Martial Arts: My talent multiplier increased

The fourth night.

Just after 7 PM, the curfew bell of Liangshui City rang out from the direction of the city lord's mansion, its deep bronze sound echoing three times in the night sky.

Fang Yuan stood at the back wall of the Class A courtyard.

Tie Meng leaned against the trunk of the locust tree opposite him, the dents in his iron arm guards appearing dark in the moonlight.

"Are you really going alone?"

Fang Yuan took the patrol captain's iron badge from his waist and handed it to Tie Meng.

Tie Meng didn't answer.

"Take this." Fang Yuan's voice was calm. "In case anyone comes to check where I've been, show this sign. Say I went on patrol in the east of the city."

Tie Meng pursed his lips. His rough fingers took the iron plaque. The plaque looked particularly small in his palm.

"Fang Ying and Fang Lin are in the main house." Fang Yuan took out the token from his pocket and held it in his palm. "You stay in the courtyard. No matter what noise you hear, don't leave the courtyard."

Tie Meng's Adam's apple bobbed.

"If you die out there—"

"Please take Fang Ying back to my old house in Qingzhou."

Fang Yuan didn't give Tie Meng a chance to reply. He flipped over onto the back wall. The jump, controlled by his eight-times-powered stance training, was silent. His shoes grazed the top of the wall before disappearing into the night outside.

Tie Meng stood under the locust tree, clutching the iron plaque of the patrol captain in his hand.

The metal plate still carried Fang Yuan's body heat.

Tie Meng stuffed the plaque into his pocket. He turned and walked towards the main house. As he passed under the corridor, his gaze swept towards Fang Yuan's room.

black.

Tie Meng paused for a moment. His lips moved, but he ultimately said nothing.

During his twenty years as a mercenary, Tie Meng had seen many people go out at night.

Less than half returned.

-

West of the city.

The moon was shrouded in a thin layer of clouds, and the light that fell down was like ink diluted with water, uneven in intensity.

Fang Yuan moved close to the alley wall. His gray-blue short-haired khaki suit blended almost seamlessly with the wall's color in the shadows. His eight-fold stance training allowed him to control his gait to its fullest extent at night—the outer edge of his foot landed first, his weight shifted inward along the arch of his foot, and finally, his toes provided the final cushioning. The entire movement was silent.

The blood-red token was affixed to his forehead.

A pulse beats once per breath.

Fang Yuan moved towards the northwest corner of the city, following the route he had taken the previous two nights. He didn't take the main street. There were city guards patrolling the main street, their torches covering an area of ​​about thirty feet. Avoiding them wasn't difficult—the city guards' patrol routes were fixed, and Fang Yuan had already recorded the intervals between each main street the previous two nights.

The narrow alley between the third and fourth main streets.

The second alleyway north of the fourth main street.

Turn left at the end of the alley.

Fang Yuan's twice-sized divine soul perception network continued to scan within a range of twenty-five zhang.

Quiet.

The night in the northwest corner of the city was unnaturally quiet. Not the kind of silence where nothing is heard—it was a quiet where all living things seemed to have huddled up. Fang Yuan passed a row of low houses, his spiritual senses scanning the inside of the walls. The vital energy signals of several households were huddled in the corners of their rooms. Two households had propped tables and chairs against their doors.

The low-level martial artists living in this area have learned to fear.

Fang Yuan did not linger in front of these doors. He kept his breathing rate at its lowest—eight breaths per minute. His cardiopulmonary system, enhanced by four times the strength of his root bone, allowed this breathing rate to be sufficient to maintain oxygen supply to his entire body, while minimizing the noise and airflow disturbances produced by his breathing.

Fang Yuan stopped when he reached the outskirts of the abandoned mill in the northwest corner of the city.

It didn't stop in front of the mill. It stopped in a dead-end alley, 120 paces southeast of the mill.

The token's pulse changed from one beat per breath to two beats per breath.

Fang Yuan took the token off his forehead and clutched it in his right hand.

