"I knew that old woman's account was unreliable. You people from Falling God Peak going out to kill those of divine nature could not possibly be because of some prophecy from a Heavenly Mechanism Elder."
Li Musheng shook his head, and the Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple immediately nodded reflexively.
He had already learned the lesson earlier that if he was even slightly slow to respond, the other party would activate the Life and Death Talisman, leaving him in agony that made life feel worse than death.
At that point Li Musheng waved a hand, saying, "Stop spacing out. Go ahead and send the signal for help."
At those words, the young man's body convulsed briefly, then he immediately reached into his robe, produced a jade tube, and drove his True Qi through it, sending a sky-reaching golden flame bursting upward.
The golden flame shot into the sky above Hundred Refinements City, then erupted with a blindingly brilliant light, several times more conspicuous than the signal the Hundred Refinements Peak Chief Elder had sent earlier.
"Falling God Peak is certainly a major sect. One after another, too afraid of death to face things directly. These distress signals are practically flares now."
Li Musheng looked up at the night sky blazing as brightly as day and clicked his tongue.
The Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple bowed his head, and the face that had been ashen white was now filled with dark malice and bitter hatred.
And this was his only remaining opportunity.
Li Musheng had subjected him to torments beyond endurance earlier, and he had registered every single moment without exception. When the grandmaster and the various honored martial uncles arrived, he would repay every last bit of suffering he had endured today back to that person a hundred times, a thousand times over.
For now all he needed to do was swallow his humiliation, satisfy every one of the other party's demands, and avoid suffering the inhuman torment of the Life and Death Talisman.
Beyond that, he was certain in his heart that with his innate divine ability protecting him, the other party could only inflict pain to torment him. Within a short time, there was simply no way to take his life.
At that point Li Musheng watched the signal in the sky slowly fade, then withdrew his gaze and looked at the Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple before him.
"All right. If you have nothing else of value to offer, it is time to move on."
Li Musheng said this with a calm expression.
The hidden secret of Falling God Peak, one of the four great martial world sects, had its roots in their founding patriarch.
The patriarch who had built such a vast sect from nothing was in truth both a person of divine nature himself and an extraordinary martial genius beyond the age he lived in.
According to the grandmaster's head disciple before him, those of his kind were one in ten thousand, capable of simultaneously pursuing both the divine and martial paths.
In what was called Dual Cultivation of Divine and Martial, the martial path side went without saying and they naturally had access to top-tier martial arts. But if they wished to strengthen their divine power, they needed to do one specific thing, which was to consume the blood of divine nature.
The blood of divine nature naturally came from those who possessed innate divine gifts, and this was the true reason why Falling God Peak had been secretly slaughtering villages and townships to target those of divine nature.
Their true purpose was not to exterminate those of divine nature, but to obtain the blood of divine nature. The old woman from before had clearly been wrong on this point, or had perhaps been deliberately lying.
This matter also tied into another important hidden secret of Falling God Peak.
The blood of divine nature within those of divine nature carried an extraordinarily strong resistance, and could almost not be absorbed by ordinary people or even by other persons of divine nature.
But Falling God Peak possessed a singular and highly unique divine art that allowed one to consume the blood of divine nature and make it one's own. This was the opportunity their founding patriarch had obtained before making his name, and the foundation upon which Falling God Peak had been built ever since.
Since those of divine nature were rare to begin with, and this divine art was extremely difficult to cultivate, only a handful of the very top figures within all of Falling God Peak could practice it. Among these was, naturally, every successive grandmaster of Falling God Peak.
The reason this Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple possessed such formidable innate divine gifts at such a young age was that he had killed many of those of divine nature and absorbed vast quantities of their blood.
At that point the Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple composed his expression, lifted his head, and looked at Li Musheng, asking, "I have carried out every one of your demands and not offered even a trace of resistance from beginning to end. And even so you still intend to kill me?"
Hearing this, Li Musheng looked at him and asked instead, "You said earlier that I could not possibly kill you. Do you still feel that way now?"
At those words, the Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple looked at Li Musheng without speaking.
Seeing this, Li Musheng gave a nod.
In the next instant, he released the young man from all restraint entirely, then extended a finger and pointed it toward the center of his brow.
