Martial Arts: My talent multiplier increased

In a dead corner of the backstreet of the mercenary guild, Fang Ping untied the knotted cloth bag, and with a clatter, scattered pieces of silver fell onto the stone slab.

"Five taels for one pill, Qi and Blood Pill. Sold out in three days." Fang Ping took a sip of cold tea, his voice barely concealing his excitement.

Fang Yuan looked at the silver on the ground. One hundred and fifty taels.

The numbers on the panel changed silently: [Current Savings: Two Hundred and Ten Taels]

The logic of the market has always been simple: cheap and easy to use.

The Li family sells mid-range pills for thirty taels, but their efficacy is only 70% of the baseline. Fang Yuan sells them for five taels, with efficacy up to 30%.

A poor person can buy two pills of Fang Yuan's medicine for ten taels of silver, directly achieving a 60% improvement. This saves a full twenty taels of silver.

Twenty taels of silver is enough for a low-level martial artist to eat cooked meat for more than half a month. Anyone can do the math.

This was an utterly unreasonable attack from below. From the bottom to the middle, Fang Yuan forcefully reached into the Li family's most lucrative profit pool and ruthlessly scooped out a huge chunk of meat.

The main study of the Li family mansion.

Li Jue looked at the monthly report in his hand. The sales trend of mid-range pills showed a glaring, precipitous drop.

"Young Master, the ones currently buying up the goods aren't those low-level rogue cultivators," the gray-robed advisor said, bowing his head and speaking rapidly. "They're the outer guards of the major clans and the vice-leaders of small mercenary groups. They can afford mid-range medicine, but they care more about money."

Li Jue tossed the report onto the table. The thin paper slid across the rosewood surface and fluttered to the floor. No one dared to pick it up.

A kid who started out selling scrap metal actually managed to corner the Li family's mid-range product line with mud balls.

This is a disgrace.

"Three things." Li Jue took out a white handkerchief and slowly wiped between his fingers.

"First, spread out all the secret agents in the East Market and the Outer Quarters. Tell them that the Qi and Blood Pill is made with poisonous residue, and that consuming it for a long time will cause internal organ rot and sudden death."

"Second, take my calling card and invite Captain Wang of the Third Battalion of the City Guard for a cup of tea." Li Jue glanced at the shadows outside the door. "Prepare five hundred taels of silver. Tell him that someone in the city is illegally manufacturing poison, which seriously threatens the safety of the business community."

Finally, Li Jue stopped moving, and the veins on the back of his hand, which he had just wiped clean, were faintly visible.

"Have Li Qi of the Black Wind Guard make some moves tonight. Prepare a story. Once the city guards have finished checking the water meters, if anyone is alone, make it look like an accidental fall during a fight at the martial arts hall."

Spreading rumors and intimidation, legal suppression, and violent strangulation.

Advancing from three directions simultaneously—this is the standard opening move of a powerful clan when using systemic power to crush a single insect. There's no need to verify its authenticity; just see who stands at the end.

Half a day later, Liangshui City was in an uproar.

Deliberately incited rumors swarmed through markets and martial arts schools like locusts.

"Fang Yuan added bone-rotting grass to Fang Yuan's Qi and Blood Pills to mask the taste! Zhang San has already started passing black blood after taking them!"

The rumors from all sides intensified.

Inside the Baicaotang pharmacy, Manager Qian listened to his clerk's report and silently swept the few Qi and Blood Pills he had just received from the counter into the locked drawer at the bottom.

No matter how lucrative the profits, he still had to see if the Fang family's only son could withstand the Li family's combined attack. He was a fence-sitter and would never take the fall for someone who had already died.

A first-class courtyard.

Fang Ping, covered in sweat, burst open the courtyard gate.

"Brother, all the orders have been cancelled! A few of my regular customers from the Mercenary Guild wouldn't even let me in the door today!"

Fang Yuan stood under the old locust tree, holding a freshly made Qi and Blood Pill in his hand. The pill was warm.

He had anticipated the Li family's counterattack in his simulation, but the sheer speed of this pressure truly showcased the strength of a century-old family. This was a cunning move within an overt strategy, using panic to buy out rationality. Explaining this to the lower-level buyers at this point would be a complete waste of breath.

Fang Yuan put the medicine back on the tray beside him.

"No need to look for individual customers." He pulled four specially made small tin tubes from his pocket. "Give these away."

Fang Ping was stunned.

"The first one is for Zhao, the head of the mercenary guild in charge of mission rating. The second and third are for Xu Mang, the lone swordsman in the south of the city, and Hu San, the iron-spearman. The last one is for throwing onto the counter of Old Man Chen's Huichuntang in the east of the city."

Four names, four characters.

Chief Zhao is the throat of the mercenary high command. Xu and Mang are the bellwethers in the independent martial arts circle. Old Man Chen is the most reputable old doctor in Liangshui City.

"Why should they help us test the drugs? The Li family is trying to kill us now." Fang Ping's throat was dry.

"They don't need to talk about morality." Fang Yuan closed the medicine box. "This medicine costs five taels of silver per pill, and it's packed with potent medicinal power. When martial artists are stuck at a bottleneck, their bodies can't suppress their instinctive craving for abundant qi and blood. If you give it to them, they'll take this opportunity as long as they're not blind. Once they've taken it, the fact is set in stone."

