The Golden Needle Iron Finger—piercing stone as if it were decayed!

After Chen Jue darted up seven meters along the sheer cliff face, his upward momentum faltered. As gravity began to pull him downward, his hands suddenly darkened with a bluish hue. His ten fingers clenched fiercely, gripping tightly into a narrow crevice barely one or two centimeters wide. Using the strength of his fingertips, he hung himself close to the cliff, his entire body seemingly suspended in midair.

It’s important to know that skilled climbers can leverage even a one- or two-centimeter protrusion to perform pull-ups.

However, such finger strength only comes after years of relentless training, and one must be prepared in advance to explosively exert power on such a minuscule foothold for large movements.

Yet Chen Jue was in the midst of intense physical exertion, with only fleeting moments to seize the narrow crack—a true test of his vision and reflexes.

Once he sensed a suitable grip, he relied on his Wudang Golden Needle Finger technique, enhanced by tightly closed pores and a burst of visible energy, combined with a strength attribute of 2.87, to suspend his roughly 180-pound frame on the cliffside.

The difficulty here was more than ten times greater than the stop-and-go rhythm of typical outdoor free climbing!

Moreover, outdoor climbing experts usually secure safety ropes beforehand when tackling cliffs as sheer and near-vertical as the one Chen Jue faced, to prevent accidents.

Chen Jue, however, had no protective measures—his only reliance was the power earned through cultivation and the formidable physical conditioning of his body.

Of course, ordinary people cannot even grasp a one- or two-centimeter protrusion to suspend themselves. If someone lacks fitness, even hanging from a jungle gym in a park would be a struggle, let alone compare to Chen Jue.

...

Using the strength of his ten fingers to suspend himself in midair, Chen Jue glanced upward and spotted another rock protrusion about three meters higher.

With a sudden downward pull from his arms, he exploded with the strength of his forearms and fingertips, propelling his entire body upward another three meters. Mid-air, he stretched out a hand and firmly grabbed the protruding rock.

The scene was breathtaking—far more impressive than any monkey leaping about in the forest year after year!

Repeatedly exerting force, searching for handholds and footholds in the rock protrusions and cliff crevices, Chen Jue spent nearly three minutes climbing to where the first patch of wild rock cabbage grew.

At this point, the cliff’s height was roughly a hundred meters, and he could clearly feel the mountain wind howling around him.

Fixing his posture with one hand gripping firmly, his feet planted in a rock depression, he used his free hand to brush away the dirt and moss clinging to the rock, then uprooted the first wild rock cabbage he saw.

Upon closer inspection, its roots were thick, about as large as a middle finger, and the flower was pink, exactly as described in the records. Bringing it to his nose, he inhaled a fresh scent of herbs mixed with earth.

---

“First prize!” Chen Jue smiled faintly, fidgeting with the wild cabbage before dropping it down.

It wasn’t particularly precious as a medicinal herb; at a height of about a hundred meters, it would fall onto the pile of grass where he had placed his backpack, cushioned enough to avoid damage.

The medicinal value of this wild rock cabbage was average, not a rare treasure. After collecting the first one, Chen Jue lost interest in the few more plants growing slightly higher.

Looking down at the distance between his feet and the ground, his brow furrowed slightly.

Earlier, his ascent had been a moment of reckless bravado, relying on explosive physical strength. Now, the prospect of descending was proving even more difficult.

“Maybe I should climb to the top, see if I can descend from the other side of the mountain and circle back?” Chen Jue pondered for a moment, then glanced at his status panel.

He noticed that during the recent cliff climb, his proficiency in the Wudang Golden Needle Finger technique had surged dramatically—he was now just shy of a few points from leveling up.

Without hesitation, he allocated 0.02 attribute points into his free attributes and triggered the breakthrough.

[Wudang Golden Needle Finger (Perfected)]!

A strange wave of muscle memory surged forth. Chen Jue felt his ten fingers swell slightly. His nails thickened, finger bones grew larger, and the skin on his fingers thickened and hardened. Though the slender elegance of his fingers faded, they now looked more powerful—sturdy and tough like slender steel rods!

Because this was merely a finger technique, the breakthrough’s siphoning effect was not intense. It only accelerated the consumption of the compressed biscuits and energy drinks in Chen Jue’s stomach, lowering his satiety from eighty to ninety percent down to thirty percent.

Besides this, his constitution and strength attributes each increased by 0.02—likely because the strengthened area was limited to just his ten fingers, not his entire body.

The newly perfected Wudang Golden Needle Finger also awakened a brand-new state: [Golden Needle Iron Fingers].

[Golden Needle Iron Fingers]: Golden needle and silver pen, iron fan leaves its name, piercing stone as if it were rotten, fingers penetrate three inches!

Bonus effect: This state greatly enhances finger grip strength, protection, penetration, recovery, and accelerates the cultivation speed of finger-based skills.

Glancing at this new state and feeling the intensified power in his fingers, Chen Jue resolutely reached out a hand to probe a smooth patch of rock on his lower right side.

With a loud bang, dust billowed as his five fingers struck the rock, gouging a pit deep enough to swallow half a finger!

---

His five fingers exerted force, dark and bright energies erupting simultaneously. The bluish fingers seemed not to be striking rock, but soft tofu.

“So that’s what ‘piercing stone as if it were rotten’ means!” Chen Jue’s heart leapt with joy. Since he could now carve finger holes artificially, he no longer needed to worry about not finding footholds.

Using the freshly carved finger holes as leverage, Chen Jue began to slowly descend.

When he had descended about ten meters, a sudden impulse made him stop digging finger holes.

Instead, he spread his ten fingers wide, pressing them firmly against the rock face as if clinging to a magnetized wall with suction, and began to fall at a pace neither too fast nor too slow.

The contact points between his fingers and the rock sparked with friction, scattering sparks and emitting wisps of smoke reminiscent of stones striking stones.

When Chen Jue finally landed steadily, he felt his ten fingers burning hot. Retracting them to sniff, a scorched, acrid smell lingered at the fingertips.

Upon closer inspection, there was no damage to the skin or nails. He shook his hands twice, blew on them to cool, and the burning sensation dissipated, restoring his fingers to normal.

“Iron fingers... so this means my fingers’ hardness can now rival steel?”

“Even the skin is hardened to such an extent?”

Chen Jue flexed his fingers nimbly, then pressed a hand forcefully against the rock. With a sudden burst of power, the combined effect of three hard skills and one finger technique exploded at once, sending sparks flying before his eyes. Chen Jue himself was nearly stunned.

Ordinarily, human fingernails have a Mohs hardness of about 2 to 3; bones, the hardest tissue in the body, range between 4 and 5; skin generally has a Mohs hardness of roughly 1.5.

By nature, a hardness of 1.5 is lower than the plaster that shatters easily, meaning skin cannot withstand intense friction against rock—the plaster would break first.

For ordinary people, rubbing fingers against rock would quickly cause bleeding and large abrasions.

But Chen Jue’s cultivation, coupled with the newly acquired [Golden Needle Iron Fingers] state, rendered his ten fingers as hard as forged iron, allowing him to slide down tens of meters with no injuries or marks.

This vividly demonstrated how extraordinarily tough his fingers had become—almost as if they were equipped with built-in drill bits!