The Modern Martial Immortal

The man’s cervical vertebrae shattered, and his neck nerves snapped. Even with the enhanced physique granted by his daemonification, life was draining rapidly from his body. Yet, when Yaoguang closed to within two meters, he still burst forward and struck with full force, pouncing ahead and stomping down on the man’s skull.

The sound of bone cracking and collapsing rang sharply in the alley.

Yaoguang exhaled a breath laced with the smell of blood before finally allowing himself to relax. A moment later, he wrenched the Chengying Sword free.

He still did not know what daemons truly were, but as long as they lived in human form, they possessed the same vital points humans did. An injury that nearly severed the neck was something no one could survive, and with the skull now crushed, survival was impossible.

Even so, the fact that this daemon had wielded a psychic-will attack and was stronger than anything he had faced made him wary, so he spent extra effort severing the head entirely.

”Young Master Yaoguang...” Lei Yun’s worried voice sounded from the mouth of the alley.

”I’m fine,” Yaoguang replied calmly. Since there was a corpse to handle and he had no license, he needed her to drive him back to Deyue Tower.

”Call Lin Xiaowei and tell her to come over,” he instructed Lei Yun.

”Yes.” Relieved by his steady tone, Lei Yun quietly exhaled.

Yaoguang then looked over the man’s attire. He was a successful elite, complete with a luxury car and a watch. Following the Merchant branch’s instinct for profit, he removed the watch and conducted a quick search of the body.

He quickly found something unexpected: a black bead roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. Dark yet translucent, it seemed capable of drawing a person’s psychic mind into it. The moment he looked at it, he felt his thoughts drift, and a scene appeared in his mind. It was the man he had just killed, answering a call; on the other end of the line, an elderly voice ordered him to quietly eliminate anyone who was still investigating the Yulong International incident.

Startled, Yaoguang immediately focused.

”This is...” He stared at the bead in surprise, then directed his perception toward his Merchant branch. As expected, that branch had absorbed a massive amount of nutrients, surpassing even the 300 million he had received earlier.

This bead was a treasured artifact worth several billion!

The only reason the nutrient surge had not become absurdly large was that the ”labor costs” of the ”deal” had been too high. His injuries, as well as the time lost because of them, were included in the final cost.

At the same time as the Merchant branch underwent that tremendous growth spurt, a fourth branch appeared on the tree. Yaoguang sensed it carefully.

[Refiner]

His expression shifted slightly. ”So this world isn’t technological at all, but a cultivation world? An urban cultivation world?”

However, after investigating the first-tier abilities of the Refiner profession, he understood at once.

This profession is perfect for someone destined to tighten screws in a factory. The thought surfaced automatically, but he pushed it aside just as quickly. With the Su family’s tens of billions waiting for him to inherit, why would he ever tighten screws?

Still, the Refiner profession gained experience by producing, assembling, and operating precision instruments. The experience earned depended on precision, practicality, influence, and value.

”So to raise this profession’s experience, I need to become the king of the screw-tightening world, open my own factory, and tighten screws freely?” Yaoguang shook his head.

He looked again at the bead in his hand. He recalled the man’s final words, ”Once I beat you to death, I will naturally find the information I want.”

A treasure capable of extracting a dead person’s lingering memories? Has the bead activated the Refiner profession? But why could I only see that little? Is my psyche too weak, or is the enemy’s psyche too strong? Or does this treasure require specific methods or techniques to be used properly? Whatever the reason, this makes no sense...

”Interesting.” Yaoguang put the treasured bead away.

This time, both the Daemon Hunter branch and the Merchant branch had gained substantial experience. He intended to complete the Dao Fruit of the martial paragon tier before anything else, so that he could glimpse the fifth tier’s psychic will. Once his Martial Dao reached the fifth tier, he would find time to level up the Refiner profession as well. He wanted to see whether he could eventually forge a life-bound refined artifact or even a life-bound immortal sword.

With that thought, a large portion of his nutrients flowed directly into the Martial Dao branch. Already at 85%, the branch grew quickly, soon flowering and bearing fruit before continuing upward toward the fifth tier.

Yaoguang quietly absorbed the flood of insights. An almost overwhelming amount of information regarding blood renewal and marrow cleansing appeared in his mind. The accumulated experience was so rich that he could now judge a person’s qi and blood circulation with a glance, just based on their physical performance.

If he were to guide a grandmaster who had tempered their physique to the human limit while they attempted a breakthrough, while he would not guarantee absolute success, he was confident that the grandmaster would succeed eight or nine times out of ten.

I’ve used up all the experience points, broken through to the fifth tier, and pushed the progress to fifteen percent. That’s good.

At this stage, cultivation involved far more than nurturing the psyche. It also included applying it. These included visualization, hypnosis, perception, and manipulation. Every living being was born with a psyche. To control the psychic mind was to control the person.

