Mo Fan had barely finished his last internal complaint when the bloodshot-eyed [ Iron-Arm Demon Ape ] launched itself at him...
A wall of fur and muscle and fetid wind crashing down like a collapsing mountain.
Faced with that crushing pounce, Mo Fan felt genuinely aggrieved.
He was LV. 15. His combat power was already comparable to Mid-Stage Foundation Establishment.
Against a half-dead ape that Lin Dong had already beaten to a pulp...
He could normally slap it down in a few moves with [ Bone Armament ] and his undead summons backing him up.
But not right now.
Because Lin Dong was standing outside the barrier with his hands behind his back, eyes wide open, watching his every single move!
Mo Fan had no choice but to tread carefully—deliberately holding back his strength, terrified of exposing his real combat capability.
THUD.
With his power consciously suppressed, Mo Fan tried to cross his arms in a conventional blocking stance.
The result was exactly as predictable as it sounds.
The ape—even at half its original strength—simply ignored his block through sheer, brute physical force.
With a dull, heavy impact, Mo Fan was launched like a baseball and slammed hard into the barrier wall behind him.
It didn't deal any serious damage, but Mo Fan still slid down to the ground with his chest heaving, struggling to breathe properly.
"Too rigid!"
Lin Dong's voice came from outside the barrier, his brow furrowed, his tone sharp.
"You're using a human body to brute-force a beast's instincts! What did I tell you yesterday?! The essence of the [ Form-Intention Fist ] is change from the bone up!"
Change the bones...
Mo Fan spat out a mouthful of saliva that tasted faintly of blood and pulled himself off the ground.
The Iron-Arm Demon Ape was beating its chest again, roaring, charging back toward him.
A flash of clarity sparked in Mo Fan's eyes.
He forced himself to recall—in precise detail—the exact posture the ape had used to generate that force just now.
Then, a thread of Necrotic Mana stirred inside him, silent and invisible, wrapping itself perfectly around his skeleton.
Crack... crackle...
A series of faint, almost imperceptible bone-shifting sounds.
Guided by the Necrotic Mana and driven by the intent of the fist technique, Mo Fan's spine curved subtly downward.
His shoulder blades spread outward and sank.
In the span of just a few breaths, Mo Fan had restructured his entire skeletal force-generation framework...
Reshaping it into something startlingly close to the ape's own!
"ROAR!"
The ape lunged again. Both fists—each the size of a millstone—came hammering down from above.
This time, Mo Fan didn't dodge. His bones had become something like the ape's own.
Both legs drove hard into the ground.
The force that erupted from that non-human structural alignment generated a terrifying reactive power...
That shattered the limits of what a human frame should be capable of!
BOOM!
One large, one small—two "apes"—collided inside the sealed Octagon Cage and broke into a savage, close-range brawl.
The dull thud of muscle against muscle rang out without pause.
Man and beast rolled through the dirt, grappling, clawing, trading blows at point-blank range.
The longer Mo Fan fought, the brighter his eyes became.
He was discovering something: once he mirrored the ape's skeletal structure, the attacks that had seemed unstoppable moments ago became riddled with openings.
The exact same force logic that powered the ape's offense also revealed exactly where its defense broke down!
After dozens of continuous exchanges—
The ape's old wounds flared. Its right hook came in with a barely perceptible hitch of delay.
Got you.
A cold light flashed in Mo Fan's eyes.
His right arm—which had been locked in a stalemate against the ape's—stretched forward by half a foot under the pull of the Form-Intention Fist's intent.
An impossible angle. A dead zone the ape had absolutely no way to cover!
BANG——!
A perfect heavy strike, accompanied by a sharp sonic crack, drove directly and precisely into the Iron-Arm Demon Ape's exposed throat!
CRACK.
The ape's massive body seized. The red drained from its eyes instantly. It toppled and hit the dirt like a falling tree.
The exact moment it stopped breathing—
[ Killed LV. 15 Iron-Arm Demon Ape. EXP Gained: +1,500 XP! ]
The system notification rang through Mo Fan's mind like a clear bell.
He looked at the experience bar on his retina...
It had surged upward by a massive chunk, leaving only a third of the gap remaining before LV. 16.
The wild joy that detonated behind Mo Fan's lowered eyes was impossible to contain.
