Lord of the Desert

Chapter 403: Desert Realm

That day, Hong Fan talked with Zhuang Liren for a long time and made arrangements for the preparations for the Tiannan trip.

Then he left behind the Yuanci treasure and rode home on horseback.

The next day, Hong Fan went to the Zhangwuyuan Yamen and met Xu Guinian.

The most important thing after the two met was naturally to calculate the military merits.

On a piece of thick paper, there is a detailed list of Hong Fan's achievements over the past year, with a corresponding number for each item.

It is generally divided into three parts.

First of all, there were independent actions before joining the Baisheng Army, involving Niutou Mountain, Pang County, etc. Feng Yixian and Hao Yong, the third in command of the De Shou Army, were both listed on the list, but the converted military merits were very small.

Secondly, there are the military operations of the Baisheng Army, including the attack on Duanli City, the ambush in Tingtao Valley, numerous field battles, the assault on Yunlan City, etc.

The last part is about the impact on public opinion, including Tang Xingqing, Feng Tianqing and others.

After all the achievements are converted, the total is 560 military merit points, which is tripled to 1,680 points, plus the existing 250 points, for a total of 1,930 points.

Seeing that he had accumulated enough military merits, Hong Fan directly used 1,500 points to obtain the "Burning Codex" - this was the one among the three top-level fire-related martial arts codes in the Military Merit Pavilion that best satisfied his killing method design ideas.

Seeing that he had made up his mind, Xu Guinian did not hesitate and wrote the transfer order in person and issued it with his seal.

If nothing unexpected happens, the following part of the "Burning Codex" will be escorted out from Shenjing and delivered to Xijing within 20 days.

In the next few days, Hong Fan was busy with various unavoidable social gatherings.

The circle of the weapon workshop supervisor, the circle of the martial arts academy, the circle of Tianhe Bank, the circle of Kaiming Bank, the circle of Jinhai Gang, and Cao Hanhai, Fan Zhengzhi and other friends in the underworld...

A few days later.

At noon on July 20th, it was drizzling.

The sky was dim, like dirty water after washing clothes.

The room is damp and stuffy.

"After Chisha's return, the pressure on my business suddenly increased. Yesterday, two big customers were poached."

Liang Chengzhou, the head of the Liang family, held the wine glass in his hand, his words full of bitterness.

"Why bother getting angry at these people?"

Yan Xingjin, who was sitting on the opposite side, advised.

"Most people in the world are dependent on the times. If there are fewer, then there are fewer. A family of yours can't afford to lose a little bit."

He drank the liquor in one gulp, but the unhappiness on his face did not disappear at all.

Half a year ago, Yan Xingjin was dismissed by the Shen family. Although they told the public that his contract had expired and would not be renewed, everyone knew that it was because of his inappropriate response in Wuzheng Garden and his inaction in the subsequent pursuit.

Hong Fan came back these few days ago, and the gossipers in the city started spreading the details of what happened, even describing vividly how he was forced to retreat by the Hong family's assassins.

As a congenital master, Yan Xingjin certainly would not lose his wealth and honor if he left the Shen family, but his reputation was far inferior to what it was two years ago.

How could he not feel resentment towards Hong Fan?

"Brother Yan, what I'm worried about is not the current situation, but the trend... Oh, no more talking, let's drink!"

Liang Chengzhou picked up the pot and poured wine.

However, the more they drank, the sadder they became, and the drunker they became, the more depressed they felt.

"Hong Fan, Hong Fan..."

Liang Chengzhou muttered a few words and suddenly looked up.

"It is said that Chisha has not been defeated in the past three years, so he is very excited. What do you think would happen if he loses last time?"

When these words were spoken, both of them felt a little moved.

"Brother Yan, he is also a congenital now, why don't you go..."

He asked tentatively.

"I am seventeen years older than him. If I take the initiative to challenge him, I will inevitably be criticized."

Yan Xingjin shook his head and replied.

"But if you miss this opportunity, you will never find it again!"

Liang Chengzhou put his hands on the round table and leaned forward.

"Hong Fan's speed is so fast. He went straight from Guantong Realm to Qi Realm in three years."

"Now he has only just entered the Xiantian stage, and it will not be until the first stage in a short time. You are now in the third stage of the Xiantian stage, which gives him a great advantage in cultivation, enough to offset that Mingshen."

"In another half a year or a year, there may be no chance anymore!"

His eyes were burning and his voice was low.

Yan Xingjin was completely moved.

He had seen the battle between Hong Fan and Su Peifeng - people formed a bank on the river bank, and the momentum revealed the sky.

[What would it be like if I could win this battle? ]

Yan Xingjin grabbed the filled wine glass, drank it in one gulp, and made up his mind.

······
July 23rd, early morning.

The sky outside Xijing is clear and blue, and you can see through it at a glance.

