The bone-chilling sounds of chewing and cracking finally died away in the hidden depths of the primeval forest.
The ground was littered with the mangled carcasses of beasts, the stench of blood so thick that even the venomous insects of the surrounding forest kept their distance.
At the center of the carnage, Lin Wuxie had stopped feeding.
The body that had been skeletal with starvation just moments ago was now swollen tight like an inflated bladder, slabs of hard muscle stacked across his frame like layered stone.
He had not merely recovered from the edge of death—the savage blood-feast had left him stronger than before.
But the Food Path's crude, plundering nature came with an unavoidable cost.
A torrent of raw, chaotic beast Dao Marks rampaged through his meridians, throwing his mind into brief chaos and frenzy.
Lin Wuxie slowly turned his head.
The whites of his eyes had vanished entirely, replaced by two pools of dim, crawling green—the eyes of a beast.
Those beast-eyes cut through the forest shadows and locked onto Lin Mu, standing atop the canopy dozens of zhang above.
"Hgghhh..."
A thread of reeking saliva dripped from the corner of Lin Wuxie's mouth. A sound of raw, animal hunger rose from his throat.
The muscles of his legs coiled tight, and under the overwhelming pressure of the beast nature surging through him, a single insane impulse took hold—to leap up, and swallow the temptingly-scented Senior Brother in the tree whole.
The mad dog was trying to bite its master.
From his perch high in the canopy, Lin Mu took in that greedy, murder-laden gaze below. He didn't so much as lift an eyebrow.
A cold snort—and the peak-stage dark-green Primeval Essence in his Aperture broke loose like a dam giving way.
"Hmmm——!"
In an instant, a ghost-pale Iron Leaf Gu floated above Lin Mu's left palm.
Around his right hand, a brilliant, razor-sharp pale-gold aura coiled and crackled—the Rank 1 offensive Metal Rend Gu, freshly acquired.
Two Gu worms, laced through with the killing intent Lin Mu had forged across countless mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, came crashing down on Lin Wuxie like a bucket of ice water filled with blades.
Under that lethal pressure—the kind that could reduce him to hundreds of pieces at any moment—Lin Wuxie's entire body seized in a violent shudder.
The wild green light in his eyes faded like snow under a scorching sun. Human reason clawed its way back under the weight of mortal terror.
Thud.
Without a moment's hesitation, Lin Wuxie dropped to both knees, drove his forehead deep into the blood-soaked earth, and trembled uncontrollably, his voice hoarse and drenched in desperate fear:
"Se— Senior Brother, spare me! Your disciple—your disciple's mind was overwhelmed by the beast blood just now. I deserve ten thousand deaths!"
Looking down at the now utterly submissive Lin Wuxie, the cold in Lin Mu's eyes did not soften in the slightest.
He had already been nursing a simmering frustration over the Pitch-Black Bone Plate's stubborn silence.
The insolence just now gave him a convenient outlet—and a chance to field-test his newly assembled combat system at the same time.
"Since you've eaten your fill, let's get some exercise."
Lin Mu looked down at him from above, his voice cold as a grave: "Let me see how much you've grown. Let me find out just how tough that body of yours really is."
He gave Lin Wuxie no opening to refuse or plead.
Before the words had even settled, Lin Mu's figure dropped from the sky.
"Boom!"
Mid-fall, the Dust Escape Gu in his Aperture detonated.
A massive cloud of grey-brown dust erupted like a smoke grenade, swallowing everything within a radius of several zhang in an instant. The already-dim forest floor became a pitch-black, howling sandstorm maze.
"Senior Brother! I wouldn't dare—AAAGH!"
Lin Wuxie's plea dissolved into a scream before it finished.
In this absolute blind zone, a completely one-sided beating began.
Lin Mu didn't even open his eyes. Inside his Aperture, the Blood Scent Gu had already locked hard onto Lin Wuxie's overwhelming stench of blood.
He drove Earth Ring Body.
The earth beneath his feet became an extension of his own body, carrying him through the sandstorm like a weightless ghost—fluid, unpredictable, impossibly fast. Speed and defense both pushed to their limit.
The grinder began to turn.
Shick. Shick. Shick.
Under the perfect cover of the swirling sand, the Iron Leaf Gu moved like a phantom weapon, slashing in from every direction at a ferocious rate, carving into Lin Wuxie's flesh from all sides.
Lin Wuxie was a blindfolded animal trapped in a slaughterhouse, flailing desperately on pure instinct.
But every time pain and panic cracked his guard open.
A brilliant slash of golden sword qi—the edge of the Metal Rend Gu—would drive through the dust at a sharp, merciless angle, cutting precisely into his joints, tendons, and the exposed edges of his weakest points.
A sandstorm packed with blades and sword qi from every direction.
Even Lin Wuxie's Food Path body, monstrous in its toughness and recovery, was carved open and left dripping blood under this combination—his skin splitting, flesh peeling back.
He was battered and kicked like a punching bag, never managing to graze so much as the hem of Lin Mu's robe, enduring a one-sided slaughter with nothing but pain and desperate cries to show for it.
Crack.
With a final heavy blow wrapped in the Metal Rend Gu's gold aura, Lin Wuxie's body slammed into the trunk of an ancient tree like a sack of broken pottery, sending a cascade of dead leaves raining down.
Only when Lin Wuxie had been beaten back to the edge of death—face-down, vomiting blood, without the strength to stand—did Lin Mu put his Gu worms away, unhurried and unsatisfied.
The dust settled.
Lin Mu stood where he was, breathing completely undisturbed.
