Mythical Three Kingdoms: Martial Arts Reach Divine Ranks, I Alone Rule the World

Before long, drops of blood essence, as clear and translucent as blood diamonds, dripped from the gap in the heart and fell into the open jade bottle.

One drop!

Two drops!

Three drops!

……

When the sixth drop of blood essence had finished dripping, Zhang Mu glanced at the heart that had stopped beating and was completely shriveled, and threw it aside with a look of disgust.

"Only six drops of blood semen!"

"I should have known better than to push so hard!"

"Perhaps after this centurion dies, we can squeeze a few more drops of blood essence from his corpse to save for my second brother Wen Yuan to use when he breaks through to the next realm."

After shifting his gaze from the corpse of the dead Xianbei commander, Zhang Mu turned back to look at the city of Yanmen behind him.

"What are you all standing there for!"

"Han soldiers, listen to my command..."

"Come out and clean up the battlefield, extracting the essence and blood remaining in the enemy corpses. After refining away the impurities and bloodthirsty energy, use it as resources for your cultivation breakthrough."

Zhang Mu didn't care about the essence and blood contained in the corpses of the other Xianbei cavalrymen.

At his level of cultivation, where he can condense a martial arts dharma image in the blink of an eye, the essence blood nurtured in the bodies of ordinary Bone Forging Realm, Blood Condensation Realm, and Meridian Opening Realm martial artists, as well as the blood essence derived from the bodies of Gathering Qi Realm martial artists, are of no use to him.

For it to work...

It must be the blood crystal left behind by a Martial Realm expert, or even a Tyrant Realm expert.

According to Zhang Mu's understanding, there is only one other expert in Bingzhou who is at the same level as him: Lü Bu.

As for the higher levels of martial arts—the Overlord Realm, which forges an unparalleled battle body, regenerates severed limbs in an instant, and further extends lifespan.

Let alone Bingzhou right now.

Looking at the entire world at the end of the Han Dynasty, there was only one who was suspected to be half a gun god, Tong Yuan.

At present, the Han dynasty is still in power, and the struggle for supremacy among various warlords has not yet begun.

If Zhang Mu were to fight to the death with Lu Bu and Tong Yuan, two of the most powerful figures of the time, just for the blood crystals needed to temper his body, he would be extremely unwilling.

It's just the Overlord Realm.

If Xiang Yu, who was once the military genius Han Xin and the strategist Zhang Liang, who used the power of heaven and earth to set up a deadly battle formation and were thus refined to death, could still reach that level in the future, he might very well reach the pinnacle of that realm.

After all, he is only in his early twenties now, and he will have plenty of time to explore higher realms of martial arts in the future.

Before Zhang Mu could think any further, the Han soldiers on the city walls of Yanmen County who had heard his order cheered.

"General, you are mighty! Long live General Zhang!"

"General, you are mighty!"

"..."

The excited Han soldiers rushed out of the city without any hesitation.

Some of the bolder soldiers even jumped straight down from the twenty-zhang-high city wall like dumplings being dropped into boiling water, without any concern that they would be smashed to pieces upon landing.

Zhang Mu did not stop his soldiers' seemingly suicidal act of jumping off the city wall.

Without him.

Due to the special nature of this world, normal men, unless they are physically disabled or born weak, do not need to train their physique. Once they reach adulthood, they can easily lift 800 pounds with both arms.

In the context of his previous life's materialistic history, it would not be an exaggeration to describe him as "everyone is like Xiang Yu, the Hegemon of Western Chu".

This is only before any martial arts training has been conducted.

If one learns the methods of cultivation—

Whether it's the Bone Forging Realm where the skin, flesh, muscles, and bones have been further tempered, the Blood Coagulation Realm where the blood and qi in the body flow like a dragon, or the Meridian Opening Realm where all the meridians in the body have been opened, all of them are enough to easily kill Xiang Yu of the material world.

Because of these three realms, it is no longer possible to describe it as lifting 800 jin with both arms, but rather as being able to generate a force of 1,000 jin, 2,000 jin, or 3,000 jin with just one arm.

With such an extraordinary physique and immense strength...

If someone were to accidentally fall to their death while jumping off the city wall, that would be a truly hellish joke.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

……

The sound of heavy objects falling to the ground was incessant.

After jumping off the city wall, the Han soldiers left craters in the ground, then acted as if nothing had happened, dusted themselves off, and rushed back to the battlefield.

Their objective was clear: to collect every enemy corpse they encountered.

This kind of gathering is not like Zhang Mu's method of extracting only the heart's blood, but rather the kind where he doesn't intend to waste any of the body's essence and blood.

"Prefect Guo!"

"It's time to get to work. You're just like your nephew Guo Fengxiao, so lazy."

Seeing that the soldiers who had left the city had already sorted and collected the enemy corpses according to their martial arts level in life, Zhang Mu shouted a message into the city.

"Zhang Gongzhi!"

"Do you think it's so easy for me, the governor, to maintain the dragon vein's protective array? Can't I even get a break?!"

The middle-aged scholar in blue robes, the prefect, did not appear, but his voice could already be heard from within the prefecture.

not only that.

Along with his voice came three large talisman cauldrons in mid-air, formed entirely from the vast and righteous energy of literature and the Dao.

The talisman cauldron has three legs and two handles, and its body faintly shimmers with golden light.

