The Return of the Condor Heroes: Starting with a Suicide Note and Conquering All Realms

The palm strike arrived.

The moment Guo Jing struck out with his right palm, the air three feet in front of him was violently compressed to its limit by the Dragon Subduing True Qi, bursting out with a muffled, low-frequency vibration that could stop one's heart from beating.

The array's core, which held the seven Taoist priests of the Tianquan position, had been shattered.

The leading Taoist priest's right foot sank into the soft stone slab, his steps faltering, and his internal energy resonance with his companion momentarily missed its mark by half a beat. In the pinnacle sword formation, half a beat is tantamount to deliberately placing one's throat on the blade.

The dragon that soars too high will regret it.

The palm strike slammed into the gap in the true energy at the Tianquan position.

The effect was devastating.

The small formation of seven people shattered instantly, like a gear assembly with its bearings removed. The leading Taoist priest was sent flying four zhang away, sword and all, before slamming his back against the old pine trunk, spitting out a spray of blood. The remaining six people were thrown about by the shockwave, their longswords flying from their hands and clanging as they bounced on the bluestone slabs.

Once Tianquan is destroyed, the axis of power is lost.

The rotational rhythm of the fourteen smaller formations all went out of sync at the same moment. The once unified silver sword net instantly disintegrated into more than ninety scattered swords, each fighting its own battle. The Quanzhen internal energy within the Taoists, which had been forcibly synchronized by the formation, surged chaotically through their meridians like an army whose command chain had been severed.

Dozens of Taoist priests were thrown into disarray. Some collapsed to their knees, others bent over and vomited blood, and three young Taoist priests with shallow cultivation collapsed to the ground, their faces pale.

A single palm strike shattered the enemy's formation. Clean and swift.

"Guo...Guo Jing?!" An elderly Taoist priest struggled to his feet, wiping the blood from his face, his voice trembling, "The Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms...you really are the great hero Guo Jing?!"

"Senior, I am by no means an enemy!" Guo Jing withdrew his palm, his breathing as steady as ever. "Chongyang Palace was attacked; I came to help!"

Behind the old pine tree, twenty feet away.

Lin Yuan hunched over, his hands supporting his knees, breathing rapidly like a broken bellows, his face as white as if he had just been dug out of a grave.

But his eyes were definitely not those of a dead man.

The moment the formation collapsed, the Quanzhen internal energy leaked from the bodies of more than ninety Taoist priests, creating a brief but deadly "information naked run" in the air.

Dragonblood talent surged to its peak at this moment.

On Lin Yuan's retina, more than ninety true qi trajectories were like a precision clock that had been violently dismantled, with the operating principle of each gear exposed to him without reservation.

The complete Qi circulation route of Quanzhen Internal Kung Fu, from sinking Qi to the Dantian, to the initial guidance of the Lung Meridian of Hand-Taiyin, and then to the cyclical closure of the twelve regular meridians, was completely stripped away by him within three breaths.

Lin Yuan's brain was working at full speed.

The fragment of the Nine Yin Manual: "The Way of Heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who have too little."

This set of rules taught him to compress the frenzied output of dragon blood, channeling its destructive power into a controllable undercurrent. But that wasn't enough; the burning of dragon blood would eventually come to an end.

The Complete True Internal Skill – "Quiet and inactive, yet enduring and continuous."

The essence of this mental cultivation method lies not in killing, but in replenishing energy!

It constructs an extremely sophisticated internal energy circulation system that automatically transforms the spiritual energy of heaven and earth absorbed by a martial artist with each breath into internal energy in the dantian.

We've put our cards on the line.

Output relies on the burst of the Sovereign Flame, control relies on the Nine Yin Law, and recharge relies on the Complete True Cycle.

Three completely different power systems, using the domineering dragon blood as a furnace, were theoretically perfectly nested in Lin Yuan's sea of ​​consciousness.

A perpetual motion machine of killing that transcends dimensions came together with a roar at this moment.

Lin Yuan closed his eyes and began to adapt the Quanzhen internal energy path to the dark golden internal energy in his dantian. In just one cycle, the consumption rate of the Monarch Flame internal fire deep in his dantian was reduced by 20%.

It's like connecting a violent engine that devours flesh and blood to a perpetually regenerating solar array.

"Brother Lin! Let's go!" Yang Guo's voice boomed into our ears.

