I became a god through frontier slaughter, and I crushed the academy's prodigies!

Construction of the Furnace City has entered a critical stage.

The 320-kilometer transport line that extended from the occupied area is now not one, but three.

Three roads are laid side by side, each fifty meters wide, enough to accommodate four heavy-duty transport dummy vehicles passing side by side.

More than 900 transport golems travel between the occupied zone and Forge City every day.

These goods were continuously loaded into the warehouses and transported along the three major transport arteries to Forge City.

Chu Feng stood in front of the observation window of the command tower, looking down at the relentless torrent of steel below.

Twenty-five days have passed since the first puppet assembly line was successfully completed.

After being incorporated into the Tianyun Prefecture's combat sequence, the offline war puppets were immediately deployed to the battlefields of clearing out the occupied territories.

The resources cleared from the occupied territories were transported back to Forge City and turned into new puppets.

This is a perfect closed loop of self-sufficiency and self-generation.

It has been fully realized; it was the idea that Shen Tian had told Chu Feng back then.

The smelting area has expanded to three times its original size.

The twenty-four extraordinary blast furnaces were expanded to seventy-two, operating in three shifts with the furnaces burning day and night.

The city's framework is also growing at a visible rate.

Meanwhile—

Three hundred kilometers away, in Tianyun City. The Zhentian Tower.

For the past month, the power center of Tianyun Prefecture has been shrouded in a faint crimson halo.

The halo was almost imperceptible at first; only high-level martial artists passing through the bottom of the Zhen Tian Tower could vaguely sense a faint, scorching fluctuation.

But as time went on, this halo became increasingly intense.

On the twentieth day, fine cracks began to appear in the floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor of the Zhentian Tower.

It's not the kind of crack that's shattered by physical force, but rather a thermal stress crack that's slowly baked out from the inside by some kind of high temperature.

By the twenty-fifth day, the entire Zhentian Tower was radiating heat.

On the tower's extraordinary alloy exterior, visible heat waves continuously rise upwards.

Pedestrians passing by the Zhentian Pagoda will unconsciously quicken their pace because the temperature within 50 meters is nearly 20 degrees Celsius higher than the outside temperature.

The soldiers stationed at Tianyun Prefecture set up a cordon around the Zhentian Tower, prohibiting anyone from approaching.

They don't need to know what's happening inside.

All they needed to know was one thing—the Lord of the Manor was in seclusion.

The top floor of the Zhen Tian Tower, in Lu Changming's secluded chamber.

Lu Changming had anticipated this situation long ago when he went into seclusion.

Therefore, people were sent to renovate the secret room.

All the materials used in the room are made of ultra-high heat-resistant alloys.

Most of the high temperature is contained within the sealed room.

Despite this, the same situation still occurred.

There was no way around it; the power of the laws was simply too terrifying.

This was an unconscious fluctuation emanating from Lu Changming while he was in seclusion.

If Lu Changming were to truly unleash the power of the laws, it could only be described as world-destroying.

The French windows were all shattered and replaced by a crimson curtain of fire formed from the power of heaven and earth.

The fire curtain completely isolated the interior from the outside world, preventing even the sound of wind from entering.

Lu Changming sat cross-legged in the center of the secret room.

Of the twenty fire lotus fruits around him, only eight remained.

He had already refined and absorbed all the fire elemental energy contained in the first twelve fire lotus fruits.

The first few were relatively gentle, with the pure aura of the law of fire slowly seeping into his meridians, resonating with the dark red flame energy within his body.

The feeling was like a light suddenly being turned on in a pitch-black fog.

He saw the trajectory of the Law of Fire.

Those things he had been searching for for ten years without success became clear and concrete under the guidance of the aura of the laws.

The barrier of the mid-stage seventh rank shattered the moment the third fire lotus fruit was refined.

When Lu Changming broke through to the late stage of the seventh rank, he didn't even experience much fluctuation.

Because of the foundation laid by the first three fruits, the refining of the fourth to eighth fruits was a natural process.

His understanding of the Law of Fire evolved from initially "seeing flowers through the fog" to "viewing the moon through a veil."

The leap from the late stage of the seventh rank to the peak of the seventh rank occurred when the twelfth fruit was refined.

At that moment, the power of heaven and earth that Lu Changming could mobilize tripled.

From the peak of the seventh rank to the eighth rank.

This is not an ordinary leap forward.

This is one of the most terrifying natural barriers on the path of martial arts.

A seventh-level martial artist is essentially still "borrowing" the power of heaven and earth.

Through their own understanding of the true meaning of martial arts, they resonate with the laws of heaven and earth, thereby mobilizing the power of heaven and earth for their own use.

But no matter how strong the resonance, the power of heaven and earth ultimately does not belong to them.

Like a person standing on the riverbank, he can use a waterwheel to divert water to his fields, but he cannot change the direction of the river.

The eighth level is another level altogether.

Eighth-tier martial artists are no longer "borrowers".

They are the "owners".

The core symbol of the eighth order is the cohesion of the fundamental laws.

The so-called origin of laws is to completely separate the laws one has comprehended from the external forces of heaven and earth, and condense them within the body into a "seed of laws" that belongs to oneself.

From that moment on, martial artists no longer needed to "borrow" power from heaven and earth.

Because he himself is part of the law.

When the power of heaven and earth sees the holder of the fundamental law, it is like water flowing into a low-lying area, naturally converging towards it.

No genuine resonance is required.