The young man narrowed his eyes slightly. In an instant the True Qi of heaven and earth all around him erupted into violent turbulence, and a strange power began to flow through his entire body, making his being become indistinct and ephemeral.
Then a blood hole passing clean through from front to back appeared at the young man's right chest.
The young man looked down at it, and the corner of his mouth curved just barely perceptibly.
But very quickly his expression changed sharply, and he urgently reached a hand toward the center of his own brow.
The flesh at the center of his brow was caving inward, and a finger-width pit had formed and was extending rapidly deeper into his skull.
At the same time, one, two, three, then countless finger holes, passing front to back, appeared across the young man's abdomen, arms, thighs, and every other part of his body.
Yet no matter how the divine power within the young man surged, no matter how indistinct and ephemeral his body became to transfer the damage he was receiving, the blood hole at the center of his brow kept deepening, and eventually pierced clean through his entire skull, leaving a front-to-back blood hole in his forehead.
The Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple's eyes widened, and an expression of utter disbelief crossed his face as the life within him drained away at terrifying speed.
His entire body, in no more than the blink of an eye, had become something resembling a human sieve, covered from end to end in the countless blood holes left behind by transferred damage.
Li Musheng withdrew his finger and looked at the body, riddled like a honeycomb, as it fell into the street furrow below. He shook his head, "And you could not even endure that many transfers of damage? For someone who has absorbed so much blood of divine nature, still this weak."
He then raised a hand toward the young man's body below, and threads of refined blood glowing with a faint clear radiance rose up from the countless holes in the body and drifted upward toward the roof of the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion.
Li Musheng's mind stirred, and he activated the Divine Consumption Art he had obtained from the young man's own account.
In the next instant, dark red blood-colored lines appeared across his palm.
The blood-colored lines reached outward and connected with the heaven and earth around him, pulsing rapidly as though alive, and at great speed began spreading across Li Musheng's body.
But Li Musheng only looked at his own hand once, and those blood-colored lines surfacing through his flesh and skin were immediately driven back under a formless pulse of his aura, until they showed only across a palm-sized area in the center of his hand.
The threads of refined blood glowing with clear radiance were then absorbed and consumed by the blood-colored lines at the center of his palm.
According to what the Falling God Peak grandmaster's head disciple had told him, even ordinary people who managed to cultivate the Divine Consumption Art could not absorb the blood of divine nature and put it to use for themselves.
Li Musheng, however, was not concerned. Even if he was not one of those of divine nature, he would try forcing the issue with sheer strength and see what came of it.
The blood of divine nature within the young man's body was drawn in through the Divine Consumption Art and concentrated in the center of his palm.
Li Musheng attempted to draw it into himself, but the unusual power contained within it resisted fiercely, as though the two were fire and water.
Even with his own aura forcing the merger, all he could manage in the end was to make the blood of divine nature break apart and dissipate.
"Frustrating. Brute force does not seem to work here."
Li Musheng furrowed his brow, and was about to give up on the experiment of absorbing the blood of divine nature.
But then a thought suddenly struck him, and his mind went to the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture, which was very nearly ready for its final refinements.
"Though the power contained in those of divine nature is entirely different from the Qilin Blood and the Azure Dragon True Qi, the cultivation art I have refined may not necessarily be unable to absorb other differing forms of power."
Li Musheng turned this over in his mind for a moment, then simply activated both the Divine Consumption Art and the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture simultaneously, combining the two in one, and pressed hard to absorb and draw in the blood of divine nature concentrated in the center of his palm.
A short while later, Li Musheng furrowed his brow slightly. He found that while the results were minimal, there was genuinely some small effect.
Yet this also prompted a sudden thought in his mind.
Whether it was the Qilin Blood, the Azure Dragon True Qi, or the Vermilion Bird Bone, all of these things connected to so-called ancient divine and auspicious beasts were existences that stood entirely outside the martial path.
They appeared on the surface to be completely different from the power contained within those of divine nature, who possessed uniquely human characteristics. Yet behind it all, there seemed to be a faint and elusive thread of connection between them.
This led Li Musheng to begin wondering where the source of all these powers lay.
If this world contained no path of transcendence through the martial arts, was there perhaps some other path of transcendence?
Or was the only path to martial transcendence the endless fusion and evolution of all these differing forms of power?