Thus, in Year 331 of the Great Yan Calendar—the twenty-first year since Gu Han had come to this world—Ran Wen became Gu Han's disciple at the Martial Lecture Hall of Prince Liu's Estate in Qinghe City. Gu Han renamed him Ran Min, and so began his magnificent, tumultuous life.
In Ran Min's first year as a disciple, Year 332 of the Great Yan Calendar, under Gu Han's meticulous guidance, Ran Min spent merely one year mastering the Arhat Fist and reached Skin Tempering Perfection.
Afterward, he spent just over ten days switching to the White Tiger Muscle Tendon Refining Fist. He quickly entered the gate, broke through the Muscle Tendon Strengthening Realm, and became a Second-rate Master renowned throughout the martial world, no inferior to those who had toiled in cultivation for over a decade or even several decades.
The third year.
Only fifteen years old, with the childishness still not faded from his face, Ran Min once again came before Gu Han. Excitedly, he told Gu Han that he had thoroughly trained all twenty-four minor tendons and twelve major tendons in his body. He even broke through the Blood Tempering Realm in one go before Gu Han's very eyes—a realm that had barred Gu Han for more than ten years—leaving Gu Han so depressed he nearly spat blood as he inwardly sighed, This boy's talent is truly terrifying beyond measure!
Not to mention himself—even compared with his elder brother Jingyuan, that peerless genius, Ran Min far surpassed him. Though Gu Han had seen and heard of countless so-called supreme prodigies over the years, not one could compare to Ran Min. Looking through all of ancient and modern times, perhaps only the legendary, deified Patriarch Bodhidharma could surpass him by a fraction.
Then, another three years passed.
At only eighteen, Ran Min's martial cultivation rose step by step once more, reaching Blood Tempering Perfection. His strength was now merely one step away from the foremost Inner Qi masters of the martial world.
Over the following months, Ran Min attempted several times to break into the Internal Qi Realm. Yet unfortunately, that single step was often incredibly difficult to cross. For the vast majority in this world, advancing from Blood Tempering to Inner Qi was like a heavenly chasm, a threshold they might never cross in their entire lives.
For Ran Min, that step might not have meant much, but it nevertheless slightly hindered his triumphant advance.
Thus, after pondering for a full month, he finally bade Gu Han farewell on a bright, sunny morning. He then began his life of roaming the martial world, opening the first page of his magnificent, tumultuous life.
Yet the changes of the world never ceased for anyone, nor was Gu Han's life interrupted by Ran Min's departure.
After Ran Min left, Gu Han maintained his former routine. Every day, he was either studying martial arts manuals or diligently practicing the martial techniques left behind by Patriarch Bodhidharma.
In the first year after Ran Min's departure, Gu Han, who had cultivated bitterly for many years, finally comprehended the first supreme martial technique left behind by Patriarch Bodhidharma: the Heaven-Overturning Palm. He cultivated it to perfection.
Combined with his incomparably fierce Inner Qi, a single palm strike covered an area several feet across, nearly a full zhang. The surroundings fell into darkness as though the heavens had collapsed. It far surpassed Abbot Yuanyin, Ben Zhen, and the others of Treasure Pearl Temple in those days, truly capable of overturning heaven and earth, living up to the name Heaven-Overturning Palm.
In the third year after Ran Min's departure, Gu Han suddenly gained an insight while practicing his fists, and his martial realm surged greatly. With the aid of two Greater Returning Pills, the Inner Qi within his body also accumulated to the limit of the Internal Qi Realm in this world.
Setting aside his physical body, his Inner Qi cultivation alone had reached the peak of this world. Though he was still far inferior to Patriarch Bodhidharma, he was no weaker than Liao Kong and Jue Ming, the two patriarchs in Treasure Pearl Temple's history, or A Yanda, the southern Barbarian King, and the like.
With the addition of his physical body, his overall strength had finally undergone a transformation. He was no weaker than a Second-rate Master of the main world, perhaps even slightly stronger.
