Six Generations of Yun Shou Attack

Yun Shou, in a sense, was "forced" to make a move today.

Although the food had been increasingly unable to keep up with his body's consumption lately, making him secretly grumble that those Great Grandmasters must be gorging themselves day and night, which was why they rarely showed themselves in public.

He was still far from starving to death, and had actually planned to reach the level where "even a Martial Master would struggle to break his skin" before going to beat up Xu Ruohai.

But who would have guessed that Mu Jian was that Er Shao's uncle and would set out for this reason?

And since Mu Jian, the head of Qing He Gang, had been thoroughly beaten by him, it meant Xu Ruohai's intervention was inevitable.

So he had no choice but to settle it all in one go, beating them all up, and on a flash of inspiration, even tried his hand at being gang leader.

In a direct fight, Qing He Gang couldn't hurt Yun Shou no matter what, but what he worried about was them playing dirty.

A Martial Master was also defenseless in sleep; the Old Yun in that simulation might have been, but the Main Body Yun Shou was not.

He feared Qing He Gang was only pretending to submit, then would stab him a dozen times while he slept—that would leave him dead or gravely wounded.

Better to head to Qingcheng. By the time Yun Shou entered the city, the gates were almost closed, and he didn't think Qing He Gang could chase him this far.

As for the gang members stationed in Qingcheng... they might not even know the leadership had changed, with their boss replaced by a teenager.

"But to guard against them truly going mad and trying to kill me, I still left a layer of insurance."

In the morning, Yun Shou woke up and, satisfied, dismantled the reminder device he had set up last night.

"Time for the daily simulation."

"Activate!"

[Ding! Foundation -1%, current Foundation 244%]

[You wake up full of energy, planning to spend the entire day wandering Qingcheng and experiencing the local customs.]

[You still have over a dozen taels of silver on you, enough for ordinary expenses.]

[If that's not enough, no problem—you can withdraw from Qing He Gang's city branch, or rob the rich to help the poor, sweeping through Qingcheng's criminal forces.]

[While wandering... you go to Hundred Flowers Pavilion to listen to the young ladies sing.]

[While wandering... you head to the snack street to enjoy all the delicacies.]

[While wandering... your eyes light up as you happily discover the arena registration office, learning that registration closes the day after tomorrow—good thing you found it early!]

Yun Shou: "...Wait, am I really that petty?"

"It was just a minor grudge in the simulation; I've already signed up once, why would I hold onto it?"

"This Simulator of yours isn't realistic at all, turning me into a petty person!"

"..."

"On second thought, where exactly is that Martial Arts Tournament to Choose a Spouse arena? There are only two or three days left to register."

[In the following days, you sweep through everything, and in the entire tournament, you fight the only First-rate Martial Artist: "Chibi Guest" Zhang Xiaoran.]

[You still remember from the last simulation that the description of Zhang Xiaoran was quite impressive, and now that you cross hands, you find he's indeed not bad.]

[His combat strength is almost close to a Martial Master, but you are a Martial Master—even with the drag of your physique, you're still a fairly strong Martial Master.]

[Zhang Xiaoran's defeat is without suspense. Afterwards, you exchange words and learn that Zhang Xiaoran indeed has some kind of peculiar constitution, naturally tall and large from birth, and his master says it's a kind of Little Giant Talent.]

[Though it can't compare to the famous "Dragon Elephant Strength," it's a bit better than talents like "Steel Muscles, Iron Bones." Below the Grandmaster realm, it can almost grant half a realm's worth of combat power.]

"Talent..." Yun Shou fell into thought. What exactly was talent?

What he knew now about the core elements of the Martial Dao were a few points.

Foundation/Talent Aptitude—it represents a martial artist's training speed, ease of breaking through realms, and combat power at the same level.

And his cheat, "Foundation Amplification," actually amplified not just Martial Dao aptitude but also elements like lifespan—it could almost be said to amplify the essential attribute of "Life Origin" itself!

