"Born to stand above all men, I alone shall live as long as heaven;
With two hands, I slaughter my way through the Three Thousand Realms; on one shoulder, I bear the sorrows of eternity."
In the darkness, a vast, ancient voice seemed to echo beside his ears, boundlessly arrogant.
Countless cities lay in ruins. Mutant Beasts as massive as mountains trampled the earth, while high above the clouds, gods and buddhas seemed to look down upon it all.
Indifference, mockery, contempt... countless faces of gods and buddhas flashed chaotically before his eyes.
In a dimly lit waiting room, a bruised young man opened his eyes in horror, as though waking from a nightmare.
"Where am I...?"
Jiang Li breathed rapidly as memories flooded his mind.
Originally, he had simply stopped by an antique market near his home one evening after work and picked up an old book to browse. Who could have imagined that he would pass out the moment he opened it?
When he opened his eyes again, he was already here.
The more he understood the memories in his head, the grimmer Jiang Li's expression became.
He had transmigrated into a world of powerful martial arts, where technology had collapsed, everyone practiced martial arts, and Mutant Beasts ran rampant.
His predecessor was also named Jiang Li, eighteen years old, a senior at Seventeenth High School in Beihe City. In three months, he would take Great Xia's martial entrance examination.
With his grades, getting into a third-rate Martial Science University would have been no problem. The problem was that, in pursuit of the school's unattainable beauty, this Jiang Li had secretly spent over two years borrowing money from every friend around him to buy her all sorts of pills. He had even maxed out every lending app on his phone—Money Loan, Cash to Spend, Borrow to Spend, Easy Installments, Happy Pay, and more. Those apps alone had netted him over two hundred thousand.
And that was not all. To buy cultivation pills for her, he had even approached gangsters outside school and borrowed another three hundred thousand. With interest compounding, that debt had now ballooned to over seven hundred thousand.
So they had abducted him, beaten him savagely, and dragged him here to participate in this underground Beast Fighting Arena.
If he died, his debts died with him.
If he somehow survived, each fight would wipe out a hundred thousand of his debt.
At this point, Jiang Li had no time to consider why he had transmigrated. If he could, he would have slapped the original Jiang Li twice.
You really deserved to die, didn't you?!
For the first time in his life, Jiang Li felt an intense hatred for simps.
A high school senior borrowing a million just to chase a girl? You were practically the supreme god of simps, the absolute trash of romance.
He had even had a huge argument with his family recently over it, nearly severing ties with his father.
Besides, Jiang Li could tolerate transmigrating into a useless loser, but he could not tolerate being saddled with over a million in loan-shark debt the moment he arrived.
I was a workhorse in my last life, and now I'm starting this one neck-deep in debt. What the hell am I supposed to pay it back with?!
On top of that, he was about to enter this underground Beast Fighting Arena and fight a real Mutant Beast to the death. The mortality rate was supposedly as high as ninety percent.
What did a catastrophic start look like? This was it.
An unprecedented killing intent blazed in Jiang Li's eyes. Right now, he truly felt like murdering someone.
Rumble...
The waiting room's gate slowly opened, letting in bright light.
"The first beast fight will begin in three minutes."
A cold voice drifted from the speakers, startling all eight people in the waiting room awake. Only Jiang Li stared blankly ahead, a strange expression appearing on his face.
"Hey, kid!"
Among the eight, a burly man nearly six foot three abruptly rose to his feet.
His eyes were cold and vicious as he stared at Jiang Li.
There was only one reason anyone ended up here: like Jiang Li, they owed enormous debts they could not repay.
The burly man was no exception. According to the order, he should have been the first to fight.
But whoever faced the beast first ran the greatest risk.
These Mutant Beasts had been carefully bred for combat and were far stronger than ordinary Ninth Grade Mutant Beasts.
As a result, a Ninth-Rank Martial Artist who faced one first was usually certain to die.
Only after several rounds of fighting wore the beast down would they have a chance of surviving.
The burly man had survived the Beast Fighting Arena once before, so he had long since planned to make someone else take his place in the first fight.
Naturally, Jiang Li—the youngest, thin-looking, and seemingly easy to bully—was the best choice.
To his surprise, however, Jiang Li ignored his shout completely, sitting there like an idiot.
