Chapter 46: I Can Sense My Blood, Stacking Gunpowder Barrels

Buzz, buzz...
Text message vibration alert.
Ma Bin narrowed his eyes as he looked at the text message, his emotions fluctuating wildly under the sway of its contents.
After a long quarter of an hour.
Ma Bin put down his phone, his expression shifting uncertainly between gloom and clarity. Finally, he let out a long sigh and muttered, "What a terrible outcome. Neither side died. It really proves that saying true—evil people are notoriously hard to kill."
Ma Bin's mind raced. "A three-on-one and they still almost managed to counter-kill one of us? That cripple isn't just sinister and cunning; his combat prowess is not to be underestimated."
Ma Bin had considered that the cripple's words might not be entirely trustworthy—the fellow might have deliberately exaggerated his battle results and hadn't necessarily crippled one of their men. However, escaping alive from a three-man pincer movement was surely no fabrication.
Little did he guess that Feng Mu's words weren't just untrustworthy in parts; not a single damn syllable could be believed. It was utterly absurd.
What was even more absurd was that Feng Mu wasn't technically lying either; the substance of his words essentially mirrored the facts.
Think about it: wasn't he surrounded three-to-one by the black market merchants? Did he or did he not escape alive? Did he not pin down one of them tenaciously, effectively crippling an adversary on Ma Bin's behalf?
Ma Bin re-read the text message, grasping the cripple's underlying hints and warnings.
On the surface, these few messages could be seen as well-intentioned reminders. But upon deeper reflection, it became clear that the cripple was warning him not to think about welshing on the debt, let alone harbor any dangerous thoughts.
After all, if a black market merchant encirclement couldn't trap him, the Green Wolf Gang shouldn't even bother trying to set traps or ambushes for him—lest they bite off more than they could chew and shatter every tooth in their mouths.
Most importantly, it served as a wake-up call: with external common enemies lurking menacingly in the shadows, they shouldn't waste time bickering among themselves right now.
Ma Bin's face darkened, a thousand curses surging through his mind with no clear target to hurl them at.
Yet, the text reply he ultimately edited read:
—What are the defining features of that gang of black market merchants?
The text was answered in a split second:
—A middle-aged man whose fake smile wrinkles his face like a chrysanthemum, and two others with dark complexions.
On the other end, Feng Mu grinned, knowing that text message carried the implication of tacit consent.
The risk of Ma Bin defaulting couldn't be said to be zero, but it had dropped by at least half. Feng Mu could now start planning an opportune moment to cash out.
Stepping out of the bedroom, he casually polished off three bowls of rice.
While eating, Wang Xiuli informed him that Feng Ju had returned a call. From the sound of it, the big fish had yet to take the bait, and the precinct was getting impatient and preparing to close the net.
Feng Mu's pupils constricted slightly. His inner state was far from as calm as his outward expression.
Returning to his bedroom, he sat blankly at his desk for a few minutes. Feng Mu took several deep breaths, fiercely rubbing his palms against his cheeks. When he stood back up, his mouth was already stuffed with iron bead powder.

