Change Direction, Enter the Western Desert!

[Year 292 of Daqing, the Qing Kingdom admitted defeat, compensated with wealth and land, and only then did the Wu Kingdom cease its attacks.]

[You feel that the Qing Kingdom is truly a joke.]

[Year 293 of Daqing, you began training in "Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony." This step has no clear division into ten or twenty percent progress, or rather, there is similar progress, but the specifics are entirely beyond your perception. It mainly involves coordinating the exertion of your meridians and bones. Once this step is completed, even without using any Force Qi, a casual wave of your hand can unleash thousands of jin of force, pushing aside an elephant or collapsing a stone wall.]

[Year 295 of Daqing, you practiced slashing daily, your blade technique growing increasingly transcendent.]

[Year 299 of Daqing, you could already make your muscles and bones vibrate in unison, bursting forth with a crisp sound, but you know you are still far from the mark. Your coordination of muscles and bones is nowhere near perfection.]

[Some Martial Masters have poor foundations, and their Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony ends up sounding no more than a firecracker's pop, while others can achieve the "Tiger Leopard Thunder Sound." You believe that with your Talent Aptitude, you should at least attain the Tiger Leopard Thunder Sound.]

[The final step for a Martial Master is to condense a Martial Will, but this step can be carried out simultaneously with Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony. In theory, these two steps run parallel, but in practice, condensing a Martial Will takes far longer than completing Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony!]

[For a standard seed of a Grandmaster, becoming a Martial Master at thirty, starting Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony at thirty-three to thirty-five, they typically achieve peak coordination of muscles and bones around fifty, then condense a Martial Will by sixty. Some may drag it out to seventy or eighty, or even fail to become a Grandmaster in their lifetime.]

[However, there are also those with firm willpower, exceptional talent, or transcendent insight who can condense a Martial Will in their thirties or forties, beating Muscles and Bones Ringing in Harmony to the punch.]

[Year 302 of Daqing, your muscles and bones grew increasingly coordinated. Though they are internal structures of your own body, you can now flexibly move them within a certain range, as easily as driving your fingers.]

[Year 303 of Daqing, you looked up at the sky and saw nothing.]

[You hesitate over what choice to make this time. If you remember correctly, that Alien Demon first appeared in the Qing Kingdom and massacred a city, but later it was besieged and killed by Grandmasters in the Wu Kingdom.]

[After the Alien Demon successfully counter-killed them, its Demon Country was also established starting from the Wu Kingdom.]

[After hesitating for a moment, you decide to head west, crossing the boundless Great Desert to reach the legendary grasslands on the other side.]

[Just before setting out, you still leave behind a word, telling the Martial Masters of your acquaintance, the first-rate juniors, and the Grandmaster seniors.]

[You say you dreamed of an Alien Demon descending from beyond the heavens, slaughtering all three kingdoms, and even a Supreme Grandmaster is no match for it in a single exchange. The dream was so real that fear has been branded into your soul, and you have no choice but to believe it.]

[They think you've gone mad from training. One Grandmaster senior even advises you to find a wife if you must, enjoy the pleasures of human life, and stop fantasizing about Alien Demons from beyond the heavens in your head.]

[You simply drop a line: "In my dream, the blood of the Alien Demon can be used to forge weapons beyond imagination." Then you leave resolutely.]

[Although you know that leaving this remark is probably useless, you still have to wait for that child of the era, Bei Chenguang, to emerge, because the conditions aren't met.]

[First, there are too few people with demon blood at the start. Those who have it were personally transformed by the Alien Demon, with combat power rivaling Grandmasters. You can't defeat them, nor can you collect their blood, so you can't forge weapons capable of threatening the Alien Demon.]

[...Later, when it begins mass-producing Demonized Soldiers, the three kingdoms have already collapsed.]

[Then... even if existing Grandmasters don the matching divine weapons, they still won't be a match for the Alien Demon.]

[Bei Chenguang, a Grandmaster at twenty, has a Foundation Amplification ten or even nine times that of an ordinary person. Don't look at how he just became a Grandmaster in the simulation back then; he could probably already beat several veteran Grandmasters to a pulp.]

[And even with that kind of strength, he fought the Alien Demon all the way to the East Sea without a decisive victory.]

[If it were you at the start, you might have thought about changing all this, actively establishing a resistance organization within the Demon Country... but after that incident eight or nine years ago, you realized that Martial Masters are still too weak.]

[Stay steady, don't get reckless! This is a future that hasn't happened yet. What you need to do now is not to change regrets in the "future," but to accumulate strength and end all this in a more distant past!]

[In truth, in these three kingdoms, as long as you're sufficiently cautious, living on steadily isn't too hard. But humans are emotional, not rational.]

[You fear you won't be able to stand by and watch the Alien Demon ravage the world, and then you'll take action on your own, exposing yourself... So it's better to run far away from the start, out of sight, out of mind.]

[In less than a month, you reach the edge of the Western Border. Here, vegetation is sparse, mostly barren soil. The farther west you go, the more yellow sand covers the ground.]

[You enter the desert.]

[You carry over a hundred jin of water and meat. This weight isn't even a warm-up for you, and the amount is enough to sustain you for over twenty days of travel, allowing you to dash westward for several thousand li—a distance that spans more than an entire kingdom.]

[You run all the way. Fortunately, this Great Desert isn't an absolute death zone. You often encounter cacti and some sand rats that come out at night, greatly easing the pressure on your food and water supply.]

[You figure that as long as you stay steady and manage your resources carefully, getting out of this desert isn't too hard. After all, ordinary people have to worry about factors like food poisoning from wild plants, disease, Water Earth imbalance, and being buried by sand pits, but these problems are greatly reduced for a martial artist.]

[But the eastern sea is a different story. The desert at least lets you keep your feet on solid ground. On an endless ocean, a martial artist with a body density higher than normal must keep swimming constantly or use Force Qi to buoy themselves up, just to avoid sinking into the sea.]

[On the fifteenth day into the Great Desert, you curse in your heart that this desert is indeed absurdly vast. You've already traveled nearly three to four thousand li, yet all around is still a sea of yellow sand.]

[At dusk, you even see a massive, earth-yellow phantom in the distance, connecting the sky and the ground, dyeing that entire stretch of sky a sandy yellow. It's a sandstorm, the most terrifying natural disaster in the desert!]

[In the face of extreme natural disasters, even a Grandmaster can't survive. You spread your legs and flee madly in the opposite direction. Though you're still carrying several dozen jin of food and water on your back, your speed has already shot up to the level of a high-speed train, exceeding 250 kilometers per hour. If the yellow sand underfoot weren't so unsuitable for pushing off, you could run even faster.]

[In just over ten minutes, you leave the sandstorm behind. You sneer, "Is that all?" But barely an hour after you slow your pace, the edge of the distant horizon turns hazy yellow again. You curse and keep running.]

["Having fun? Picking on a nearly fifty-year-old old Martial Master?!"]