Halfway up Hundred Forging Peak.
Sparse branches. Dead wood everywhere. Withered shrubs too dry and lifeless to bother growing leaves.
Compared to Sunset Peak, this place was the difference between hell and paradise.
And yet, moving through this barren, desolate stretch of rock and dead brush, a furtive figure was picking his way along the mountain path.
Mo Fan, the great nocturnal trespasser, had finally made it home.
He exhaled a long, relieved breath and looked around at the bare rocks and cracked stone with something approaching genuine affection.
A golden nest, a silver nest—nothing beats your own doghouse.
He still couldn't openly summon his ghost-blue bone wings and fly around in broad daylight...
Even here on this godforsaken peak where nobody cared about anything.
But at least he didn't have to crawl through the mud like a worm anymore. He could stand up straight and walk like a human being.
He followed the path to a clear pool not far from his canyon, and in the pale moonlight, looked down at his reflection in the water.
...Yikes.
The state of him was genuinely difficult to look at.
His hair was a disaster—a bird's nest that had been rubbed by a windstorm, packed with dirt and dead leaves.
His once-clean cyan robe had been shredded to ribbons by Sunset Peak's various unnamed thorned shrubs, strips of fabric hanging off him at every angle.
He looked exactly like a beggar who'd just escaped from a refugee camp.
Why does this art style look so familiar?
Mo Fan rubbed his chin. The image that surfaced in his mind was Zhao Ziwei—the first time he'd laid eyes on him.
So that's what happens when you spend enough time on Hundred Forging Peak. You eventually evolve into Senior Brother Ziwei.
He shook his head with a wry smile, cupped some water from the pool to simply wash his face, and walked briskly back to the canyon.
The night's ordeal—the constant tension, the crawling through undergrowth, the sheer sustained terror of it all—had wrung him completely dry.
Back at the stone house, he heated a bucket of water, scrubbed himself from head to toe until he was a recognizable human being again, and then collapsed face-first onto his bed.
He didn't even do his nightly review.
He slept like the dead, straight through until the sun was high in the sky the next day.
"Mmph."
Mo Fan blinked awake and hauled himself upright on the hard plank bed, stretching a massive, extremely comfortable yawn.
Crack. Pop. Pop. Crack.
His thoroughly tempered bones and tendons fired off a rapid-fire sequence of pops and snaps as he moved, like a string of firecrackers going off.
He took a deep breath. His blood and qi felt full, circulating cleanly through every part of him, indescribably comfortable.
Good.
He swung off the bed, rolled his shoulders— And then stopped dead and smacked himself on the forehead.
Crap!
He'd been gone from the peak for several days. He'd come back last night.
And he still hadn't gone to check in with Eldest Senior Brother Wu Mang or Senior Sister Li Banxia to report that he was safe.
That was genuinely his fault.
This "useless body cultivator" persona is a real pain sometimes.
He sighed helplessly. A proper Inner Sect disciple would just grab a Voice Transmission Jade Slip, and with a whoosh, the message would be sent over in seconds.
But Mo Fan was supposedly a Waste Spirit Root who couldn't even sense spiritual energy—he fundamentally couldn't use a Voice Transmission Jade Slip.
Which meant this job of reporting his safety required his two legs and nothing else.
He pushed open the door and stepped out into the harsh midday sun, heading along the mountain path toward the back face of Hundred Forging Peak.
He didn't waste the walk. His mind was already running the numbers on his Sect Contribution Points.
After his labor at the Forging Peak, his identity token now held just over two hundred points.
Technically, mid-grade spirit stones could be exchanged one-for-one into Contribution Points according to sect rumors—and he was sitting on over a hundred of them.
He could turn that into a substantial fortune instantly.
But that would be an extremely low Return-on-Investment choice.
Contribution Points only work inside the Azure Cloud Sect's Inner Sect system.
Mid-grade spirit stones are hard currency circulated across the entire continent. Converting them is a last resort, not a first option.
His most pressing need right now was the high-tier body-tempering methods gathering dust in the Scripture Pavilion.
