Returning to the Mysterious Era

"Glug, glug, glug…"

Cassius uncorked the bottle and gulped it all down in one go. The liquid tasted similar to disinfectant, dizzyingly unpleasant and hard to swallow, like drinking soapy water. He let out a loud belch.

Setting the bottle down on the table, Cassius immediately stepped into the last wooden barrel in the room and covered his entire body with sand. With his eyes half closed, he waited quietly for the effects to kick in.

The name "Bone-Devouring Water" could not have been more perfect.

Crack… Crack… Crack…

Eyes closed, Cassius heard sounds emanating from within his body. It wasn't from his joints but rather from all his bones, like countless tiny hammers tapping gently.

At first, it wasn't too painful; he'd even call it comforting. But as time went on, those little hammers grew larger, and their blows heavier. At a certain point, it felt as if a threshold had been crossed, the hammers swinging at full force like someone was pounding the ground with a sledgehammer.

Snap!

Cassius clenched his teeth, veins popping on his temples. He thought he heard his bones breaking or was it just an illusion?

After some concentration, he realized he hadn't imagined it. His bones had really broken! Specifically, the bone in his right calf.

Snap!

Another sharp crack sounded. Cassius grunted, sweat dripping from his forehead.

This time, a crack had developed in his left leg bone. Then, as if in agreement, all the bones in his body began to crackle and pop. Fractures spread across his skeleton like a spider web, from his leg bones all the way to his arms. Waves of excruciating pain crashed through his body.

Cassius's breathing grew heavier, his heart pounding like a drum under the agony. In the empty private room, the only sounds were his heavy, bull-like breathing. The pain from the Bone-Devouring Water was intense, but Cassius managed to endure it, thanks to the continuous stimulation from his training medicine, which had built up his pain resistance.

The pain from the Bone-Devouring Water far exceeded what he had experienced before, but just as quickly as it came, it soon began to subside. After about ten minutes, Cassius felt the pain noticeably lessen throughout his body. At the twenty-minute mark, it was back to how it had felt at the start. By thirty minutes, the liquid's effect had completely worn off.

He was about to stand up when he felt a wave of dizziness—the mental side effect of using forbidden techniques. Cassius gritted his teeth and pushed through it for five minutes before standing up again, shaking his head to clear the fog as he did so. Dust cascaded down from his body like rain.

He raised a hand and brushed the sand from his chest, feeling the uneven surface of his muscles. It wasn't the bony feel of ribs but rather solid muscle mass. Looking down, he saw his pectorals had appeared, and further down, a set of evenly arranged six-pack abs.

And that wasn't all. Cassius surveyed his whole body; he had grown at least two sizes bigger. His muscles were well-defined in all the right places, with sharp, chiseled lines. This was the kind of healthy physique a pugilist should have.

If Li Wei had been a scrawny stray cat before, Cassius was a leopard now.

In the private room, he slowly extended his powerful hand, clenching it tightly. A long-lost feeling of strength returned to the muscles of his palm, the streamlined contours bouncing like steel cords.

Cassius grinned, his white teeth glinting in the light. As he spread his arms wide, a hint of black traced along his body, muscles bursting forth with unyielding intensity.

"Hiss…"

His tall frame was like a drawn bow as he arched his back, taking a fierce breath, his chest swelling like a balloon. The air twisted around his nose and mouth in spiraling white lines. This breath seemed never-ending, even though it only lasted a full half-minute.

Cassius's body grew taller by the inch, muscles swelling even more dramatically than usual until he was like a towering wall; though it was still a bit thin, the wall would thicken in time. He casually swung his arms, the muscles of his veined, powerful arms exuding a fearsome strength, even with the slightest movement.

A few minutes passed. With a muffled thud, a surge of energy erupted from Cassius's body in the form of a gust of wind. It burst forth from his pores, swirling violently like a gale.

In the private room, a faint whistling sound could be heard. Cassius's physique began to shrink, deflating like a balloon until he eventually returned to his usual muscular build. He glanced at the status bar in the top right corner.

[Wind Elephant Fist Incomplete: Elephant Herd 76.6% (Total Three Stages) → [Wind Elephant Fist Incomplete: Elephant Herd 78.5% (Total Three Stages)]

[Elephant Soul Incomplete: Bug Bite 36.5% (Total Three Stages)" → "Elephant Soul Incomplete: Bug Bite 61.8% (Total Three Stages)"

He had increased his training progress by 25%.

