Ranked Martial Art, Tiger Subduing Fist

"Thump, thump, thump!"

Su Mu could clearly hear his own frantic heartbeat. It wasn't until he spotted a few flickering lights in the village that he, still shaken, finally steadied himself a little.

His mind was still uncontrollably replaying what had happened not long ago.

In this chaotic world, human life was as cheap as grass. He had never offended Sun Li, a fellow apprentice, yet Sun Li had borne him a grudge, even hiring thugs to kill him.

"The human heart is unfathomable..."

Su Mu trembled all over, finally understanding why the ancient sages had coined phrases like "Beware of others, for harm may come from within" to warn the world.

He muttered the words over and over, and the youth's mindset quietly began to shift.

"Yeah, I've transmigrated. This isn't a society ruled by law... it's a chaotic age..."

"If I hadn't trained hard in the Five Animal Frolics for over half a year, if that bandit hadn't let his guard down seeing how young and scared I was, I'd be the one dead today..."

Su Mu took a deep breath, his fists slowly clenching.

"I, Su Mu, won't be the kind of villain who harms others, but I sure as hell won't be the kind of goody-two-shoes who dies young either..."

He returned to the small courtyard naked, having already discarded his blood-soaked clothes separately in the wilderness. Back inside, he boiled water and washed the bloodstains off his body. Only then did his heart finally settle completely.

This time, besides a money pouch containing ten taels of loose silver taken from Sun Li, there was also a tightly wrapped bundle.

"Let's see what that scumbag had on him."

When he'd felt the bundle earlier, the outline inside felt like a book. He just hoped it wasn't some useless tome like the Four Books and Five Classics.

After brushing with death, Su Mu craved power and strength.

With anticipation, he opened the dark blue cloth bag, folded three layers thick. The true contents were finally revealed before him: an old, thread-bound book with a yellowed cover.

Su Mu's breathing quickened. He reached out and brushed the dust off the book, revealing three golden characters: Tiger Subduing Fist.

"A martial arts manual for real?"

Su Mu's heart pounded.

"Tiger Subduing Fist, imitating the ferocious pouncing of a tiger—fierce and domineering, using brute force to overcome finesse. When cultivated to a high level, it can reach the Ninth Rank..."

Can reach the Ninth Rank!

Before him was a Ranked Martial Art.

Su Mu's heart burned with excitement. He couldn't help swallowing. The ancients weren't wrong—crime really did pay. Sun Li probably never imagined, even in death, that the thugs he'd hired would end up delivering such a gift to Su Mu.

"The Ninth Rank is the lowest rank for martial artists in this world. This Tiger Subduing Fist isn't some top-tier martial art... but it's exactly what I need right now. A top-tier art would just be useless to me at this stage."

The higher the tier of a martial art, the higher the threshold to practice it. Without a foundation in martial arts, even if Su Mu were handed a top-tier manual now, he'd just be staring at it helplessly.

So Su Mu began flipping through the Tiger Subduing Fist manual by candlelight. The pages rustled pleasantly as he turned them, one after another. His eyes grew brighter and more fervent, the more he read, the more captivated he became.

It wasn't until late into the night that Su Mu reluctantly closed the manual. A look of joy couldn't help spreading across his face.

"Tiger Subduing Fist is a fist art that mimics a tiger's pouncing and killing. With my foundation in the Five Animal Frolics, getting started should be much easier than for an ordinary person. I'll start training tomorrow!"

The Five Animal Frolics included the 13 forms of the Tiger Frolic, and this Tiger Subduing Fist could be seen as the ranked, advanced version of the Tiger Frolic.

At the same time, after skimming through Tiger Subduing Fist, Su Mu finally gained a rough understanding of this world's martial arts system.

According to the manual's description, the martial artist realm in this world was divided into nine ranks, with the Ninth Rank being the lowest and the First Rank the highest.

The Ninth, Eighth, and Seventh Ranks were collectively called Low-Ranked Martial Artists, also known as Body Refining Martial Artists in the first major stage of martial arts. In the path of martial arts, body refinement came first.

Ninth Rank: Refining Strength into Force. Eighth Rank: Bone Forging and Marrow Refining. Seventh Rank: Muscle Tendon Transformation and Meridian Cleansing.

Refined Strength—the threshold for a Ranked Martial Artist. Simply put, this realm involved gradually increasing one's physical power through years of cultivation, ultimately achieving the circulation of energy throughout the body, generating an invisible "force" in every movement.

Though this was the entry gate to martial arts, it shut out over ninety percent of the world's practitioners. Countless martial artists trained for over a decade without ever producing "force." Without "force," they could never become ranked, forever remaining unranked.

Suppressing his excitement, Su Mu stepped out into the yard, practiced the Five Animal Frolics for a while, and soon fell asleep.

Exhausted in both body and mind, Su Mu slept deeply that night.

The next day, after practicing the Five Animal Frolics as usual, Su Mu headed to town with some unease. Walking through the streets and alleys, he was a bit tense.

But after just one night, there was no news in town. The two deaths had caused no ripples at all, making him wonder if the town's officials had even noticed that two people had died overnight.

That eased Su Mu's mind a little. At noon, while eating lunch, Li Xiaohu sidled up to him. "Sun Li took a day off yesterday, but he still hasn't shown up today..."

Su Mu's expression shifted slightly. His heart skipped a beat, and the ladle scooping porridge froze in midair. Li Xiaohu shot him a puzzled look.

"I think he went out drinking again last night. His family lives in Willow Village, north of town. There's a decent-sized distillery in that village, and Sun Li's house is right across from it. Anyway, this isn't the first time. He used to hang out with the local thugs around there all the time."

Hearing this, Su Mu quietly breathed a sigh of relief. He brought the porridge to his lips, but his mind wandered elsewhere.

Memories of yesterday surfaced.

Before he died, Sun Li had sneered, calling him a country boy. The money pouch Su Mu had taken from Sun Li's corpse held a full ten taels of loose silver. In this world, one tael of silver was enough to feed a family of three for three months without worry.

How could an ordinary apprentice have ten taels? Even if that money was meant to hire killers, it still showed Sun Li was well-off.

Since the guy was already dead by his hand, he might as well take all of Sun Li's assets before anyone noticed he was gone. It was what Sun Li deserved anyway.

Besides, in this chaotic age, if Sun Li stayed away from home too long, someone else would eventually covet his property. Better to take it himself.

Willow Village, across from the distillery, huh...

Coming back to his senses, Su Mu asked casually, "What about Sun Li's family? Don't they care?"

"Sun Li only has an uncle left now, and they don't live together. His uncle was the one who sent him to the shop, and he used to visit Sun Li now and then, but after he caught Sun Li drinking heavily, he stopped coming."

"I see."

Su Mu replied, a decision firming in his mind.

Clang, clang, clang!

An afternoon passed amid the sound of hammering. As dusk fell, Su Mu banked the forge and left the shop.

When night descended, a figure scaled the wall of a house and slipped inside. It was Su Mu. After practicing the Five Animal Frolics for over half a year, his body was light and coordinated, and he entered Sun Li's courtyard without alerting anyone.

Groping through the darkness, Su Mu found a small wooden box under the bed.

When he opened the box, the first thing that caught his eye was silver—a ten-tael ingot of Official Silver, along with some loose coins, totaling about sixteen taels.

"Sixteen taels here, plus the ten from before, that's a full twenty-six taels of silver. This Sun Li really is well-off."

Su Mu muttered under his breath.

"Hm? What's this?"

Besides the silver, the small box also contained two Tokens and a Fish-shaped White Jade Pendant.