Chapter 53: Skin Tempering Perfection
Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Skin Tempering Perfection
Within the former Xu Mansion, now Su Mu’s personal estate.
Su Mu was lying in a room.
Su Mu was the sole occupant of the vast estate.
To outsiders, living in such a large estate without even a single servant girl seemed excessively frugal.
But Su Mu was fine with it. He didn’t plan on staying in the Outer City for long. His ambitions reached for the stars...
There was no need to invest much effort in a place he wouldn’t be living in for long.
[Name: Su Mu]
[Status: Constable Leader (Official)]
[Points: 1005]
[Cultivation Technique: Golden Scale Skin Tempering Technique (Major Accomplishment/+)]
[Martial Arts: Submerging Wave Saber Technique (Perfection), Archery (Entry Level/+)]
As soon as midnight struck, Su Mu eagerly summoned his system panel.
His Points had finally broken past one thousand, and the familiar "+" had appeared next to the Golden Scale Skin Tempering Technique.
"I’ve been waiting for this day for almost a month."
Su Mu took a deep breath and, with a mental command, pressed the "+".
VMMMM!!!
As the thousand Points from the panel were consumed, Su Mu felt a scorching wave of vital energy detonate inside him.
A boiling heat wave spread from within him, piercing through his skin and bursting out of every pore on his body.
This was the third time Su Mu had endured this agony, and his condition was much better than the previous two times.
At least this time, he didn’t pass out.
He was in so much pain that he couldn’t move a muscle or make a sound.
But he still managed to maintain a sliver of consciousness.
It wasn’t that the pain had lessened; it was that he had grown more tolerant of it.
That’s just how people are. As long as one is willing to endure hardship—
Su Mu felt as if a red-hot branding iron was gliding over his entire body, the burning sensation lingering on his skin, making him feel like he was being cooked through.
His skin repeatedly sloughed off and regenerated.
With every regeneration, his skin gained a faint metallic luster.
An unknown amount of time passed, and he lost count of how many times his skin had molted.
He had been purged of his old weaknesses, emerging from his chrysalis a new man.
Su Mu climbed out of bed, and flakes of dead skin rustled off his body, falling to the floor.
He staggered to the table and began frantically stuffing the food he had prepared earlier into his mouth.
Breakthroughs were incredibly draining. After each one, he had to eat voraciously to make up for the energy his body had expended.
Only after he had devoured all the food on the table did Su Mu let out a groan of pure satisfaction.
In response, every inch of his skin seemed to hum with pleasure.
Su Mu shook his body, keenly aware of the changes that had taken place.
On the surface, the color of his skin had darkened slightly.
In reality, however, it had undergone a monumental transformation.
His skin was now composed of tiny scales, invisible to the naked eye. These scales, like gold and jade, protected the muscles beneath, as if Su Mu were draped in a suit of soft, jade-gold armor.
Now, an ordinary person who hadn’t undergone Body Tempering would find it difficult to so much as scratch Su Mu’s skin, even with a sharp weapon.
Skin Tempering Perfection!
The strength of his skin was now sufficient to support the enhancement of his muscles.
Skin, flesh, tendons, and bone—each stage built upon the last.
Only when the skin is strong enough can one advance to the Second Stage of Body Tempering: Flesh Tempering.
If one tempered the flesh directly, the muscles would become too powerful. When unleashing that power, before you could even harm an enemy, your own skin would likely be unable to withstand the strain and simply tear apart.
Only when the skin has been tempered to be sufficiently resilient can it support the explosive power of the muscles.
In his current state, if he were back in his previous life, it would be as if he had mastered the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Cloth Shirt.
With Skin Tempering Perfection, he could already be considered a master in the Outer City.
Few people in the Outer City could cultivate to such a level.
And if you factored in his Submerging Wave Saber Technique at the Perfection Realm, you could count the number of people in South City who could defeat him on one hand.
Barring someone who had also achieved Perfection in a martial art, only a warrior at Body Tempering Second Realm Perfection could be guaranteed to have an edge over Su Mu.
