The Modern Martial I Chapter 14: Dao Fruit

Chapter 14: Dao Fruit

Yaoguang was not even 1.8 ters tall. In front of the 2.3 ters tall daemon, he looked as small as a young girl standing before a burly man.

Even so, he raised his sword without the slightest hesitation and charged at the daemon that lood before him like a mountain of flesh.

As the jin under his feet erupted, power coursed through him, making him shoot forward like an arrow loosed from a crossbow. He rushed forward with great strides, and the heavily muscled daemon, just as excited, also charged. Its massive form rolled forward like a slab of at, bearing down on him.

Seeing this, Yaoguang’s bones and tendons resonated with each other. The jin he had built up within him compressed and then surged, all of it pouring into the sword in his hand. His arm, steady to the extre, gripped the razor-sharp short sword. At the tip of the blade, a faint, almost imperceptible ring of white ripples seed to bloom as he thrust straight toward the massive daemon.

At the instant before their charging figures collided, the daemon let out a low growl. Its right hand, which already looked sowhat inhuman, suddenly twisted and swelled, turning into a thick slab of flesh that slapped down toward Yaoguang’s stabbing blade.

Even if this strike still managed to pierce that thick palm, with the massive daemon and terrifying weight, the head-on collision that followed would definitely send Yaoguang flying and severely injure him in an instant.

Just as the two were about to slam into each other, Yaoguang suddenly jerked sideways, narrowly avoiding the blow that could have smashed a solid wall to pieces.

The two brushed past one another.

Yaoguang could clearly sll the hot, rancid stench rolling off the daemon as they passed!

At the exact mont their bodies were about to move past each other without any contact, his sword suddenly twisted. The thrust turned into a horizontal slash, chopping heavily across the daemon’s enormous torso.

If this sword strike had landed on a normal, human martial artist, it could have torn them open on the spot; in severe cases, it might even have cut them in half. Yet when it struck this daemon...

A dull, tearing sound rang out. The blade did rip open the daemon’s flesh, but it felt as if it had bitten into rock, unable to sink in deeply at all.

On top of that, the mont the sword edge entered its body, a powerful recoil force surged back along the blade, pounding into Yaoguang’s hands. Under that violent mutual impact and pull, the sword was nearly shaken out of his grip.

This change made Yaoguang’s expression shift, but he imdiately followed up with a decisive move.

In an instant, the heavy blow that had been ant to cleave the daemon in two shifted into a smooth, skimming slash that flowed along the contour of its body.

The short sword swept out, dragging a streak of dark-red blood through the air.

Yet not only did this bloodshed fail to deliver a fatal wound, it instead completely triggered the daemon’s ferocity.

With a low roar, the daemon warped further into its daemonified form. Its gigantic fra began to twist sideways, and its massive hand swung out like a solid steel bar being whipped around in a wide arc, smashing down with brutal force.

At that critical mont, Yaoguang used the short sword in his hand as a pivot point and twisted in mid-air.

As he did so, the short sword was suddenly released. His right hand let go, and the blade hung in the air, about to fall under inertia.

Just as the sword was about to drop, his right leg, which had been bent since he brushed past the daemon, snapped straight. His foot kicked out, slamming into the sword hilt.

Bang! With that kick, the sword shot out like an arrow from the string, the air screaming around it as it tore through the space between them. Before the daemon could even react, the blade drilled into its skull and punched straight through.

It was a killing blow!

The sword directly burst out from the daemon’s head and, without losing montum, flew on to slam into the wall ahead. Half the blade buried itself deep in the concrete.

Yaoguang, who had just completed that crossing spin, also landed, carried forward by the montum of his earlier charge. Because he had turned in mid-air, he had no ti to perfectly adjust his center of gravity. When he hit the ground, he staggered back three steps before finally managing to steady himself.

The daemon’s towering body, which resembled a mountain of flesh, also lurched forward two more steps under inertia before crashing heavily to the floor.

On the wall in front of the daemon, the short sword still trembled slightly, half its blade buried in the concrete as cent dust and stone chippings trickled down from around it.

Phew! Yaoguang let out a long breath. The scorching heat from his surging qi and blood poured out with that exhalation.

