This martial saint is too cautious.

It was still the same dilapidated courtyard where Lin Yan had transmigrated.

The martial arts master who appeared in the teahouse was dressed in fine clothes and sat in the seat of honor.

If someone were still rational at this moment, they would notice that something was wrong.

How could a dignified martial artist appear in this dilapidated courtyard?

However, at this moment, Lin Yan is playing the role of a young man who has been overjoyed by the news of martial arts training, so naturally he will not point out these things.

"My lord, these are pastries I specially bought from Lan Kwai Fong. Please accept them."

Seeing Lin Yan open the paper package, Zhao Chuan and Zhang Dahai exchanged a glance, their eyes revealing a hint of disdain.

How incredibly naive! They have the nerve to call a few packets of pastries "acceptable"?

But it's precisely because they're so stupid that they're easy to fool.

"That's very thoughtful."

Zhao Chuan picked up a piece of pastry and took a bite.

"Sir, how does it taste?"

Zhao Chuan was stunned. What a fool! Only superiors or elders would ask juniors if the pastries were delicious. How dare you, a junior, ask such a question?

However, Zhao Chuan still subconsciously took another bite and said lightly, "Not bad."

"My lord, Lin Yan is eager to learn martial arts. Last time, you examined his bones and he has been using medicinal soup to nourish his body and blood. This time, he wants to become your disciple."

Zhang Dahai, who was standing to the side, couldn't hold back any longer. He didn't want to watch Lin Yan act silly anymore and wanted to get down to business.

"Is that so? I vaguely recall this matter. Come forward and let me examine your physical attributes."

Upon hearing this, Lin Yan stepped forward. Zhao Chuan touched Lin Yan's body for a while, and when he finally spoke, he sighed, "Your qi and blood are much more abundant than last time, but you are still some distance from practicing martial arts. It will be difficult."

"Oh no, how could this happen?"

Lin Yan's expression turned anxious, and Zhang Dahai, seeing this, quickly said, "Sir, Lin Yan is completely devoted to his country. Is there any way to help him?"

"There is a method, though. There is a kind of pill called Blood Refining Pill. Once taken, it can make up for the deficiency of qi and blood. However, this pill is not cheap. One pill costs thirty taels."

Good heavens, they want not only their old family house, but also the house where they and their aunt currently live.

The pills cost thirty taels each, plus the money he owed for the medicine, totaled more than fifty taels.

Lin Yan looked flustered, while Zhang Dahai gritted his teeth and said, "Brother Lin has the potential to practice martial arts, so I'm willing to pay for it for him. May I ask, sir... where can I buy this Blood Refining Pill?"

"They can be found in the pharmacies in the city."

Listening to the two of them putting on this act, Lin Yan felt a little suspicious. He thought that if he went to a pharmacy, the pharmacies in the city wouldn't cooperate with these two in their charade.

"Brother Lin, please wait here for a moment while I go to the pharmacy."

"Brother Zhang."

Lin Yan was touched, but he understood that Zhang Dahai would probably just bring back a random pill to fool him.

Zhang Dahai left, and thoughtfully closed the courtyard gate behind him.

"Sir, are you sure you didn't touch the wrong person? Would you like to touch me again?"

Lin Yan looked unwilling, and Zhao Chuan snorted: "How could I have touched the wrong person? But since you are not willing to give up, then come forward and touch it again."

Zhao Chuan placed his hand on Lin Yan's body, but this time Lin Yan immediately sensed the Martial Dao Tree in his mind.

In his mind, the gray branch of the martial arts tree separated from the green branch and fell to one side of the green tree, becoming an independent gray tree, but it was shorter than the green tree.

At the same time, a leaf also grew on the gray tree trunk, and words were revealed in the leaf: Wild Ox Stake.

Just now, this scene had already appeared in his mind, along with a piece of information about Martial Dao Mountain.

As long as someone makes physical contact with it without warning, the gray martial arts tree can sense the other person's martial arts level and reveal their strongest technique.