It works! As long as I'm the one who lands the final killing blow, the system judges it as me making the kill—even fighting above my level!
He'd found a bug. An absolutely broken, heaven-defying exploit!
Outside the barrier.
Watching the ape fall, a rare, genuinely satisfied smile crossed Lin Dong's gaunt face.
For this boy to grasp the true intent of Form-Intention in live combat this quickly...
To even execute a skeletal extension that Lin Dong himself hadn't anticipated... that kind of comprehension was indeed something else.
"Well done."
Lin Dong dissolved the barrier with a casual gesture and asked mildly:
"How's your blood-qi consumption? Can you keep going?"
In his heart, Mo Fan was practically begging the old man to go round up every demon beast on the entire mountain right now and line them up for him to kill.
But he knew better than to overplay his hand. He immediately buried the elation in his eyes.
He began panting heavily—exaggerating each breath, letting his body sway slightly twice, performing the picture of a man on the verge of collapse.
But when he raised his head, his eyes burned with stubborn, unbroken intensity and fanaticism.
"Elder..."
Mo Fan gritted his teeth and forced out the words in a tone of fierce, desperate hunger.
"Just now... I faintly grasped a trace of inspiration. But it's not enough! Just a little bit more!"
"I entreat the Elder—bestow another beast! This disciple can still fight!"
Looking at this battered, bleeding young man who still refused to give up seeking the Dao, the admiration in Lin Dong's eyes reached its peak.
"Good! Ambitious! I'll grant you your wish today!"
He laughed once, sharp and loud, and his silhouette dissolved into a streak of cyan sword-light that shot straight into the sky.
And so...
The Foundation Establishment demon beasts that had lorded over this deep mountain range for years encountered the single most despairing day of their lives.
Half an hour later, a half-dead [ Raging Fire Lion ] was thrown into the cage.
Mo Fan immediately shifted his skeleton into a tiger form and fought it to the death.
Two hours after that, a [ Shadow Fang Wolf ] with its fangs pulled out fell victim to Mo Fan's "tender mercies."
Lin Dong moved like a tireless, merciless hunting machine—an endless conveyor belt of high-tier sparring partners delivered straight to Mo Fan's fists.
And Mo Fan, within this natural arena, continuously cycled through the skeletal force structures of one beast after another, grinding experience at a frantic pace.
Until the sun began to set in the west. And the hardest fight of the day arrived.
BANG!
A Foundation Establishment stage [ Demon Hawk ]—one wing broken, but still ferociously dangerous—was dropped into the arena by Lin Dong.
The creature was cunning. Even badly wounded, it refused to come down.
It circled stubbornly at a height of over ten meters, using its aerial advantage to constantly rake at Mo Fan below with iron-hard talons and a beak like a blade.
For Mo Fan—in human form and unable to use his Soul Wings—this was an extreme headache.
Several deep, bloody gashes opened across his body before long.
After continuously taking several hits, Mo Fan's mind clicked into gear.
He stood still. Drew a deep breath.
The bones of both legs frantically squirmed and realigned in an instant...
Restructuring into the force-generation framework of the Giant Ape form!
BOOM!
Both feet drove into the ground violently. The rock beneath his feet shattered.
Mo Fan launched upward like a fired cannonball—shooting nearly twenty meters straight into the air from a dead standstill!
In mid-air, he reached out and seized the hawk's one intact wing in a firm grip.
As they plummeted downward together in rapid descent, his right knee drove upward with savage precision.
CRACK!
The hawk's spine snapped clean in half in mid-air!
THUD!
Man and hawk smashed heavily onto the blood-soaked earth together.
Mo Fan slowly stood up from the hawk's corpse.
After a full day of continuous, brutal, high-intensity combat, he was drenched head to toe in the fresh blood of various beasts.
His coarse cloth robe had been reduced to strips of tattered fabric hanging off him.
His body was covered in real claw marks and deep bruises—a genuinely wretched, battered sight.
But in the gathering dimness of the night—
Mo Fan's eyes burned like two stars. Brilliant. Incomparably terrifying.
Because in the exact instant the hawk's breath left its body—
A cascade of radiant light that only he could see erupted quietly.
[ Experience Full! ]
[ Level Up: LV. 16! ]