The same elemental forces of heaven and earth within a radius of tens of thousands of meters will actively submit to the gravitational pull of the law's origin, flowing continuously into the body of an eighth-level martial artist as if paying homage to a king.

This is the insurmountable gap between the seventh and eighth orders.

One was a subject, the other a king.

In Lu Changming's sea of ​​consciousness, the true meaning of the Fire Martial Dao had been honed to its extreme.

A dark red flame hovered in the center of his mind. It was no longer the erratic shape it used to be, but had condensed into a fist-sized fireball with golden patterns flowing across its surface.

Something is being gestated inside the fireball.

That was the prototype of the origin of laws.

But it was always just one breath short.

Like an egg about to hatch, its shell is already covered with cracks, and the life inside is struggling frantically, but it can never break free from that last layer of restraint.

Lu Changming picked up the fourteenth fire lotus fruit.

He swallowed it. The pure aura of the Law of Fire surged into his sea of ​​consciousness like magma pouring down on him.

The cracks on the surface of the fireball expanded rapidly, and golden light burst forth from the cracks.

Lu Changming's face turned ferocious, and veins bulged on his forehead.

The body temperature had soared to an alarming level, and the blood seemed to have been replaced by boiling lava.

The cracks on the fireball had covered the entire surface, and it shone with a brilliant golden light.

But not enough.

The fifteenth one.

Lu Changming popped the last fire lotus fruit into his mouth without hesitation.

An explosive aura of law stirred up an apocalyptic storm within him.

Lu Changming let out a deep roar, his voice sealed within the secret chamber by the fire curtain, yet it shook the entire Zhen Tian Tower from its top floor to its foundation.

Within the sea of ​​consciousness.

The fireball, which had been polished for a whole month, finally cracked open with the infusion of the last bit of law energy.

The eggshell-like outer shell shattered into countless golden fragments.

Amidst the debris, a tiny, reddish-gold speck of light, no bigger than a grain of rice, slowly rose.

It's too small.

So small that it's even smaller than a speck of dust in the sea of ​​consciousness.

But this insignificant speck of light, at the moment of its birth, released a pressure that made the entire sea of ​​consciousness tremble.

The origin of laws.

The Law of Fire!

The moment the light rose, the world changed color.

Outside the Zhen Tian Tower, the originally gloomy clouds above Tianyun City were suddenly torn apart by an invisible force.

A crimson beam of light, 100 meters in diameter, shot up from the top of the Zhentian Tower and pierced the sky.

The pillar of light surged with the pure aura of the laws of fire, and the temperature was so high that even space itself was warped.

Every martial artist within a 50-kilometer radius of Tianyun City felt this fluctuation at the same moment.

Especially for martial artists who cultivate fire-attribute techniques, they felt as if their internal energy had encountered the emperor's soldiers, frantically breaking free from the constraints of their meridians, wanting to rush out of their bodies and head towards that crimson pillar of light.

"This is... the celestial phenomenon of an eighth-order breakthrough!"

On the streets of Tianyun City, a sixth-level martial artist suddenly stopped in his tracks, looked up at the crimson pillar of light piercing the sky, and trembled all over.

"Lord of the Manor...Lord of the Manor has broken through to the eighth rank!"

The news spread like wildfire throughout Tianyun City.

Inside the secret chamber on the top floor of the Zhentian Pagoda.

Lu Changming slowly opened his eyes.

His pupils were no longer the dark red they used to be, but had turned into a deep crimson gold.

Deep within the pupil, a tiny, golden speck of light, the size of a grain of rice, was slowly rotating.

That is the origin of his laws.

He raised his right hand, his five fingers loosely clenched.

The fire-attribute power of heaven and earth within a radius of ten thousand meters surged into his body like hundreds of rivers flowing into the sea.

He did nothing.

Then the power of heaven and earth came.

It wasn't that he went to "grab" it, but rather that the power of heaven and earth took the initiative to "come".

This feeling is completely different from that at level seven.

At the seventh level, mobilizing the power of heaven and earth is like tethering a wild horse with a rope. It requires a lot of energy to maintain resonance, and if you loosen your grip even slightly, the power of heaven and earth will break free of control.

But now, the power of heaven and earth is as docile as a flock of sheep that has seen a shepherd.

They surrounded him, obediently awaiting his commands.

Because he himself is the embodiment of the Law of Fire in the human world.

Lu Changming stood up, feeling the immense power emanating from the crimson-gold law origin within his body.

His blood and qi underwent a transformation under the nourishment of the origin of the laws, and faint reddish-gold patterns flowed on the surface of his skin, which were the marks of the laws engraved on his flesh.

He waved his hand casually.

But a crimson-gold flame appeared out of thin air thirty meters in front of his palm, its temperature instantly soaring to a level sufficient to vaporize extraordinary alloys.

The surrounding air was directly ionized, producing a piercing hissing sound.

This is the power of the eighth rank.

The laws operate on their own in every gesture and movement.

Lu Changming withdrew his hand, and the crimson-gold flames silently extinguished.

He looked down at his hands, his lips trembling slightly.

ten years.

He sat in the mid-stage of the seventh rank for a full ten years, thinking that he would never be able to advance another step in his life.

Shen Tian used twenty Fire Lotus Fruits to force him onto the eighth-tier throne.

Tianyun Prefecture has finally produced its first eighth-level martial artist.

As the flames dissipated, the myriad lights of Tianyun City came into view through the shattered French window frames.

The crimson pillar of light had dissipated, but the lingering afterglow in the clouds continued to flow slowly, enveloping the entire city in a warm red glow.