Lin Yuan opened his eyes, and his golden pupils instantly disappeared.

Ahead, the elderly Taoist priest, though believing in Guo Jing, still stubbornly blocked the way, his face filled with grief and indignation: "Great Hero Guo! That treacherous dog Huo Du led two hundred elite soldiers to break in through the secret passage in the back mountain and killed thirty-seven of our fellow disciples! Our Master Uncle led his men to retreat to the main hall, ordering us to intercept and kill any invading enemies! We dare not let them pass!"

"Thirty-seven people?" Guo Jing's knuckles cracked. "Is the sect leader still alive?"

"News was circulating just half an hour ago. But Huo Du's martial arts are unpredictable, and Master Uncle... I'm afraid he won't last much longer!"

Guo Jing stopped wasting words. With a sudden burst of power, he leaped three zhang into the air, scrambling over the heads of the Taoists like a golden whirlwind, heading straight for the mountain gate.

"Keep up!" Yang Guo grabbed Lin Yuan and rushed upwards with all his might.

The road up the mountain was like purgatory.

The bluestone steps were soaked in blood, slippery and nauseating to walk on. The corpses of Quanzhen disciples in grey Taoist robes and Mongol soldiers lay scattered haphazardly along the way. In the most gruesome places, the stone steps had been sheared flat by swords, revealing the scorched earth beneath.

Lin Yuan was dragged upwards by Yang Guo. His gaze swept over the Taoist priests who died with their eyes wide open, but his heart remained undisturbed.

He merely noticed calmly that the swords carried by these Taoist priests were all three-foot-long blades engraved with the Big Dipper pattern. This standardized equipment proved the Quanzhen Sect's profound foundation, but even the deepest foundation could not withstand a massacre at the cost of dimensional reduction.

The higher you go, the stronger the smell of blood becomes.

The pine resin was burning, and the strong, acrid smell of burning mixed with the stench of blood weighed heavily on Yang Guo's chest. His face turned deathly pale, and his Adam's apple bobbed twice with difficulty as he forced back the acidic liquid.

"Brother Lin, isn't the Quanzhen Sect supposed to be very powerful?" Yang Guo asked in a low voice, a hint of confusion in his voice.

"A large number of people does not equal strength," Lin Yuan replied weakly, his voice devoid of sarcasm, a statement of absolute rationality.

Three hundred stone steps, it took half an incense stick to burn.

The main hall of Chongyang Palace came into view at the edge of the horizon. Half of the side hall on the left had collapsed, and the flames painted the night sky a chaotic orange-red. The main hall's doors were tightly shut, and Mongolian scimitars were nailed haphazardly to the door panels.

Guo Jing was already standing in the square in front of the main hall.

His back was ramrod straight, his fists clenched tightly. The disciples lying in pools of blood, the severed prayer flags, the burning Taoist temple—everything was tearing at the string of "chivalry" within his chest. The legacy established by Wang Chongyang was being trampled upon tonight by the iron hooves of a foreign race!

Guo Jing took a deep breath. The Dragon Subduing True Qi surged in his dantian like a raging sea, and golden light seeped from his palms, illuminating his hands.

From inside the door came the ear-piercing sound of weapons clashing, followed by an extremely arrogant laugh.

"The Quanzhen School? The orthodox school of Taoism? Is that all?"

His voice was youthful, yet carried the arrogance inherent in Mongolian nobility: "If that old bastard Qiu Chuji were still alive, I'd like to exchange a few blows with him. You bunch of useless trash who can't even hold a sword properly, dare to call yourselves disciples and grand-disciples of Wang Chongyang?"

"Huo Du! You've gone too far!" came an old Taoist priest's furious roar filled with grief and indignation from inside the hall.

Behind him, Lin Yuan, supported by Yang Guo, slumped against the foot of the stone lion at the edge of the square.

He slightly raised his head, gazing at Guo Jing's imposing silhouette outlined by the firelight. Deep within his dantian, a drop of dark golden internal energy silently completed its first automatic recharge, following the newly deciphered Quanzhen Inner Strength cultivation method.

Faint, yet real.

The monster, amidst the ruins of the Taoist ancestral temple, truly opened its eyes.

"boom!"

With a single palm strike, Guo Jing shattered the door, frame and all, studded with curved blades into dust.