Planetary Era

At the entrance of the gym stood a service desk.

There was a table and a chair there, manned in rotation by a disciple.

From time to time, island residents came to the desk to submit commissions.

After hearing a client's description, the disciple on duty categorized and posted the commission according to its difficulty, reward, and other conditions.

The gym's disciples could freely accept commissions and complete them. By the rules, twenty percent of the reward went to the gym, while the rest belonged to the disciple.

This service desk was not unique to the Shadowless Fist Gym. Nearly every gym in town had one. It had become one of the gyms' established side businesses.

The reason for this was the bizarre broader setting of Wang Yu's world.

Humanity did not live upon a single planet!

As far as Wang Yu currently knew, humanity occupied a total of seven planets within the star system.

That was right. He had transmigrated into an interstellar age, yet it was vastly different from the interstellar age he knew. Even the composition of the universe itself seemed somewhat different.

Humanity's technological level was far behind the Information Age of Wang Yu's previous life, and its direction of development was entirely different as well.

Many things that ought to have existed simply did not.

There were cars and airships, but no airplanes or rockets.

There were certainly no series of hot weapons capable of destroying heaven and earth.

Humans could not fly into the sky and leave the planet's surface, because legend had it that the endless darkness beyond the planet contained not only no air, but also pervasive deathly energy.

No living thing could survive within that deathly energy. No matter how tightly one was sealed up, one could not withstand its infiltration.

To travel between planets, humanity relied on something known as the Magnetic Separation Gate.

The planet Wang Yu inhabited was Fragment Star No. 5, humanity's fifth occupied fragment star.

It was a semi-habitable miniature planet.

The only places on the planet where humans could live and develop were islands of various sizes.

According to Wang Yu's understanding, all of Fragment Star No. 5 was still in a relatively chaotic era of division among various nations.

Every place on the fragment star was an extension of a great nation. Due to the vast distance from their main planets, dispatches could not arrive promptly. Added to that was the mixed bag of people gathered here, making control an arm too short to reach.

The upper echelons of the governments on the fragment star could at most ensure that their territories were not lost, that the broad direction of national policy remained unified, and that incidents such as riots or rebel armies did not occur.

But it was difficult for them to attend to every aspect of local public security.

Not to mention petty livelihood matters. Rather than seek out the local Security Bureau and be delayed again and again, island residents found it far more efficient and practical to turn to Martial Artists from the gyms.

So long as the gym's Martial Artists did not act recklessly, the local governments generally kept one eye open and one eye shut, treating it as though nothing had happened.

In recent days, as Sun Chengshan achieved remarkable results in his gym-challenging matches, the Shadowless Fist Gym had gradually made an even bigger name for itself in town.

More and more residents came to the Shadowless Fist Gym's service desk with commissions whenever they encountered problems they could not resolve.

That day, Zhang Erdan was on duty at the service desk. Early in the morning, he sat there bored out of his mind, yawning.

A provisional disciple was dutifully sweeping the ground by the courtyard gate. The sky was only just beginning to brighten, and few figures moved along the street.

Suddenly, someone hurried over. Seemingly having traveled a long way, he was covered in sweat as he headed straight for the Shadowless Fist Gym's service desk.

"I want to submit a commission. Quick, quick, find someone to help me!" The man grabbed the corner of the table and said anxiously to Zhang Erdan.

"No matter how urgent it is, speak slowly and follow the procedure. How can the disciples here just be sent out at random?" Zhang Erdan casually took out paper and a pen.

"Name?"

"Meng Lao Er."

"Address?"

"I live in a household below Nan Shan Ling. The farmland my family just reclaimed is about to be seized. Please, you have to help me." Meng Lao Er pleaded urgently.

Zhang Erdan looked up at him. "Tell me exactly what happened. Who wants to seize your family's land? Why have they set their sights on it? And—"

Though Zhang Erdan was usually unreliable, he did not dare be too negligent when handling this matter.