15% progress was not enough to display the full strength of a fifth-tier cultivator, but the various uses of the psyche already made one thing very clear. For someone in this realm, ordinary beings were far too fragile.

If he succeeded in nurturing the psyche, he could easily hypnotize someone and make them jump off a building to their death. By extension, controlling the mind of someone in charge of a nuclear base could just as easily result in the launch of a nuclear missile.

Of course, people with sufficiently strong wills could resist hypnosis. Yet as cultivators ascended to the sixth and seventh tiers, even if their physical power grew no further, mastery over the psyche alone would allow them to manipulate high-ranking military commanders, letting them fire nuclear weapons at each other’s nations and wipe the world out.

”Humans are the foundation,” Yaoguang murmured. No matter how powerful a weapon was, it still had to be operated by a person. And compared to cultivators who wielded the power of the psyche, ordinary people were simply too weak.

The brilliance of modern civilization was nothing more than flowers in a mirror or the moon reflected on water. In front of someone with psychic-will realm strength, it could be destroyed effortlessly.

”Fortunately, the Dao Fruit I gained this time is designed precisely for dealing with this.” He focused on the Dao Fruit produced by the fourth tier: Great Solar Psyche-Suppressing Diagram.

He could visualize the great sun, letting its blazing radiance burn all things and guard the psyche.

It was specifically used to resist psychic-will attacks and psychic mind erosion. If he had possessed the Great Solar Psyche-Suppressing Diagram earlier, then when the daemon used its psychic-will strike, he would not only have avoided being stunned but could also have burned the opponent’s psyche with the visualized great sun, causing heavy damage.

In battles fought on the level of psychic minds, home-field advantage was overwhelming. Without absolute superiority, a single misstep in a psychic-will clash could rebound and injure the attacker.

Once I finish nurturing the psyche, I can rely on that bead. The next time I kill a daemon, I should be able to obtain clearer memories and figure out how powerful the faction behind them truly is. Yaoguang thought.

Uncovering the truth was no longer a distant goal.

”Over here.” While Yaoguang digested the gains of this battle, several voices drifted over from the distance, followed by multiple footsteps.

When he stood and looked toward the entrance of the alley, he saw not only Lei Yun and Lin Xiaowei but also Ye Yuhe and Xia Wuyuan, whose qi and blood were unsteady, showing he had been gravely injured.

Seeing him, Yaoguang was surprised, but after some thought, it made sense. Xia Wuyuan clearly had a stomach full of questions. Lin Xiaowei happened to be with Ye Yuhe, and he must have overheard Lei Yun’s phone call, so following them here was not strange at all.

”This is...” Lin Xiaowei and Ye Yuhe immediately noticed the headless corpse lying on the ground.

”Young Master Yaoguang, are you alright?” Lei Yun asked quickly.

”No need to worry. I’m fine,” Yaoguang answered.

Even though the daemon traits had withdrawn from the body upon death, Xia Wuyuan still grasped the key point at once. ”You had to cut off the head?”

Yaoguang glanced at him, understanding what he meant. ”They’re tougher than humans, but they have the same vital points.”

Xia Wuyuan drew in a slow breath and said in a deep voice, ”Just what are these... people?”

”I’m waiting for you to investigate that,” Yaoguang said, looking straight at him. ”You look rather miserable.”

”I thought he was only at martial master level,” Xia Wuyuan admitted reluctantly, ”but when we actually fought, his strength wasn’t below mine at all—No! Strictly speaking, his Martial Dao was stronger than mine.”

”Then how did you...” Yaoguang looked at him.

Xia Wuyuan took out a firearm slightly larger than a standard pistol. ”A gift from the third prince when I won the fourteenth National Martial Dao Tournament. The Black Blade, a 12.7 caliber gun with special rounds, whose initial velocity reaches 1130 meters per second.”

Clearly, the Peerless Martial Artist was not only skilled in the Martial Dao but also highly proficient with firearms.

Yaoguang nodded. The same weapon could display vastly different levels of lethality depending on the person who used it.

”This is...” At that moment, Ye Yuhe’s gaze fell on several footprints near the corpse. The stone-paved ground had been deeply indented, and the wall where the prints led was covered in spiderweb-like cracks.

The destructive force was the same as the scene left behind when Xia Li died. What had once been a suspicion now stood fully confirmed.

Ye Yuhe looked at Yaoguang in shock. It was hard to believe that someone nearly a full generation younger than her senior brother possessed such terrifying power.

”These... were left by Young Master Yaoguang?” Lei Yun stared at the shattered ground, then at Yaoguang’s slightly damaged shoes, her eyes filled with disbelief.

What kind of strength does one need to cause such destruction? Martial master?! Or grandmaster?! She pondered in shock.