Chapter 77

The morning wind blew in the harbor, the sails fluttering.

But there were always a few wisps that weren't satisfied with the swaying of the sails, trying to lift the sea surface, making the blue waves ripple. But the sea was too deep, the wind passed powerlessly, and even if not careful, it would be swallowed amidst the ups and downs of the sea waves.

Just like a fish that didn't know its own strength, provoking an opponent it shouldn't have provoked.

The morning light was calmer than the wind, without so many desires, quietly spilling onto boat after boat, and also landing on Xu Qing, who was walking back with a calm face.

Whether killing people or killing fish, to Xu Qing, from the moment the other party revealed murderous intent toward him, the outcome was already destined.

He wanted to live, so any existence that threatened his life safety touched his red line.

He knew that between life and life, when alive, they were different.

The teacher in the slums had once mocked this kind of difference. He told the children, including Xu Qing, that if it were a prosperous age, the rulers would still use a layer of fig leaf to cover it up, but in chaotic times, this was already a deeply rooted cognition for everyone.

But Xu Qing had walked all the way here, and he also knew that this world, to some extent, was fair.

Because after death, it actually removed everything, and the final outcome was one direction.

Dying in an alley where no one knew, and dying in a pool of wine piled with gems, there was no difference.

"The Second Highness was right, it was indeed very fishy." Xu Qing withdrew his gaze toward the sunrise, walked into the cabin, washed his body, and until there was no fishy smell, he lay down.

Today was not a day for duty, so he didn't need to go to the Homicide Department for roll call. At this moment, his mood had a kind of comfort of having one less thorn. He felt he could sleep well.

But before sleeping, Xu Qing sat cross-legged, took out the bamboo slip, crossed out the four words "Mermaid youth," and looked at the Jin Gang Sect Ancestor ranked first, murderous intent rising deep in his eyes.

"Soon..."

Muttering, Xu Qing took out the storage bag that the Mermaid youth had never had the chance to open.

He was very curious about what items were packed inside.

So after weighing it in his hand, Xu Qing narrowed his eyes and pondered for a while. His internal spiritual energy erupted instantly, surging into the storage bag. There wasn't the difficulty he imagined; after the owner died, the mark on the storage bag had actually long since dissipated.

This made Xu Qing's spiritual energy surge in smoothly, viewing the items inside.

After a while, Xu Qing couldn't help but suck in a breath.

"So wealthy?" Xu Qing muttered. Although there were only a hundred or so spirit stones in this storage bag, there were a full twelve spirit tickets with the Sixth Peak's mark.

Each one was one hundred spirit stones.

Such a sum made Xu Qing's heart accelerate. After all, this was wealth he had never possessed before.

But he understood that for the sake of insurance, he couldn't go to exchange these spirit tickets in the short term.

So after calming down, Xu Qing checked other items. Besides spirit stones, there were three or five heavy treasures in the storage bag. And as he waved his right hand, two talisman treasures also appeared in front of him.

One yellow, one blue.

The appearance of these two talisman papers emitted fluctuations that made Xu Qing's heart tremble, and looking at the marks on them, they were actually both eight or nine tenths new, clearly not having been used many times.

Xu Qing felt them and confirmed that these two talisman treasures, the blue one was for protection, and the yellow one was for attack.

"If that fish had opened the storage bag..." Xu Qing narrowed his eyes. He could imagine that if such a situation had really occurred, although he could still kill, wanting to finish the battle quickly would have cost a huge price.

"So the use of the shadow can actually be even richer." Xu Qing lowered his head and scanned his own shadow, a dark glint flashing deep in his eyes. In his mind surfaced the scene where the shadow seemed to have come alive for an instant when it wrapped around the Mermaid youth.

"Was it an illusion?" Xu Qing narrowed his eyes, looked at the shadow deeply, raised his hand to touch the place on his chest where the purple crystal was embedded, and a cold glint flashed in his eyes. He had felt it many times and knew that the purple crystal had a restraining and suppressing effect on the shadow.

At this moment, regardless of whether it was alive, Xu Qing felt that he should suppress it and try.

Thus, he tried to surge his internal spiritual energy into the purple crystal. The process was somewhat raw, and Xu Qing tried several times before succeeding. And at the moment of success, his whole body shone with purple light, forming a suppressing force, roaring toward the shadow on the ground.

The shadow twisted instantly and faded a bit.

Xu Qing looked at it carefully and was satisfied in his heart.

