"Hah..."
As the level-up notification chimed through his mind, Mo Fan slowly exhaled a long breath of turbid air.
His bones let out a series of faint, barely audible sounds before settling back naturally into their human configuration.
Not a single thread of Necrotic Mana was used. Pure, absolute mastery over his own flesh—one hundred percent.
During this stretch of madness—so consuming he had lost all track of sunrise and sunset...
Mo Fan had stopped thinking about almost everything else.
He had emptied his mind of all calculations and scheming...
And like a martial arts fanatic, had thrown himself completely into the cultivation and advancement of physical strength.
Now, he could feel it with perfect clarity.
Even without [ Bone Armament ] as a safety net, he could extremely precisely control every muscle fiber, every bone segment, every thread of force—its direction, its generation, its release.
These native cultivation methods of the Mystic Realm really do possess some unbelievable profounds as well.
Mo Fan felt the ceaseless, surging tide of blood-qi flowing through him from the [ Pale Wood Body Forging Art ].
After more than half a month of relentless, extreme squeezing on the edge of life and death that had pushed him to the absolute limit again and again...
His physical body had finally undergone a true qualitative transformation.
The Copper Skin was long past. The Iron Bones had reached full completion.
His body cultivation realm could already be considered as truly stepping beyond the threshold of a mortal frame and into a level equivalent to [ Foundation Establishment ] in the cultivation world!
Standing outside the dissolved barrier, Lin Dong watched Mo Fan standing proudly amid the scattered wolf corpses.
Something new had entered those sunken eyes. A gleam of admiration—the kind reserved for a rare and precious treasure.
From Lin Dong's perspective, the young man called Lu Xiaoqi was an unprecedented, irreplicable body cultivation monstrous genius!
One must know, throughout all of history, why had so few cultivators in the Mystic Realm ever chosen the path of body cultivation?
Partly because the training process was inhumanly brutal and agonizing.
But more significantly—progress in body cultivation was an extremely agonizing, slow grind!
It required decades of painstaking polishing just to see the faintest sliver of effectiveness.
And yet Mo Fan? He was the complete opposite!
This kid's body cultivation progress was like a burst dam.
Every single day, it advanced by leaps and bounds at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Although his progress in spiritual cultivation remains as stagnant as a stubborn rock—an absolute Waste Spirit Root...
His comprehension regarding the physical body is truly unprecedented in history and completely baffling!
Lin Dong exclaimed in his heart repeatedly.
For Mo Fan, skyrocketing all the way to LV. 19 had brought more than just a stronger body.
The biggest windfall, naturally, was the accumulated Skill Points (SP).
He didn't hesitate for a single moment.
He deeply understood the danger of spreading himself too thin. He had no interest in blindly unlocking flashy new skills.
Having already experienced the qualitative leap that came from upgrading [ Death Vision ] and [ Bone Armament ] to the second tier...
Mo Fan made an extremely decisive choice.
He dumped every last SP he had saved into the old friends who had fought beside him from the very beginning.
[ Ding! SP consumed—Corpse Shackle upgraded to LV. 2! ]
[ Ding! SP consumed—Corpse Explosion upgraded to LV. 2! ]
[ Ding! SP consumed—Death Frenzy upgraded to LV. 2! ]
A cascade of golden light blazed across the System's Skill Tree in rapid succession.
Feeling the shifts ripple through the System panel, Mo Fan was practically blossoming with joy on the inside.
The Tier-2 versions of these skills would absolutely cause his overall combat power to undergo another qualitative leap.
The only problem was—right now was absolutely not the time to test skills.
Lin Dong had spent every single day of the past weeks glued to his back like an extremely dutiful shadow, watching his every move without pause.
It caused Mo Fan to almost forget he was still a Necromancer.
Just as he was beginning to turn over ideas in his head—trying to figure out some excuse to get the old man out of his hair long enough to quietly test the power of his new skills—when...
Swish.
The barrier dissolved. Lin Dong drifted over.
"Good comprehension, boy."
Lin Dong offered a rare compliment, his tone carrying a deep undercurrent of genuine emotion.
"This set of [ Form-Intention Fist ] of mine took years of groping in the dark to develop.
"For an ordinary person to merely grasp the basics, they'd need at minimum three to five years of bitter effort."
"You—in just over a month—have already brought it to minor completion."
Lin Dong clasped his hands behind his back and gazed deep into the distance.
"With that said, these life-and-death paired combats against wild beasts in the deep mountains have no more meaning for you."
Hearing these words, Mo Fan's heart lurched.
No more meaning? Hold on—don't do that!
I'm fucking just one last shiver away from Level 20! One step! How can you, old man, call a halt at this critical juncture?!