He glanced at the dozens of human corpses still hanging all over the room like cured at...

Noticing that there were both n and won, he remained silent.

Then he walked to the wall and pulled the sword free.

He had to admit, a sword that cost several hundred thousand was truly worth the price. Even with half the blade driven into the wall, there was no obvious damage to be seen, though repairing it later would be unavoidable.

"Two left," Yaoguang said.

He shook his right hand slightly, and the dust and blood on the blade scattered off.

Then he held the sword one-handed, pushed open the iron door, closed it behind him, walked past the interrogation room, and pushed open another door.

Inside the room, there were more iron cages, with hundreds of numb, despairing people locked within.

Yaoguang said nothing and simply closed the door again, just to prevent them from noticing the scene in the daemon’s room, though everything they had already gone through was probably enough to shatter their minds.

After closing the door, he still did not open the cages to let them out. Instead, as if nothing had happened, he walked out of the room, went up the stairs, and left the basent.

Just then, a guard happened to push the door open and co in.

He seed to be here to change shifts with the guard assigned to the basent, or perhaps this underground level was ant to have two guards watching it at all tis.

However, it no longer mattered. The instant the two t, Yaoguang twisted the guard’s neck without hesitation and quietly dragged the corpse back downstairs.

When one carries a deadly weapon, murderous intent is never far behind. And what of a grandmaster whose very body, from head to toe, is itself a weapon?

Once such a grandmaster harbors the intent to kill, only a full encirclent by regint-level forces or higher can stop them. To a grandmaster, ordinary people are nothing more than lambs waiting for slaughter.

After closing the stairwell door, Yaoguang found a room, climbed out of the window, and headed straight for the location of the second daemon.

Halfway there, Yaoguang’s steps faltered slightly.

In his ntal world, the Martial Artist branch had finally grown to its limit after receiving the experience points from the Daemon Hunter branch.

Aside from granting him a bit of experience and technique for fighting above his level, it finally blood and bore fruit.

With this, the third tier, the grandmaster tier, had fully reached perfection. Every detail was filled in, flawless and complete.

If he used this information to cultivate through the grandmaster tier, he would beco the strongest grandmaster.

However, Yaoguang had no desire to pursue absolute perfection, nor did he intend to achieve the feat of slaying a martial paragon as a grandmaster.

As long as his foundation remained solid, he would advance decisively when it was ti.

Thus, the information granted by the third tier's perfection was unimportant. What mattered was the third Dao Fruit that had ford.

A Dao Fruit was the manifestation of a cultivator's peak comprehension and mastery of a given tier.

"The first two Dao Fruits... One was Formless, granting the ability to hide a weapon within the body; the second was Perception, granting the ability to sense anomalies. As for the third Dao Fruit..."

In monts, the Dao Fruit was plucked, dissolving into countless strands of starlight that shone across his ntal world.

As the starlight illuminated him, innurable mories from his ti as a grandmaster surged forth—years of bitter cultivation, battles against daemons, life-and-death clashes...

Most of them followed the path of slaughter.

At the grandmaster tier, killing daemons was the only way to ensure survival. These experiences forged a wealth of combat knowledge.

Combined with the information, comprehension, and insights belonging to the grandmaster realm, they finally condensed into the secret technique born from the Dao Fruit of the grandmaster tier.

The only secret technique designed solely for frontal combat: Star Ignition.

The human body had seven apertures; reflected above them are the nine stars.[1]

Each star ignited would stimulate the body’s latent potential, unleashing power far beyond its limits.

This was not just a secret technique, but a forbidden technique! It was a life-risking technique, a killing technique.

It was also precisely the technique Yaoguang needed at this mont.

1. Ancient texts frequently refer to the Nine Stars of the Northern Dipper (北斗九星) rather than the standard seven. This distinction arises from the traditional belief of "seven visible and two hidden" (七现二隐), which posits that while seven stars are observable, two remain concealed from view. In the context of traditional correlations with the human body, these stars represent the nine orifices. The commonly recognized seven orifices (七窍) consist of the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth, while the two hidden orifices (二隐) correspond to the urethra and the anus. ??