Without the subsequent cultivation methods, he couldn't maintain his body cultivator cover story.
Two more shifts at the Forging Peak, and I should have enough to go to the bottom floor of the Scripture Pavilion and exchange for an extremely orthodox Foundation Establishment-stage body cultivation method.
He worked through the calculations as he walked, following the rough map sketch Zhao Ziwei had given him...
Skirting around several abandoned toxic mine pits, until he arrived at Eldest Senior Brother Wu Mang's residence on the back face of Hundred Forging Peak.
It was not what he'd expected.
A simple, quiet courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence.
A few stalks of unknown, lush green bamboo planted inside, their leaves rustling softly in the breeze—the kind of understated, reclusive atmosphere you'd associate with a scholar-hermit.
I wouldn't have guessed a battle maniac like him would live somewhere this elegant.
Mo Fan was still taking it in and preparing to step forward and knock—
And stopped.
From inside the courtyard came a series of deep, highly rhythmic, extremely strenuous grunts.
"Ugh—Hah—UP—Ugh!"
The sounds were drenched in sweat and filled with the roar of a physical body resisting pressure at its absolute limit.
In the middle of this peaceful bamboo courtyard, it was deeply incongruous.
With a strange expression, Mo Fan tentatively pushed open the unlatched courtyard gate.
Creak.
In the center of the courtyard, Eldest Senior Brother Wu Mang stood bare-chested...
His bronze skin covered in sweat so heavy it was visibly steaming in the sunlight.
And resting on Wu Mang's shoulders was a barbell.
A completely primitive, deeply unhinged barbell—a single massive trunk of century-old Black Iron Wood, with two grinding-wheel-sized slabs of ore lashed to either end!
He was currently carrying this heavy object, akin to a "small hill," and doing squats!
"RAAUGH—!"
Wu Mang let out a roar, the muscles in his thighs knotting like tree roots, and forcefully drove the mountain on his shoulders upward.
Mo Fan stared at the sight of this man—whose frame was entirely disproportionate to the weight he was moving—and felt a twitch develop in the corner of his eye.
It looks like an ant pushing a towering ancient tree. Except the ant is winning.
Cultivation really did not play by any reasonable rules.
BANG.
Seemingly hearing the movement at the gate, Wu Mang turned his head abruptly.
The moment he saw Mo Fan, he was stunned at first, and then a grin of pure, unrestrained delight erupted on his face.
"Youngest Junior Brother! You're finally back!"
And without another word, he reached back and extremely casually tossed that ten-thousand-pound "small hill" dumbbell directly behind him!
RUMBLE——!!!
An earth-shattering explosion blasted open in the courtyard!
The earth trembled as if a small-scale earthquake had occurred.
In the originally tranquil and elegant small courtyard, a column of turbid dust erupted dozens of meters into the air, directly submerging those few pitiful green bamboos in dirt.
Wu Mang strode out of the sky full of smoke and dust in large steps.
Without even a single extra word of polite pleasantry, his eyes were already burning with the kind of focused, hungry battle-intent that had no interest in small talk.
"Long time no see! How's the recovery? Let's find out."
He cracked his knuckles.
"How about taking another punch from me!"
Mo Fan blinked at the completely unprompted spar invitation.
Then the surprise in his eyes was replaced by an extremely sharp, bright glint.
He didn't refuse. He didn't even take half a step back.
His visit today, besides reporting his safety, was originally precisely to verify his physical intensity!
To find out exactly how much his Tier-2 physical foundation was actually worth against a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
"Since Eldest Senior Brother is in such an elegant mood, then this younger brother will have to offend!"
No more polite nonsense.
BOOM.
An extremely muffled sonic boom of air exploding.
Relying on the Blood Qi power compressed to the absolute limit in his physical body...
Mo Fan's legs viciously shattered the bluestone slabs beneath his feet.
His body launched forward like a heavy crossbow bolt leaving the string at point-blank range!
No flashy spells. No sword-light. No techniques.
Two men—like two unleashed humanoid ferocious beasts—collided in the swirling dust with a raw, solid, fist-to-flesh impact!