[Metal detected—pig iron, edible!]
[Occupy a new consumption slot?]
[Occupy!]
[Current consumption slot 1: Pig iron (Consumption progress 0.1/100%)]
[Consumption progress ↑]
There was no time left for hesitation or self-doubt. He needed to open a new consumption slot immediately, press forward with his upgrades, and boost his combat power.
As for the other consumption slot—whether to choose [Rusted Iron] or wait for a chance to unlock [Yin-Yin Nether Calamity Grudge Iron]—he could decide once the pig iron slot was fully consumed.
"I shouldn't have slept in vain last night; I wasted precious time," Feng Mu regretted inwardly.
Over the past month, his level of diligence had already surpassed ninety-nine percent of the grinding fanatics across the entire world, yet he remained deeply unsatisfied.
If only there were a trait that allowed someone to skip sleep and never feel fatigue... That had been Feng Mu's greatest hope and wish before going to bed every night.
While resuming the iron-swallowing process, Feng Mu pulled open a drawer, extracted a syringe, and drove it mercilessly into his arm, drawing blood in a steady stream.
"Whatever was missed last night must be doubled and made up for today," he thought to himself.
Steeling his heart, Feng Mu drew a full three tubes of blood. Moreover, this time he had no intention of flushing the blood down the toilet as he had on previous days; instead, he stored it in an opaque thermos.
[Feast]: The blood of your kind exudes an enticing fragrance. Devour them, and you shall attain immortality~
Treating others as blood bags would inevitably lead one's soul to degenerate into something inhuman.
So, if one treated oneself as a blood bag, would it still lead to dehumanization?
Perhaps not; perhaps it would turn him into something even less human. Feng Mu couldn't say for sure, but he intended to try. He had no other choice.
The situation was shifting abruptly. Ma Bin would undoubtedly accelerate his bid for power, the precinct was on the verge of closing its net, and the provoked black market merchants were still out there... All these visible and hidden dangers gave Feng Mu the distinct sensation that the temperature was rising.
If the aforementioned perils were to arrive sequentially one by one, Feng Mu was reasonably confident he could hold his ground.
However, a strange intuition lingered in the back of his mind, faintly telling him that these gunpowder kegs, seemingly scattered apart, might well detonate simultaneously and blow up into one magnificent grand finale.
If there were only one gunpowder keg, Feng Mu's [Iron Eater] could manage to shoulder it;
If there were two, adding [Frenzied Blood] would probably still allow him to endure;
Yet,
Should three gunpowder kegs pile up together, refusing to draw upon [Feast] meant he might truly fail to survive.
Feng Mu wanted to witness the fireworks; he even felt a restless urge to spark the display. But he had no desire to be blown to smithereens and become mere fireworks in someone else's eyes.

The blood from the three syringes was just enough to fill a thermos cup.
Feng Mu screwed the lid on tightly, tucked the cup into his messenger bag, and resolved to carry it with him every single day from tomorrow onward.
"What a pity. Once blood leaves one's own body, its shelf life is only twenty-four hours," Feng Mu thought. Fortunately, he could replenish it daily.
A twenty-four-hour shelf life wasn't a figure Feng Mu had simply plucked out of thin air; he had tested it a few days prior, though not by drinking it.
He had tested it through perception.
Feng Mu discovered it the very first time he drew blood: once his own blood left his body, if it was stored in a metal container, he could sense both the location and the vitality of the blood.
Back when he fought fiercely with Zhang桐, the blood he lost couldn't be sensed because it had splattered onto the ground and was instantly contaminated and rendered inactive.
That day, after drawing blood, he had secretly carried it to the bathroom in an iron basin to dump it into the toilet when he noticed this characteristic.
While the blood was in the iron basin, he could sense it; the moment the blood was poured into the toilet, the sensation vanished.
Thus, Feng Mu deduced that his blood required metal—specifically, ferrous metal—for storage in order to retain its vitality outside the body.
It made complete sense. After all, [Frenzied Blood] and [Iron Eater] were traits born together; some unique karmic bond between them was hardly surprising.
Yet, storing blood in ferrous metals did not preserve its vitality forever; it could only last for twenty-four hours. Beyond that mark, Feng Mu would lose all perception of his own blood.
As a side note, this perception ignored distance. This meant that if someone were to steal a jar of Feng Mu's blood, within twenty-four hours—even if that person fled to the ends of the earth—Feng Mu would still be able to pinpoint the exact coordinates of that jar of blood.
It seemed like a utterly useless little ability, seeing as Feng Mu couldn't imagine anyone being crazy enough to steal his blood.
However, what if he used it in reverse?
Feng Mu tucked the syringe back into the drawer, his gaze lingering on the black core for a moment while the embryonic form of a scheme brewed in his mind.
"If this actually works, that black core might just net me a massive windfall in one go," Feng Mu muttered to himself, pitch-black, eerie light gleaming in his eyes.
Standing by the window, he gazed out at the gathering darkness of the night. He couldn't see the person tracking and monitoring him, but he knew for certain that watcher hadn't departed.
Which one of them could it be?
The middle-aged man with the chrysanthemum fake smile, the utterly unremarkable dark-complexioned fellow, or the other dark-complexioned fellow who played with ants?
He drew the curtains shut.
Feng Mu reined in his stray thoughts, concentrated his mind, and began practicing his physical conditioning routine...