Martial Arts: My talent multiplier increased

Blood Bat Dharma King's body froze.

This time, the stalemate wasn't 0.6 breaths.

His mouth split open. But no sound came out. His throat was pierced. His vocal cords were severed. The two overlapping sounds would never be produced again.

Within its dark red pupils, a bat-shaped shadow flapped its wings violently. It flapped three times. The speed gradually decreased.

The first blow—the domain collapsed.

The blood mist collapsed from the three-zhang-tall spherical structure as if its skeleton had been removed. Thick, dark red mist scattered in all directions, hissing as it hit the ground like ice cubes falling onto a hot iron plate.

The second time—the blood vessel broke.

All the remaining blood streaks—those Fang Yuan hadn't had time to clean up during the battle—fell down with a thud from mid-air, landing on the shattered stone slabs. The dark red threads twisted twice in the moonlight and then remained still.

The third time—the wings didn't retract.

It was frozen in a half-open posture.

The Blood Bat King's dark red pupils—extinguished.

It wasn't that my eyes were closed. The pupils were still there. But the dark red sheen in the pupils began to fade from the outer edge. Like a glass of water having its color drained from the bottom. The dark red turned grayish-red. The grayish-red turned grayish-white. The grayish-white turned into—

empty.

Two empty eye sockets.

The Blood Bat Dharma King's body fell backward.

Fang Yuan's left hand loosened its grip on the hilt. The short sword was still embedded in the Blood Bat King's throat. The hilt extended from the left side of the neck. A section of the curved blade protruded from the right side. Dark red liquid dripped down the blade.

It dripped onto the broken stone slab. Tap. Tap.

The body lay in the moonlight. A dark red robe lay spread out on the rubble and ice crystals. A wisp of dark red mist still rose from the edge of the robe, but it was growing fainter.

Fang Yuan stood beside the corpse.

My right hand is free. My left hand is free.

His body was covered in wounds. Two cuts on his left arm. A one-inch-long gash on his right shoulder. Five bloody puncture wounds on his chest. A bruise on his abdomen from a knee strike. A layer of skin was missing from his left ear. The front of his greyish-blue short-sleeved shirt was ripped open. Blood stained the cut on his right shoulder line, made by fingernails.

Fang Ying's room door. Fang Lin's breathing came through the crack in the door. Rough. Heavy. Like a bellows.

Fang Yuan's knees bent.

It wasn't kneeling. It was that the effects of the Breakthrough Pill had completely subsided at this moment.

The violent energy of the Beast God's essence blood receded like a tide. When it arrived, it filled every meridian. When it left, it stretched all the elastic fibers on the meridian walls until they creaked and cracked.

weak.

A wave of weakness, like a torrent, surged up from every part of my body at once.

The temporary boost to my root bone strength expired at that moment. The panel flashed in my mind.

"The temporary increase has expired."

All increases simultaneously reset to zero.

Fang Yuan's body plummeted from its peak state of "approaching the threshold of the Qi and Blood Realm" back to the late stage of the Bone Refining Realm.

The difference is too great.

It's like someone falling from a great height back to the ground.

Fang Yuan's knees did not touch the ground. The 8x stance training—back to 8x—held his quadriceps and knee joints in the final moments of control.

Standing.

He could barely stand.

But standing.

The panel flashed in my mind again.

"Foreign essence blood energy detected. Qi and Blood Realm level. Absorb?"

Fang Yuan's hand hovered above the corpse for a moment.

Yes.

The feeling of absorption was different from every time before.

It wasn't just one or two tentacles that coiled around him. Instead, an entire mass of dark red mist surged from every pore of the corpse's body simultaneously, flowing into Fang Yuan's palm at an incredibly fast speed and in enormous quantity.

The icy sensation in my palms traveled from my fingertips to my shoulders. From my shoulders, it traveled to my chest. From my chest, it flowed into my lower abdomen.

cold.

It took Fang Yuan's four times stronger constitution twelve heartbeat cycles to crush this coldness.

The notification sound on the panel kept beeping during those twelve heartbeats.

"Absorption complete. Temporary boost points +15."

Fang Yuan looked at that number.

"+15".

A Blood Bat Dharma King at the early stage of the Qi and Blood Realm. One life is worth fifteen temporary amplification points.

"Current temporary increase in points: 17."

17.

Add the remaining 2 from before.

That's what Liu Ruyan said.

Microcrack. Will widen without healing agents. If not healed within three days—there is a 10% chance of permanent damage.

Fang Yuan suppressed this signal to the bottom of his brain.

Footsteps in the distance. Many.

Fang Yuanshan's voice came from the direction of the passageway. Deep and resonant, accompanied by the metallic clang of a scabbard striking leg armor.

"Fang Yuan!"

The bugle calls of the city guards came from a more distant direction—from the city walls and gates. A muffled, mournful sound.

They've arrived. Fang Yuanshan's four-man team. Following Fang Yuan's plan, they'll take down the Li family in the south of the city, then head to the main residence.

When Fang Yuanshan's figure appeared at the entrance of the inner courtyard passage, he stopped in his tracks.

