「Meanwhile, in Celestial Sea Prefecture.」

A black sedan slowly approached, stopping on a street not far from the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall.

Inside, Sun Yunyong and Zhao Xuanqi wore black hats, their brims pulled low to obscure their faces.

Zhao Xuanqi gazed out the window in the direction of the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall.

The once-bustling Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall now had its main gates sealed shut. Two conspicuous paper seals were plastered across them, and two soldiers in Giant Spirit Army uniforms stood guard out front, firearms slung over their backs. Passersby took one look and began to whisper among themselves.

Overnight, the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall, once a rising power in Celestial Sea Prefecture, had vanished like a puff of smoke. Its assets were seized by the City Defense Army, its core disciples had fled, and its top True Inheritance disciples and Hall Master were nowhere to be found.

The heavens are unpredictable. In these chaotic times, the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall was but a tiny ant compared to the might of the Giant Spirit Army. The slightest mishap was enough to get it crushed.

"Let’s go."

Zhao Xuanqi took one last look, his expression calm and unreadable, then turned to Sun Yunyong.

Rong Zhenyu was in charge of the Guangdong region and couldn’t leave his post, so only Sun Yunyong had accompanied Zhao Xuanqi to Celestial Sea to handle subsequent arrangements.

"This all happened so suddenly that our people couldn’t get to the other disciples from the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall. However, we did our best to arrange for the members of Wind Shadow Hall. A few are waiting outside the city right now. It’s still early; do you want to see them?" Sun Yunyong asked.

"We’ll talk after Hou Rong is dead."

Zhao Xuanqi slowly closed his eyes, saying nothing more.

As the car drove on, Zhao Xuanqi’s consciousness gradually sank deep into his body.

’Zhang Hongyun’s identity had been exposed, Weng Xiaolin had been captured and killed, the Xiaolin Martial Arts Hall had been annihilated, and Second Brother was dead. Now, he was being hunted across the city by the Warlords, like a cornered rat.’

This experience was remarkably similar to what Zhao Qi had once endured. And so, for the first time since the Three Halls Martial Competition, it had reawakened the body’s natural instincts.

A burning desire and impulse for revenge.

After wiping out the master of the Taihe Tiger Form Boxing Hall and five of its True Inheritance disciples, and then killing the elders of the Four Great Sects in front of everyone at the banquet, he’d noticed another significant increase in his willpower’s control over his body.

Over the past six months, he had repeatedly tried to analyze the cause of this instinctive physical reaction, but he always failed. In the end, he could only reach one conclusion.

There was no single, fixed cause.

The human psyche is complex. Even possessing all of someone’s memories doesn’t guarantee you can decipher their thoughts, let alone a body’s instinctive obsession.

So, Zhao Xuanqi had eventually stopped trying. He decided to let things happen as they may. Even without this shortcut, he could still gain complete control over his body through relentless training, day and night. It would simply take a little more time and effort.

’If a reaction occurred, he’d just consider it a pleasant surprise.’

Even without this shortcut, he had managed to elevate his strength to the absolute peak of Cross-Training in the past six months. However, Inner Cultivation demanded far more bodily control than Cross-Training. After all, manipulating muscles and circulating the functions of internal organs were entirely different concepts. By his original estimate, the barrier between Cross-Training and Inner Cultivation should have taken him anywhere from six months to a year to break through.

But now, this sudden turn of events had once again enhanced his bodily control, which would undoubtedly speed up the process.

All along the way, Zhao Xuanqi focused on acclimatizing to this sudden surge in bodily control.

HUFF! HISS! HUFF! HISS!

As his consciousness sank deeper, his breathing pattern began to slowly change, as if he were gradually reaching a state of greater harmony with his body. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Using his breath to guide his internal organs and connect his Qi and Blood, he brought the vital frequencies of his entire body into gradual harmony.

This was the state of "Rong" in Inner Cultivation.

At this moment, even with his improved bodily control, Zhao Xuanqi had only just grazed the edge of this state.

But for an ordinary Martial Artist, this was an insurmountable chasm. It had taken Liu Changfeng a full three years to grasp the secrets of "Rong" after reaching the peak of Cross-Training.

For Zhao Xuanqi, however, as long as he trained his bodily control enough, entering this state was merely a natural progression.

However, the "Rong" state was only the beginning of Inner Cultivation. For practitioners of Hundred Beasts Fist, merely entering the Rong state wasn’t even enough to qualify to learn its specialized Breathing and guidance methods.

Regardless, being able to touch upon this realm still granted a definite boost to one’s physical abilities.

Sun Yunyong, who was driving, keenly sensed the change occurring within Zhao Xuanqi, and his expression tensed.

’Is this... Rong?’

’This guy...’

At that moment, Sun Yunyong didn’t know how to describe his feelings.

...

...

「Night fell.」

Inside the City Defense Army garrison, all was as it usually was.

Under Feng Zheng’s orders, the intelligence department had temporarily blocked all communications to Celestial Sea Prefecture. As a result, Hou Rong had not received any news and could not make any special arrangements.

The goal was to prevent him from taking countermeasures and to maintain an appearance of normalcy, lest they arouse Zhao Xuanqi’s suspicion.

As it turned out, this arrangement was necessary. The National Salvation Association did, in fact, have moles inside the Celestial Sea Prefecture’s City Defense Army; otherwise, they could never have obtained such precise intelligence on Hou Rong.

It was precisely this arrangement that led the moles to believe the Giant Spirit Military Department had not anticipated the events in Celestial Sea Prefecture, leading them to give the operation a high safety rating.

Now, thanks to arrangements made by his trusted subordinates, Feng Zheng had moved into the room closest to Hou Rong’s own quarters.

Besides Feng Zheng, the room was empty.

He was not resting on the bed or a chair. Instead, he stood in the very center of the room, and it looked as if he had been rooted to that spot for hours, if not longer.

His stance resembled some form of Pile Skill, yet he also appeared to be standing casually. His entire vital aura, including the fluctuations of his consciousness, seemed to have merged with a certain resonant frequency of the Earth Veins.

It was an incredibly profound and mysterious sensation.

The Giant Spirit Sect’s True Inheritance disciple, Zhou Lie, had once used a Secret Technique to achieve a similar state during his battle with Zhao Xuanqi, but compared to Feng Zheng now, the difference was like that between the heavens and the earth.

If someone had pushed the door open right then, they wouldn’t even have noticed a person in the room at first glance. Instead, they would have wondered why a massive stone pillar or boulder was sitting in the center of the floor!

The circulation of his True Spirit turned illusion into reality. It was just like a Blinding Technique.

In this wondrous state, the tremors of the ground, the fluctuations of the Earth Veins—all this strange information, imperceptible to ordinary people—was laid bare to Feng Zheng’s Sensing.

He could discern the paths of vehicles moving through the barracks hundreds of meters away, judging their size and weight by the tremors they sent through the Earth Veins. He could even, to some degree, distinguish individual footsteps.

He had once said that as long as he was in the garrison, everything that happened within it was under his control.

This was no empty boast!

The name "Earth Spirit" was not unearned.

There are mistaken names, but never mistaken titles!

The moment Zhao Xuanqi made a move, he would be unable to escape his Sensing.

Meanwhile, outside the garrison, Zhao Xuanqi was hidden in the shadows, secretly observing everything inside.

’Nothing seems out of the ordinary.’

But his Hundred Beasts instincts, honed through countless trials, were sounding an alarm.