The Modern Martial Immortal-Chapter 14: Dao Fruit

Yaoguang was not even 1.8 meters tall. In front of the 2.3 meters 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 loomed 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 meat, 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 extreme, gripped the razor-sharp short sword. At the tip of the blade, a faint, almost imperceptible ring of white ripples seemed 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 somewhat 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 smell the hot, rancid stench rolling off the daemon as they passed!

At the exact moment 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 moment 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 immediately followed up with a decisive move.

In an instant, the heavy blow that had been meant 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 frame 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 moment, 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 momentum, 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 momentum of his earlier charge. Because he had turned in mid-air, he had no time 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 cement 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 meat...

Noticing that there were both men and women, 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 basement.

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

He seemed to be here to change shifts with the guard assigned to the basement, or perhaps this underground level was meant to have two guards watching it at all times.

However, it no longer mattered. The instant the two met, 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 encirclement by regiment-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 mental 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 bloomed 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 become 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 time.

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

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

"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 moments, the Dao Fruit was plucked, dissolving into countless strands of starlight that shone across his mental world.

As the starlight illuminated him, innumerable memories from his time 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 moment.

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. ☜