Chapter 48: Completion of the Qi Condensation Realm

Tong Jin was struggling to cope with the four men before him when he suddenly heard Fairy Tianfeng's angry shout. Distracted, a sharp blade grazed across his back, and the searing pain of torn flesh made him gasp sharply.

At once, a fierce ruthlessness welled up in his heart. "Do you really take me for a pushover!" A surge of violent energy gushed from his dantian, rushing along the meridian pathways of the Furious Sun Palm. Tong Jin let out a loud roar, "Furious!" Immediately, a gale whipped up, and the burly man at the initial stage of Qiization who took the brunt of the attack spewed a mouthful of blood and flew backward.

The remaining three men also staggered back several yards before finally steadying themselves, their faces etched with terror.

Fairy Tianfeng had torn a strip off her sleeve to barely wrap around her lacerated chest. Gritting her teeth with fierce determination, she lashed out with both palms at Shan Hu. Yet Shan Hu, perhaps still mindful that she belonged to the Imperial Palace and unwilling to deal a fatal blow, merely parried her attacks with ease while looking for an opportunity to subdue the frenzied Tianfeng.

With Shan Hu personally entangling Fairy Tianfeng, the three burly men who had previously been besieging her swiftly closed in on Tong Jin.

The Qiization-realm man who had been sent flying by Tong Jin's palm strike was clearly incapacitated. However, at that moment, Tong Jin's body was locked in a state of stiffness. Seeing three more Qiization practitioners bearing down on him, a thought flickered in his mind, and the evolved Corpse-Sinking Poison Ant resting within his robe shot forth like an arrow. The three approaching men instantly changed expressions, drew their sharp blades, and halted in their tracks.

Meanwhile, the other three men, seeing that he had grown weak and stiffened in place after delivering a single palm strike, roared and charged forward with blades raised.

A blinding flash of blade light slashed down. Tong Jin stared at the blade descending right toward his head, mustering every ounce of his strength to dodge. Yet the harder he tried, the more excruciating, tearing pain wracked his body after using the Furious Sun Palm.

"It's over!" Tong Jin thought to himself. He simply relaxed his mind, and suddenly a strangely humorous feeling arose within him. After hiding away for all these days and surviving countless mighty storms, he was actually going to die today at the hands of three mediocre body-refining practitioners simply because he had unleashed his most powerful technique.

Yet at the very instant of his bitter smile, a bizarre and distorted character representing "Furious" flashed vividly in his mind from the pages of the Furious Sun Palm manual. Those crooked strokes seemed to mirror his own expression at that exact moment—a laugh born of extreme rage, a smile amidst bitterness, a roaring laughter in the face of absolute despair, a wild laughter transcending mere anger!

In that instant, enlightenment struck him. The rampaging currents of energy surging through his meridians seemed to completely transform their temperament, flowing smoothly once again along the pathways with a momentum that surpassed any previous attempt.

"Hhahahahahaha!" Just half an inch before the blade edge reached Tong Jin's head, he suddenly burst into loud laughter. The laughter carried a wave of domineering energy that surged straight toward the three burly men slashing down at him.

Boom—

As this intense burst of energy erupted, even Shan Hu, who had been toying with Fairy Tianfeng, flashed a dozen yards away. Theoretically, this energy could not cause him the slightest harm, but a sudden flash of danger had just arisen in his heart.

Shan Hu knitted his brows tightly and looked toward Tong Jin. At this moment, even Fairy Tianfeng stopped her movements, staring in stunned silence at the laughing Tong Jin and the three burly men who had rolled a dozen yards away before fainting unconscious on the ground.

Feeling the surging energy within his body, which felt like ten thousand warhorses galloping across a vast plain, Tong Jin's internal anger vanished entirely, replaced by a sense of unbridled exhilaration. The vastness of heaven and earth, all things and matters, each possessed its own Dao—the Dao of slaughter, the Dao of benevolence, the Dao of craftiness, the Dao of lust, the Dao of detachment... Tong Jin's mind seemed to open up completely, and his entire demeanor underwent an instant transformation. The magnanimity and dominance of feeling as though the sky could fall and still serve as a blanket made him seem to grow instantly from a fourteen-year-old boy into a stalwart emperor.

"Peak Qiization realm!" Shan Hu furrowed his brows even deeper, thinking to himself that this youth's growth was far too dangerous. Just a moment ago, he was a negligible nobody, yet he had broken through to the peak Qiization realm right before his eyes. If allowed to develop further, he would undoubtedly pose a threat to him. "He must not be allowed to escape!" Shan Hu thought darkly.

Even as Shan Hu weighed his options, Tong Jin moved with lightning speed, appearing with blinding swiftness before the three men who had been stalemating with the poison ant. The three initial-stage Qiization practitioners felt only a blur before their eyes, followed by a sharp pain erupting in their chests as their bodies flew backward!

Fairy Tianfeng's jaw dropped so wide in astonishment that she could hardly close it. Although those three men were only at the initial stage of Qiization, even she would have needed a considerable amount of time to defeat them in combat. Yet Tong Jin had sent them flying with a single blow each, landing a punch squarely on every chest as if the three men had completely forgotten how to dodge.

In truth, it was not that the burly men did not know how to evade; rather, Tong Jin's three punches were simply too fast—a speed that even surpassed what ordinary peak Qiization practitioners could achieve.

At this moment, the three initial-stage Qiization experts flying backward each spewed a mouthful of blood and lost consciousness, their fates unknown.

The Corpse-Sinking Poison Ant seemed to sense the change in Tong Jin as well, obediently flapping its wings and landing on his shoulder.

"Good boy! For what you've done today, I cannot let you live!" Shan Hu watched Tong Jin walking step by step toward him, his mind somewhat dazed. This was not the scenario he had anticipated. He could see that Tong Jin had broken through to the peak Qiization realm, but his speed and the sovereign aura around him were definitely unmatched by ordinary peak Qiization experts. It was precisely this feeling that made him extremely uneasy, prompting him to decide on a lethal strike! The words he had spoken earlier now applied to himself—"If one's life is gone, of what use is an empty treasure?"

Of course, Shan Hu did not believe for a second that these two could take his life. Even if there were a one-in-a-million chance, escaping would still be a simple matter for him. However, if the two of them managed to escape, given the young man's rate of cultivation, he would likely never know peace again.

With that thought, Shan Hu curved his hands into claws. Awoo—! Accompanied by a crisp tiger roar, Shan Hu's fierce figure bore down upon Tong Jin.

In contrast, Tong Jin still wore a smile on his face. At a single thought from his mind, his true Qi—which had moments ago been fiercely tempestuous and was now as placid as a calm lake surface—began to well up in a steady stream. Beneath this calm exterior lay a vastness capable of striking dread into anyone's heart.

Bang—

Palm and claw finally collided, and the two streams of energy generated a massive destructive force that immediately rippled outward, making the surroundings feel as though they had been caught in the eye of a storm. Fairy Tianfeng circulated her protective Qi and looked toward the epicenter of the storm, spotting two figures rapidly separating.

Shan Hu steadied himself only after retreating a full twenty yards, panic and disbelief flashing across his eyes. "How is this possible! He is clearly at the peak Qiization realm, yet he can fight me to a standstill against my full-powered claw!"

In the distance, Tong Jin had been forced back more than twenty yards. Feeling the lingering numbness in both palms, he instead threw his head back and laughed aloud, "Hhahahahahaha!" That laughter, still retaining a childlike treble before his voice had fully broken, conveyed a sense of exhilaration welling straight from the depths of his heart!

Fairy Tianfeng, who had been unable to find even a chance to intervene from afar, was completely frozen in place at that moment...