"

The dwarf only had time to let out a desperate, piercing cry before he died.

His upper body slid diagonally to the ground amidst a blinding shower of blood, his internal organs spilling out onto the ground.

The three of them didn't stop walking, but a look of horror appeared in their eyes.

A treasure! How did this kid get a treasure?

But their hands kept moving.

Poisonous powder filled the air in front of him, while three daggers, arranged in a triangular formation, blocked Chen Ping's escape route.

Chen Ping lightly touched the ground with his toes, stepped onto the wall, avoided the poison powder, and used the momentum to leap high into the air, slashing down with the Nightfall Slash.

The three of them scattered to avoid the danger.

One of them shouted angrily, "The treasure's power is immense! Get it close! Make it impossible for him to use it!"

The three figures moved with an extremely strange and cunning manner, like three venomous snakes, grazing the blade of Jingye's sword, aiming straight for Chen Ping's wrist and heart.

Chen Ping took a slight step back and turned around.

The alley was indeed narrow.

But he always found himself in an extremely tricky position, and every now and then he would swing his knife. The angle of each strike was so sharp that the three of them had no way to avoid it. They could only distract themselves to parry his moves, but they could never get close enough to get close.

The fight lasted only a dozen breaths.

Seeing the situation was turning against them, one of them immediately shouted, "They're tough! We can't kill them! Retreat!"

The three of them scattered instantly with perfect coordination, not lingering in the fight, and turned to run.

Chen Ping's eyes turned cold.

If any of these three escapes, it will cause endless trouble in the future.

"Trying to run away?"

His voice wasn't loud, but his feet had already started moving.

Chen Ping took a step forward, leaving a blur in his wake, and caught up with the person fleeing on the left.

The man dodged to the left, but Chen Ping's eyes were icy. He suddenly twisted his wrist, and Jingye spun around, a flash of cold light.

The man's body stiffened instantly.

Chen Ping didn't even glance at him, his figure sweeping past him as he continued his pursuit.

It wasn't until Chen Ping had taken three steps away that the man's upper body slowly shifted from his waist and crashed to the ground.

Seeing this, the remaining two moved even faster.

One of them ran while frantically scattering pale green powder behind him without looking back.

Chen Ping always managed to get ahead of the movement, without slowing down at all.

As the aura of death drew ever closer, the assassin running ahead abruptly stopped.

He turned around and roared, "Damn it! There's no escape! I'll fight to the death!"

The two men gritted their teeth, grabbed their daggers, and charged back at Chen Ping.

During the pursuit, he had already swung his sword more than ten times.

With each swing of the sword, the force of the blade was like layers of overlapping waves, pressed down within the blade itself.

The moment the two rushed to within an arm's length of him, Chen Ping's eyes widened in fury, and his wrist suddenly trembled!

boom!

The sword's power was unleashed without reservation!

The two of them paused for a moment.

Just this once.

A flash of cold light appeared, and two heads landed on the bluestone slab, rolled twice, and came to a stop.

The alleyway fell silent again.

Chen Ping stood there, catching his breath. He looked down at himself and saw a shallow cut on his right shoulder, from where the dagger had grazed him at the beginning. It was bleeding a little, but not deep.

Chen Ping squatted down and skillfully searched each person's body.

The three carried similar items: several cloth bags and porcelain bottles containing black and red pills, a bottle of colorless liquid, and two bottles of pale green powder, all of which they tucked into their pockets.

Walking up to the short man's corpse, Chen Ping squatted down and roughly ripped open the collar of his shirt.

The black inner armor was tightly bound to his skin and flesh. Chen Ping untied the straps and tore off the inner armor.

It's surprisingly light.

He unfolded the inner armor and took a closer look. It was soft, like cloth, but the surface had a metallic sheen. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that it was covered with densely packed layers of tiny scales, each as thin as a cicada's wing, interlocking perfectly.

He tapped his finger, producing a very soft, muffled sound.

From his current blacksmith's perspective, the craftsmanship of this inner armor is probably extremely good, something that an ordinary blacksmith cannot touch. He can't even forge a single scale on it now, let alone piece together the scales into armor.

However, Jingye's knife cut off a third of his lower body, and the remaining part, when worn, could only cover his chest and arms, resembling a crop top from his previous life.

Chen Ping folded up the inner armor, stuffed it into his bundle, stood up, and glanced around the alley.

