More than ten years had passed since the death of Wang Ming in The First Under Heaven World.
His soul had not truly died under the protection of the system. He had escaped by the skin of his teeth, but that also meant he had lost one chance at resurrection.
Be that as it may, staying alive was the best possible outcome.
The only regrettable part was that he could no longer find Zhu Wushi to take his revenge, though he figured Zhu Wushi would be well taken care of by those filial sons of his.
Mm...
Fiercely and profoundly filial! A knife hidden within filial piety! Settling everything with filial piety! Filial piety powerful enough to overwhelm...
Thinking along these lines, Wang Ming instantly felt relieved.
·
The very moment he awoke in this world, Wang Ming began to review and criticize his mistakes from the previous world.
He finally concluded that there were three reasons Zhu Wushi had hunted him down:
First, his intelligence-gathering capability was too formidable, and since Zhu Wushi himself had skeletons in his closet, the man panicked!
Second, he had courted death by seeking out Zhu Wushi to trade for the Heaven and Earth Great Shift, which drew the man's attention.
Third, the Indestructible Vajra Body. Zhu Wushi had made his fortune through the Great Art of Absorbing Power, one of the two major inheritances of the Celestial Pool Monster, and he had suffered losses at the hands of Gu Santong, so that particular martial art was his absolute reverse scale.
Furthermore, he was far too reckless.
His brain kept telling him to keep a low profile, but his heart involuntarily started acting wild.
He had thought trading martial arts with people was done very secretly and prudently, but the reality was that he was breakdancing right in front of a tiger, every single move under Zhu Wushi's surveillance.
Shangguan Haitang, Guihai Yidao, and Duan Tianya had all been raised by Zhu Wushi since childhood.
When Wang Ming sought them out to exchange martial arts, Shangguan Haitang and the others would definitely report it to that old fox.
Even if they didn't say anything, what about Ryūyō Hyōsu? That woman had actually witnessed the Illusion Sword Wang Ming traded away.
In the end, Wang Ming couldn't help sighing: I was still too arrogant, turning into a box the moment I dropped my guard. The ancients were only inferior to modern people in certain information, but their intelligence was by no means lacking—let alone someone like Zhu Wushi, an old politician.
Although Wang Ming had practically courted death and killed himself in the previous world, he did not regret it.
In The First Under Heaven World, he couldn't survive without fighting tooth and nail.
The system had only given him the ability to travel across worlds.
Unlike those heaven-defying systems with features like daily check-ins and mission systems, which only required the host to lay low and check in to grow stronger.
Back in The First Under Heaven World, Wang Ming's only advantage was his familiarity with the plot.
Yet plot armor was something that expired if you didn't use it, becoming entirely worthless once past its date.
Was he not supposed to take risks to grab what he could?
Did they really expect him to cultivate using the mortal shell of that mid-tier loser Zhang Jinjiu?
The fact that he could be easily slain by Ryūyō Hyōsu showed that this body's aptitude was mediocre at best, and its martial arts inheritance even more so.
Having missed out on the plot.
Where in that world could one ever find a good martial arts inheritance?
Without even thinking, it was bound to be as difficult as ascending to the heavens.
Wang Ming was very self-aware. He was no Protagonist of Destiny, let alone a heaven-defying overlord; martial arts wouldn't deliver themselves to his doorstep, nor would an old master magically appear to pass down his cultivation through an initiation.
Thinking of the various manuals stored in the depths of his mind, Wang Ming felt a sense of reassurance.
The martial arts he had collected in the previous world would be the greatest support for his rise in other worlds.
If the system was too trashy, then he would build his own advantages.
Otherwise, if he arrived in a new world only to find himself an ordinary person once again, how could he ever hope to catch up to the "seniors" and scions of prominent clans who had spent decades cultivating?
Wang Ming pondered inwardly. Right now he had only transmigrated into a martial arts world, but he figured that sooner or later he would be able to venture into worlds of immortals and gods.
Perhaps,
there might come a day when he could finally return to his homeland, Blue Star.
After all, that was truly his home, where his parents were.
Alas,
although the system could travel through worlds, it wasn't as if Wang Ming could go wherever he pleased; otherwise, he would have gone straight back to Blue Star.
Let us put the past aside for now...
·
In this lifetime,
Wang Ming had obtained the identity of the fifth disciple of the Mount Hua Sect.
He was an orphan brought up the mountain by Yue Buqun, at the time only around five or six years old.
Whether this life was a reincarnation or a case of body snatching, Wang Ming had no way of knowing, but in any case, he possessed no prior memories.
Because he was an orphan, when Lao Yue asked for his name, Wang Ming simply gave his real name.
Lao Yue didn't think much of it either; he didn't care all that much about a disciple like Wang Ming to begin with.
