Thunderclouds Gather Across the Nine Heavens, Startled Geese Fall at the Sound of a Bowstring

The Lian Clan training ground--

More than thirty burly men were practicing martial arts in the field, sending dust and stones flying!

They were all members of the Lian Clan's Warrior Reserve Camp, and the one teaching them was the Lian Clan's instructor, Yao Yuan. Aside from the clan chief and Lian Chengyu, he was also the third warrior in the Lian Clan to reach the fifth level of the Mortal Blood Realm.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Waves of fist wind tore through the air, accompanied by thunderous roars. Every member of the Warrior Reserve Camp had been nurtured by the clan at the cost of everything it had.

It was early winter, and the cold winds of the Great Wilderness were biting. Yet every member of the Warrior Reserve Camp was sweating as if drenched by rain!

However, Yao Yuan, the instructor standing on the high platform and watching the men train, merely furrowed his brows. "Stop!"

Yao Yuan's roar was like a thunderclap erupting on level ground!

The warriors in training immediately stopped.

"The Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist I taught you is the foundational cultivation method passed down by the Tai'a Divine Kingdom! Although the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist has only eighteen short forms, every single one contains profound knowledge! You idiots only learned the forms, yet can't bring out even a shred of their Mysterious Charm. You're nothing but flashy showpieces, useless as birds!"

With a single tirade, Yao Yuan dismissed all the effort these men had put into their cultivation over the past few days!

Yet no one dared say a word of disagreement, because Yao Yuan's prestige in the Warrior Reserve Camp was extremely high.

Lian Chengyu's prestige was high because of his future. He could become a Purple Blood Warrior and perhaps even reach a realm beyond the Purple Blood Realm.

Yao Yuan's prestige, however, came from his past.

Yao Yuan was not a member of the Lian Clan. He was an outsider who had once cultivated to the peak of the Purple Blood Realm. Later, he was injured while being hunted by enemies and fell to the realm of an ordinary warrior. He came to the Great Wilderness to escape his troubles, settling in the Lian Clan. He had stayed there for many years.

His strength was gone, but Yao Yuan's experience remained. With him teaching the Warrior Reserve Camp, no one dared refuse to submit.

Because Lian Chengyu had been taught by Yao Yuan!

Lian Chengyu was young and had been born into a small clan like the Lian Clan. Without guidance from an expert, how could he possibly have achieved so much?

"Don't underestimate this Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist. In the Tai'a Divine Kingdom, the most precious thing is naturally the Tai'a Sacred Law, but the Tai'a Sacred Law is a cultivation method you can only come into contact with after reaching a higher realm of martial cultivation. Below the Purple Blood Realm, it is completely useless! Below the Purple Blood Realm, you must cultivate the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist! Even members of the Tai'a Divine Kingdom's imperial family are no exception!"

"The Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist is a supreme body-tempering method. If you truly calculated its value, an entire city couldn't buy it! Back then, the Tai'a Divine Kingdom deliberately made the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist public so that countless impoverished commoners would have the chance to learn martial arts and resist the various dangers of the Great Wilderness, all to strengthen the nation. The fact that you can learn this fist technique is your good fortune!"

"To cultivate to the fifth level of the Mortal Blood Realm—the Qi Induction Realm—you must successively master Valiance, Breath, Thunderous Sound, and Meridians! To master these, you must train your strength, temper your flesh and muscles, temper your bones, and temper your internal organs! All eighteen forms of this Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist—tempering the flesh and muscles, tempering the organs, and tempering the bones—are fully contained within it!"

"If you can truly comprehend the first six forms of the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist, you will be able to lift a thousand-jin cauldron, attaining the strength of one cauldron, and draw a nine-stone bow until it forms a full moon. Your arrows will shoot beyond a thousand paces and still pierce through chain armor!"

Yao Yuan lectured loudly in the field, but every word fell into Yi Yun's ears.

"Lift a thousand-jin cauldron, draw a nine-stone bow..."

Yi Yun was filled with longing. In this foreign world, nine stones amounted to nine hundred jin!

"From what Yao Yuan said, this Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist really is an excellent fist technique. I didn't expect the Tai'a Divine Kingdom to keep its basic fist techniques to itself. Instead, it made them public to strengthen the nation. The ruler of the Tai'a Divine Kingdom truly has something of a Sage's bearing."

Yi Yun held his breath, staring without blinking at the training ground. He had naturally come here intending to secretly learn the martial arts!

Before transmigrating, the only fist technique Yi Yun had learned was the military boxing taught during military training. That could only be considered a kind of unarmed combat, and it certainly wouldn't work in this foreign world. Now, Yi Yun's physical qualities had improved by leaps and bounds, but he knew no cultivation method or Martial Skill. He would certainly suffer a loss in a real fight!

Moreover, without a cultivation method, his future cultivation speed would be much slower.

The higher his realm climbed, the more obvious this problem would become. Otherwise, the Tai'a Divine Kingdom's Tai'a Sacred Law would not be so precious!

"I'll demonstrate it once for you now. Watch carefully!"

Yao Yuan's voice thundered, and Yi Yun also summoned every ounce of his attention.

"This move is called Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain. It is a form for tempering the sinews!"