He didn't want to rack his brains to guess whether the other party was alive. Even if his guess was wrong and the shadow didn't have the possibility of activation, at most it would just be wasting some spiritual energy. Thus, he operated it several more times, suppressing it continuously until he stopped.

Finally, his gaze turned inward, and as if nothing had happened, he looked up and put away the two talisman treasures in front of him.

Afterward, he checked the storage bag again and finally took out two items. The former was a sea chart, which was marked very detailedly, far more comprehensive than the standard sea chart of the Seventh Peak disciples.

It even marked the location of Mermaid Island. After Xu Qing checked it, he felt that the value of this item was no less than the talisman treasures.

After all, for disciples cultivating by the sea, the more comprehensive the sea chart, the smaller the risk, and the greater the harvest.

Information, many times, possessed even greater value than spirit stones.

And the last item, the degree of his attention even surpassed the talisman treasures, because this item... he had seen it, and he also had one.

That was a palm-sized metal block, looking like a box, but not a box.

Looking at the metal block in front of him, Xu Qing opened his own storage bag and also took one out.

His metal block was obtained from Ma Si in the scavenger camp. Later, Fatty Shan also, due to greed for this item, intentionally gave Xu Qing a chance to take action, but drank hatred.

After placing these two metal blocks together now, Xu Qing observed carefully and found that no matter how he looked at them, they were exactly the same.

"What exactly is this?" Xu Qing was very curious in his heart, his eyes slowly narrowing.

During these days, he had been to various shops in the harbor and hadn't seen this kind of item. But whether it was Fatty Shan's greed back then or the Mermaid youth's collection in his storage bag now, it all showed that this metal block wasn't as ordinary as it looked on the surface.

"I need to find an opportunity to explore the function of this item." Xu Qing pondered, put everything away, looked at the sky outside, lay on the small bed, and closed his eyes to rest.

The rest time wasn't too long. Two hours later, when the afternoon passed, Xu Qing opened his eyes, stretched, his spirit was very good, and his body state was also quite full.

Most importantly, after experiencing the action of last night and the relaxation of today, he had a strong feeling that his Sea-Mountain Technique... was already close to breaking through.

"The seventh layer is already the Great Circle, what will happen after the eighth layer... I don't know if I will have the combat strength to kill the Jin Gang Sect Ancestor at that time." A look of anticipation appeared in his eyes. He felt that his Sea-Mountain Technique had taken a very long time from the seventh layer to the eighth layer.

It seemed the Sea-Mountain Technique had always been brewing some kind of transformation, until today, he felt the aura of wanting to break through.

Thus, Xu Qing sat cross-legged, opened the magic boat's spirit-gathering formation, took out spirit stones to replace them, closed his eyes, and began to cultivate.

Time passed. While he was immersed in cultivation, the time of an afternoon slowly passed. Until the moment night fell, Xu Qing, who was sitting cross-legged, suddenly shook his body, and his whole body's flesh and blood tightened abruptly at this moment, as if shrinking.

Within his body, there was even the sound of bones growing, and blood vessels bulged instantly, spreading over his refined whole body, like python snakes spreading, looking shocking at the same time, and also having a majestic blood-Qi power, within his body, with every heartbeat, constantly flourishing.

With every beat, his Qi and blood grew stronger. As the gradually thickening Qi and blood power gathered continuously around Xu Qing, the phantom of the ghost king above his head also manifested. It let out a silent roar toward the sky, its expression twisted, as if enduring immense tempering, as if undergoing a transformation!

Ordinary people cultivating the Sea-Mountain Technique would have the Kui Shadow fully mature after reaching the Great Circle of Body Tempering, but Xu Qing's Sea-Mountain Technique had the Kui Shadow mature in advance when it was at the seventh layer. Afterward, he cultivated according to the technique, but he himself didn't know what would happen, and didn't know what kind of changes the eighth layer of the Sea-Mountain Technique would have after breaking through.

But he could feel that during this period in the Seven Blood Eyes, as he cultivated the Sea-Mountain Technique, his physical body strength was increasing, so he also wanted to see what would happen after this increase reached the extreme.

After all, the cultivation of body tempering was the accumulation of strength, speed, and recovery.

In reality, even the creator of the Sea-Mountain Technique probably never thought that someone would be like Xu Qing, maturing in advance, so even this person didn't know.

