Chapter 210

Wang Hongshi's expression twisted violently as his frame rapidly expanded. His robes tore apart, revealing skin gone livid—a deep, bruised cyan. Muscles swelled like bundled steel cables, coiling around his body in thick, corded ridges. In less than two seconds, his modest stature had ballooned into a hulking giant well over two meters tall.

"Power... so much power... it's endless!" Wang Hongshi spread his hands, staring at them in shock, feeling as though a single swipe could shatter anything in his path.

"The Righteous Body Law Seal is a power awakened only by those who acknowledge the Clear Wind Temple from the bottom of their hearts. It will boost your physical attributes by at least fifty percent. How much it amplifies your actual combat strength—you'll need to discover that yourself," Lin Hui said.

"Fifty percent?! And just like that? Doesn't a secret art like this have side effects?" Wang Hongshi was astounded.

"None," Lin Hui replied with a nod.

Standing to the side, Mingxia's jaw dropped. She wondered if she had misheard.

"A secret art that is powerful with no side effects? Who do you think you're fooling?" she couldn't help but retort.

"Time will make it plain enough. Next." Lin Hui lowered his hand, his tone unhurried.

The remaining disciples exchanged uncertain looks until Qiu Yiren stepped forward.

"I'll go!" She had no fear that the Temple Master would harm her. If anything, she was arguably the person in this world who understood Lin Hui best—no one else, after all, crept over to observe him in secret every single day. His preferences, his daily routine, his character: she knew them all by heart. Among everyone present, she was the least worried.

"My injuries haven't fully healed yet. Will that be an issue?" She stood before Lin Hui without self-consciousness, her slender, shapely figure entirely at ease.

"It doesn't matter." Lin Hui smiled faintly, raising a hand and extending his index finger.

Sizzle. Hiss...

…

Huangjia Town

Xia Si fixed her eyes on the figures ahead, drawing her sword and casting the scabbard aside.

"Who are you?" She studied the trio with narrowed eyes. "This is a hunting formation. Are you here for me?"

"You may stand down. Our target is the one behind you." The armored leader pointed at Liu Xiao.

"Me?" Liu Xiao's expression darkened. She stepped forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Xia Si.

"Who are you? I am Liu Xiao, Presiding Divine Officer of the Rain Palace's Yuanming Hall! You dare to attack a Divine Officer of the Rain Palace?" Her sharp gaze locked onto the armored leader.

She could faintly sense an oppressive aura emanating from the man—a pressure she had only ever felt from High Divine Officers like her eldest brother. These three had clearly come prepared. Their concealed attire told her something else: they were people of standing who could not afford to be recognized.

"Of course, we know who you are. It doesn't matter. As long as everyone here dies, no one will be left to report back to the Rain Palace," the armored figure said, unmoved.

"Everyone dies? Who do you think you are?" Liu Xiao immediately crushed the warning jade tablet at her waist, firing a distress signal to the Rain Palace. Given her status, a High Divine Officer would certainly be dispatched. The Tuyue Rain Palace kept at least four High Divine Officers stationed permanently. All she needed was for one to receive the signal and reach her in time, and—

Her eyes narrowed. The armored figure had drawn his saber, holding it horizontally with one hand.

"Overlapping Peak Divine Method." He flicked the blade with a finger, drawing a crisp, clear ring from the steel. "Mountains Roar!"

Hum!

An invisible ring of sonic force erupted from the blade, expanding in all directions in an instant. Everyone in the vicinity—within a full kilometer—felt their mind-spirit rattle under the surging sonic assault.

The Fushan Sect?! Before the daze could fully set in, Liu Xiao had already placed the technique. It was the Fushan Sect's supreme art—one of the Inner City's Three Sects and Six Associations—the Overlapping Peak Divine Method.

An instant later, everyone present, Clear Wind Temple disciples included, felt the breath seize in their lungs. They looked up in horror to find a massive, semi-transparent black mountain of jagged rock hanging above them, bearing down with crushing weight.

The wind pressure was suffocating. As the mountain filled their entire field of vision, it left no space for resistance, struggle, or even thought.

Some, clinging to the hope that the mountain was merely an illusion, failed to steel themselves against it. But Liu Xiao knew from experience that this was precisely the technique's most insidious quality: an opponent who dismissed the mountain as false and refused to mount a full defense would have their mind-spirit shattered, plunging them into deep unconsciousness.

She screamed a warning—but the howling winds swallowed her voice whole. No one heard her.

Save for one person.

Xia Si stood at the vanguard, sword raised. Facing the mountain's descent, she showed no fear. Instead, a strange, ferocious smile crept across her face.

Through the chaotic blur, Liu Xiao thought she saw Xia Si's lips moving—whispering something she couldn't catch.

The next moment, Liu Xiao's eyes flew wide open. The corners split and bled from the strain, though she didn't feel it.

