Chapter 1: Galloping Thunder
The central region of the Warcraft Mountain Range was virtually untouched by human footprints year-round. Occasionally, seventh- and ninth-level magical beasts roamed here; only a ninth-level expert would have the courage to traverse the mountain range. This time, however, Linley had come to the central region and was heading north along the mountain range’s central axis. Such a feat would be considered insane even for a typical ninth-level expert.
Linley wore only tattered linen trousers, his upper body bare, and walked barefoot. Carrying the Black Heavy Sword on his back, he trudged step by step through this desolate land.
Bebe, perched on Linley’s shoulder, looked around alertly.
“Creak, creak—”
Linley stepped on the thick layer of fallen leaves, his expression calm. His bundle, the Violet Blood Soft Sword, the flat blade, clothes, and other belongings were all stored directly in the interspatial ring. Clayde’s interspatial ring, aside from containing a massive magic crystal card worth 2.2 billion gold coins, also held dozens of precious items, the least valuable of which was worth millions of gold coins. The millennia of accumulation by the Finley royal family was indeed terrifying.
But to Linley now,
Wealth was merely an external thing. What he truly valued was his own strength. Hadn’t the Dawson Chamber of Commerce offered to pay him 100 million gold coins just to join them? That was only because Linley had the potential to become a Saint-level expert. If they were truly inviting a Saint-level expert, the price would be even more astonishing. From this, it was clear that personal strength was paramount.
…
Although Linley traveled through the central region, he consciously avoided places where no magical beasts could be seen for dozens of miles. In the central region, an area spanning dozens of miles without a single beast likely indicated the territory of a Saint-level magical beast. Though confident, Linley had no desire to provoke a Saint-level beast.
Cutting through thorns and brambles, Linley’s pace was not fast.
“Everything starts from the basics.” Linley was very pragmatic. He carried the Black Heavy Sword every day. He repeatedly practiced basic movements like chopping, slashing, lifting, and thrusting, each time striving to maximize the attack’s power.
Linley didn’t practice mechanically.
Instead, he practiced thoughtfully, deducing a correct path of cultivation based on the sparse descriptions of his ancestors’ training from the books in his family’s inheritance.
The path of cultivation must never aim too high.
Early spring, midsummer, cool autumn, harsh winter. Regardless of the season, Linley always wore the tattered linen trousers, damaged from multiple dragon transformations, and remained bare-chested.
Linley discovered…
Walking barefoot allowed him to feel the pulse of the earth more clearly. With his feet on the ground, his heart became as steady as the earth itself. Using the Black Heavy Sword, he felt a sense of the earth’s heaviness.
With his upper body bare,
Feeling the wind brush against him, Linley felt as though he had become part of the wind itself—formless and free. His use of the Violet Blood Soft Sword became increasingly effortless.
Because of this,
Linley exuded both a heavy, steady presence and an ethereal, drifting quality. These two sensations were contradictory, yet they appeared in one person, natural and harmonious.
…
Heavy sword training was primary, soft sword training secondary, and occasionally he engaged in stone carving. At night, he meditated… In this way, Linley entered a special state of cultivation.
Sometimes, seeing a rushing waterfall in the mountain range, he would be inspired and train directly beneath it.
Seeing a pure river, he might swim in its waters.
Seeing a massive rock atop a peak, inspiration might strike, and he would climb to the summit to complete a stone carving. A single carving could take days and nights.
…
Following his heart.
Linley’s mind was closer to nature than ever before. In this cultivation, he completely lost track of time. He only felt his strength improving daily, each improvement filling him with genuine joy and emotion.
The path of cultivation was winding and long.
The journey was arduous, but the insights gained along the way were deeply moving.
…
Linley’s beard grew out, and his originally short hair gradually lengthened. His eyes, once tinged with killing intent, had become calm and natural after long exposure to nature.
Only occasionally, during training, did his gaze become terrifyingly sharp.
Linley’s temperament had been tempered by nature, becoming much more composed. Without Doehring Cowart’s guidance, he had no one to rely on. Naturally, Linley continued to grow and mature.
******
“Rumble~~~”
The nearly hundred-meter-tall waterfall crashed down from above, slamming heavily into the deep pool below, sending up countless splashes. Beside the deep pool, near the waterfall, a protruding rock jutted out.
On that rock sat a person cross-legged, a dark green heavy sword resting on his thigh.
It was early morning, just before dawn. In the deep mountains of the Warcraft Mountain Range, the fresh morning air made Linley take a greedy deep breath.
“Ah.” Linley opened his eyes.
He glanced back. Bebe was curled up beside him, his little claws firmly gripping the rock, with no fear of falling.
“Bebe, time to go,” Linley said with a smile.
Bebe opened his drowsy eyes, looked around, then shook his head groggily and stood up. “Boss, I’m hungry.”
“Let’s go. We’ll eat later.” Linley lightly pushed off the rock, and like the wind, he floated across the dozens-of-meters-wide deep pool to the shore. Bebe kicked off the rock, turning into a black blur, and landed directly at Linley’s feet.
Man and beast set off again.
But after walking a short while, Linley’s bare foot stopped mid-step. Bebe looked at him in confusion.
“There’s a magical beast nearby,” Linley transmitted through soul communication.
Bebe’s eyes widened. Now a ninth-level magical beast, he usually sensed approaching beasts before they got close. But this time, he hadn’t noticed anything.
Linley stood on the earth, feeling the wind.
Any movement around him was hard to escape Linley’s perception.
“This beast moves lightly. I can’t feel it walking on the ground, but its movement stirs the wind,” Linley transmitted.
Bebe nodded.