After all, the Sea-Mountain Technique was a low-level technique prepared for those with foreign substances in their bodies. Never had anyone been like Xu Qing, cultivating the Sea-Mountain Technique without any foreign substances in their body.

And at this moment, as time passed, there were more and more blue veins on Xu Qing's body, and his skin seemed to have cracks appearing inch by inch. A large amount of fresh blood overflowed from within, and even thicker blood-Qi seemed to want to burst his body!

It was as if Xu Qing's body had become a clay pot, and the blood-Qi inside erupted, looking like it was about to shatter.

But just at this moment, purple light bloomed in advance for the first time in Xu Qing's cultivation, spreading from his chest, permeating his whole body, repairing rapidly, and at the same time, compressing with all its might.

While making his body even more refined, intense and indescribable pain turned into rumbling in Xu Qing's body and mind.

His bones were shattering, his flesh and blood were collapsing, his whole body seemed unable to support it, but the purple crystal's light constantly repaired it under this coverage.

Cycle after cycle, the blood-Qi was stronger. Even the boat's formation was difficult to cover, causing a lot to spread out. Looking from afar, Xu Qing's magic boat seemed to have been dyed blood-red.

Thick blood-Qi constantly spread toward all directions, also attracting the attention of the Seventy-Ninth Harbor disciples. One by one, they were horrified, and Xu Qing opened his blood-red eyes abruptly in the magic boat.

At the moment his eyes opened and closed, a heaven-shaking rumbling, containing the syllable of a word, exploded in Xu Qing's mind like a heavenly thunder. This heaven-opening and earth-splitting sound caused Xu Qing's whole body to shake wildly. The Kui Shadow above his head also let out an even more intense roar at this moment, its phantom body tearing apart directly, revealing... a newborn body!

A tall body, cyan all over, revealing a sense of violence, and even more carrying an incomparably weird feeling. All the skin that could be seen was withered and cracked, permeating cracks like dry land, a head of scattered withered hair draped over his shoulders, and a pair of red eyes carrying madness.

The mouth of fangs, and a black single horn on the head, lingering with arrays of lightning, all revealed its ferocity and cruelty. Roaring toward the sky, it seemed to want to tear open this sky covering the heads of all living beings.

As if two poles were converting, what appeared around it was no longer water vapor, but a black flame, burning all directions, as if it could burn everything.

To be precise, that wasn't fire, but a state of absorbing water vapor to the extreme, making all things wither!

"Ba!" Xu Qing revealed a sharp glint in his eyes, muttering in a low voice. This word was the syllable that had echoed in his mind just now, and it was also the blood-Qi shadow that appeared on its own after the Sea-Mountain Technique broke through its original level!

Surpassing Kui!

Xiao can move mountains, Kui can move seas, Ba burns all living things.

And at this moment, following Xu Qing's opening of his mouth, a power far more flourishing than before erupted in his body, spreading throughout his whole body.

Xu Qing looked up, stood up abruptly. Under his slender body, the refined physical body strength contained at this instant broke through the original shackles, reaching a realm that surpassed the Qi Condensation level!

The magic boat's barrier shattered at this moment, and even the cabin was the same, shattering quite a bit.

This caused the disciples in the Seventy-Ninth Harbor who were paying attention here to have their expressions change completely, their eyes widening, their hearts jumping, huge waves rising in their minds, all looking at Xu Qing here.

Xu Qing was silent. He also hadn't expected that his Sea-Mountain Technique breakthrough this time would have such a huge sound. Additionally... he could feel that his Sea-Containing Scripture was currently flowing in his body following the eruption of the Sea-Mountain Technique, as if it were also about to break through.

"Congratulations, Senior Brother Xu Qing!"

"Congratulations, Senior Brother!"

Amidst Xu Qing's silence, the disciples of the magic boats all around breathed rapidly, cupping their fists toward Xu Qing and speaking respectfully.

Respect was because of strength.

The title of Senior Brother was also the same.

Being able to cause such a commotion during cultivation, and even the barrier of a level-six magic boat shattered, one could imagine its formidable nature. Especially Xu Qing at this moment, in their eyes, the pressure emitted was so intense that it made them tremble intensely from body to heart!

That was a kind of pressure... from a strong person!

I cried, I actually reversed chapters 74 and 75.

Life is always full of accidents. I originally planned to go out and date Lu Chong this afternoon...

It seems I was born to code words. Just as I was thinking about relaxing, I was beaten back by my own operation... I could only tearfully reject the invitations of a group of young ladies.