As for the internal cultivation method he wished to create, it finally began to take shape with the aid of this enlightenment.
In the ninth year after Ran Min's departure.
Though Gu Han's internal cultivation method had yet to be perfected, he comprehended One Reed Crossing River, the lightness technique and movement art among the other two supreme martial techniques left behind by Patriarch Bodhidharma, and cultivated it to perfection.
This art specialized in making the body light. Once mastered, one could become as light as a swallow and walk upon water.
Although Gu Han was limited by his cultivation realm and could not, like Patriarch Bodhidharma, carry a single reed across a surging river hundreds of zhang wide, crossing a river several hundred meters wide posed no problem for him.
By then, Gu Han had mastered two arts.
His fistwork, footwork, and lightness technique had all achieved success.
Until Year 354 of the Great Yan Calendar, the twenty-third year since Ran Min became his disciple and the seventeenth year since Ran Min left.
The southern Barbarian King A Yanda had grown old, but his son A Kakin suddenly rose to prominence, erupting like thunder. At only twenty-eight years old, he broke through to the realm his father A Yanda had attained in his prime, far beyond Inner Qi Perfection and gazing toward the legendary realm.
Even in his first battle, he displayed strength no weaker than his father's. He cut down several Inner Qi-level generals of the Northern Eighteen Vassals Alliance amidst their ranks, his might soaring to the heavens and forcing the vassals to avoid battle one after another.
However, compared with A Yanda, who had grown up in Barbarian Tribe settlements since childhood, the young Barbarian King A Kakin had received instruction from famed Central Plains masters from a young age. His grasp of military strategy surpassed A Yanda's by who knew how many times. Under his leadership, the Northern Eighteen Vassals Alliance, which had struggled to hold on for over a decade, finally collapsed beneath the Barbarian Tribe's powerful forces.
Among them, Prince Liu, lord of Qinghe City, died in battle on the spot. His daughter Liu Yiyi vanished without a trace, and Prince Liu's Estate, famous throughout the realm for centuries, crumbled from that day onward.
Of the remaining eighteen vassals, eight also died in battle. The survivors all suffered crushing defeats and grievous losses, retreating to their strongholds to stubbornly resist the Barbarian Tribe's attacks.
Unfortunately, even when the eighteen vassals had been twisted into a single rope and worked together with one heart, they had been unable to withstand the Barbarian Tribe's assault. How could the vassals now, merely lingering on in miserable existence, fare any better?
Therefore, under A Kakin's offensive, the northern vassals had no power to resist whatsoever.
One city fell every three days, one commandery was taken every half month, one province conquered every two months!
Countless miraculous figures unfolded as Barbarian Tribe forces continuously seized northern territory. In less than a year, six of the nine northern provinces had fallen into their hands—an appalling two-thirds.
Just when people believed that Great Yan, which had endured for over three hundred years, was finally about to perish, an army rose from Liang Province in the north. It swept across the land with arrogant might, slaughtering countless barbarian soldiers without meeting a single foe.
Its leader called himself Ran Min and was known as the Martial Mourning Heavenly King. A man of extraordinary talent and grand strategy, with astonishing military ability, he not only issued an order to kill barbarians, calling upon all aspiring men under heaven to make restoring Great Yan and slaughtering every barbarian their duty, thereby winning over the people's hearts, but also rallied Prince Ming of the northwest and the northern vassals not yet destroyed by the Barbarian Tribe, establishing the Anti-Barbarian Alliance.
For a time, under his leadership, the alliance army repeatedly defeated A Kakin. They recovered four of the six fallen northern provincial cities and stood in equal opposition to the Barbarian Tribe, which occupied the entire south and a small half of the north, locked in an unyielding stalemate.
Thus, another seven or eight years passed.
In the north, in Gaoliang Province, inside an ordinary thatched cottage in an unnamed mountain village, an old man with white hair and a youthful face shuddered. Inner force began to arise within his Dantian.
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