The man's gaze grew more vicious. He abruptly straightened up and strode toward Jiang Li.
The others shrank back at the sight.
Little did they know that Jiang Li was staring, utterly transfixed, at a Yellow Book before him.
This Yellow Book was precisely the one he had opened at the antique market before transmigrating.
Now, however, the Yellow Book floated silently before him, with lines of text displayed on its first page.
Name: Jiang Li Age: 18 Cultivatable lifespan: 1061 Abilities: None Cultivation art: Hundred Battles Art (Ninth Grade) Martial arts: Wind Severing Saber (Ninth Grade)
After seeing the Yellow Book, certain memories involuntarily appeared in Jiang Li's mind, as though he had been born with them.
The information in the Yellow Book represented his current state. More than that, he could use the Yellow Book to expend his lifespan on practicing cultivation arts and martial arts, increasing his strength.
His cultivatable lifespan was the lifespan available for him to spend. Once it reached zero, he would die immediately.
Furthermore, the Yellow Book displayed a lifespan of 1061 because sixty-one was his own remaining lifespan, while the other thousand was a temporary lifespan loan from the Yellow Book.
Within one hundred days, he had to repay 1100 years of lifespan. Otherwise, the Yellow Book would erase him outright.
Obtaining lifespan was simple, too. By killing Mutant Beasts or enemies, he could acquire their cultivation lifespan. The stronger his opponents and the longer they had cultivated, the more cultivation lifespan he would receive.
Jiang Li's expression had never been so spectacular. Now he owed not only the million-plus his predecessor had spent simping, but also over a thousand years of lifespan.
Before Jiang Li could even curse a couple of times, a hand seized his collar and hoisted him into the air.
"Kid, didn't you hear me talking to you?"
The burly man's face was thick with flesh as he glared ferociously at Jiang Li in his grip.
Only then did Jiang Li snap out of his daze. He frowned at the man. "What did you say?"
The man gave a savage grin. "So you're not mute after all!"
With that, he drove a fist straight into Jiang Li's abdomen.
Caught off guard, Jiang Li took the punch head-on. In an instant, the wrenching pain in his abdomen drained all his strength. The man slammed him onto the floor, leaving him curled up like a cooked shrimp.
"Kid, you've got two minutes. Get your ass into that arena, or I'll kill you before the beast can!"
The man threatened him viciously. Any ordinary youngster would have meekly obeyed in the face of such intimidation and entered the arena to fill the beast's stomach.
What he failed to notice was the fierce brutality surfacing on Jiang Li's face as he lay on the floor.
His predecessor's memories contained the Beast Fighting Arena's rules and mortality rate. Naturally, he understood that this man intended to send him to his death.
In this world, strength ruled supreme. Without power, he would probably die here today.
You want me dead? Then let's see who dies first.
Expend lifespan to cultivate the Hundred Battles Art and the Wind Severing Saber Technique!
Below his personal information, lines of text appeared in the Yellow Book.
[You diligently cultivated the Hundred Battles Art. In the second year, you successfully broke through to its second level, reaching lower Ninth Grade.] [In the fourth year of diligent cultivation, you successfully broke through to the third level of the Hundred Battles Art, reaching middle Ninth Grade.] [You continued cultivating diligently. In the ninth year, you finally mastered the Hundred Battles Art to perfection, reaching upper Ninth Grade.] [In the fifteenth year, you brought the Hundred Battles Art to its pinnacle, reaching peak Ninth Grade. Lacking a higher-level cultivation art, your cultivation stagnated, leaving you unable to break through.] Cultivation art: Hundred Battles Art, fourth level (peak Ninth Grade)
[You began practicing the Wind Severing Saber Technique. In the seventh year of rigorous practice, you attained minor mastery.] [In the sixteenth year, your Wind Severing Saber Technique reached major mastery.] [In the twenty-eighth year, you finally perfected the Wind Severing Saber Technique, incorporating every move into your instincts.] [In the thirty-fifth year, you continued rigorously practicing the Wind Severing Saber Technique and finally comprehended a trace of saber intent from it. However, the Wind Severing Saber Technique was merely Ninth Grade. No matter how hard you tried, you could advance no further.] Martial arts: Wind Severing Saber Technique (Ninth Grade, perfected) (nascent saber intent) Cultivatable lifespan: 1011
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