The Bone-Devouring Water certainly lived up to its reputation as the Golden Fist Sect's top-tier precious elixir, comparable to two of the Singing Water Sect's secret medicines combined.

With this rapid progress, Cassius was now only about 5% away from reaching the major culmination of Bug Bite at 66.7%. Although it might take years of personal training to get this last five percent, the Bone-Devouring Water had significantly shortened that journey. Its effects had far exceeded his expectations especially since Cassius had initially estimated an enhancement range of around fifteen to twenty percent, but it had reached twenty-five percent.

He twisted his neck, and the exhaustion that had plagued his frail body vanished instantly. The strength that he thought he had lost forever returned once more.

"After being chased around like a dog for half a month, time to collect some interest." He hoisted the wooden barrel and trudged toward the door.

On June 8, at seven in the morning, a light fog covered parts of Beiliu City. Pedestrians occasionally broke out of the mist on the sidewalks, and cars drove cautiously with their headlights on.

A man wearing a black trench coat emerged from a standalone house, expressionlessly stepping out onto the nearby street through the wooden gate.

Not far away, at the corner of the main road and an alley, a man in a suit and wearing a black wide-brimmed hat stood with a briefcase in hand. Every few minutes, he glanced at his watch as if he were waiting for someone.

As his eyes swept across the alley, he casually peeked at the man in the trench coat walking toward him, before looking down again. The wide-brimmed hat covered most of his face, making it difficult to discern his features.

Tap, tap, tap…

The sound of footsteps gradually grew closer in the faint mist, until suddenly, it stopped.

The middle-aged man lowered the hand with his watch and noticed a pair of black boots at the bottom right of his vision. A leg swiftly whipped out like a black python, filling his entire field of view.

A minute later, footsteps echoed from the alley.

Cassius dusted off the black wide-brimmed hat in his hand, adjusting the front and back before gently placing it on his head. He turned around and strolled down the sidewalk.

Five minutes later, at a street corner intersection, a little boy in brown suspenders, wearing a plaid beret and a boxy-looking backpack filled with freshly printed newspapers was shouting.

"Beiliu County Morning News! Just printed, the Beiliu County Morning News! One yuan per copy, just one yuan per copy!"

A man in a trench coat walked up to him from the left side of the street. "Give me one."

"Sure." The boy reached behind him.

"That looks cumbersome. Let me help you with that," said the man in the trench coat in a deep voice. He placed his hand on the back of the boy's neck.

The boy shuddered and stiffly raised his head, only to see a face as cold as steel.

At 7:30 p.m., on Zhenni Street, Cassius rifled through the newspaper before tossing it into a trash bin.

He slowly turned his head, sensing at least three or four gazes subtly looking his way. A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth.

The Shadow Organization. What a bunch of sewer rats. If they were going to be used as pawns, they should be prepared for the consequences.

***

On June 9, at six in the evening, during dusk.

The sunset painted the sky red, with beams of light stretching across the city. The dazzling golden-red glow reflected brilliantly off various pointed and domed rooftops. The expansive crimson clouds resembled a vast ocean.

In the suburbs of Beiliu City, two tall men in peculiar attire emerged from the woods near the train station, their eyes fixed on the metal train at the station. One man with thick eyebrows turned and said, "I'm surprised that these humans created such a thing, Wolf."

"I can't sense any totemic aura or supernatural essence from it; it's just a long metal carriage," the other taller man responded as he took out a palm-sized stone from his pocket, positioning it. "Forget about those things. We must bring the traitor back and offer him as a sacrifice to the great Totem King."

A figure approached from afar just as he finished speaking. The person was dressed entirely in black: black gloves, long black boots, and a hat that concealed their face. Only a pale, bloodless chin was visible.

"Lord Wolf, Lord Owl, Count Andrew asked me to come meet you. My name is Robert, the leader of this Shadow Organization operation," the man in the suit said, giving a simple bow. He lifted his head slightly; his sharp teeth were a dead giveaway to his identity.

"Robert, is it? What's the situation here? My Totem Stone is sensing that he's still in the city," Wolf said, tucking the stone back into his pocket.

"Everything is going well. I have men all over the city monitoring him. The target won't escape our grasp," the man replied.

Suddenly, another figure dressed in black dashed toward them from a distance. Flustered, he said, "Leader Robert, all the assassins we positioned around the target have been taken out."

The man in the suit whipped his head around. "What? Say that again!"

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