Linghu Chong's aptitude was truly exceptional, while disciples like Wang Ming were merely hired muscle that Lao Yue was helping to cultivate for Linghu Chong.
Naturally, he wouldn't care whether this disciple was named Wang Ming or Wang Dark.
Still,
Wang Ming was quite satisfied with the identity of a Mount Hua Sect disciple.
Upon entering the Mount Hua Sect,
Wang Ming received a systematic, comprehensive education and upbringing from Yue Buqun.
From reading, character recognition, calligraphy, dialects, and accents, all the way to the identification of meridians and acupoints, everything was taught to him step by step.
Having learned his lesson from the previous world, Wang Ming concluded:
I have plenty of time, so there's no need to stand out too much. I should adhere to one principle—stay low and hide my strength.
Therefore, Wang Ming had always kept his light under a bushel.
Aside from genuinely not wanting to recite the Three Character Classic alongside Linghu Chong and thus displaying a rather decent memory, he kept everything else thoroughly mediocre.
Linghu Chong's aptitude was truly extraordinary, both in comprehension and physical constitution.
Wang Ming's physical aptitude was ordinary, and his comprehension was likewise average.
Of course, relying on his mature mindset, becoming the second-in-command of Mount Hua wouldn't have been a problem.
However,
without surpassing Linghu Chong, Lao Yue wouldn't focus his cultivation resources on him, meaning his allotment would be no different from that of an ordinary disciple.
He would still just be a disposable tool.
Wang Ming never thought about killing Linghu Chong just to monopolize Mount Hua's vast resources.
Things were fine as they were.
That way, he wouldn't end up owing Mount Hua Sect and Yue Buqun a debt too massive to ever repay.
Thus, he tried his best to keep himself out of people's notice.
Over a dozen years passed, and he remained as invisible as a ghost within Mount Hua; no one targeted him, and no one paid him any mind.
·
·
In his fifth year up the mountain,
he began cultivating internal martial arts.
At that moment, he realized just how laughable his past notions had been.
The idea that an ordinary person could tumble off a cliff, pick up a manual, and instantly master it was utterly absurd.
There were many technical jargon terms within the manuals. In the previous world, he had memorized quite a few manuals by rote, but because he didn't understand their meanings, he simply swallowed them whole and spat them out without paying any attention to those hidden phrases.
It was only in this world that he realized it was a good thing he hadn't practiced recklessly back then; otherwise, he might have ended up like Mei Chaofeng and the others practicing the Nine Yin White Bone Claw, turning themselves into terrifying freaks.
When first practicing qi cultivation, one needed a master to "plant the qi," guiding the disciple to sense the flow of true qi.
Wang Ming had once asked Lao Yue: "Can one cultivate internal force without 'planting the qi'?"
Lao Yue replied: "With brilliant natural talent and good fortune so that your qi doesn't deflect, you might be able to cultivate a 'qi seed' on your own within three to five years."
Hearing this, Wang Ming couldn't help marveling at how truly formidable the very first person to invent qi cultivation must have been.
Brilliant natural talent and good fortune—taking three to five years?
During initial cultivation, a deflection of qi would at most cause abdominal bloating.
Once one had a slight sensation of qi, a bad deflection would directly cripple them into a useless cripple.
·
During his days on Mount Hua,
Wang Ming hadn't immediately begun practicing the Indestructible Vajra Body.
It wasn't that he didn't want to, but that he couldn't.
For the first five years, Wang Ming couldn't make heads or tails of what was written in the manual.
Moreover, before Linghu Chong turned fifteen, Lao Yue would periodically check the progress of their internal cultivation.
Yue Buqun was a naturally suspicious person, and what if some other true qi popped up inside Wang Ming's body?
Wouldn't that be a complete disaster?
However,
Mount Hua's treatment wasn't bad either.
After cultivating introductory foundational techniques for a year or two, all inner disciples would switch to cultivating the Primal Chaos Technique.
Honestly, the Mount Hua Sect treated its people remarkably well—starting them off straight away with the Primal Chaos Technique, a treatment usually reserved for someone like Yuan Chengzhi!
In other sects, who would dare think of switching manuals without cultivating foundational techniques for a full decade?
Don't think this was abnormal.
At this point in time, the Mount Hua Sect's Purple Cloud Manual was their true sect-guarding martial art.
The Primal Chaos Technique had only gained its prestigious status after the Purple Cloud Manual was lost to history.
Furthermore, Mount Hua was shorthanded at this time; there was no need to hoard resources too tightly, and hurriedly cultivating disciples was the key.
After turning fifteen, noticing that Lao Yue no longer probed the progress of his internal true qi cultivation, Wang Ming finally began practicing the Indestructible Vajra Body.
Unlike the Primal Chaos Technique, which stored qi in the lower dantian, this martial art stored true qi in the middle dantian at the Shanzhong acupoint in the chest, completely without interfering with the cultivation of the Primal Chaos Technique.