Fang Yuan stood in the center of the inner courtyard. Pebbles and ice crystals lay beneath his feet. Behind him lay a corpse in a dark red robe, a short knife still embedded in its throat.

Moonlight shone on Fang Yuan. His gray-blue short brown clothes were stained with blood.

Fang Yuanshan saw the body.

His hand loosened its grip on the hilt of the knife. His fingers left a sweaty mark on the hilt.

Fang Yuanshan walked to the body and squatted down. He glanced at the frozen face, the dark red mask now shattered into a few strands.

"Blood Bat Dharma King".

Fang Yuanshan's voice became dry.

He looked up at Fang Yuan.

Fang Yuan stood opposite him. He was so weak that he needed eight times the strength of his stance training to stand upright. But there was no expression on his face that showed any signs of having "almost died" from a near-death experience.

Fang Yuan's gaze shifted from Fang Yuanshan's face to—

The door frame of Fang Ying's room.

Above the door frame.

The stone brick cracked open amidst the shockwaves of the entire battle.

The gap is narrow, about two fingers wide.

Fang Yuan walked over. Each step he took landed on loose stones. His steps were unsteady, but his direction was accurate.

He walked to the door frame. He looked up.

A double dose of divine sense swept across the crevice.

The energy fluctuations that were previously detected—weak, silent, and neither hot nor cold—are now seeping out from the cracks at twice the intensity they were before.

Because the stone bricks cracked. The seal loosened.

Fang Yuan's right hand reached into the gap.

My fingertip touched something.

Hard. Thin. Angular. Temperature—

Constant temperature.

Constant Temperature is exactly the same as the Dark Gold Shard in my pocket.

Fang Yuan used his fingers to pry the thing out of the gap.

The moonlight shone on my palm.

A fragment. Dark gold. The size of a thumbnail. Its surface has extremely fine patterns, exactly the same as the fragment in Fang Yuan's pocket.

Fang Yuan's pupils contracted, teetering on the edge of becoming unfocused.

His right hand reached into his pocket and pulled out his dark gold fragment.

The two fragments are placed side by side in the palm of your hand.

The jagged edges—

Right.

Perfectly fitted.

Fang Yuan's fingers clutched two fragments in the moonlight. The constant warmth of his palms seemed burning hot against his weakened body temperature.

The door was pushed open from the inside.

Fang Lin stood inside the threshold, still clutching the short dagger in his hand. His knuckles were bluish-purple. His face—Fang Yuan didn't have the energy to analyze his facial muscles—was pale. His lips were white.

Fang Lin's gaze swept from Fang Yuan's face to the two shards in his palm. He didn't understand. He didn't need to understand.

His gaze passed over Fang Yuan's shoulder and landed on the dark red robe-clad corpse in the center of the courtyard.

Fang Lin's Adam's apple bobbed slightly.

Through the crack in the door, Fang Ying rolled over. The blanket slipped from her chin to her chest. One and a half of her two little pigtails came undone. She mumbled something indistinctly.

Fang Yuanshan stood behind Fang Yuan, a long sword in his hand. There was no blood on the blade—he hadn't used the sword tonight.

His gaze fell on the two fragments in Fang Yuan's palm. He paused for a moment. He didn't ask.

At the entrance to the passageway, Fang Teng and Fang Ce arrived one after the other. Their gazes swept from the corpse in the courtyard to Fang Yuan, then to the shattered stone slabs, the dark red ice crystals, and the scattered bloodstains.

Fang Ce's mouth opened slightly.

It's closed.

Before tonight, he said, "It's against the rules for a junior under twenty to be directing a group of old men."

Now he saw the corpse of a malevolent cultivator at the Qi and Blood Realm lying at Fang Yuan's feet.

He chewed the word "rules" over and over again before swallowing it.

Fang Yuan's knees bent again.

The 8x power training, already at its weakest point, issued a silent warning—if it continued, the quadriceps would spasm.

Fang Yuan did not kneel.

He leaned against the doorframe, his back against the stone bricks. The doorframe, seventeen years old, bore his entire weight. The wood creaked.

Fang Yuan's right hand clutched two dark gold fragments. The constant warmth of his palm reflected his fingerprints.

The words on the panel were still stuck in my mind.

"Should we merge?"

Fang Yuan's gaze shifted from the panel to the fragment in his palm.

The dark gold patterns rippled slightly in the moonlight. The jagged edges of the two fragments touched gently in Fang Yuan's palm, and a faint, almost invisible, dark gold glow appeared at the point of contact.

The fluorescence spread along the gaps in the texture, diffusing from the point of contact towards the center of the two fragments.

Fang Yuanshan's gaze lingered on that glimmer of light.

His fingers clenched the hilt of the knife.

Fang Yuan pressed his thumb against the seam between the two fragments. Fluorescent light seeped through his fingers, illuminating his gray-blue, short-haired, blood-stained chest.

Fang Ying rolled over again behind the door. The last half of her little bun came undone, and her hair spread out on the pillow.

He muttered something under his breath.

"...Brother...Bingbing..."

Fang Yuan's finger stopped on the shards.

The fluorescence was spreading at an accelerated rate. The seam between the two fragments was beginning to heat up—it was no longer at a constant temperature.

It's hot.