As evening approached, the wind direction in the city shifted in an extremely strange manner.

At the task posting area, Chief Zhao slapped a mercenary who was spreading poison theories away.

"Toxins and ulceration my ass! I just swallowed one, and my blood circulation is smoother than if I'd drunk a century-old ginseng! If you dare spread rumors and ruin the guild's supply again, I'll chop off your token!"

A piece of white paper was pasted on the door panel of Huichuntang.

A line of wild cursive script:

"This elixir is potent yet non-toxic, making it an excellent tool for breaking through cultivation levels. I have personally tested it."

Two tough challenges directly shattered the foundation of the rumors. Although the negative impact remains, the abyss of collapse has been forcefully blocked.

At the same time, at the city guard's garrison.

Captain Wang weighed the five-hundred-tael silver note in the lining of his breastplate and glanced at the Li family's steward.

"The Fang family has been placing great importance on this Fang Yuan lately."

"You don't need to overstep your bounds and arrest him," the manager said with a fawning smile, his voice low. "Just take your men and seal off his workshop, then interrogate him for two days under the guise of an investigation order. Once business stops and supplies are cut off, why would the Fang family bother protecting an empty shell that can't supply goods?"

Captain Wang fastened the buckle on his helmet.

"I'll go to the Fang family's gate first thing tomorrow morning to demand their return."

The night was as deep and dark as iron.

In the small training ground of the Grade A courtyard, Fang Yuan was shirtless.

With double the comprehension and at full power, the air before me seemed to have turned into a viscous fluid, and the trajectory of every wisp of wind was crystal clear.

The key to getting stuck in "Layered Wave Fist" is not the brute force of stacking power, but the resonance in the high-frequency resonance of muscle groups.

Fang Yuan stared at the ten-foot-tall bluestone training target in front of him. Such an extremely hard target, if thrown by someone at the Body Refinement Realm without any internal energy to protect themselves, would inevitably break their finger bones.

He merely assumed an extremely ordinary starting stance. He did not unleash his peak internal energy.

Relax your shoulders. Straighten your back.

In a fraction of a second, the muscle groups beneath the skin completed an extremely tiny, rapid tremor.

A punch is thrown.

"Pop".

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a muffled sound similar to a bubble bursting at the bottom of a body of water.

Fang Yuan's fist imprinted itself in the center of the bluestone target. The stone surface remained intact.

But he could clearly feel that the force did not stay on the surface at all, but penetrated the stone skin and pierced into the depths of the stone core without any obstruction, like a sharp steel needle, before exploding completely.

He withdrew his fist and took two steps back. A sharp pain shot through his brain—the price of overloading his comprehension with twice the processing power.

On the ridge tiles of the corner tower, separated by a wall.

Fang Teng stood in the shadows. His dark gray cloak fluttered slightly in the wind.

His pupils contracted sharply as he stared intently at the bare-chested figure in the center of the training ground and the pristine bluestone target.

Fang Teng was at the Bone Refining Realm. He knew all too well what that punch meant. The force didn't cause damage or deformation at the point of impact; instead, it achieved complete internal penetration.

That's the essence of boxing.

This is a realm that only a great martial artist whose bones have been tempered to the extreme and who is about to step into the True Essence Realm can barely touch.

Fang Yuan, a cultivator at the Body Refinement Realm, has developed the rudiments of fist intent.

Fang Teng's mental framework regarding the "controllable strength of Fang Yuan" crumbled instantly. He recalled the scene of him contemptuously defeating Fang Yuan in five moves on the martial arts stage, and a layer of white sweat instantly soaked his back. This young man from a collateral branch was hiding something. And hiding it so deeply that it was unfathomable.

In the training ground.

Fang Yuan did not turn around. The enhanced senses brought by his doubled bone structure allowed him to keenly detect the breathing sound above the corner tower that was momentarily disordered and then forcibly suppressed.

Fang Teng is still watching.

Fang Yuan didn't intend to pay any attention to it.

Following his muscle memory from before, he threw three more punches at the bluestone target.

The first punch cracked a piece of stone from the surface. A typical example of brute force.

The second punch went astray.

The third punch, though the knuckles turned red, did not penetrate.

An extremely unstable probability. Fang Yuan collected the data from the three failed attempts at exerting force in his mind, comparing them with the first successful one. Since Fang Teng had seen that first punch, his guard should already be at its highest. That was enough; any further concealment was pointless.

Fang Yuan grabbed the coarse cloth shirt hanging on the wooden frame and wiped the sweat from his forearm. He turned and walked into the house.

The door was pushed open and then closed.

The training ground fell silent again, the moonlight coldly piercing the bluestone target.

At the bullseye, the stone surface remains flat.

But deep within that extremely smooth stone surface, a series of almost inaudible crisp sounds suddenly rang out.

"Karara".

A crack, thinner than a hair, seeped out from beneath the stone like a living thing. Then came a second, and a third. Spiderweb-like radial fissures spread wildly along the stress points inside, completely destroying the inner structure of the target stone.

Inside the room, Fang Yuan's breathing was steady and even, continuing throughout the entire night.