·
Wang Ming practiced with extreme diligence,
yet...
What he didn't know was that among the martial arts obtained from The First Under Heaven World, very few were actually usable.
Was the Indestructible Vajra Body strong?
Extremely strong; placed even in a high-martial world, it wouldn't be considered poor.
However,
it had to be cultivated in conjunction with the Great Art of Absorbing Power; otherwise, it was a bottomless abyss of a pit, on par with the Dragon Elephant Prajna Skill.
Gu Santong knew the Great Art of Absorbing Power, yet even so, it had taken him decades of cultivation to reach mastery.
The Heaven and Earth Great Shift!
This wasn't the version from Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabi; this version was purely a skill for killing enemies, requiring extremely profound internal force to wield, making it completely impossible for Wang Ming to learn.
Hegemon Under Heaven!
Wang Ming declared: He didn't dare practice it.
In the end,
only the Illusion Sword and Thousand Flowers Scatter Money proved to be truly practical.
At the time, however, Wang Ming was blissfully unaware of this, otherwise he would have regretted it so deeply his intestines turned green.
Back then, a Cheng Shifei covered from head to toe in martial arts manuals had been right before his eyes, but he hadn't known to cherish him—only realizing his worth after losing him...
·
·
Cultivating two different internal martial arts simultaneously also had its drawbacks.
His progress was far slower than everyone else's.
The most troublesome part was that the resources consumed were likewise double those of others.
Internal cultivation, to put it bluntly, was refining essence to generate qi.
To refine essence, one naturally needed medicinal broths; otherwise, he would simply be refining his own body.
A single portion was clearly not enough, but fortunately, all the fellow apprentices on the mountain were a bunch of unmotivated slackers.
Or rather, they were simply ignorant children.
When they were young, they took one look at those pitch-black, bitterly foul medicinal broths and flatly refused to drink them.
Each time, a massive cauldron would be boiled, and the disciples would ladle it out themselves. Anyone who failed to finish a cauldron was not allowed to leave, and those who dared to pour it out or waste it faced a miserable fate.
A bunch of immature kids had no idea of the benefits of medicinal broths, knowing only that they tasted awful.
Consequently, more than half of the bounty ended up being claimed by Wang Ming.
Over the past two years, however, these fellows had gradually grown up and all realized those were good things.
Which suddenly made Wang Ming's supplies rather tight.
Linghu Chong's status on Mount Hua was truly extraordinary.
He was the king of the children; aside from Wang Ming and Lao Denou, virtually all the fellow apprentices followed him everywhere making trouble.
For instance: Linghu Chong frequently took the lead in teasing the tutor Lao Yue had hired to teach the Four Books and Five Classics, treating Wang Ming to a live-action version of Truant Heroes.
Such antics had thoroughly annoyed Wang Ming for many years.
Wang Ming had desperately wanted to properly catch up on all sorts of ancient knowledge; he never wanted to experience that awkward feeling again of obtaining a cultivation manual without even knowing how to practice it.
Fortunately, Lao Yue was reliable, continuously inviting scholars up to Mount Hua to teach. Eventually, he invited pretty much every tutor capable of being persuaded within the vicinity of Mount Hua, successfully offending every single one of them in the process.
When Lao Yue finally found it too difficult to track down any more tutors, figuring that they didn't need to take the imperial examinations anyway and that merely being able to read a manual was good enough, he finally stopped hiring teachers for lessons.
Sometimes Wang Ming couldn't help sighing that Lao Yue was truly unlucky!
Including outer disciples, the entire Mount Hua had over a hundred disciples, and naturally, the one with the best aptitude was Linghu Chong.
Thus, Linghu Chong's treatment was worlds apart from ordinary disciples like Wang Ming.
As for ordinary disciples like Wang Ming, they were doing well if the medicinal herbs used in their broths had aged ten years.
Linghu Chong's medicinal meals used herbs aged for over twenty years, which was one of the reasons his martial arts could rival those of his peers.
Wang Ming and the others were cultivated by Old Yue as hired muscle, meaning they were tools prepared for Linghu Chong.
Linghu Chong was the true heir to the mantle.
He was raised by Old Yue as his own son and the successor to the sect, which meant he was essentially the young master of the Mount Hua Sect.
After Linghu Chong turned fifteen, Old Yue stopped teaching martial arts to the group as a whole and instead instructed Linghu Chong alone.
Linghu Chong would then teach the other junior fellow apprentices; this was to pave the way for Linghu Chong's future succession as sect leader, establishing his prestige among the disciples.
Furthermore, Linghu Chong frequently dined at the same table as Old Yue's family. For ordinary disciples like Wang Ming to sit at that table would show a lack of etiquette.
What a pity!
Apart from learning martial arts rather quickly, Linghu Chong was a complete mess in every other aspect.
