Chapter Five: Emerging from Confinement with a Blade in Hand, Leading an Old Hound

However, it was precisely Lin Fan’s appearance that made her breathe a sigh of relief! Though she deeply disliked Lin Fan, if Lin Xiong truly expelled her from the Lin family because of him, she would be unwilling to accept it. After all, she and Lin Xiong had been husband and wife for many years, and their feelings ran deep—not to mention she couldn’t bear to leave Yu’er behind.

Yet she would remember what happened today. She understood now that Lin Xiong did not care about Lin Fan as little as he appeared to on the surface.

“What exactly is going on here?”

Lin Xiong glanced at the unconscious old woman on the ground and questioned Lin Fan, for he recognized her as one of his wife’s attendants.

Lin Fan turned to look at the old woman lying on the ground and slowly said, “Here’s what happened, Father. Though my stepmother harbors no intent to kill me, this old dog did. She wanted to murder me so that the supreme Body-Tempering Pill would fall into my brother Lin Yu’s hands, hoping to curry favor with my stepmother. My stepmother knew nothing of any of this.”

With that, Lin Fan lifted his head to look at the beautiful woman, a brilliant smile on his face. “Stepmother, how do you think we should deal with this old dog? After all, she's one of your people.”

He kept addressing her as “stepmother,” which made the beautiful woman's eyes narrow slightly. She realized that Lin Fan seemed different from before.

In the past, Lin Fan was merely stubborn, treating her with cold indifference; he only called her “stepmother” because he was forced to, and he seldom smiled—certainly never with such a hidden edge beneath it.

It was as if he had become a different person, his aura drastically altered!

“How else should we deal with her? Of course she must die!”

At Lin Fan’s words, fury once again blazed in Lin Xiong’s eyes. He turned his head to look at the beautiful woman and said, “Wife, you have no objection, I presume?”

“None at all,” the beautiful woman replied, the corners of her mouth twitching. A cold glint flashed in her eyes as she forced an unnatural smile at Lin Fan.

Hearing this, Lin Fan crouched down, grabbed the old woman’s hair with his left hand, and lifted her head to expose her neck toward the beautiful woman. He grinned and said, “Since you agree, stepmother, I’ll do it myself. After all, a man should take his own revenge!”

With a ringing sound, no one knew where Lin Fan produced a sharp blade, about a foot long, which he suddenly drove into the old woman’s throat.

“Urrgh—!”

Roused by the searing pain, the unconscious old woman’s eyes flew open, but she could make no sound—for the blade had pierced her throat, leaving her able only to emit hoarse, choking noises.

Her head held tight in Lin Fan’s grasp, her eyes could only fixate on the beautiful woman before her as blood gushed from her neck, staining a wide swath of the floor.

The beautiful woman’s pupils contracted instantly; her face went deathly pale, her fists clenched so tight her hands lost all color.

“With blade unsheathed I exit the forbidden halls, old dog’s head in hand!” Lin Fan declared in a loud, clear voice. The blade in the old woman’s neck twisted, and in a gruesome flourish, her entire head was severed.

A fountain of blood erupted, spraying in all directions—splattering even the beautiful woman’s dress, and Lin Xiong’s as well.

The beautiful woman’s features were drained of all color, while Lin Xiong’s brow furrowed; he too had noticed Lin Fan’s transformation, but said nothing.

Lin Fan straightened. His white robe was now soaked in blood. He hefted the old woman’s head, her eyes wide with lingering hatred in death, and flung it aside.

Thud!

The blood-soaked head rolled to the beautiful woman’s feet. She shuddered as she gazed into those unblinking eyes—almost screaming, but just managed to restrain herself.

Though she had ordered many deaths herself, she had always left such things to her subordinates. When had she ever witnessed such a ghastly scene firsthand?

After all, she had once been the young lady of the Liang clan, one of the four great families, and even after marriage, as the Lin family’s matron, she never needed to dirty her own hands. The most brutal sight she had seen was when Lin Xiong struck down two guards with a single palm, shattering their organs and leaving them to die in a bloody heap.