Then there were Martial Arts—different Martial Arts could provide different proportional boosts to aptitude, shaping the Foundation into the form of that Martial Art and strengthening it, with the depth of the Martial Art giving additional bonuses.

After that came Talent/Divine Abilities.

Most Talents were similar to the bonus from Martial Art depth, directly increasing corresponding values in one go: for example, "Steel Muscles, Iron Bones" added a thousand jin of strength and matching body toughness.

An ordinary person with the "Steel Muscles, Iron Bones" talent and a Great Grandmaster with the same talent both got an increase of a thousand jin of strength.

Generally, those with Talent or Divine Abilities wouldn't have poor aptitude, but having such a talent only meant a baseline guarantee—their aptitude wasn't necessarily better than someone without any talent.

"Early on, I wanted a talent too..." Yun Shou shook his head. "But the further you go, the more useless it gets!"

When he was still an ordinary person, having a Steel Muscles, Iron Bones talent would have made him comparable to a slightly weaker Second-rate Martial Artist, greatly boosting his early combat power.

But talents become more useless the further you go. For someone at Zhu Baowen's level, the tens of thousands of jin added by Dragon Elephant Strength was a joke!

Zhang Xiaoran's Little Giant Talent seemed to be a proportional growth type, but it actually had a limit: the ratio got lower and lower, and it wouldn't work after reaching Grandmaster.

"Truly not as good as my Foundation Amplification."

[You win the Martial Arts Tournament to Choose a Spouse champion once again. But just as the Lin Family steward leads you toward Qingyu Tower, you see a young woman run out, looking you up and down.]

["So you're that young Qing He Gang leader? Rumor has it you beat up Xu Ruohai to take over?" The woman's eyes are full of curiosity. "At your age, are you really a First-rate Martial Artist, strong enough to beat that big gang leader Xu Ruohai?"]

[You've already guessed her identity and think to yourself that this woman truly has eyes but can't see Mount Tai. Xu Ruohai is nothing—Zhang Xiaoran, who fought you in the arena earlier, is far stronger than him. Yet this woman lacks the insight to recognize a true expert.]

[The woman doesn't notice your disdain and continues eagerly: "If you really did defeat Xu Ruohai, then marrying you wouldn't be a problem at all!"]

["So all it takes is the identity of Qing He Gang's leader to make her ignore the age gap and even come out of the building to greet me..." you think to yourself, this works out perfectly.]

["What's this, an old woman? If I'd known, I wouldn't have come." You curl your lip in disgust, turn around, and leave.]

Lin Youbai, just seventeen years old: "..."

You laugh loudly a few times as you walk away, returning to Qing He Gang to throw your weight around.

Under your orders, some of Qing He Gang's rules were revised, which you consider a small favor for the elders and villagers of the fishing villages.

The favors weren't much—just that the fish merchants weren't allowed to shortchange anyone, and the purchase price for fish was raised slightly. By the standards of your modern perspective, it was still exploitative.

But most of those fishermen hadn't helped you when you were struggling. Being able to do even this much was already very generous on your part. People like Uncle Ji, for instance, now had nothing to worry about in terms of food and drink even without working a day.

Now that you had a foundation, you could practice martial arts anywhere. Though your freedom was somewhat restricted, you were getting paid for doing nothing, which made things much easier.

As a Martial Master, you already had the ability to expand Qing He Gang's sphere of influence. Following the edge of Green Lake, you even stretched your reach into the neighboring Lihu City.

Lihu City was a medium-sized city with one martial hall, also located on the shores of Green Lake. After all, the eight-hundred-li Green Lake had quite a few cities around it.

Lihu City naturally had its own fishing villages, and the power controlling those villages was precisely that city's sole martial hall: Baishui Martial Hall.

Yun Shou: "Interesting. Is this life going to take a different path—a strategy of conquest and territorial expansion?"