Chapter 117 – Piecing Together

Lu Yuan walked into the bedroom with his hair still damp.

The window was open.

There had been several consecutive days of heavy rain recently, which had significantly dissipated the summer heat, and the temperature had not yet risen again.

From time to time, a breeze blew in from outside, carrying a hint of coolness.

Lu Yuan was still thinking about his conversation with Gao Qing in the morning, especially the double C ratings for his strength and potential that had been bothering him.

Even if Gao Qing had intentionally rated him lower, these two ratings still reflected to some extent that.

He wasn’t strong enough.

Or rather, his strength wasn’t obvious enough.

He needed to work even harder on his cultivation!

With his professional panel, he would eventually climb step by step, step by step, to the top, to become that…

Shaking off the distracting thoughts in his mind, Lu Yuan sat down at his desk and casually picked up his mobile phone to check his messages.

He mainly wanted to see if White Glowing Grass had any more replies.

“You have successfully added the user as a friend.”

Seeing the notification, Lu Yuan’s spirits lifted, and then he discovered that White Glowing Grass had indeed sent some more messages.

The first few were links and screenshots of news articles.

He clicked on each one to view them.

[Joint Archaeological Team of Javier and Two Other Countries Unearths Mysterious Past from 3,000 Years Ago; White Demon Mountain Finally Sees the Light of Day After Long Slumber in the River of Time!]

[Elephant Deity Sect Myth Not Groundless; Temple Ruins Discovered by Archaeological Team in Southern Part of Distant Star; New Round of Excavations Underway]

[…]

The news articles were spaced out over long intervals, and all reported discoveries of Elephant Deity Sect ruins in various countries around the world.

Scrolling further down, there was a table.

The table listed many names, most of which were annotated with “deceased” or “missing,” along with the times of death or disappearance.

Lu Yuan cross-referenced the names and found that several highlighted ones matched those mentioned in the news articles above.

The times of death or disappearance were almost all within six months of the news being published.

“Is this to substantiate what he said earlier?”

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered slightly as he replied with a simple “Thank you.”

There was a time difference between Xia State and Javier; it was probably around midnight over there now.

Lu Yuan thought it would take a while to get a reply, but to his surprise, White Glowing Grass responded quickly after he sent the message: “I might come to Xia State next month. Perhaps we can meet and talk then.”

Next month… Lu Jing would be back next month too. It seemed just right.

Lu Yuan replied with “Okay.”

Involving the matter of the elephant deity sect, Lu Yuan, after finishing his conversation with White Glowing Grass, immediately sent a message to Lu Jing as well.

He simply asked about her return plans.

Lu Jing also replied instantly, which made him breathe a little easier.

He had been sending messages to Lu Jing almost every day recently to check on her situation, fearing that she might also be plagued by the so-called curse of the elephant deity sect.

“…we’ll have to take a helicopter first, then ride camels for two days, and then switch to cars, planes… even if everything goes smoothly, the journey will take several days.”

“Is it that troublesome…”

“Beep beep beep—”

Lu Yuan was chatting with Lu Jing when a message notification suddenly flashed at the bottom right corner.

He glanced at it and saw an avatar with a bouncing red hairpin.

Lu Yuan’s expression shifted slightly, suddenly curious about what this girl named Xia Zhiqing might reply to him.

He clicked it open.

A picture came into view—

It was an oil painting.

The painting depicted a dark, gloomy alley.

Blue rain was falling from the sky.

In the alley, a tall boy with a slightly lowered head was cautiously holding a gray cat.

He was walking out of the alley, step by step, towards a street bathed in the orange glow of street lamps.

Lu Yuan was stunned for a moment, his memory instantly brought back to that rainy alley two months ago.

“Cat… does she mean herself?”

“Quite fitting, actually.”

Lu Yuan murmured, suddenly glancing at his well-built, muscular arms, and thought with a strange expression: “But I look so different from the boy in the painting now. If we meet, the image she has of me might shift from an oil painting to a macho comic strip…”

He hoped that the girl’s pure, innocent heart wouldn’t shatter into pieces.

Lu Yuan pondered for a moment and replied: “The painting is really good.”

“Bang! Bang bang bang!”

The sounds of fists and feet striking echoed continuously in the arena.

“Huff—huff—”

The man wearing the red Ox Head Mask stopped his movements, one hand on his knee, breathing heavily.

As he looked up, his eyes under the mask began to show intense shock and disbelief.

“This… how is this possible?”

Even though he had heard of the reputation of the person standing before him, he had just attacked with all his might, throwing continuous blows for several minutes without stopping.

The fierce outburst had nearly exhausted him.

Yet… his opponent was still standing firmly in place, his strong and burly body as immovable as a rock.

“You’re done… now it’s my turn.”

A calm voice came from under the three-eyed goat head mask.

The figure slowly approached him.

The man instantly tensed up, fear spreading across his face.

“I…”

He turned to face the referee, but before he could utter his surrender, a fierce whooshing sound echoed in his ears.

“Boom!”

The mask on the man’s face shattered instantly, and a steel-like arm gripped his neck, lifting him off the ground.

But he didn’t struggle.

“Fainted?”

Under the mask, Lu Yuan frowned slightly, then casually tossed the man aside.

“Feast Eater wins!”

With the referee’s announcement, Lu Yuan walked down from the arena.

The spectators on both sides, many of them fellow competitors, looked at him with awe-filled eyes.

After his last battle with Force King, every match he fought drew a considerable crowd.

A sort of… star effect?

“Mosa’s attention on me seems to be getting stronger.”