But now, Lin Fan had, right in front of her eyes, sliced off the old woman’s head while she still lived.

“Stepmother, I’ve already dealt with that old dog for you. In the future, you’ll need to find a new servant—do pick better next time. Just look at her eyes—she died with a grievance!”

Lin Fan smiled as he addressed the Lin family matron, then, paying no heed to her ghastly pallor, turned to Lin Xiong and bowed. “Father, what about the supreme Body-Tempering Pill my brother left for me?”

“Ah! Here it is.” Lin Xiong reached into his storage ring and produced a small white jade vial, handing it to Lin Fan. “Fan’er, your brother paid a high price for this. Treasure it well.”

“I will, Father. I promise to do my best.”

With that, Lin Fan offered a calm smile, turned, and strode away.

Lin Xiong watched his departing figure in silence, lost in thought. Yet, in his eyes, a trace of pride and satisfaction could be seen.

“Negative emotion points from Liang Yuyan: +361, +128, +453, +841...!”

“Negative emotion points from Granny Liang: +2000!”

“Negative emotion points from Liang Yu: +127, +221, +59, +121, +34...!”

When Lin Fan returned to his small courtyard room, he opened his system’s income log, an involuntary smile curling his lips. In just one day, his negative emotion points had increased by nearly six thousand.

Liang Yuyan was his stepmother, the grand matron of the Lin family. The surge in her negative emotion points was clearly because he had just slain her old servant before her eyes, leaving her with bitter hatred toward him—hence the constant jump in points.

Granny Liang was the “old dog” he had just killed—a mid-stage Qi Induction expert. Had he not secretly drugged her food, he might never have subdued her. It was that final, fatal blow that startled her awake; she knew it was his doing, contributing a final surge of negative points. But with her death, her points ended there.

As for his good brother Lin Yu, he had to thank him for his steady contributions these past seven days—almost a thousand negative points daily, much like the two guards.

Over the last three days, Lin Fan had exchanged for more than twenty Body-Tempering Fruits and consumed them all, the effects remarkable—his cultivation had soared to the ninth stage of Body-Tempering.

But his ninth stage was different from others’. In the Ice and Snow Kingdom, the nine stages of Body-Tempering were skin, membrane, tendons, bones, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, and heart—each completion marking a new stage.

Yet with each fruit, Lin Fan refined his entire body, especially his heart. After the first fruit, his strength reached a thousand pounds, his heart like a blazing furnace.

After the fifth fruit, his heart was still a furnace, but his power had only grown to two thousand pounds. Even so, he was delighted, for the ninth stage of Body-Tempering usually meant only about two thousand pounds of strength.

He didn’t stop there, but kept consuming the fruits. The sixth one refined his spleen, making it heavy as earth and adding another thousand pounds. By the tenth fruit, his strength reached four thousand pounds.

Next came the liver, brimming with vitality—five thousand pounds at the fifteenth fruit. Then lungs and kidneys: one became as tough as iron, strengthening all his sinews, bones, skin, and membranes, his strength breaking through to eight thousand pounds; the other surged like a tide, filling him with boundless energy, his power climbing to ten thousand pounds.

By this point, he had consumed all twenty fruits he had acquired, and by his reckoning, he had reached the ninth stage of Body-Tempering.

For others, the final steps of the ninth stage involved refining the five organs, but he had begun that process from the very start. No matter the order, once all five were tempered, the ninth stage was complete.

What’s more, his strength already matched that of an early-stage Qi Induction cultivator. If he had possessed any true energy, he would have been an outright match for them.

Yet even without true energy, with sheer physical might alone, if a Qi Induction expert were careless enough to be ambushed by him...

Heh—at the very least, they’d lose a layer of skin, if not their life!

That was why Lin Fan had come back to the Lin family: he no longer feared any overt threat. Besides, by now, his father should have returned.