That system notification—ringing through his mind like a divine melody...
It blew open the door deep inside Mo Fan's heart. The one labeled Madness.
The moment he confirmed he could actually exploit the system's mechanics, Mo Fan fell into a state of complete and utter obsession.
From that day forward, Hundred Forging Peak developed a deeply unsettling new phenomenon.
Nearly every morning, before the sky had fully brightened...
Mo Fan would appear at Lin Dong's gloomy residence like a model employee clocking in for his shift.
Proactively, even urgently, demanding to be taken out to "temper the true essence of [ Form-Intention Fist ]."
To the other disciples of Hundred Forging Peak—especially Eldest Senior Brother Wu Mang and Second Senior Brother Zhao Ziwei...
Mo Fan's daily, voluntary submission to the old lunatic's torment was nothing short of a solemn and stirring heroic feat.
"Junior Brother... he truly is the unrivaled iron man of our Hundred Forging Peak!"
One morning, Wu Mang stood at a distance watching Mo Fan's retreating figure disappear toward Lin Dong's cave dwelling.
His eyes were as red as a rabbit's.
He wiped his face and choked out to Zhao Ziwei beside him:
"To keep Elder Lin from coming after the rest of us, Junior Brother is offering his own battered body as a shield!"
"He's actively trading his suffering for our peace! We absolutely have to treat him better from now on!"
Zhao Ziwei was so moved he was practically in tears himself.
Every last troublemaker on Hundred Forging Peak had, through this magnificent misunderstanding...
Elevated Mo Fan to the status of a sacred guardian of their mountain.
On the other side of this equation, Lin Dong had fallen into his own unprecedented state of elation and disbelief.
From Lin Dong's perspective, the young man called Lu Xiaoqi was nothing less than a perfect treasure delivered to him by heaven itself!
The boy's blood-qi was vigorous. His devotion to martial cultivation bordered on fanatical.
But what truly left Lin Dong speechless—even somewhat ashamed of himself—was the depth of this young man's understanding of human skeletal structure.
After all, Mo Fan was the Mystic Realm's only Necromancer, armed with the anatomical knowledge of modern medicine.
He would casually drop what he considered basic common sense, and Lin Dong would receive it like a revelation...
Feeling that his research into the human body over these past weeks had surpassed the progress of the last hundred years combined.
During this period, Mo Fan had achieved a terrifying three-pronged advancement.
In his daily life-and-death battles against various high-tier, half-dead demon beasts...
He had not only fully internalized the skeletal transformation principles of the Form-Intention Fist—burning them into muscle memory...
But had also been frantically circulating the [ Pale Wood Body Forging Art ] under relentless, crushing pressure every single moment.
And most importantly: his experience bar was climbing at a speed that defied all reason, rocketing upward like it had been strapped to a missile!
Deep in the mountain range. A natural clearing.
BOOM.
Lin Dong swept his wide sleeve.
A solid cyan barrier erupted from the ground, forming a massive Octagon Cage that sealed Mo Fan and three demon beasts—each the size of a young bull—firmly inside.
"Xiaoqi, today's lesson is doubled!"
Lin Dong stood outside the barrier with his hands behind his back, undisguised anticipation gleaming in his eyes.
"These three [ Shadow Fang Wolves ] are all at the foundation of the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment."
"I've stripped away most of their true essence, but they're from the same litter—their coordination is seamless. Let this old man see how far you've come."
Grrrr...
Inside the barrier, the three Shadow Fang Wolves recovered from their brief disorientation and quickly locked onto Mo Fan...
Standing alone, his body radiating not a single trace of spiritual energy fluctuation.
They didn't charge blindly like common wild beasts.
Instead, they lowered their bodies, let out a chorus of bone-chilling growls from their throats, and fanned out with cold intelligence.
Forming a triangular encirclement with no blind spots, closing in on Mo Fan one measured step at a time.
Wolves were born hunters. Masters of coordinated predation.
WHOOSH——!
They moved as one!
The alpha let out a piercing howl and launched its massive body skyward...
Diving from a high-altitude blind spot with jaws spread wide, carrying a bloody wind aimed directly at Mo Fan's throat!