…
A three-meter-long Golden Patterned Leopard clung to a tree trunk, motionless. Leopard-type magical beasts were among the fastest ground-dwelling creatures.
Especially the Saint-level magical beast, the Galloping Thunder Leopard, which moved at terrifying speeds.
The Golden Patterned Leopard was a seventh-level magical beast. As a leopard, it inherited the species’ greatest strength: speed. Its instantaneous burst speed surpassed even that of most eighth-level beasts.
The Golden Patterned Leopard tensed its limbs.
“Swoosh.”
With a leap, it landed on another tree. Leopards were famous for running through trees. Through the gaps in the dense leaves, the Golden Patterned Leopard had already spotted the human in the distance.
It waited quietly, watching the human approach.
Sure enough, the human and a black Shadow Mouse drew near.
“Black Shadow Mouse? No threat.” Seventh-level magical beasts had considerable intelligence. The Golden Patterned Leopard focused on the human. The aura emanating from the human made it cautious, but the leopard sensed that the human wasn’t too strong.
Indeed, in human form, Linley was only at the late seventh-level stage.
A seventh-level magical beast against a seventh-level warrior—usually, the beast had the advantage.
“Swoosh.” Suddenly pushing off the tree trunk, the Golden Patterned Leopard turned into a golden blur, charging at Linley along an erratic trajectory.
The human, who had been motionless, suddenly—
Drew the Black Heavy Sword like lightning, stepped back to borrow momentum, and swung the sword with immense force directly at the Golden Patterned Leopard.
The leopard, mid-air, couldn’t change direction drastically. It could only try to twist its head away.
“Thud.”
The Black Heavy Sword, swift as lightning, slammed into the leopard’s body. The leopard’s body was grotesquely dented, accompanied by the sound of breaking bones.
With a “bang,” the leopard’s body crashed heavily to the ground. It twitched, blood seeping from its mouth. Within ten seconds, the Golden Patterned Leopard was dead.
Linley sheathed his sword naturally.
“Bebe, we’ll have leopard meat for breakfast today,” Linley said casually.
For Linley and Bebe, this was just an ordinary occurrence. In the Warcraft Mountain Range, they killed several powerful beasts almost every day.
If a sword expert had watched, they would have noticed that Linley, only at the late seventh-level, wielded a 3,600-jin heavy sword with remarkable skill. The sword’s weight didn’t hinder him; instead, he used it to increase speed.
And with a single chop, he could kill a seventh-level magical beast. The power was truly astonishing.
Linley and Bebe roasted the leopard meat in the mountain range.
“Boss, how strong is your heavy sword attack now? You said you broke through a few days ago,” Bebe asked.
It had been over a year since they entered the Warcraft Mountain Range. During this time, Linley’s mind had fully merged with nature, immersed in cultivation. The progress over this year and a half was indeed remarkable.
“Strongest attack? Hard to say. At least in my normal human form, I can handle ordinary eighth-level beasts,” Linley said confidently.
This wasn’t arrogance but confidence in his strength.
“The leopard meat smells great,” Bebe said, sniffing.
“Hmm?” Linley frowned, then smiled. “Bebe, roasting meat often attracts beasts. But this time, the beast seems very clumsy.”
It took a while for Linley and Bebe to see the beast.
A Swift Raptor.
“A Swift Raptor?” Linley laughed. He was familiar with Swift Raptors. Though a seventh-level magical beast, its defense was exceptionally tough. Compared to the Golden Patterned Leopard, the Swift Raptor’s defense was far superior, while the leopard was much faster.
“Boss, you said your attack is strong. Can you kill this Swift Raptor with one strike?” Bebe suddenly asked.
The Swift Raptor’s scales were nearly half a meter thick, and its skull, the most vital part, was incredibly hard. Though slow-moving, its defense rivaled that of an ordinary eighth-level beast.
“One strike? I haven’t tried. Let’s give it a shot today.”
Linley drew the Black Heavy Sword from his back and walked step by step toward the Swift Raptor.
The Swift Raptor was two stories tall, nearly twenty meters long. Compared to its massive size, Linley looked like a tiny speck.
“Roar~~” The Swift Raptor roared at Linley.
But Linley, holding the Black Heavy Sword, continued walking barefoot.
Suddenly—
Linley’s pace quickened, and he charged at the Swift Raptor. The raptor roared, swinging its tail with immense speed.
“Clang.” Linley’s Black Heavy Sword swiftly blocked the tail.
But the force of the tail strike was enormous. Linley pushed off the ground, using the tail’s impact and the ground’s rebound to leap diagonally toward the raptor.
Seeing the human in front of it, the Swift Raptor opened its massive jaws.
“Hmm, this human?” The raptor was surprised to see the human swing the Black Heavy Sword as lightly as if it were a straw, then bring it down on its head.
The Swift Raptor was confident in its skull, the hardest part of its body.
Indeed…
When the light sword first touched the skull, there was no threat. But the moment it made contact, a terrifying force erupted like a flood bursting through a dam. The immense power exploded in an instant. The raptor only heard the sound of its skull cracking before it knew nothing more.
Bebe stared in shock.
Linley had struck the Swift Raptor’s hardest skull with one blow, and the skull had shattered like glass, brain matter and blood spilling out. The raptor’s massive body crashed to the ground. Linley landed gracefully.
“Boss, wow, how is it so powerful?” Bebe rushed over excitedly.
Linley smiled and said, “Over this past year, I’ve nearly perfectly coordinated my strength with Dragonblood battle qi. Then, by understanding the earth, I broke through the simple levels of strength and battle qi, reaching the state my Baruch ancestors called ‘wielding heavy as light.’ That’s how I developed the ‘Galloping Thunder’ technique.”