The height of the gray tree represents one's realm, and the leaves represent one's martial arts techniques.

He had already noticed that this person's martial arts tree was not as tall as his own, but he was afraid that he had misjudged it, so he asked the other person to touch it again.

Now that it's clear the other side is weaker than me, there's no point in being hypocritical.

"I told you there wouldn't be any mistake, you..."

When Zhao Chuan's hand touched Lin Yan's waist, Lin Yan's waist bones trembled, and he swung his arm, instantly throwing a punch that smashed directly at Zhao Chuan's face.

At such close range, Shiyao Manji unleashed its full power.

The punch landed so hard that Zhao Chuan didn't even utter a groan before his forehead caved in and he collapsed to the ground.

It was unclear whether Lin Yan knocked Zhao Chuan unconscious or killed him with that punch, but he didn't stop. Instead, he pulled out a dagger from his pocket, swiftly plunged it into Zhao Chuan's chest, and twisted it forcefully until he was certain that Zhao Chuan was dead beyond any doubt before pulling the dagger out.

"If I had known that even the cultivation of the foundation wouldn't have succeeded, I wouldn't have wasted the pastries."

Looking at the pastries on the table, Lin Yan's eyes flashed with heartache. These pastries cost him thirty coins, and he had drugged them with sleeping pills, so they were no longer edible.

For the past two months, besides practicing martial arts, he has also been thinking about how to deal with Zhang Dahai's gang.

Report to the authorities. The patrol and inspection department doesn't even handle gang fights, so why would they bother with such trivial matters?

The bodyguards of Weiyuan Escort Agency travel all over the country and have various self-defense methods. They are especially familiar with sleeping potions. He found Zhang Wei and asked Zhang Wei to ask the master of the escort agency to prepare a sleeping potion.

At the same time, he combined the wisdom of his predecessors and sewed two inner pockets on the cuffs of the loose clothes he was wearing. The left pocket was for lime and the right pocket was for pepper. He had his aunt sew the pockets with slipknots, just like the sealing rope of a burlap sack. They could be opened by pulling the thread.

Unfortunately, none of these were used.

Lin Yan didn't rush to touch the corpse. Instead, he walked to the side of the courtyard gate, holding pepper powder in his left hand, and waited attentively.

Zhang Dahai had never practiced martial arts; otherwise, the strange tree would not have remained unmoved after several physical contacts with him.

Even so, he dared not let his guard down.

Waiting is a long process, but Lin Yan has the patience.

As soon as footsteps approached, Lin Yan bent over, and the moment the courtyard gate opened, he threw out pepper powder with his left hand without hesitation, followed by a punch with his right hand.

"Damn, I..."

Bang bang bang!

A few soft sounds were heard, and then the courtyard returned to silence.

When I killed Zhao Chuan, my heart was still racing, but when I killed Zhang Dahai, I calmed down.

After locking the courtyard gate, Lin Yan began to examine the corpse.

Zhang Dahai was very poor, with only a few dozen copper coins on him. However, he also had a lot of paper. Lin Yan glanced at it and saw that there were IOUs for his own debts, but there were also IOUs for someone else. All of them together amounted to fifty taels.

"Goodness, this guy is even more daring with his loans than I am. So Zhang Dahai was impoverished because of this guy's borrowing?"

Lin Yan took out a tinderbox from his pocket, burned all the IOUs, turned around and walked to Zhao Chuan's body, and searched around again.

Withdrawal!

Looking at the silver notes in his hand, Lin Yan was overjoyed.

Fifty taels!

With so much money, this person should be a monk by now, even if he drinks Qi-nourishing soup like water. Is he some kind of miser?

Lin Yan naturally had no idea that the money was the apprenticeship fee Zhao Chuan had prepared for him to join the martial arts school, but now it had benefited him instead.

Besides the silver notes, there were also some loose silver and copper coins, totaling seven or eight taels, which Lin Yan put away.

Looking at the two corpses on the ground, he felt no fear whatsoever.

The title "Martial Arts Champion's Courage" is indeed not just a saying.