Mo Fan was just about to open his mouth—ready to perform the role of an eager junior who still needed more tempering, attempting to freeload a few more high-tier beasts—when Lin Dong reached out without warning and grabbed his arm.
"This old man will take you to a Sect Mystic Realm right now."
He fundamentally wouldn't allow Mo Fan to refuse.
CLANG——!
A blinding streak of cyan sword-light flashed.
The overwhelming spiritual power of a Golden Core cultivator wrapped around Mo Fan instantly.
In just the time of a few breaths, the blood-soaked killing grounds of the deep mountain were left far behind.
They didn't even make a stop at Hundred Forging Peak.
The flying sword transformed into a streak of light cutting across the sky...
Sailing clean over the outer Sect's mountain ridges and galloping directly toward the hinterlands of Azure Cloud Sect's resplendent, magnificent, immortal-qi-shrouded Main Peak!
However, Mo Fan acutely perceived something...
The moment the flying sword entered the territory of the Main Peak, Lin Dong kept a taut, rigid face the entire time.
He said nothing, merely burying his head in maneuvering the sword through the clouds.
His complexion was also somewhat displeased; it was a "stinky face" mixed with disgust, old memories, and a simmering undercurrent of anger.
This extremely oppressive low pressure made Mo Fan tactfully shut his mouth as well. He had no desire to become collateral damage by striking up a conversation.
The two of them maintained that deeply bizarre silence as they descended among the jade pavilions and gilded halls of the Main Peak.
Along the way, those Elders on the Main Peak who were originally talking loudly or instructing disciples...
Upon seeing Lin Dong's face, the expressions on every single one of their faces were simply more wonderful than if they had seen a ghost.
Lin Dong paid every single strange stare absolutely no mind.
He walked straight through unimpeded, Mo Fan in tow, until they stopped before a towering, majestic giant pagoda that reached into the clouds.
At the entrance to this imposing [ Heaven-Reaching Pagoda ]...
A plump Main Peak elder with an extremely exquisite outfit was currently sitting on a grandmaster armchair, his head bobbing up and down as he dozed off.
Hearing the footsteps, the plump elder groggily opened his eyes.
When his somewhat sleepy vision focused and recognized exactly who the gray-robed figure standing before him was...
HIC!
The plump elder was so scared he let out an extremely loud hiccup on the spot!
His eyeballs almost bulged out of their sockets, and his heart nearly stopped!
"L-Lin... Lin Dong?!"
He shot out of the armchair, scrambling to pull out a Voice Transmission Talisman from his sleeve—that posture clearly meant he was going to summon the guards immediately!
"W-What are you here for?! Who let you in!"
Lin Dong kept a cold face and waved his hand with extreme impatience, cutting the man off.
"This old man's visit this time is through a formally processed application. There is no need to make a fuss over nothing."
At the words "formally processed application," the plump elder's hand stilled...
But he remained hidden behind the door pillar, his face full of suspicion and guardedness, his voice still trembling:
"Are you serious?!"
"You were like this last time too, and as a result, you nearly turned this [ Cloud Summit Mystic Realm ] of mine upside down! This old man only recently managed to repair it with great difficulty!"
He glared at Lin Dong with open distrust.
"What is it now? Why are you trying to barge in today again?"
"Didn't you boastfully declare at the Inner Sect Elders' meeting a long time ago that there fundamentally isn't any True Intention of the Soul that you want in this Mystic Realm?"
Faced with this ruthless exposure of his dark history, Lin Dong could no longer maintain his composure on his old face, a rare flash of genuine embarrassment crossing it.
But he didn't reply in response. Instead, he forcefully dragged Mo Fan forward from behind him to the front.
"It is not this old man who wants to enter."
He pointed at Mo Fan's thoroughly bewildered face. "It's him."
Only then did the plump elder react. He shifted his gaze down to this young man...
A young man whose body lacked a single trace of spiritual energy fluctuation.
He released his Divine Sense and swept it across Mo Fan several times, his brow creasing tighter and tighter with each pass.
"This child?"
The plump elder's eyes were filled with absurdity and disbelief. He looked back at Lin Dong suspiciously.
"A mortal Body Cultivator who doesn't even have a trace of cultivation? You want to let him enter the Cloud Summit Mystic Realm?!"
"Do you have any idea what the pressure and illusions inside this Mystic Realm are like? How could a mortal body withstand that?"
He jabbed a finger at Mo Fan and questioned loudly: "Aren't you sending him to his death?!"
However. Faced with that sharp accusation...
On Lin Dong's usually placid face, a trace of ruthlessness actually appeared extremely rarely at this moment.
"No matter."
"There is no construction without destruction."
"The second stage of this old man's [ Form-Intention Fist ] is precisely to transition from 'Form' to 'Intent'. Without tempering the soul, how can one ever grasp its true intent?"