Body Tempering Second Realm Perfection wasn’t rare in the Inner City, but in the Outer City, it was the level of a constable at minimum. In a gang, one would need to be at least a Vice Gang Leader to possess that kind of power.
In other words, Su Mu’s current strength was already enough for him to be qualified for the post of constable in the South City Bureau.
The previous constable of the South City Bureau, Xing Zhao Fu, hadn’t been much stronger than Su Mu was now.
’If I can reach the Flesh Tempering stage, or master a second saber intent, then I could truly do as I please in the Outer City.’
Su Mu mused while washing himself. He had some silver on hand now; perhaps he could go to the Pawnshop to buy a Flesh Tempering Technique.
He wondered if Yang Jin knew of a better source.
Suddenly, Su Mu raised his head and looked out the window.
"Come on out. I know you’re there!"
Su Mu ordered in a low voice, his hand immediately grabbing the long saber that rarely left his side.
Just then, a figure leaped in through the window.
Two glints of saber light flared simultaneously.
With a series of sharp clangs, both figures retreated two steps.
Su Mu fell back to his bedside, his eyes locked on the tall figure who had retreated to the window.
By the light of the moon, he could see the man’s face.
"Wei Yongfu, who hired you to assassinate me this time?"
Su Mu said slowly.
"The Xu Family is finished. Who would dare hire someone to kill you now?"
Wei Yongfu sheathed his saber and shook his head. "It just goes to show you Officials rake in money the fastest. I risked my life to earn a few hundred taels of silver from the Xu Family, and then you turn around and seize all their assets. Now this massive estate belongs to you."
He glanced around the room, his expression a mixture of awe and envy.
"With your skill, wouldn’t it be easy for you to become an Official?"
Su Mu didn’t bother explaining, just replied casually.
His gaze fell on Wei Yongfu’s forearm.
A white mark was visible on Wei Yongfu’s forearm—the spot where Su Mu’s blade had just landed.
’Even though I didn’t use the saber intent of Nine Waves,’ he thought, ’with the full force of my Skin Tempering Perfection, I still couldn’t even break his skin.’
"I could never be an Official. There are some things I just can’t bring myself to do. The life of a Ghostwriter suits me better. I get paid what I’m worth, plain and simple."
Wei Yongfu said, shaking his head.
He noticed Su Mu’s gaze, rubbed the white mark, and added casually, "I was born with skin of bronze and bones of iron. Now that I’m at Skin Tempering Perfection, my skin is significantly tougher than that of an ordinary Skin Tempering Martial Artist. If I can one day reach Bone Tempering, I’ll be stronger than others at that stage as well."
"No use being envious. It’s innate. Unless you can cultivate multiple Skin Tempering Techniques, you’ll never measure up to me in this regard.
Of course, if you really managed to cultivate multiple Skin Tempering Techniques to the Realm of Perfection, you’d be even more impressive than I am.
But that would take a massive amount of time, and your chances of ever reaching the Blood Transformation Realm would become even slimmer. The trade-off isn’t worth it."
Wei Yongfu continued.
A thoughtful expression crossed Su Mu’s face.
"But let’s get to business. I came here to make a deal with you."
Wei Yongfu said, looking at Su Mu, "You’ve reached Skin Tempering Perfection, so you’ll definitely need the next stage’s Cultivation Technique. As it happens, I need silver to buy a Tendon Tempering Pill. I want to trade a Flesh Tempering Technique for some of your silver."
"Oh?"
Su Mu’s interest was piqued. "You have a Flesh Tempering Technique? Why not trade it for silver at the Pawnshop?"
"Those guys are sharks who’d eat you alive and not even spit out the bones. For something priceless, they wouldn’t even offer five hundred taels."
Wei Yongfu said, shaking his head. "You just seized the Xu Family’s fortune, so you should have plenty of silver. And a Flesh Tempering Technique is exactly what you need right now. I figure you’d be more willing to pay a fair price than they would."