Border Village

In the 284th year of the great celebration, you were twenty-nine years old. Your Foundation Amplification was 260%, and your Vital Energy Infused into Bone progress had reached 100%. You had already reached a point where there was no further room to advance. The last time you reached this stage in a simulation, you had already been over fifty.

At the end of the year, you set out for the border between the Qing Kingdom and the Wu Kingdom... but upon arriving, you realized you had been a little too naïve: the border between the two nations stretched for hundreds of miles!

Although this world was not one of those high-martial fantasy continents spanning millions of miles in every direction, its scale was still astonishing. Wu, Qing, and Ning—the three kingdoms each spanned three to four thousand miles across, comparable to half of China.

There were dozens of villages along the border between the two kingdoms. After a period of travel and on-site confirmation, you identified three villages nearest to the Wu Kingdom and most likely to suffer an "attack": Little Lotus Village, Sweet Potato Village, and Slope Earth Village.

The three villages were very close to one another because a certain stretch of land between the two kingdoms formed a mortise-and-tenon structure like interlocking puzzle pieces. A piece of Qing Kingdom territory had been "inserted" into the Wu Kingdom, and these three villages were located there.

You settled down in "Slope Earth Village." True to its name, the village had been built upon a not-too-steep hillside—though only along its middle and lower slopes. Behind Zhenyuan Mountain lay an even denser forest.

You could often enter the forest to hunt wild beasts and replenish the meat required for martial training. Usually, you could also practice martial arts atop Zhenyuan Mountain, feeling the vastness of the clouds and sky and the freedom of having no restraints, while standing high and looking far to monitor the three nearby villages.

In Da Qing 285, several months passed. Your progress in martial cultivation was ordinary. Having completed Vital Energy Infused into Bone, your next step was to make Force Qi circulate through a Heavenly Cycle within your body, endlessly renewing itself. Only then could you reach the Martial Master level.

Of course, that did not mean you had made no progress in those months. Reaching the limit of martial cultivation did not mean all your body's potential had been developed. Your total amount of Force Qi had increased by around five percent from the previous year.

Just as ordinary people could multiply their strength several times through other methods of training even without practicing Martial Arts, at their limit they could even use a mortal body to battle a Second-rate Martial Artist possessing Internal Force.

On this day, you practiced your saber techniques atop the mountain. Every slash cleaved several meters of blazing white light through the air. Within that blade-light, whose cross-section covered two or three square meters, even a dozen or more trees as thick as bowls would all be severed!

"What a pity." You sighed softly. The Sunday Art was not much help to a Martial Master's "Vital Energy Circulation," and was even inferior to the Flowing River Technique in that regard. Fortunately, it was quite helpful in several later stages of martial cultivation.

After Vital Energy Infused into Bone came the limit of a First-rate Martial Artist. Completing "Vital Energy Circulation" made one a Martial Master! After becoming a Martial Master, the next step was to achieve "Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony," then condense "Martial Will." After that, unifying Essence, Qi, and Spirit would make one a Grandmaster!

And a Grandmaster was only the first step of martial cultivation in Zhu Baowen's words!

"My future road is still far too long..." You had only just sighed with emotion when you suddenly spotted an unexpected occurrence far below the mountain. A group of people—perhaps one or two hundred—were moving through the distance dozens of miles away.

They were tiny as dust. If not for more than a hundred people gathered together, your eyesight would not have noticed them at all!

And this group was heading directly toward Little Lotus Village. You frowned. Judging from the direction and position of that mass of "dust," they had set out from within the Qing Kingdom!

"I hope it isn't what I think it is." You murmured, then activated the lightness skill paired with the Sunday Art. With every step, it seemed as though a firecracker exploded beneath your feet—the flash of light from that instantaneous burst.

Having reached the First-Rate limit, you could run at forty-five meters per second at full speed under normal conditions. With Force Qi and lightness skill, that speed could surge to sixty meters per second... but you needed to reserve some stamina and Force Qi for battle, so you only maintained a high-speed run of fifty meters per second.

Yun Shou said in surprise, "That's nearly high-speed rail speed, isn't it?"

But he also knew that increasing speed was far harder than increasing strength and physique, and it only became harder the farther one went. Even a Great Grandmaster might not be able to break the sound barrier, yet the combined strength of a hundred ordinary people would still fall short of a Great Grandmaster's.

Because martial artists weighed only around two hundred jin, they found accelerating far easier than high-speed trains and vehicles at the beginning. The only issue was that air resistance would grow ever greater later on, causing improvements to slow.

In little more than ten minutes, you neared Little Lotus Village. That group, which had started closer to it, had naturally arrived long ago. Because they had been too far away before, you had not even noticed that they were riding horses!

When you arrived at the village, you discovered that the group wore soldiers' uniforms. There were over a hundred of them. They had all dismounted and were searching the village for people.

They searched house by house, dragging out the villagers they found and keeping them in the center of the village. More than a dozen soldiers were responsible for tying them up. They searched the homes while cursing and shouting, and besides people, they had also loaded up bags and bundles of valuables.

"There's another fish that slipped through the net." You had not watched for long before soldiers noticed you standing outside the village. You drew a deep breath. Having practiced martial arts alone atop Zhenyuan Mountain for months, far from human habitation, your sharp edge had been sheathed.

Though you did not look like an ordinary person, these soldiers would certainly not be able to tell the depth of your martial cultivation.

A soldier approached and ordered you to follow him. You entered the village, where an officer noticed your uncommon bearing and asked about your origins, as well as whether you had practiced martial arts.

You decided to put on a show with them and see whether these people truly were as you suspected... Over more than ten years in the martial world, you had seen much darkness, and in your previous life, you had heard many stories. But you had never personally experienced something like "slaughtering a village and exterminating a clan."

You found it hard to believe that, just to scheme against and eliminate a Grandmaster and gain an advantage in war, a nation would truly turn its hand against its own civilians.

So you told the officer that you were a wandering martial artist. Though you were only Third-Rate, you wanted to travel the world early and force yourself onward, determined to forcibly give birth to Internal Force.

The officer gave you a half-smile, half-smirk, then waved a hand to signal two soldiers to restrain you. In an indifferent tone, he said that they had important business to attend to, and that a wandering martial artist like you should behave yourself for now. They would release you after they had finished handling their affairs.

Those two soldiers were quite strong. Both were Third-Rate Martial Artists who had trained their muscles and blood qi. They restrained you while others tied you up. You did not resist—but in your heart, you had already placed them in the same category as bandits and mountain brigands!

After practicing martial arts for many years, you had not killed many people. Challenges between martial artists usually ended at the first touch, with victory and defeat decided. At worst, the loser would lie in bed recovering for several months; few suffered injuries that damaged their Foundation.

Only when it came to bandits, mountain brigands, gangsters, and their ilk—those who committed evil—would you cripple them completely. Those who murdered innocents, you killed as well!

You were no sage in this world, but you leaned toward neutrality and kindness. So long as it was within your power, of course you would act according to your heart!