Yao Yuan stood before a wooden stake in the center of the field. He extended his left leg straight forward and gripped his left ankle with his left hand. His right knee bent, his body tilted sideways, and his waist and back curved like a bow, even emitting faint cracking sounds.

The posture was extremely strange. It gave the impression that he had drawn his body taut like a fully drawn bow, while Yao Yuan's right fist rested against his waist like an arrow on the bowstring!

Suddenly, Yao Yuan moved!

His body snapped straight.

"Snap--"

At that moment, Yi Yun clearly heard an exceptionally crisp sound come from within Yao Yuan's body.

Yao Yuan's right fist shot out like lightning, striking the wooden stake dead center!

"Boom!"

The wooden stake shattered into pieces!

The watching members of the Warrior Reserve Camp cried out in shock.

"Instructor Yao is incredible!"

"Damn, he shattered a stake that thick with one punch! Instructor Yao's fists are made of iron!"

The burly men began flattering him, though they were also genuinely impressed. In the Great Wilderness, the strong were always worshiped.

However, faced with the flattery of the men, Yao Yuan's expression turned cold.

"You only saw my fist?"

"Hmph! I told you before, Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain is a form for tempering the sinews! The reason my punch shattered the stake wasn't that my fist was strong. It was because I used the strength of my sinews!"

"Every person's body is a treasure trove! Do you know that in the Tai'a Divine Kingdom, there is a precious bow called the Star Shooting Bow? Do you know what its bowstring is made from?"

At Yao Yuan's question, the men exchanged bewildered looks. They had never even heard of the Star Shooting Bow, so how could they possibly know what its bowstring was made of?

"Silk from a heavenly silkworm?"

"The sinew of a legendary flood dragon?"

Yao Yuan shook his head. "It was the Founding Emperor of the Tai'a Divine Kingdom. After he died, his own sinews were used to make the bowstring of the Star Shooting Bow!"

Yao Yuan's words left every man present dumbfounded.

A bowstring made from human sinews!?

"That's right! My move just now, Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain, stretched my body taut, using my bones as the bow and my sinews as the bowstring, allowing my punch to be 'shot' out! The key to Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain is to perfectly unleash the strength of your sinews! That is why Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain is a form for tempering the sinews, not practicing punches!"

"Didn't you hear the sound that came from my body when I struck?"

At the instant Yao Yuan's fist shot out, there had been an exceptionally clear sound: "Snap--"

Yi Yun had heard it clearly. It sounded just like the noise made by a bowstring when a bow was drawn and an arrow shot.

"Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain repeatedly stretches the sinews within your body, making them tougher and more elastic through relentless tempering! When Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain reaches a high enough realm, the sound of your sinews snapping when you throw a punch alone can startle a lone goose from the sky! This is what is known as 'Startled Geese Fall at the Sound of a Bowstring'!"

"Within the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist, there is also a move called Dragon Soars Through Nine Heavens, which corresponds to tempering the bones. When this punch is thrown, every joint in the body explodes with sound. The noise is like distant lightning flickering within the clouds, yet without the thunderclap that strikes down!"

"Thunderclouds Gather Across the Nine Heavens, Startled Geese Fall at the Sound of a Bowstring. If you can reach such a realm, then your cultivation of the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist can be considered to have achieved something!"

After hearing Yao Yuan's words, the men present stared at him with their eyes wide open. Wasn't that too exaggerated?

Could a human really reach such a realm?

Seeing the men's expressions, Yao Yuan also knew that he was asking too much.

He continued, "The realm of Thunderclouds Gather Across the Nine Heavens, Startled Geese Fall at the Sound of a Bowstring is indeed somewhat difficult for you. I don't expect you to reach it. As long as you can temper your sinews until they make a bowstring-like sound—even if it's only a faint sound—and temper your bones until they produce bone explosions when you throw a punch, I'll be satisfied!"

"If you can do that, you can be considered to have barely reached the third level of the Mortal Blood Realm—the Thunderous Sound Realm."

While Yao Yuan taught the burly men, Yi Yun's blood was boiling.

Thunderclouds Gather Across the Nine Heavens, Startled Geese Fall at the Sound of a Bowstring!

Could he possibly reach such a realm?

Yao Yuan had described the Dragon Marrow Tiger Bones Fist as something that "an entire city couldn't buy." The cities of this foreign world were far more valuable than cities on Earth. In the Great Wilderness, every city had to withstand the trials of savage beasts. Without numerous experts stationed there, it could not possibly survive. Establishing a city required the spilling of countless drops of blood!

Lian Chengyu had merely dangled the bait of allowing the Lian Clan to move into a city, yet so many impoverished commoners had supported his cultivation without regard for anything else. That alone showed how valuable it was.

"I must carefully observe this fist technique. If I can achieve something through it, then the Tai'a Divine Kingdom's warrior selection will be absolutely no problem. Perhaps I might even have a chance to strive for the title of National Scholar. When that time comes, I can let Sister Xiaorou share in my glory!"

Yi Yun had already come to this world. Since he had come, he would make the best of it.

Yi Yun was unwilling to spend his entire life cooped up in this tiny Lian Clan, living from dawn to dusk without knowing whether he would survive, and going hungry day after day.