The other two wolves flattened themselves against the ground and became twin gray blurs, exploding from the left and right flanks simultaneously...
Perfectly cutting off every possible retreat or evasion route.
Above. Left. Right. A three-dimensional kill formation with no openings.
Against any ordinary human cultivator of the same level, without a wide-area defensive technique, this coordinated assault would have torn them to shreds in the very next second.
But faced with this absolute trap, the expression on Mo Fan's face—streaked with sweat and blood—was one of complete indifference.
He didn't retreat. He stepped forward.
CLANG——!
Mo Fan didn't dodge at all.
He raised both arms in a cross-guard and met the alpha wolf's descending fangs head-on—fangs capable of crushing refined iron!
Tempered day and night by the Pale Wood Body Forging Art, a faint spectral glow pulsed beneath the skin of Mo Fan's forearms.
A dull, resonant impact rang out—like steel striking steel.
The alpha's razor fangs bit viciously down onto Mo Fan's arms and found nothing to pierce.
The violent rebound force sent a numbing shock through the wolf's entire jaw; it let out a pained whimper!
"Too slow."
A confident smile pulled at the corner of Mo Fan's mouth.
In the half-second the alpha was locked rigid from the rebound...
Mo Fan's raised right arm erupted with a series of skin-crawling bone-shifting sounds from within.
Form-Intention Fist—Giant Ape Transformation!
His right arm's skeletal structure stretched and reshaped in an instant, reconfiguring into the force-generation framework of a giant ape.
The entire limb became a lead-filled steel whip, tearing through the air with a sharp sonic crack.
Hand as a blade—he brought it crashing down onto the alpha wolf's skull!
BANG——!!!
A muffled sound like a watermelon bursting open.
The alpha's skull shattered under that obliterating, terrifying force. It didn't even have time to scream.
Its massive body dropped to the ground like a puddle of wet mud—killed instantly on the spot.
One exchange. The lead attacker was dead!
"ROAR!"
The two flanking wolves clearly hadn't expected their big brother to be one-shotted.
Their assault stuttered for a fraction of a second—but beastly ferocity drove them forward anyway.
Both sets of jaws clamped down hard onto Mo Fan's thighs.
RIIIP.
Sharp fangs finally broke skin. Fresh blood welled up.
If they could now use their core and hip strength to wrench sideways simultaneously...
They could tear Mo Fan—suspended in midair with both legs pinned—clean in half!
However, Mo Fan, hanging in the air with seemingly nowhere to brace himself, let out a ferocious, hair-raising laugh.
Both legs seized? So what!
In midair, through sheer, monstrous, perverted control, Mo Fan forced his own skeleton to twist into a horrifying angle that no human body should have been able to achieve!
"Get UP!"
His core muscles detonated.
Riding the unbelievable torque of that skeletal rotation, he generated a burst of terrifying centrifugal force in midair!
Awooo——!
One of the wolves that had been clamped onto him with everything it had was wrenched free by that colossal force—flung outward like a hammer throw.
BANG.
It slammed viciously into the barrier's energy wall. Bones cracked, and blood sprayed from its mouth in thick gouts.
In under two breaths of time, the three-wolf kill formation had been forcefully dismantled into a one-on-one.
Looking at Mo Fan landing like a primordial ferocious beast...
The last wolf—still biting Mo Fan's thigh—was thoroughly dumbfounded.
It released its grip. Those gleaming green eyes finally filled with the absolute despair and terror that belonged only to prey.
It understood now. Today, it had picked a fight with a monster a hundred times more savage than itself.
Half an incense stick later.
The barrier dissolved.
The sealed arena held nothing but churned, blood-soaked earth and three wolf corpses with extremely miserable causes of death.
Mo Fan's already-tattered clothes had been stained a deep, dark red.
He was breathing hard, a few fresh claw marks carved into his muscles.
But those profound eyes of his—catching the sunlight—blazed with a brilliance that was almost painful to look at directly.
Because in the exact instant the last wolf breathed its last—
That divine, crystalline notification rang through the depths of his soul like a full orchestra reaching its grand crescendo!
[ Experience Full! ]
[ Level Up: LV. 19! ]