The pulse isn't pointing towards the mill. It's off-target. Off-target by about fifteen degrees.

It wasn't directly below the abandoned mill—that was the direction of the underground stronghold we'd tracked down the previous two nights.

Tonight's pulse is biased towards the northeast of the mill.

Fang Yuan's doubled comprehension allowed him to complete a deduction within three breaths. The underground stronghold was fixed. The token's pulse was off tonight, indicating that a "homogeneous signal" had appeared outside the stronghold.

The Blood Demon Cult. Someone's started making moves.

Fang Yuan put the token into his pocket. He no longer needed the token to guide him—the direction was already clear.

His footsteps emerged from the dead-end alley. He moved northeast along the outer wall of the mill, around a section of a half-collapsed adobe wall, and across a stinking ditch.

Eighty steps ahead.

An abandoned house.

The door of the abandoned house was askew, with only one panel remaining. A third of the roof had collapsed. Moonlight streamed in through the collapsed section, dividing the interior floor of the abandoned house into light and shadow.

Fang Yuan's twice-strong spiritual perception penetrated the crumbling walls of the abandoned house.

There is one person inside.

Sitting cross-legged in a dark corner of the abandoned house.

Qi and blood fluctuations - early stage of Bone Refining Realm.

When Fang Yuan's senses touched the edge of that blood and qi signal, a chill spread back from the touchpoint of his sensory network. Cold. It was of the same nature and origin as the cold signal he had tracked the previous two nights.

It's not the warmth a living person should have.

Fang Yuan's perception network continued to extend into the abandoned house.

Around the seated man were three corpses.

Lying on the ground, the body was scattered irregularly in front of the seated man. When Fang Yuan's spiritual sense swept across the surface of the corpse, he did not detect any signs of vital energy.

zero.

Not faint. It's zero.

The vital energy signals of a living person will slowly dissipate after death, but at least for two to three days after death, a very faint residual warmth will remain on the body surface. The body surface temperature of these three corpses was the same as that of the stone slabs on the ground.

His essence and blood were completely drained. Not even a trace remained.

Fang Yuan shifted his gaze from the crumbling walls of the abandoned house. His eyes swept over the structure of the ruins.

Front: A crooked door panel. Entering through the main entrance, footsteps will make a sound as you walk on the broken tiles. Eliminated.

Left side: Solid wall. No windows. No cracks. Excluded.

On the right: a window. The window frame is still there. The window paper has long since rotted away. The window faces east, so the moonlight doesn't reach it. It's dark.

Behind: Fang Yuan's spiritual perception swept across the back wall—there was a crack at the base of the wall. It wasn't big enough. No one could pass through.

The window on the right.

Fang Yuan moved. He followed the outer wall on the right side of the abandoned house. The ground beneath his feet was soft mud. The eight-fold stance training distributed his weight across the soles of his feet, so the pressure on the mud was less than that of a cat.

There were no footprints.

He walked to the outside of the window. Fang Yuan pressed his body against the wall. The five fingers of his right hand slowly closed.

The gap in the window frame.

Fang Yuan turned his head to the side. His right eye cut through the crack in the window frame.

I saw it.

A shadowy figure in a dark corner of an abandoned house.

He was wearing a dark red short brown shirt. The material was very rough. The collar and cuffs were frayed.

Thin. Not normally thin. It's the kind of thin where the skin is tightly pressed against the bones and there's almost no muscle in between.

His face was gaunt and emaciated. His cheekbones were high and prominent. His eyes were sunken into two dark holes. In the faint moonlight filtering through the cracks in the roof, a faint, dark red glow flickered deep within those eye sockets.

nail.

Fang Yuan's eight-fold stance training pushed his visual precision to the limit—all ten of the man's fingernails were more than twice their normal length. The color wasn't normal transparency or pinkish-white; it was a dark red. A thick, dark red. As if it had been soaked in blood for a long time, seeping deep into the nail bed.