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered, clearly sensing the gaze fixed on his back.

It came from the giant three-eyed goat head statue hanging above the arena.

Lu Yuan could keenly feel that with each battle he fought, this “attention” grew stronger.

“And with each battle, I get closer to uncovering the secrets surrounding Lin Zhiqin…”

In the lounge, Lu Yuan routinely took off his mask and changed his clothes.

Then, he quietly slipped out through the back door of the lounge.

The preparation area on the second basement level was now much busier than before. While Lu Yuan was considered strong among ordinary people, in this place filled with muscle-bound individuals, he was quite inconspicuous.

Carrying his backpack, he took the elevator up to the first-floor hall.

As he walked out, he pulled up his professional panel to check his progress.

[…Spirit Crane Body lv2 (182/200)]

With three to five matches a day, using his opponents’ punches to advance his body training, Lu Yuan’s Spirit Crane Body was progressing rapidly and was about to break through to level 3.

Moreover, he could clearly feel his flesh becoming more and more firm.

The potential of his 16 constitution points was being gradually unlocked.

His whole body felt like a piece of iron being forged, becoming more refined bit by bit.

When he lay in bed at night, an inadvertent turn would make his body emit creaking sounds, like a tightly wound clock mechanism.

He had already mastered the sixtieth movement of the Spirit Crane Body.

His body was rapidly becoming stronger!

Lu Yuan walked out of Mosa’s entrance and checked the time, realizing it was already past nine in the evening.

Two tattooed men stood chatting not far away. When they saw him come out, they immediately stopped talking and stared at him.

Lu Yuan couldn’t be bothered with them and quickly walked to the street.

Yesterday, when no one was home, he had used the kitchen knife to chop at his arm twice.

The sharp blade hit his arm and was immediately deflected by his tough skin and underlying muscles. Without deliberate force, it couldn’t break through at all.

Lu Yuan finally understood the principle of being invulnerable to blades and bullets—

High intensity and high-density skin and muscles, combined with advanced force-dissipating techniques!

“For martial artists like Lin Zhiqin and Qin Feng, blocking ordinary bullets shouldn’t be a problem. But against high-tech attacks from cyborgs like Zhou Ling…”

Lu Yuan walked under the lit street lamps, thinking silently, “There’s still a long way to go.”

Lu Yuan had conducted experiments in his Consciousness Space. Even though his constitution points were now at 16 and his body training showed some results, when hit by the energy beam from Zhou Ling’s weapon, the flesh at the impact site still disintegrated instantly.

“So, the Crane Style’s body training approach isn’t without merit: focusing on attack and agility, aiming to take down the opponent before their attacks land…”

However,

“What if it’s a wide-range attack? Like a Mushroom Cloud?”

“So, adding defense is still necessary. Unlike typical pure martial artists, I also wield the extraordinary power of death energy. My path is filled with too many unknown possibilities!”

As Lu Yuan walked out of the street, he gradually saw cars on the road.

He planned to walk home. After several fights tonight, his panel had accumulated a lot of prompt information, which he hadn’t finished reviewing yet.

“The professional experience for [martial artist] is almost halfway…”

“Hmm?”

Lu Yuan suddenly noticed that his basic grappling skill under the [martial artist] panel had reached max level, lv5.

Lately, he had intentionally used finger and palm techniques in battles to gain experience points for basic finger techniques and basic palm techniques, hoping for A Moment of Inspiration to recreate Qin Feng’s killer move.

Unexpectedly, while the basic finger techniques and basic palm techniques hadn’t maxed out, basic grappling had reached max level first.

This also rewarded him with one attribute point.

“15, 14, 16, 14…”

Lu Yuan looked at the values of his Four Basic Attributes and pondered how to allocate this attribute point.

He ruled out strength and constitution points for now, focusing on whether to add it to agility points or intelligence points.

After careful consideration, Lu Yuan decided to add it to intelligence points.

With Spirit Crane Body about to break through, agility points could soon be increased again. Intelligence points, however, could mainly be improved through attribute points, and increasing them could also enhance his success rate in comprehending Qin Feng’s killer move.

“Buzz—”

One attribute point was added to intelligence points, raising it from 14 to 15.

A splitting headache followed as expected.

Lu Yuan grunted in pain, quickly grabbing the nearby streetlight pole for support.

In the waves of searing pain, a torrent of images flooded Lu Yuan’s mind.

Spirit cranes, crows, the sky, a full moon…

These fragmented images flickered madly between the visions of the Spirit Crane Technique and the Crow Language dreamscape.

Gradually, they even seemed to start piecing together.

Lu Yuan could barely tell if it was a crow soaring through the sky or a spirit crane flapping its wings under the full moon…

And then,

It abruptly stopped.

“Huff, huff.”

Lu Yuan gasped for breath, sweat beading on his forehead, face, and back.

It took him a while to gradually recover from the aftershocks of the pain.

Releasing his grip, he saw a clear handprint on the hollow steel streetlight pole.

Lu Yuan felt an extraordinary clarity in his mind, his thought process greatly accelerated.

Many issues and problems that he previously couldn’t understand or figure out suddenly became clear.

“My Mental Power has increased a lot…”

Lu Yuan looked up and saw the crescent moon hanging high in the night sky.

He thought for a moment and tried to extend his Mental Power slowly towards the moon.

At that moment,

Suddenly, a large flock of crows flew past the crescent moon.

Lu Yuan’s mind was inexplicably stirred. His lv2 [Crow Language] skill activated, and he instinctively “pulled” a few crows down.