After all, this counted as one of the gym's revenue-generating businesses. If Sun Chengshan found out someone had not treated it seriously, he certainly would not be polite.

After a round of detailed questions and answers and the completion of the process, Zhang Erdan put away the paper.

"All right, wait for news. The reward you offered is decent, and the task isn't difficult. A disciple should head over soon enough."

Yet after hearing that, Meng Lao Er looked even more anxious.

"How long will that take? They'll definitely come again today. When that happens, my family will... will be finished!"

Impatience had already crept onto Zhang Erdan's face. "Then take your family somewhere to hide first. Our gym has received quite a few commissions lately, and all of them are anxious too. You aren't the only one."

Meng Lao Er wanted to continue, but then he suddenly heard a soft call from the courtyard nearby.

"Uncle Meng, why are you here?"

Meng Lao Er froze and turned his head. It was actually that kid Wang Yu.

"Y-you, you brat, why are you here?! And you're even dressed—"

When Meng Lao Er saw Wang Yu, he quickly noticed what Wang Yu was wearing.

He abruptly turned to look at Zhang Erdan, then back at Wang Yu.

The two wore identical gym disciple uniforms!

"Uncle Meng, you told me to find another way out and not go mining. So here I am, learning fist techniques," Wang Yu said with a smile. Seeing Meng Lao Er again, he still felt rather warmly toward him.

He had few acquaintances in this town.

For a moment, Meng Lao Er did not know what to say.

He truly had wanted Wang Yu to find another way out, but he had never expected Wang Yu to be capable enough to become a gym disciple.

The magnitude of this change left him stunned.

"Has Uncle Meng run into some trouble?" Wang Yu walked over to the service desk and asked.

Meng Lao Er gave a bitter smile. Only then did he recover from his shock. He had no time to be happy for Wang Yu. Seeing that he was a gym disciple, he immediately explained the matter again.

It turned out that after returning this time, Meng Lao Er had finally made up his mind not to mine anymore. He used the money he had saved to buy tools and planned to reclaim and farm his family's land for a living, so he could stay by his wife and children's side at all times.

For the past three months since returning, he had been busy with the farmland.

Then, recently, a group of people suddenly came and wanted to buy his land.

Meng Lao Er refused, and conflict arose between both sides.

That group grew increasingly vicious, threatening to bury his entire family alive.

Only then did Meng Lao Er begin to panic. Originally, he had gone to the town's Security Bureau.

The Security Bureau would still handle matters involving threats to life.

But the other side was slippery as an eel. The moment they saw Security Bureau officers arrive, they vanished without a trace.

For several days in a row, Security Bureau officers came by, but they could not keep guarding his fields forever. Besides, Meng Lao Er had only suffered threats so far and had not sustained any actual harm.

The Security Bureau was short-staffed, and it had no way to deploy large amounts of manpower to help Meng Lao Er hunt them down. In the end, the matter could only be left unresolved.

With no other choice, Meng Lao Er could only come to the gym for help.

After hearing everything, Wang Yu more or less understood the full story. He asked Zhang Erdan, "How difficult is this commission?"

Zhang Erdan glanced at the commission details he had recorded. "The other side is just a group of ordinary hooligans, though there are quite a lot of them. The difficulty isn't high. I recommend three disciples at the Body Tempering First Level, or one disciple at the Body Tempering Second Layer. The agreed reward is two hundred Crystal Coins."

"Fine. I'll take this commission. Register it," Wang Yu said with a nod.

"All right. Junior Brother Wang, be careful." Zhang Erdan had no objection and casually added Wang Yu's name as a note on the commission slip.

"Mm. Let's go, Uncle Meng. I'll come take a look with you," Wang Yu said.

He had originally been considering finding a few simple commissions to do these days and earn some living expenses.

Now that Meng Lao Er had come by, he could complete a commission while helping him resolve this trouble.

It could also be considered repayment for the kindness Meng Lao Er had shown him in the mine.