Xiangzi’s Record of Immortal Cultivation-Chapter 70: Jin Fugui’s Transformation

Liang Hua was dead.
But Xiangzi was gravely wounded.
Facing the blood-drenched Xiangzi, the Ma Liu guards steeled themselves and charged together.
Before, Fat Fan had offered thirty silver dollars for Xiangzi’s leg.
Now, his life was worth two hundred!
At that moment, a branch in the silent forest behind them trembled lightly.
Leaves rustled, falling like rain.
A small figure streaked through the air, leaving an afterimage.
Xiangzi noticed it first.
His brows shot up, his gaze piercing past the guards to a spot behind them.
Sensing something, a chill ran up his spine, his pores tightening.
He raised his short knife to his chest,
bracing for a formidable foe
.
Even facing Liang Hua, a ninth-grade martial artist, he hadn’t felt this.
Seeing Xiangzi’s reaction, the flat-nosed man scoffed. “Trying to bluff us again? Liang Hua fell for it, but we’re not that dumb!”
Brandishing his long saber, he shouted, “Get him! Kill him for Fat Master’s reward!”
Then, he could speak no more.
A sharp claw pierced his chest from behind.
The flat-nosed man’s strength drained, his legs buckling, his body hurled into the air by an overwhelming force.
Struggling to turn, he saw a face both familiar and alien, trembling in horror.
Familiar, for the face was barely human; alien, for the monstrous body—
if it could still be called human
.
In his fading vision, a half-man, half-beast figure.
A body shrunken to half a man’s height, like a dwarf.
Yet its head remained adult-sized, covered in horrific wounds crusted with blood-gold scabs.
The scabs coated its body, screeching like metal when it moved; its wounds revealed pale gold bone shards, like those of the demon tiger Xiangzi had seen.
Most chilling were the sharp, pale gold claws on its fingers, glinting coldly in the ore-dust-laden light.
Those claws had effortlessly pierced the flat-nosed man’s chest.
Xiangzi stared at the dwarf’s face, his heart pounding in shock—
Jin Fugui
!
This was the first time Xiangzi heard of someone surviving days of “ore miasma” without dying.
He couldn’t imagine what Jin Fugui had endured.
But this Jin Fugui was no longer human.
More like a frenzied demon beast.
A shrill, piercing roar erupted from Jin Fugui’s shrunken frame.
He raised his claws, impaling the flat-nosed man’s body.
The man wailed, begging for mercy, but Jin Fugui’s screeches grew sharper—
part exultation, part release
.
Several long sabers hacked at him, like that night of rain and fire.
The dark-gold scabs blocked blades, but not the brutal impact.
Jin Fugui grunted, pale gold blood trickling from his mouth, but he ignored it, sinking his claws deeper, pulling the flat-nosed man’s body to his mouth.
He bared sharp, ghastly fangs.
His teeth tore into the man’s neck, ripping it open.
Hot blood poured into Jin Fugui’s throat, setting his heart ablaze.
In a shower of blood, Jin Fugui howled.
The guards, witnessing this horror, dropped their sabers and fled, souls shattered.
Jin Fugui’s dark-gold eyes seemed fixed only on the flat-nosed man, ignoring the escapees.
When the man was dead, Jin Fugui’s raging emotions seemed to subside.
He—or it—turned to Xiangzi.
Facing that horrific visage, Xiangzi said nothing, picking up a long saber from the ground.
The dwarf’s face flickered with complex emotions.
“Leave!”
“I… owed you a life.”
“It’s repaid!”
His voice, long unused, grated like metal scraping.
Xiangzi’s eyes narrowed, unmoved by the words.
This demonized Jin Fugui was no longer trustworthy.
Sensing Xiangzi’s wariness, the dwarf let out a harsh laugh—
mockery or resignation?
In an instant, it dropped to all fours, darting into the forest like a beast.
After a moment, seeing no movement, Xiangzi relaxed.
He pulled out a wound salve, hastily binding his injuries—none were critical. With his interface’s “eternal proof,” his combat strength barely waned.
Then, he approached Liang Hua’s corpse.
Closing the dead man’s fish-like eyes, he searched carefully.
In Liang Hua’s inner lining, Xiangzi found a hard object.
In his palm appeared a palm-sized, translucent item, like jade marrow.
The missing high-grade beast bone
?
Xiangzi had suspected it was on Liang Hua—
Even the Li Family, to frame him, needed solid proof.
With such a grand scheme, they wouldn’t skimp on a high-grade beast bone.
Xiangzi studied the bone.
Compared to the bone shard from the skinny lackey, this one was larger, laced with faint gold veins, resembling jade marrow more than bone.
He sneered at Liang Hua’s unseeing face and pocketed the beast bone.
After a brief hesitation, he vanished into the forest.
At the Li Family mining area’s edge, a black steed charged in, radiating ferocious energy.
Per Li Family rules, no living creatures but pullers could enter.
But the rider ignored this.
Liu Tang, his burly frame surging with ninth-grade adept qi and blood, pushed to the limit.
At the horned barricade, he said nothing.
Still mounted, his saber flashed.
The blade’s gleam outshone the glaring sun.
A heavy barricade shattered under his strike.
The outer Li Family guards, seeing this martial artist approach, meant to question him but froze under his terrifying aura. With Liang Hua and Chen Fan absent, they could only gape.
A sharp whistle tore through the sand-filled air—the Li Family’s alarm!
In the forest, Liu Tang’s chest heaved. Even a ninth-grade adept was mortal.
Galloping from Forty-Nine City, avoiding main roads, straight to the mines, he was exhausted.
His earlier slash and unrestrained qi and blood let five-colored ore dust wreak havoc in his nose, ears, and lungs.
His eyes blazed red, driven by a raging will.
He was fighting for a sliver of hope.
As Baolin Martial Hall’s outer disciple, Harmony Rickshaw Yard’s adopted son, and a ninth-grade adept, only his presence might make the Li Family’s hidden master hesitate—
even if just a chance
.
He was gambling.
On one side, his life and honor.
On the other, the brothers he’d trained.