Now he's thinking about how to destroy the evidence.

Zhang Dahai and his companion were doing something so shady that they certainly wouldn't reveal it to anyone. As long as they disposed of the two bodies, they wouldn't suspect them for a while.

A moment later, Lin Yan climbed over the wall and went out. Half an hour later, he climbed back over the wall, opened the courtyard gate, pushed in a four-wheeled cart, threw Zhang Dahai and the other man's bodies onto the cart, covered them with a white linen cloth, and then casually pushed it out the door, heading towards the city gate.

Along the way, many pedestrians made way for him with disgusted expressions.

Even when they reached the city gate, the guards only glanced at them and did not stop them or ask any questions.

After Lin Yan had walked away, the soldiers began to talk.

"It's another gang fight in the city; people are already dead."

"These gangsters live a life of luxury, but when they die, they're just wrapped up in burial clothes and thrown into a mass grave; they don't even have a grave."

"The gangs in the city have been fighting fiercely lately. I heard that a new gang is vying for territory."

……

Lin Yan was betting on the darkness right under his nose!

After all, no one would believe that a murderer would dare to push a corpse out of the west gate of the city so brazenly.

Upon reaching the mass grave outside the city, Lin Yan discarded Zhao Chuan's body but kept Zhang Dahai's. He found another place, dug a grave, threw Zhang Dahai's body in, placed a wooden plaque on it, and carved the words with a dagger: "Tomb of Second Uncle Zhuang Hai, left by nephew Zhuang Zheng!"

After doing all this, Lin Yan changed the direction of the city gate and entered the city to go home.

Take a bath, burn your clothes, and hide your money.

After finishing all this, Lin Yan returned to his room, took out a notebook, and began to recall everything that had happened that day.

"That was still a bit too hasty."

After a while, Lin Yan wrote the words "reckless" heavily on the paper.

Although he had planned it for a long time, looking back now he still felt he had acted impulsively.

Zhang Dahai is taking me there today to trick me into writing down a large debt, but I don't have to rush to do it.

It will definitely take a month or two for the other party to come and collect the debt.

They could continue practicing the Rock Stake technique to increase their strength, and then investigate Zhang Dahai and his companion's backgrounds more thoroughly before making a move.

"What you learn from books is never enough; you must put it into practice."

Lin Yan murmured, "I've read so many novels in my past life, but when it comes to my own situation, I'm inevitably a bit blinded by my own experience and don't think things through very thoroughly."

Next time, we must avoid this situation.

After reflecting on his actions, Lin Yan began to look inward into his mind, but what he saw left him completely stunned.

The gray tree returned to its original form and intertwined with the green tree once again, except that the original gray leaf had somehow transformed into a gray fruit.

The next moment, a piece of information appeared in Lin Yan's mind.

[Martial Arts Fruit: Formed from the life of a martial artist, it contains the martial artist's cultivation time and can increase the proficiency of martial arts techniques.]

"Martial Arts Fruit, obtained by killing someone, a good thing."

Lin Yan's eyes gleamed. With this Martial Dao Fruit, all martial artists in the world are like medicinal herbs to me.

Kill someone, plunder their martial arts training time, and then infuse it into your own body.

This isn't just a cheat code anymore, this is an open-world cheat.

[Zhao Chuanwu's Dao Fruit: 5 months and 4 days]

Lin Yan stared at the gray fruit, and with a thought, he was about to swallow it to use for cultivating the Rock Stake.

However, the fruit remained motionless.

The next moment, another message appeared in my mind.

Lin Yan: ? ? ?

Upon reviewing the message again, Lin Yan suddenly realized.

The time allotted for Martial Arts Fruits can only be used to improve the proficiency of martial arts techniques.

The rock-hardened pillar is only used to increase qi and blood, and it has already reached its limit and cannot be improved further.

Thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense. If it could be used to cultivate the Boulder Pillar, wouldn't it be like drawing blood and energy from the void?

This means that if I want to make further progress, I must learn the art of skin smoothing.