He looked at his own hands, took stock of the fluid, unbroken rhythm of what had just unfolded, and quietly ran the numbers:
With the Metal Rend Gu as the primary striker, the combination finally has real finishing power. My current combat strength, between my reserves and my killer moves, can now decisively crush any peak Rank 1—and push close to an ordinary initial-stage Rank 2.
But... against the Rank 2 python king, with that thick hide and the Jade Tendon Gu's reflect damage—or Green Snake, a veteran Rank 2 with layers of trump cards—the odds still aren't enough. The pressure of a higher rank is still a wall I can't get past.
He didn't give the figure lying on the ground another look. He turned and walked away from the wrecked stretch of forest.
The frustration and the hunger for a fight were spent. Life returned to its normal track.
The uproar of the Grand Competition gradually died down within Black Blood Stockade, and the rewards for the victors were, at last, fully dispensed.
As Lin Feng's most indispensable contributor throughout the competition, Lin Mu's standing rose sharply.
A single document from the clan's Internal Affairs Hall stripped him of the lowly, functionless title of "Steward" in the External Affairs Hall and elevated him directly to one of the working "Deacons" with real authority.
His monthly stipend more than doubled. On top of that, the clan assigned him a private courtyard in the Silent Stone District—its own surrounding wall, and a spacious basement below.
A leap across a class boundary, accomplished overnight.
That afternoon, sunlight spread across the wide new courtyard.
Lin Mu sat at the stone table in the yard, unhurriedly drinking tea. He locked every door and window around him, activated a sound-dampening Gu, and began taking stock of his true assets.
His early accumulation from hunting and from conning; the substantial haul from the black-market dealings and selling off war trophies at Grey Street Market; the three hundred Primeval Stones Lin Feng had given him to buy loyalty after the competition; the five hundred Primeval Stones the clan distributed as a reward; the advance on his Deacon's stipend, along with various grey-area earnings on top...
When he added all the numbers together, even Lin Mu's finger, holding the brush, paused for a moment.
One thousand eight hundred Primeval Stones. An absolutely staggering figure.
On the Gu worm side, he had deliberately kept changes to a minimum to avoid drawing suspicion or investigation.
Beyond the batch of Rank 2 refinement materials and scouting Gu he had purchased from Old Ma earlier, the only addition to his visible lineup was the Metal Rend Gu.
But the expensive supplementary materials and ample feeding supplies had built his underlying foundation to a quietly monstrous level.
Resource freedom.
Lin Mu looked at the numbers in his ledger and exhaled slowly.
By any measure, he was now an outright wealthy man—by the standards of a Rank 1 Gu Master. Every conventional resource needed for the push to Rank 2, plus one to two years of Gu worm feed, was no longer a concern.
Whenever he chose, he could simply bury the gate to Rank 2 under an avalanche of Primeval Stones and force his way through.
And yet.
Faced with this leap in status and this sudden flood of wealth, the Lin Mu sitting in his new courtyard was conspicuously, abnormally indifferent.
"Deacon Lin, Senior Brother Li from the inner sect has sent a small gift, and would like to invite you to a banquet at the Spring Breeze House tonight..." Outside the door, Lin Ping—newly appointed as his attendant—relayed the message with careful deference.
"Not seeing him. Send the gift back."
Lin Mu frowned and waved a hand without hesitation.
Over the past few days, a steady stream of outer disciples and stewards had arrived at his door bearing gifts and flattery. He had sent every single one of them away with some excuse or another.
Even when Lin Feng sent someone to invite him to the victory banquet, he declined gracefully—citing days of hard fighting and a minor illness, not wanting to pass it on to Young Master Lin Feng.
Others took it as arrogance from someone newly favored, or simply an antisocial temperament.
But only Lin Mu knew the truth.
The wine, the wealth, the status—even the Rank 2 breakthrough that was now well within reach—none of it could fill the vast, gnawing restlessness hollowed out at his core.
He was sick.
Sick with something called obsession.
He had lost all appetite for food and drink. Nearly every hour of every day and night, his entire focus was consumed by the Pitch-Black Bone Plate he had pulled from the bottom of the Blood Jade Python's bog.
It was an unknown opportunity that exceeded his understanding and exceeded anything recorded in the original work—a peerless beauty standing before him, veiled, while he could find no hand to lift the veil.
The torment of sitting atop a treasure mountain with no way in was pulling his nerves to their breaking point.
Deep in the night.
The world was still. Moonlight fell like water.
Lin Mu lay on his wide wooden bed, turning from side to side, unable to sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, his mind filled entirely with those cryptic, twisting engravings on the bone plate—patterns that seemed to contain some fundamental truth of heaven and earth, yet yielded nothing.
What is it... what is the missing step...
He muttered in the darkness, his thoughts running in circles with no way out.
Then.
Snap.
Lin Mu's eyes flew open. In the pitch-black room, they lit up like two sudden searchlights—sharp and blazing.
He shot upright in bed and slapped his thigh with a loud crack.
"Damn it. I've been too close to see clearly. I've been too clever for my own good."
The corner of his mouth pulled into a wide, sudden grin—the look of a man who had just broken through a wall. His eyes burned with the fervor of someone who had finally seen the sky through the clouds.
Since I can't make sense of the bone plate's origin, its material, or the engravings on my own...
Why haven't I gone to someone who specializes in exactly this?!
In the area around Black Blood Stockade, who had broader experience, more varied intelligence, and greater exposure to rare and exotic treasures from every corner of the Southern Border's many walks of life than that one person?
"Old Ma."