’So there’s another secret passage on this mountain?’
Lin Yan expanded his Perception to its maximum and began to search the entire village.
A quarter of an hour later, Lin Yan arrived at the village’s main hall.
The village’s main hall was built in the very back, set against the mountain wall. It was in the most conspicuous location, a place that seemed impossible for hiding anyone. But the more impossible a place seemed, the more likely it was that someone was hiding there.
This wasn’t from Lin Yan’s own experience, but rather a conclusion he’d drawn from the countless books he had read in his previous life.
After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Lin Yan’s gaze landed on a stone wall in the back courtyard. This wall looked no different from the surrounding ones—a grayish-white mountain rock with a rough texture, its cracks filled with fine grains of sand.
But when Lin Yan’s gaze fell upon the bottom of the stone wall, it stopped.
There was an extremely fine crack there, but it was concealed by moss. If his five senses weren’t far superior to an ordinary person’s, he would have never noticed it.
’A secret passage!’
The corners of Lin Yan’s mouth lifted slightly. He reached out and fumbled along the stone wall. After a moment, his fingers paused, and he pressed down hard.
The creaking sound of a mechanism echoed as Lin Yan retreated ten feet, watching the moss-covered crack slowly widen.
When the opening was just large enough for a person to enter, a flash of a saber sliced out from the darkness.
It was fast, ruthless, and aimed straight for Lin Yan’s throat.
The Old Village Chief made no sound, no probing attack. He poured all his strength into this one strike. The Qi Blood of a peak Blood Exchange First Transformation cultivator infused the saber, and Blood Gang swirled on the blade, carving a dark red streak through the darkness.
Lin Yan was already prepared. His expression remained unchanged. As the saber flash struck, the Abyssal Sword swept up from below. The Sword Gang and Saber Gang collided with a muffled explosion.
The Old Village Chief’s long saber snapped in two. The broken blade flew off and embedded itself in the stone wall. At the same time, the terrifying Sword Gang did not dissipate. After piercing through the saber, it shot directly into the Old Village Chief’s chest.
PFFT!
The Old Village Chief’s body swayed, then collapsed with a THUD.
From the stone door opening to the Old Village Chief’s collapse, only two breaths of time had passed.
Having dealt with the Old Village Chief, Lin Yan stood at the stone entrance without going in. Instead, he used his Perception to scan the situation inside. Only after a few breaths did he step through.
The stone cave was huge!
Beyond a narrow, ten-foot-long passage was a stone chamber about a hundred feet across. A man in his thirties was currently gripping a long saber, glaring viciously at Lin Yan. However, his trembling hands clearly betrayed his inner terror.
However, Lin Yan paid the man no mind. His gaze fell upon the mountain wall at the very back. Within that section of wall were several veins of Blood Essence, which were currently seeping out a dense Qi Blood.
This Qi Blood aura had no metallic scent of blood. It was more like the Qi Blood of some ancient creature that had not dissipated over countless years, solidified within the stone and radiating a heart-pounding pressure.
This aura... He had felt something similar when absorbing the energy of a True Blood Stone. It was just that the energy from the True Blood Stone was clearly diluted compared to the aura emanating from this stone wall.
"If you spare me, I’ll tell you the origin of this stone wall."
Tong Jun, who stood to the side, recalled his father’s earlier instructions: if he failed to ambush and kill the intruder, Tong Jun was to use the secret of this stone wall to bargain for his life.
Lin Yan looked at him and pondered for a few breaths. "Fine."
Hearing Lin Yan’s reply, Tong Jun breathed a sigh of relief but remained uneasy, afraid the man would go back on his word. "Do you dare to swear an oath?"
"I, Zhuang Zheng, swear that if you tell me the secret of the stone wall, I, Zhuang Zheng, will absolutely not kill you."
Lin Yan held up the index and middle fingers of his right hand together, pointing them to the heavens as he swore.
"I trust that a Powerhouse of the Blood Exchange Realm like yourself will not go back on your word. And if you let me go, I will also tell you about a large sum of silver my father transferred to another county town."
Now that Lin Yan had sworn the oath, Tong Jun finally relaxed completely. He glanced at the stone wall and began to speak slowly, "The reason our Tong Family has stayed at Eagle Beak Cliff all these years is because of this stone wall... This story begins with my grandfather..."
Sixty years ago, Tong Jun’s grandfather, a Third-Time Skin Smoothing Martial Artist, came to Eagle Beak Cliff seeking a Treasure Medicine to break through to the Fourth-Time of Skin Smoothing. After searching the entire area and finding nothing, he was about to leave in disappointment. But as he neared this mountain wall, he discovered that the Qi Blood in his body had begun to circulate uncontrollably.
Sensing something unusual, Tong Jun’s grandfather spent a month excavating the mountain wall. He eventually uncovered this natural stone cave and saw, deep inside, the stone wall with veins of Blood Essence.
The Qi Blood radiating from the Blood Essence was incredibly strong—so strong that Tong Jun’s grandfather didn’t dare approach it. And yet, just by absorbing the Qi Blood emanating from the wall at a distance of thirty feet, he managed to break through to the Fourth-Time of Skin Smoothing.
This discovery made him ecstatic. To keep the secret hidden, he first hired some stonemasons to build a mechanism to conceal the cave, then constructed the village, and finally killed the stonemasons to silence them.
After that, Tong Jun’s grandfather claimed the mountain for himself and began to build his power. Later, Tong Jun’s father did some dirty work for a certain powerful family in Deng State Prefecture and obtained their Blood Exchange Realm Technique. Ultimately, however, it was also thanks to this stone wall that he was able to break through to the Blood Exchange Realm.
Originally, Tong Jun’s father had planned to break through to the Blood Exchange Realm, take the stone wall with him, and shed the Tong Family’s identity as mountain bandits. With this wall, he believed he could guarantee the Tong Family hundreds of years of glory.
But what he didn’t expect was that even after reaching the Blood Exchange Realm, he could only get within ten feet of the wall. Any closer, and the terrifying Qi Blood would throw his own into chaos. He was forced to abandon his original plan and continue to occupy Eagle Beak Cliff.

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