The broad wind pushed the atmosphere to roll, forming vortex-shaped cloud flags on the peaks dozens of miles away.

Hong Fan glided steadily in the deserted valley. After traveling for several miles, he rose and fell and landed on a flat stone platform cut out by a sand knife, and recorded the data on a bound paper.

After converting the sand wing to propeller blade drive, he gradually thickened the wing and blunted the leading edge of the wing to further optimize the lift, and finally stabilized the speed at 220 kilometers per hour.

Except for a very small number of specialized martial arts, this cruising speed is almost unmatched in the innate realm.

After writing down all the data, he turned over a few pages and displayed the second project he had been carefully considering in the past few days.

【Sand Gun V1.0】

When he reached the Hunran realm, Hong Fan had already developed a killing method called "Sand Bullet", but at that time the sand bullets were only enough to penetrate armor at close range, and the range was limited to twenty meters.

Taking a gunpowder gun as an example, the propulsion force of the bullet mainly comes from two aspects - one is the gas produced by the combustion of gunpowder, and the other is the high temperature pressurizing the gas in the chamber.

Air rifles are at a disadvantage in both of these aspects.

First, the requirement for convenience limits the thickness of the metal gas cylinder wall, resulting in the pressure inside the tank not being too high. Second, when the gas expands, it quickly releases heat and cools down, greatly reducing the chamber pressure.

Based on this, the strongest air gun muzzle energy that Hong Fan had heard of in his previous life was only three or four hundred joules, less than a fraction of that of a conventional rifle.

Fortunately, his realm has changed qualitatively now. He can use the stress conduction of sand and friction self-locking to continuously compress the air to thousands of atmospheres of pressure, and then use the flame flow power to explosively increase the temperature. The peak chamber pressure is enough to increase three times, even slightly exceeding the AK.

The sand flow rose up, using Hong Fan's arm as a skeleton.

He used the pine trees on the mountain as targets and conducted hundreds of tests at different distances, calculating the dispersion accuracy and power of the bullets.

Afterwards, by shooting a homemade ballistic impact pendulum, Hong Fan obtained the kinetic energy of the bullet and deduced the speed of the bullet.

The initial muzzle velocity is 800 meters per second, and the muzzle energy is 2,500 joules.

At a distance of 100 meters, the speed is 600 meters per second, the kinetic energy is 1,400 joules, and it can penetrate 30 centimeters thick solid wood in one go.

At a distance of 800 meters, with a speed of 270 meters per second and a kinetic energy of 280 joules, it can still penetrate a two-inch wooden board.

In addition, since the bullet is directly produced in the chamber and fits the rifling in a specialized way, the accuracy is also excellent, with a calculated deviation of 2 centimeters at a distance of 100 meters, and 30 centimeters at 800 meters. From the data, except for the weaker armor-piercing ability of the rock bullet, the flesh penetration and accuracy are slightly higher than the original version of the automatic rifle.

The value of this new killing method is self-evident.

Just like pouring a drop of ink into clear water at high speed, the boundary between the two sides will quickly become blurred - the warrior's true energy comes from the innate spiritual energy, and will naturally penetrate and interfere with the innate spiritual energy.

Before reaching the realm of "true essence with spirit", attacks dominated by true essence can hardly reach far.

Under the Jinhai City, the snakeman general Chilin once used a supersonic iron spear to make a kilometer-level attack. This is not only a feat that cannot be replicated by innate warriors, but even the Yuanci warriors who are not known for their strength find it difficult to do so.

The sand gun breaks through this limit.

Above the Qi realm, warriors usually sense attacks in four ways - light and shadow, sound, airflow, and fluctuations of innate spiritual energy - among which light and shadow are easy to avoid, but the last three are extremely difficult, so innate warriors rarely die from ambushing.

But the bullets are different.

Supersonic projectiles will arrive before sound and will not have any innate spiritual energy fluctuations.

Imagine that Hong Fan fired a cold shot at a blind spot in his field of vision at a distance of 100 meters. When the target felt the disturbance of the air flow at close range, the reaction time was only a few milliseconds at most - even in this world, the power of a 762 rifle bullet was enough to kill the heavenly being and injure the innate.

Back at the stone platform, Hong Fan recorded the test results one by one on paper, thought for a moment, and made up for two major deficiencies:

First, the pressurization process of the sand gun is long. The higher the air pressure, the more laborious it is to compress it. A single shot requires four to five seconds to prepare.

Secondly, the load during activation is too large. The peak value of 3,000 atmospheres is equivalent to 3,000 kilograms of pressure per square centimeter. It can only be maintained for a short time and cannot be stored in advance, so continuous firing is impossible.

After completing the sand gun test, Hong Fan rested for half an hour before testing the last highlight.

【Desolate Sand Realm V0.71】.

