Chapter 3: Grade-less Talismans

Chu Hao instinctively raised the surgical knife in his hand to block the blow, but the moment it touched Lu Yan’s fist, the blade snapped in two.

That thin layer of golden light was as firm as iron. The fragile surgical knife couldn’t withstand the impact—its shards flew in every direction, slicing bloody gashes across Chu Hao’s face.

“Bang!”

Lu Yan’s punch landed squarely on Chu Hao’s face with full force, sending the massive man crashing onto an operating table.

Dazed, bleeding from his mouth and nose, Chu Hao—who had once slaughtered dozens without blinking—didn’t die from the hit. Instead, it roused the feral madness within him.

Despite his bulk, he flipped off the table with shocking agility and avoided Lu Yan’s second punch. With a vicious grin, he lunged for Lu Yan’s throat.

“You little bastard! I’ll kill you!”

But before his hands could reach Lu Yan, they were blocked by that seemingly flimsy golden light. Only now did Chu Hao finally notice the strange glow surrounding Lu Yan’s body.

“What… is this?”

The grin vanished from Chu Hao’s face, replaced by confusion and panic.

He hadn’t noticed Lu Yan activating the Golden Light Talisman earlier. He’d assumed the snapped knife had been a fluke.

Now that he clearly saw the shimmering light around Lu Yan, decades of life experience were overturned in an instant.

But the only answer to his question was Lu Yan’s fist.

Another punch landed—flesh and bone clashing with the force of steel. Chu Hao’s hands shattered bone by bone.

His palm turned into a mangled pile of meat. Jagged white bones pierced through torn flesh, unleashing fountains of blood. The agony consumed his mind.

“AAHHH!!! YOU DAMNED—!”

Driven mad by the pain, Chu Hao tried to bite Lu Yan’s neck, but all he received was another iron punch to the mouth.

Every single one of his teeth was knocked out. Before he could even spit them out, they lodged in his throat, blocking his airway.

One punch, two punches, three punches…

Lu Yan’s expression didn’t change as he struck again and again—his fists moving like a machine repeating its task.

Chu Hao’s face was no longer recognizable. His collapsed nasal bone had been smashed into his skull. Pale, grayish matter oozed from his ruined features.

Finally, when Lu Yan’s knuckles were split open by fragments of shattered bone, the pain made him stop.

Chu Hao was now dead beyond any doubt. The mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator who had once towered above all others was now just a mangled, hideous corpse.

Lu Yan sat on one of the nearby operating tables. The Golden Light Talisman had lost its effect during the fight—explaining why Chu Hao’s broken bones had managed to wound him at the end.

As a Grade-less Talisman that didn’t require spiritual power to activate, the Golden Light Talisman was relatively limited in duration and strength.

Still, Lu Yan looked at the body with a sense of deep relief.

“In the end… I won.”

His original plan had been more cautious: take what he could from the underground chamber and leave the Talisman Shop before activating the version update.

That would have allowed him to avoid any confrontation with Chu Hao and minimize danger.

But…

Lu Yan refused to just run.

He’d spent three grueling months working in the Talisman Shop, under constant threat, enduring exploitation harsher than the worst capitalist regimes. How could he be satisfied if he simply fled?

More importantly, there was one other thing: the Demonic Soul Banner.

Its forging method was cruel, yes—but it was undeniably a powerful magic artifact, and likely the most valuable item in the entire shop.

Lu Yan had no intention of killing innocents to refine the banner further. But the Soul Banner was already near completion. Using it didn’t weigh on his conscience.

For someone like Lu Yan, who would inevitably go through multiple version updates in the future, increasing his power to survive was the highest priority.

But as a demonic artifact bound to the Xianxia version, if he left the Talisman Shop, the Soul Banner would vanish with the next version change.

The only way to keep it was to hold onto it during the update.

But the Soul Banner was dangerous. Long-term contact could result in his soul being devoured. The array it was forged in likely had traps as well—touching it too early would’ve triggered Chu Hao’s return.

So, Lu Yan decided to wait in the underground chamber until the version update occurred. In the instant of transition, he would touch the banner—bringing it through the version change with him.

There was risk involved. Chu Hao might return and catch him before the update.

But Lu Yan gambled on the update itself.

If the next version happened to be something like a modern Urban version, Chu Hao would lose his Qi Refining strength.

Even if it wasn’t the Urban version, the shift in supernatural systems could still give Lu Yan a fighting chance.

Without his cultivation, and with Lu Yan armed with several Grade-less Talismans, the odds of killing Chu Hao were high.

And in the end… Lu Yan won the bet.

The Urban version was one of the update options.

The mid-stage demonic cultivator was reduced to an ordinary man—easily slain by Lu Yan.

And of the several talismans Lu Yan had prepared, he only used one: the Golden Light Talisman.

He looked at the corpse on the floor and smiled.

“I really should thank Shopkeeper Chu for those talismans.”

Those Grade-less Talismans had been drawn by Chu Hao himself for sale in the shop.

They were targeted at wealthy mortals, and because demand was low, the shop didn’t keep much in stock. They were only made upon request.

Over the course of three months, Lu Yan had secretly replaced some and hidden them in the stacks of talisman paper in the warehouse. That’s how he’d managed to preserve a few.

Without them, even with Chu Hao stripped of his cultivation, his brute strength alone would’ve made him a formidable opponent.

After a brief rest, Lu Yan finally took a moment to examine his surroundings.

Underground factory. Frozen corpses. Organ trafficking.

Seeing it all, Lu Yan suddenly recalled urban rumors he’d once heard in the previous Urban version.

He lived in Luo City, a small third-tier city. For a while, some of the elderly in his neighborhood had spread rumors of organ trafficking rings operating nearby.

“I thought those were just urban legends… Turns out, they were real. And this factory for organ harvesting happens to match up perfectly with the underground chamber used for refining the Soul Banner in the Xianxia version.”

“So the different versions might not completely correspond, but there are definitely some parallels.”

He quietly filed the observation away.

Since killing Chu Hao had caused such a ruckus yet no one had come, it was clear the underground facility had only ever been manned by Chu Hao alone.

It was the perfect time to reorganize his gains—and examine the Soul Banner that had come through the version update with him.

(End of Chapter)