He had seen those four faces no less than fifteen times in the past month.

They would always squat a hundred paces away from his yard, wearing tattered cotton-padded jackets, disheveled hair and dirty faces, holding a chipped bowl in their hands. Sometimes, after finishing their work, the canal workers would laugh loudly and urinate on them. The four of them would not even raise their heads, letting those people laugh until they were done and then leave.

I stayed there for a month.

Judging from their fighting style, every move was ruthless and decisive. The four of them hardly needed to speak, and their actions were perfectly synchronized, clearly indicating that they had gone through life and death together.

The choice of ambush location was extremely insidious. This narrow alley was the only way he could move, with earthen walls on both sides blocking his retreat and cutting him off from both sides, leaving him no room to even turn around.

If it were a month ago, he would have died here before he even drew his knife.

These four men didn't seem like gang members; they were more like professional assassins. They had been staking out the location for a month, probably to make sure there were no hidden people around him.

He slung his bundle back over his shoulder and turned to walk towards Lü Cheng's residence.

Pushing open the door, I saw Lü Cheng sitting there, holding a teacup.

He raised his eyes and glanced at Chen Ping.

With just that one glance, he slowly placed the teacup back on the table, his gaze darkening.

"Something happened?"

Chen Ping put down his bundle and said calmly, "There are four assassins at the Tendon Refining Realm squatting outside the alley in front of my courtyard. They must think highly of me; they've been squatting there for at least a month."

Lu Cheng frowned: "What's going on? Li Yuan said your area is clean."

Chen Ping shook his head: "Those four people were disguised as refugees. Before, they had no vital energy at all and were starving, just like those refugees."

Upon hearing this, Lü Cheng's expression changed drastically: "Bone-Corroding Pill? Do they have some kind of black pill on them?"

Chen Ping took the items out of his pocket one by one and placed them on the table. Then he took out the tattered inner armor from his bundle and put it down as well.

Lu Cheng looked at the items on the table, his gaze lingering on the inner armor for a moment. He reached out, picked it up, unfolded it, and examined it. His brow twitched slightly. "Fish-scale soft armor, although damaged, is in good condition. Find a skilled armorer to remake it; at least it can still protect your chest. This is a good item; ordinary iron cannot damage it. It's priceless on the market. Keep it."

He pushed the inner armor back to Chen Ping and went to look at the pills again.

Lu Cheng stared at the things on the table and remained silent for a long time.

He picked up the cloth bags and porcelain bottles one by one, opened them, and looked at them closely, his brows slowly furrowing.

"Bone-Corroding Pill." He picked up the black pill and put it back. "It suppresses the regeneration of qi and blood. Long-term use can keep one's qi and blood in a state of constant deficiency, so that others cannot sense the qi and blood in one's body."

He then picked up the red pill: "Blood-Exploding Pill, usually used in conjunction with Bone-Corroding Pill. After taking it, one's blood and qi can be instantly restored to their peak. Together, the two form a complete set of equipment for stealth and assassination."

He picked up the bottle of colorless liquid, but without opening it, he simply looked at it against the light and put it down. "This poison is so potent that even a filthy martial artist would die quickly if he got a little bit of it. I suspect that these four men's original job was to find out who my Green Robe Society's talents were. If Changshan hadn't been crippled that night, these four men would have taken action, poisoned him, and eliminated him silently."

He paused for a moment: "If what you said is true, the time when these four people infiltrated was probably before Changshan was crippled. At that time, you hadn't yet revealed your abilities, which means that this wasn't a backup plan targeting you, but rather a preemptive move that had been planted in the town long ago, only to be redirected later."

"No wonder Li Yuan said your yard was clean; these four have probably been taking Bone-Corroding Pills for a month."

He picked up the two bottles of pale green powder, examined them for a moment, and shook his head: "I don't recognize this stuff."

He pushed the things aside and stood up: "These past few days, Rouge Tiger has been refining your Bone Tempering Pill and can't leave. I'll take you to her to ask what this poison powder is, and we can take care of the move at the same time."

Chen Ping didn't say anything, but got up and followed.

These four are the first moves, Changshan is the second move. The White Gang's scheme was probably laid long ago. So how many more first moves and how many more second moves does Qingkou Town have?

The crisis still looms large.

The door closed, and the sun had already risen in the alley, pushing the shadows on the ground back a bit.