Chapter 58: The cultivation technique is broken through the meridians, and the Wang family of the prefecture emerges!

Lin Chen stood on the steps of the front courtyard, glancing at the rowdy crowd outside the gate.

The sound of gongs and drums, the popping of firecrackers, and the laughter of children mingled together, making the place feel so lively it didn't seem like a place where a battle had just ended.

He didn't look for long.

Turning back into the front courtyard, he bypassed the screen wall and sat down in a corner on the back where no one passed by.

The clamor behind him was mostly cut off by the brick wall of the screen wall, leaving only a faint, blurry hum.

Lin Chen took out the roll of light blue silk from his chest and spread it across his knees.

The Qi Circulation maps of the Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art were laid out before his eyes, one by one.

About half a cup of tea's time passed.

A faint blue light spread across the edge of his vision.

[System detected that the host has obtained the Profound Rank Medium Grade Cultivation Technique "Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art," which has a high possibility of Fusion with the existing Cultivation Technique "Xuanhuang Immovable Body."]

[Do you wish to consume 10,000 points to perform Fusion deduction and attempt to break through to the Tongmai Realm?]

Lin Chen closed his eyes.

"Fusion."

[Consuming 10,000 points! Beginning Fusion deduction!]

[Xuanhuang Immovable Body (Perfection) + Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art (Complete) → Fusion deduction in progress...]

A searing sensation surged out from his Dantian.

It was more violent than any time before.

It was like a bucket of boiling oil being poured into a dry iron pot that had been heated over a fire.

All the blood and Qi of the Blood Refining Realm Perfection went wild within his Meridians.

Galloping, colliding, and scouring.

The layers upon layers of heavy foundation accumulated by the Xuanhuang Immovable Body were met head-on by the pure Profound Rank essence of the Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art.

The two forces fought at every intersection node of the Meridians.

It was not a gentle Fusion.

It was a head-on clash of tearing and restructuring.

A layer of earthy yellow halo surfaced on his skin, thicker than ever before.

Beneath the halo, a deep shade of dark cyan surged.

That was the base color of the Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art.

The two colors alternated and flickered on the surface of his body.

The frequency grew faster and faster, so fast that the naked eye could not distinguish one from the other.

Finally, the two colors churned together.

They merged into a dark gold as heavy as a mountain and as deep as an abyss.

The twelve main meridians began to be cleared one by one.

Strands of True Qi were stripped from his blood and Qi, scouring, polishing, and pouring along the walls of the Meridians.

The first one was cleared.

It was as if a river channel blocked for decades had its gate smashed open by a hammer; muddy water surged out and then quickly turned clear.

The second one.

The third one.

With each one cleared, the quality of the True Qi in his body jumped up a level.

By the sixth one, his bones began to make sounds.

The sound was not of breaking.

It was of reshaping.

Like a blacksmith throwing a piece of crude iron back into the furnace, heating it red-hot to be forged again.

Infused with True Qi, his bones became denser, heavier, and harder.

The ninth one.

The dark golden halo had become so thick it was almost tangible.

A few withered leaves in the corner of the screen wall were lifted by the air pressure, hovering in mid-air and spinning slowly.

The tenth one.

The eleventh one.

Lin Chen's jaw was clenched tight, his molars grinding with a creaking sound.

Each of the twelve main meridians being cleared was like lighting a fuse inside his body.

The first eleven fuses had finished burning.

The last one.

The moment the twelfth main meridian was cleared.

All the fuses reached their end simultaneously.

The qualitative change arrived.

Blood and Qi transformed into True Qi.

Turbidity became clarity.

Coarseness became purity.

The torrential flood of blood and Qi that had been overturning the Dantian Qi Sea was completely replaced by True Qi at this moment.

A mass of steady, heavy True Qi slowly rotated within the walls of the Dantian.

Its density far exceeded any previous state.

Like a lead ball compressed to its limit, it hung there quietly.

But the power contained within was enough to destroy everything.

[Fusion deduction complete!]

[Xuanhuang Immovable Body + Black Tortoise Mountain-Suppressing Art = New Cultivation Technique "Xuan Yue Immovable Body"!]

[Grade: Profound Rank High Grade!]

[Effect: Protective True Qi automatically condenses into a Xuanyue Shield, capable of withstanding a full-strength strike from one Realm higher. When struck, the Xuanyue Shield automatically reflects 20% of the damage.]

[Cultivation Breakthrough: Tongmai Realm Early Stage!]

[All twelve main meridians are cleared; True Qi can now leave the body to harm others!]

[Current System accumulated total points: 7,600 points.]

Lin Chen opened his eyes.

The dark golden halo receded into his body like a ebbing tide, silently.

The withered leaves hovering in mid-air lost their support and drifted back onto the stone bricks.

Everything returned to normal.

He raised his right hand, spreading his fingers.

An extremely thin thread of True Qi condensed between his fingertips.

Silent and invisible.

He sent the thread forward half an inch, then retracted it.

The release and retraction were precise to the millimeter.

This feeling was an entirely different matter from the blood and Qi release of the Blood Refining Realm.