This was almost the first technique he imagined after obtaining the Sand World - using a large amount of sand and gravel to construct a field, and flexibly switching between the solid and liquid phases, which was equivalent to the final integration of a series of killing methods such as sand thorns, sand traps, sand fog, sand mayflies, etc.

Imagine that once the enemy steps into the sand world, they will have to deal with quicksand under their feet, sand waves in all directions, and even more dangerous and hidden dust in the air...

Unless one has a huge advantage in cultivation, this move is almost impossible to counter through skill.

Unfortunately, the Desolate Sand Realm has absolute rigid requirements on the magnitude, control power, and control range of the true energy. Over the past three years, Hong Fan has made dozens of attempts but has failed over and over again.

Until now, when he had advanced into the Xiantian Yihe realm, he finally felt that the time was ripe.

On the forest floor, the soil dehydrates, the humus peels off, and the fallen leaves sink, all happening silently.

When the sand flow expanded to several hundred square meters, a five-meter-tall beech tree suddenly tilted, awakening an adult male leopard perched on the branch.

Its eyes widened and it raised its head suddenly. Seeing the ground wriggling like boiling water, it quickly climbed down the tree and ran away, but as soon as its four claws touched the ground, they sank into the sand.

Sand and fog were flying everywhere, obstructing vision.

Hong Fan took the initiative to stop and let the leopard run away on all fours, but there was no escape from the heavy sand waves several meters high coming from all directions.

Soon, it collapsed to the ground exhausted, its ears flying, and only its belly with coin-shaped markings was still heaving.

"Finally, he has some of the charm of the sand-controlling characters in the anime works of his previous life."

Hong Fan waved his hand to disperse the sand and restore the terrain, feeling very proud of himself.

"But the radius of 15 meters is still a bit small..."

Looking at the leopard's hasty escape, he felt impulsive again.

For a mid to high level innate warrior, it is not difficult to charge at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour. In comparison, the coverage area of the Desolate Sand Realm is too insufficient.

[Do you want to use a Dragon Soul Fruit? ]

Hong Fan couldn't help but cast his gaze towards the Dragon Soul Tree—the three crystal clear fruits were swaying slightly, making the scene even more unbearable.

[The sooner you cash in your martial arts skills, the sooner you’ll benefit. Even if you’re keeping a trump card, there’s no need to keep three identical cards.]

Thinking so, he picked the fruit that was transformed from the remaining essence and blood of Martial Saint Feng Yeyi.

Like a drop of water falling into the Dantian like a calm lake, a storm of true energy immediately arose.

The celestial cycle runs on its own.

Hong Fan sat cross-legged under the Fagus suspensa, trying his best to guide the enemy to break through.

From the lower limb part of the foot Jueyin meridian, the true essence is subtle and dense like waves surging up, and after reaching the hairline, it divides and disperses, as if a handful of soft needles are brushing into the liver and gallbladder with their sharp tips, and finally connect to the eye sockets and the foot Shaoyang gallbladder meridian.

This sitting lasted for three hours.

Hong Fan had never imagined that the tiny bit of blood and essence left in the Martial Saint could help him open up the second stage of the Innate Realm in one go.

The strength was nearly doubled, nerve reflexes were reduced to about ten milliseconds, and the maximum sand control range was extended to fifty meters.

Using the Desert Sand Realm again, it was indeed more maneuverable, with a coverage radius of slightly over 20 meters, and it only took a few seconds to topple a giant tree...

Xu time (7pm).

The setting sun kisses the earth.

Standing on the cliff and overlooking the scorching forest, Hong Fan felt for the first time how powerful he was.

······
Half an hour later.

The world is like a dying furnace.

The color of the western sky cooled from orange-red to iron blue.

As soon as Hong Fan returned to Chaori Mansion, he saw Shen Hong who had been waiting there.

"Second Young Master, someone delivered this letter of challenge to you shortly after you left the house this morning."

The latter handed over an unopened letter sealed with wax.

Hong Fan opened it and saw that the signature was "Xijing Yanxingjin" and the content was "We will compete again at noon on July 30th at the center of Xianzun Bridge, and that’s it."

"This letter of challenge comes at a perfect time. I remember July 30th is the next day for the announcement of the results of the three examinations."

He straightened the paper, folded it, and stuffed it back into the envelope.

"I am also surprised."

Shen Hong was worried and indignant, but he didn't understand what his young master said.

"Yan Xingjin is much older and more skilled than you, how dare you challenge me to a fight?!"

"Shall I go back to him tomorrow?"

he asked.

"No, of course I will."

Hong Fan walked forward with his hands behind his back, looking relaxed.

"By the way, there will definitely be a gambling house for this kind of fight. You can bet one thousand taels of silver for me then."

"This... Second Young Master, this is indeed a convenient way to make money."

Shen Hong hesitated when he heard this and advised tactfully.

"But compared to the loss of reputation, isn't it worth it?"