Right beside her, Xia Si—the beautiful girl she had assumed was merely a gifted Clear Wind Temple disciple—was transforming.

The skin on Xia Si's face split open before Liu Xiao's eyes, peeling back to expose the raw flesh beneath. The facial skin ruptured entirely as great quantities of grayish-white, bone-like mucus erupted from under the surface, churning outward in viscous streams that enveloped her body from the inside, mutating and hardening as they spread.

In the space of a blink, she had grown into a towering, three-meter-tall skeletal swordsman forged of grayish-white bone. Pale flames ignited in the hollow eye sockets. Her right arm had fused with her weapon, transforming into a massive bone blade nearly five meters long and as wide as a door.

Swish! The skeletal swordsman leveled the greatsword. Fierce winds coiled and howled around her frame, roaring back at the descending mountain.

Gripping the hilt with both hands, she swung upward. The blade dragged countless screaming air currents in its wake, cutting straight toward the sky.

"Kill! Hahahaha!"

In that moment, Xia Si drove Lin Hui's Wild Wind Sword Technique to heights it had never reached. Countless semi-transparent air currents condensed into a colossal blade dozens of meters long, cleaving straight up into the heavens.

The phantom blade collided head-on with the descending mountain.

With a thunderous detonation, blade and mountain shattered together, dissolving into countless transparent motes of light that rained across the earth.

Liu Xiao's vision swam. When it cleared, Xia Si was already engaged in direct combat with the armored man in the open ground ahead, their blades meeting with every exchange in a terrifying, thunderous concussive burst.

Xia Si was back in her human form, as though the skeletal transformation had been nothing more than a hallucination. Yet Liu Xiao felt, with a certainty she couldn't name, that the monstrous shape she had witnessed was perhaps the truth.

Bang! Xia Si brought her blade down in a crushing overhead cleave, forcing the armored man into a desperate block. The impact blasted a crater over a dozen meters wide into the ground beneath his feet. The shockwave hurled rocks and clods of earth outward like shrapnel, leaving several bystanders badly injured.

Liu Xiao wanted to intervene but was horrified to find she could no longer track their movements.

Void Force! How is Xia Si standing against a High Divine Officer's Void Force? And the Time Sense Divine Method?! Just who is she?!

"Wild Wind! Crush him!" Xia Si's roar rang out again.

The winds spiraling around her intensified, the high-speed air currents shrieking without mercy. From a distance, she looked like a figure standing at the eye of a gray tornado, every strike piling immense, crushing force down upon the armored man.

Fueled by the gales, Xia Si's power and speed grew more ferocious with each exchange. This was the defining nature of the Wild Wind Sword Technique, and in her hands, it was being wrung to its absolute limit.

No one else in the area could intervene—they could only watch from a safe distance. The initial shockwaves had already flung back those who had tried to move closer.

Unafraid of Void Force, unafraid of Time Sense... Xia Si... Lin Hui... just who are you people?

In that moment, Liu Xiao's vague suspicion that something was deeply wrong with the Clear Wind Temple hardened into dread.

Back when she had been watching over Lin Xiaoliu, her little sister would sometimes cry that the Clear Wind Temple was full of monsters and that she was frightened. Liu Xiao had brushed it off at the time—she'd assumed the disciples were dressing up to scare the child.

Looking at it now...

…

Clear Wind Temple, Rear Courtyard

Lin Hui finished bestowing the Righteous Body Law Seal upon the last of the core disciples. Looking out at the crowd—stunned and overjoyed in equal measure—he simply smiled and told everyone to return to their quarters and grow accustomed to their new strength.

After the others had filed out, Mingxia remained exactly where she stood.

She narrowed her eyes, staring fixedly at Lin Hui. The two of them were alone now in the rear courtyard's drill ground.

She alone had observed the so-called secret art with full clarity, and understood precisely how extraordinary its underlying nature was. In the eyes of an ordinary martial artist, it might genuinely be nothing more than what Lin Hui had called it—a secret art, a cultivation method. Given that it was an Extreme Martial Art, unusual properties or strange mechanics would hardly be surprising.

But in the eyes of a Palace Master of her caliber...

That kind of mark... Mingxia kept her gaze locked on Lin Hui.

In the beginning, she had regarded him as simply an exceptionally talented prodigy—one capable of producing valuable martial arts. Such a genius possessed both backing and potential. She had even considered, at some point in the future, using him as a sire to produce a few descendants and sharpen her lineage's martial comprehension and aptitude.

That had been her plan. Until the seal bestowal, she had held to it without question.

But now...

Lin Hui's face seemed to blur before her eyes. The Clear Wind Temple, which had once struck her as a shallow pond, now felt as though it had transformed into a bottomless, freezing abyss—one she could not see to the bottom of, no matter how long she looked.

She had no idea what lurked in its depths.