Releasing blood and Qi in the Blood Refining Realm was like throwing water out of a bucket.

Once thrown, it was gone; it couldn't be brought back, nor could its direction be controlled.

True Qi leaving the body in the Tongmai Realm was like threading a needle.

Whichever eye of the needle you wanted to thread, you could thread.

The Tongmai Realm.

Lin Chen stood up, rolled his shoulders, and flexed his wrists.

His joints gave off several crisp cracks, as clear as the snap of a finger.

His entire demeanor was different compared to half a day ago.

All his sharpness was now contained within.

Standing there, he looked like an unremarkable stone.

But if anyone lacked eyes and tried to probe him with True Qi or Divine Sense.

When they touched that thin layer of Xuanyue Shield.

They would understand what was pressed beneath this stone.

Lin Chen folded the silk book, tucked it back into his chest, and walked out from behind the screen wall.

The commotion in the front courtyard hadn't diminished at all.

The shouts of Bailiffs moving boxes, the rustling of clerks dipping ink to create records, and the waves of sound from the commoners outside striking gongs in celebration were all mixed together like a thick porridge.

Magistrate Pei Qingxue stood on the steps of the front hall, holding a list and ledger in her right hand, speaking in a low voice with Clerk Zhou.

Her left arm was still suspended in a sling around her neck, and the dark purple patterns beneath the silk cloth were tightly covered by her sleeve.

While speaking, her gaze casually swept across the courtyard.

Then she stopped.

The list and ledger in her hand almost slipped out.

She gripped the edges of the ledger, her nails sinking into the paper.

The cultivation perception of the Tongmai Realm would not lie.

The thickness of the Qi around the person walking over from behind the screen wall was an entirely different matter compared to a few hours ago.

That feeling.

It was as if he were a rushing river this morning, but had now become a silent mountain.

One could hear the sound of a river.

A mountain made no sound at all.

But when you stood at the foot of the mountain and looked up, you would instinctively feel very small.

"You..."

Magistrate Pei Qingxue squeezed half a word from her throat, but the rest of the sentence simply wouldn't come out.

Lin Chen walked to the bottom of the steps and looked up at her.

"Lord Magistrate."

His tone was flat and calm, no different from his usual reporting of official business.

"The inventory of the Zhao family's belongings is finished. The recorded documents will be delivered to your desk before tonight."

Magistrate Pei Qingxue stared at him.

She watched him for several breaths.

She really wanted to ask.

Wanted to ask how he did it.

How he had crossed that chasm-like gap between the Blood Refining Realm and the Tongmai Realm in just half a day.

She had spent a full six years walking this path herself.

Six years of bitter cultivation, six years of polishing, before she finally stepped from Blood Refining Realm Perfection into the Tongmai Realm Early Stage.

Yet the young man before her had still been at the Blood Refining Realm Perfection this morning.

Now, he was standing on the same level as her.

Magistrate Pei Qingxue swallowed all her questions back down.

She turned around, facing the direction of the front hall doors.

Her back was very straight, and the silk cloth cradling her left arm swayed slightly in the wind.

Her right hand gripped the list filled with numbers, her knuckles protruding.

She didn't look back.

But Lin Chen could tell.

The hand she used to grip the list was looser than before.

That wasn't giving up; it was being at ease.

Lin Chen didn't stand at the bottom of the steps for long.

He turned and walked toward the back courtyard.

There were still some things in the secret room of the Zhao family's back courtyard that hadn't been moved yet.

He wanted to personally inspect the letters and documents in the final batch of boxes.

At the bottom of a wooden box in a corner of the secret room, pressed beneath several letters, was a piece of thin silk folded very small.

Lin Chen took out the thin silk and unfolded it, holding the corners with both hands.

It wasn't a map of Qingxi County.

It was a map of the official road route from Qingxi County to the Prefecture.

Seventeen Relay Stations and Secret Outposts were marked along the way.

Beside each marked point, a surname and a number were written.

The surnames were all different.

Zhao, Li, Sun, Zhou, Qian...

But the surname that appeared with the highest frequency.

Wang.

Of the seventeen marked points, nine were written with the character "Wang."

From the first Relay Station outside Qingxi County, all the way to the last Secret Outpost at the gates of the Prefecture city.

The nine points connected to form a line.

A line that led straight from Qingxi County to the heart of the Prefecture.

The words Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan spoke before his death echoed in his ears once more.

"In the Prefecture... the connections the Zhao family has cultivated for generations... are deeply entrenched..."

The Zhao family's connections?

No.

The Zhao family was merely an endpoint node on this line.

The one truly deeply entrenched was at the other end of the line.

The Wang Family.

Lin Chen folded the thin silk.

He folded it very small, very carefully.

Then he tucked it into the deepest layer of his chest pocket.

It sat right against Old Wang's blood-stained Fury Thunder Blade Manual.

A blade manual, a map.

One was a Legacy left behind by a dead man.

The other was the tail exposed by a living enemy.

Both were named Wang.

Lin Chen moved his hand away from his chest, his fingertips rubbing against the fabric of his martial attire.

The sky over Qingxi County had indeed brightened.

But the sky over the Prefecture was still dark.