He could not tell right from wrong!
He had no sense of responsibility as a young master!
He was ignorant and unskillful!
He spent his entire day just drinking alcohol and causing trouble!
The only person in the entire sect who could actually get things done and stand on his own two feet was Lao Denou.
Yet...
Damn it, this fellow was an undercover agent, and Old Yue seemed to know it.
As for Wang Ming, he minded his own business, couldn't manage anything, and didn't even dare to try.
Cultivating two inner arts simultaneously meant his progress was already slow. What would happen if he stood out too much and got killed?
One had to remember that Mount Hua had undercover agents.
Wang Ming made up his mind to peaceably remain a transparent nobody.
As for worrying about Old Yue?
Were you out of your mind?
What was a little shrimp like you sticking his nose into?
It was like a wage slave earning two or three thousand a month worrying whether a billionaire with hundreds of billions had enough money to eat!
Wasn't that absurd?
Borrowing trouble for nothing.
First, honestly make yourself strong!
Stealthy development was the absolute truth!
Once he grew strong, it wouldn't be too late to pull Old Yue along.
One day,
a letter was delivered into Yue Buqun's hands, and Yue Buqun then summoned all his disciples to Zhengqi Hall.
"Your Uncle-Master Liu Zhengfeng from the Hengshan Sect has invited your master to go to Hengshan to witness his retirement from the pugilistic world."
Yue Buqun swept his gaze across the numerous disciples and continued:
"Who wishes to follow your master to Hengshan?"
Before long,
Wang Ming looked left and right at his fellow apprentices and felt a bit conspicuous.
He was the only core disciple standing still in place, unwilling to go to Hengshan.
It was not surprising that everyone else wanted to go; they were all young lads at an age where they loved to play, and it was completely normal to want to go out and see the outside world.
From Wang Ming's perspective, going out this time would yield no benefits and only bring a pile of trouble.
With Old Yue staring at them the whole way, going out really wasn't fun.
"Ming'er! I originally planned to have your mistress keep house. Since you don't want to go to Hengshan, exactly right, you can stay home and manage the sect's affairs! Remember to properly supervise your junior apprentices in practicing their martial arts." Old Yue instructed with a rather good mood.
"This disciple obeys!" Wang Ming said with a respectful expression.
Subsequently, Yue Buqun called out the disciples who wanted to go to the Hengshan Sect but possessed low martial arts, having them stay home and keep watch with Wang Ming.
Then Yue Buqun told the disciples to dismiss and return to pack their things in preparation for descending the mountain.
In the afternoon,
Wang Ming sent Yue Buqun and his party down Mount Hua.
"Junior fellow apprentices, guard the sect well. I am going to Siguo Cliff to enter closed-door cultivation and practice martial arts. Unless something major happens, do not come disturb me."
Those left behind were all junior apprentices, so naturally they had no objections.
Currently, Wang Ming held the highest status on Mount Hua; who could possibly have any dissenting opinions regarding his words?
The swordplay on top of Siguo Cliff—
Wang Ming had endured for over a dozen years without ever going up to unlock it, and now he finally had the chance to go up and take a look.
Initially,
Wang Ming had considered telling Yue Buqun about the "Five Peaks Swordplay" to raise Mount Hua's strength so he could hunker down more securely, which would also serve as repayment for the kindness of the past few years.
But upon calming down to think, this damn thing was asking for death!
First, there were spies on Mount Hua. Lao Denou was a spy Wang Ming knew of, but were you certain he was the only one?
Might Mount Song not have other spies?
Might Shaolin, Wudang, and the Demonic Cult not have spies?
News leaking out that Mount Hua possessed the lost "Five Peaks Swordplay" would only invite disaster.
There was a precedent for this: news leaking out that Mount Hua possessed the peerless martial art "Sunflower Manual" had provoked a massive invasion by the elders of the Demonic Cult.
The two sect leaders of Mount Hua at that time died directly in battle.
Moreover,
the martial arts on Siguo Cliff actually offered very little improvement to Old Yue.
For experts at their level, aside from martial arts on the scale of the "Nine Swords of Dugu", other moves-based martial arts offered little help to them.
Those Demonic Cult elders were not much stronger than Old Yue; moves they could break, Old Yue could break as well, only Old Yue lacked systematic categorization.
What experts at their level compared was inner force; overemphasizing moves was merely a heretical path.
Among the peerless experts in the pugilistic world today, the ones with the strongest moves should be those from the Sword Sect, yet none of their martial arts ranked in the top ten of the martial world.
Just look at Dongfang Bubai's "Sunflower True Qi", Zuo Lengchan's "Ice True Qi", Ren Woxing's "Star Absorbing Great Art", and Fang Zheng's "Yi Jin Jing"...
PS: The plot of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer is primarily based on the 2001 Zhang Jizhong television adaptation.
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