As soon as the three talisman cauldrons appeared, they floated above three mountains of corpses piled up from the bodies of enemies at the Bone Forging Realm, Blood Coagulation Realm, and Meridian Opening Realm.

"rise!"

The voice of Prefect Guo came again from the depths of the city.

In an instant, wisps of Xuanhuang Qi, identical to the one that had previously formed the city's protective array, surged up from beneath the ground and gathered below the talisman cauldron.

"Refine!"

As soon as the word "Refine" was uttered, not only was the primordial energy ignited and transformed into fuel for the cauldron, but even the essence and blood within the corpses were drawn in some way, with fresh blood gushing from the wounds of the Xianbei corpses and converging into the cauldron.

During this process, the three rune cauldrons rotated continuously.

As the blood in their bodies was continuously drawn out, the Xianbei corpses gradually became shriveled and gray, as if they had been dried out by the wind.

The Han soldiers present were already used to this scene.

The Han army killed foreign tribes in this way, and foreign tribes slaughtered Han soldiers and civilians in the same way.

In this world, the blood feud between the Han and the barbarians is no longer just a struggle over territory and civilization, but also a matter of plundering and expanding one's own resources for cultivation.

"Team leadership!"

"The corpses of the Xianbei people can be refined, then..."

A Han recruit's gaze fell upon the dozens of corpses of his comrades who had tragically perished at the hands of the Xianbei at the start of the battle...

"You bastard!"

Don't even think about it!

The Han army commander raised his foot, his face contorted with anger, and was about to kick the recruit who had asked the question to the ground.

however.

Before he could even make a move, the Han army commanders felt their shoulders being pressed down, rendering them unable to exert any strength.

He turned back to look at it with displeasure...

"Uh! General... what brings you here?"

The Han army commander stared in astonishment at Zhang Mu, who had appeared beside him without him noticing. The displeasure and anger at the new recruit's words instantly transformed into fervor.

Zhang Mu ignored the words of the Han army commander and instead looked at the Han army recruit who had just asked that ignorant question.

"Are you asking whether, in the process of refining essence blood, the corpses of fallen comrades can be disposed of in the same way as the corpses of alien races?"

Zhang Mu's tone was calm, without the slightest hint of anger.

"No!"

"General...you've misunderstood...I..."

The Han army recruit tried to argue, but under Zhang Mu's gaze, which seemed to see right through him, and recalling the young general's recent godlike and demonic performance on the battlefield, he immediately lost his temper.

"I can tell you now."

"The essence and blood from the corpses of fallen comrades can not only be extracted, but their essence and blood are even more potent than that of alien races."

"To put it bluntly!"

"If any of you were capable of killing all your comrades present and refining their blood essence for your own use, breaking through to the level I am currently at might be wishful thinking, but creating a Gathering Qi Realm expert who is impervious to swords and spears should not be difficult."

"but."

Zhang Mu suddenly stepped forward, staring intently into the eyes of the Han army recruits, and said, "Are you prepared to have your reason devoured by the demonic nature in your own race's blood?"

"If you can't control the demonic nature in your own blood..."

"Even if you receive a great fortune in the future and manage to reach the level I am at by devouring and refining the blood of your own kind, you will only be a demon general whose mind is filled with the desire to kill, not even as good as a wild beast that eats raw meat and drinks blood in the mountains."

"Because wild beasts will howl in fear and run away when they encounter a powerful enemy, while demon generals will only be dominated by that overwhelming demonic nature and will kill relentlessly to the death."

"When his blood and energy are completely depleted, that will be the time of his death."

The new recruits of the Han army were frightened by Zhang Mu's words, but the veteran soldiers of Yanmen County around them felt a pang of sympathy.

These veterans, who have struggled countless times on the brink of life and death, are not new recruits who know nothing.

Having guarded the border for many years, they had witnessed firsthand how some of their old comrades, in their pursuit of breakthroughs, would secretly slaughter the corpses of their fellow soldiers and innocent Han Chinese civilians.

But without exception.

Those people went mad after refining the essence blood of their comrades.

Either they become demonic under the stimulation of killing when fighting against foreign tribes, and recklessly rush into the enemy's encirclement;

Or...

The veteran from Yanmen County looked at Zhang Mu with awe.

Before its demonic nature could even erupt, the general forcefully suppressed and annihilated it after the matter was exposed.

"General! I..."

After hearing Zhang Mu's description, the new recruits in the Han army wanted to promise that they would never do such a thing in the future.

But before he could finish speaking, Zhang Mu abruptly changed the subject.

"Raising your sword inward to use the blood of your own kind to enhance your cultivation is not a skill."

"I will kill every single one of these people I see."

"The truly capable ones are those who go north and kill all the old, weak, women, and children of the foreign tribes beyond the Great Wall, extracting their essence and blood for their own use. I would have no objection to that."

Upon hearing Zhang Mu's words, all the veterans from Yanmen County present smiled knowingly.

Because of this, the young general in front of them had done quite a few things like this.

Laying the wheels flat is just a basic exercise.

The new recruits of the Han army were stunned by what Zhang Mu said next. They never expected that their general's bottom line would be so flexible.

But at that moment...

He caught a whiff of a delicate fragrance.

Zhang Mu and the other Han soldiers present also smelled it.

Everyone looked in the direction from which the fragrance was coming...

Inside the three large talisman cauldrons in mid-air, fueled by the earth's primordial energy, varying numbers of blood pills were gradually condensing and taking shape.