Three Entries

Your mind's eye had always been narrow.

Yun Shou: "What nonsense are you talking about?"

After winning first place in the Martial Arts Tournament to Choose a Spouse without any suspense, you followed a Lin Family steward into Qingyu Tower beside the arena and saw the heroine of this event: Lin Youbai.

After meeting her, you looked at her as though she were private property, then swiftly turned that look into one of boredom.

With the unique arrogance and disdain of a young prodigy, you said, "Why are you so old? I don't want an old woman!"

Yun Shou: "That felt great!"

Served you right for looking down on me last time!

This differed from the previous simulation: you had been the one to refuse first. The Lin Family had also asked you to leave with unfriendly expressions. The fact that they had not caused trouble was already out of consideration for your status as a young talent; compensation was out of the question.

But you did not care about that. As long as you had enjoyed yourself, that was enough.

In Da Qing 270, you settled permanently in Qingcheng. Taking on the guise of a young wandering hero, you often collected pocket money from unlawful gangs within the city.

Over the course of a year, you not only earned back the 1% Foundation consumed to activate the simulation, but your Martial Cultivation also advanced at breakneck speed. In just one year, Extreme Viscera Enhancement was pushed another twenty percent forward!

You gradually began interacting with Zhu Baowen, master of the Hun Yuan Sheng Mie Children's Martial Arts Hall. In order to learn the ultimate truth of martial arts sooner, you shamelessly claimed that he looked like your master.

That mysterious master whose origins and name you knew nothing about—the one who, after passing his cultivation on to you, had resolutely chosen to bury himself in the eight-hundred-li Green Lake, sinking his corpse to the lakebed to be gnawed upon by fish and shrimp as a water burial.

Zhu Baowen: "..."

Yun Shou: "That's exactly it. The key is that there's no proof left—neither witness nor bones."

Zhu Baowen did not suspect you, or perhaps could not be bothered to care. Under your shameless, clingy offensive of daily ingratiation and repeated pleas to become his disciple, he reluctantly agreed to accept you as half a disciple—a Registered Disciple.

In Da Qing 271, your Extreme Viscera Enhancement reached seventy percent. That same year, you participated in this year's Young Talents Grand Competition, held at Hengduan Cliff.

Hengduan Cliff was a strange peak within the Ning Kingdom. It stood six hundred zhang tall, yet judging from its slope and course, it should have reached eight hundred and fifty zhang. But at the six-hundred-zhang mark, it seemed to have been forcibly cleaved by a single blade from the heavens, leaving behind a jagged, uneven cross-section like interlocking dog teeth.

Below Hengduan Cliff stood the Meteor Sect. Any group capable of establishing a sect had at least one grandmaster within it. If, after that grandmaster's death, no new grandmaster emerged within several decades, the sect could no longer retain its name and would be downgraded to the status of a martial arts school.

Over a month and a half, you rode nearly three thousand li. In some mountainous regions, you had to cross on foot using your Lightness Skill. It was exhausting, but it saved a great deal of time.

Because of your unchecked rampage, you encountered six or seven groups of bandits and robbers blocking the roads along the way. Yet the strongest among most of them did not even reach the Second-Rate level, and none could withstand a single exchange with you.

You arrived at Hengduan Cliff.

No fewer than five hundred young talents participated in this competition, and not a single one was below the Second-rate level.

More than half came from sects across the land, while many others came from martial arts schools. Only a small number were Rogue Martial Artists who had relied on chance encounters and fortuitously acquired martial arts to grow this far.

This was because most sects and martial arts schools regularly sent people through towns and villages. Whenever they encountered someone with obviously exceptional bones and talent, they would take them away on the spot, further reducing the number of Rogue Martial Artists among the common folk.

The registration requirements for the Young Talents Grand Competition were very "low." It required neither the guarantee and recommendation of a Renowned Figure nor excessive investigation into one's identity and origins—as long as one was not an important Wanted Criminal, they would not dig to the bottom of things. They only looked at bone age and Martial Cultivation.

You arrived at the small town beneath Hengduan Cliff. After registering, you waited in town for another half month before the competition finally began.

At the opening, a grandmaster from the Meteor Sect gave a speech. This grandmaster was truly extraordinary, his voice booming like a great bell. You knew that he had used Gang Jin.

Gang Jin could be understood as an upgraded version of Force Qi, but not every grandmaster could wield it. Just as the bones of a First-rate Martial Artist were incredibly hard, tougher than much refined iron, that only came after passing through the stage of Vital Energy Infused into Bone.

A grandmaster, meanwhile, had to complete Bone Marrow Forging with Vital Energy before Force Qi could undergo a fundamental sublimation from within to without and transform into Gang Jin.

The competition began with preliminary selections. First-rate Martial Artists did not need to participate, so you did not care about the specific process. You only knew that you were idle for another five days before entering the next stage with the other sixteen First-rate Martial Artists of this competition and the eighty-three selected Second-rate Martial Artists.

Then came five days of round-robin matches, five days of alternating group battles. In the end, the top ten were decided—and this time, you were among them!

That weakest First-Rate Martial Artist from before was already dead. You would reclaim the dignity of the man named Yun Shou!

"He really is dead," Yun Shou added. "But he lived out his final years in peace and died of old age."

It had taken a full fifteen days to select the current top ten from among the more than five hundred participants, and quite a few had been injured or crippled along the way.

Yet merely determining the ranking among you top ten would require another two days of fighting.

Your Talent Aptitude had already caught up to the foremost batch of heaven-blessed martial artists, but the depth of your martial arts was only at Minor Accomplishment. You also did not dare use the matching Combat Techniques of someone else's Flowing River Technique in public. When facing opponents whose grandmaster-level martial arts had reached Major Accomplishment and who possessed matching Combat Techniques, you still fell short by a notch.

Your greatest advantage, comparatively speaking, was your age. A sixteen-year-old First-Rate Martial Artist was indeed outstanding beyond measure, with few among your peers able to compare to you. But others could reach First-Rate at twenty, or twenty-three or twenty-four, and their bodies were more fully developed than yours.

The competition ended, and you ranked sixth.

Although you did not receive the prize of grandmaster-level martial arts, the abundant Martial Dao Resources and medicinal supplements still let you make a fortune. You could not help wondering who had first proposed holding the Young Talents Grand Competition.

It was simply a blessing for wild-path martial artists like you. You did not need to bear any responsibility at all; you only needed to enjoy the benefits.

Of course, the sect responsible for hosting each competition did not lose out either. Not only did it greatly raise its fame, it also, to a certain extent, forged goodwill with the finest group of rising stars in the future martial world.

In Da Qing 272, aided by the vast amount of Martial Dao Resources, you used merely one year to drive the final thirty percent of Extreme Viscera Enhancement all the way to completion, completely strengthening your internal organs and viscera.

Yun Shou: "At this point last time, my Extreme Viscera Enhancement seemed to be... thirty-five percent?"

Was this growth in Talent Aptitude not far too terrifying?!