This World!

Fate rarely bestows favors upon us; often, when we feel we have hit rock bottom, we are still being too optimistic. The most painful thing is that she always leaves a glimmer of hope—a hope that makes one persist in a sea of bitterness and regret while sinking.

James was currently like a practitioner who had fallen into a demonic trial; he should have been in a meditative state of emptiness and self-realization, yet he was filled with hateful, ferocious resentment at his own helpless weakness. His eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wild. He slapped his hand against a giant boulder, performed a backflip off it, and began to unleash every martial art he knew in a frenzied, maddened state.

In his past life, Bai Feng had studied under a secret lineage of Xingyi. Beyond the complete San Ti Shi stance training and the Five Elements Fist, he had mastered the five rare, authentic animal forms—Dragon, Tiger, Snake, Eagle, and Bear—as well as the Marrow Washing Technique, revered by all internal martial arts schools as the supreme practice: the Tiger-Leopard Thunder Sound!

After his fist techniques reached the level of Huajin, he had absorbed the strengths of many schools, learning internal arts like Taijiquan and Baguazhang, and external arts like Bajiquan. Although he could not learn forbidden techniques like the Great Toad Power or the Heng Ha Sounds, he had grasped the essence of combat from every style.

Panda, standing to the side, had never seen his master in such a violent state. The Lage Forest in late autumn was filled with fiery red fallen leaves, which were whipped into a dance by the gale and fist force generated by this figure. His feet moved with the rapid, swirling footwork of Baguazhang, his body weaving constantly, while his fists and palms cracked and popped with every strike.

Suddenly, he switched to the hammer techniques of Taijiquan—Ban Lan Chui, Pian Shen Chui, and Pao Chui. His clothes billowed from the force, and the muffled thuds sounded like someone beating a thick-skinned war drum. He executed the Five Elements—Pi, Beng, Zuan, Pao, and Heng Quan—with effortless ease. The air crackled with lightning-like snaps and rumbled with thunderous booms. His shoulders, elbows, knees, and legs moved in perfect harmony with his fists, fully displaying the power of the peak of Mingjin.

James ignored the neighing and struggling of his beloved horse. At this moment, there was only a fire in his heart—a fire that burned until he felt insane and delirious. The rotation of time and space, the immense terror under the supreme power of heaven and earth, the confusion and decadence of being in a strange world, and the profound sorrow of facing a terminal illness with no power to resist.

His fist intent had never been so filled with the determination to overturn heaven and earth. His soaring intent no longer seemed aimed at defeating a human opponent, but at shattering the barriers of space and time, at shattering the wheel of fate!

He unleashed everything he had learned, over and over, without fatigue. By the end, he was no longer bound by styles or routines; there was only the purest form of attack! Everything was instinct—the combat instinct that humans possess for the sake of struggle and slaughter.

James slowly felt a power stirring within his body. Following the current-like circulation along his spine to the very last tailbone, the membranes inside and outside his muscles and bones connected, and every pore on his skin tightened shut. He suddenly threw a heavy, unadorned punch.

"Bang!"

His flesh-and-blood fist sank deep into the two-meter-tall boulder he had been sitting on earlier. His hand remained unharmed, but the boulder looked as if it had been struck by a battering ram. The fist-sized crater was damp, and spiderweb-like cracks spread out from it, inch by inch.

Anjin achieved!

James finally slowed down, gradually withdrawing his hands to calm his blood and qi, nodding to himself. His physical strength in this normal state was far superior to his past life; even a healthy body practicing Anjin could never achieve such destructive power—at most, it would only leave cracked marks on a boulder. His heart swelled with ambition, and his initial frustration and resentment were swept away.

"So what if I'm a weakling! In this life, I will not only re-enter the realm of Huajin, but I will also reach Bao Dan, Zuo Kua, master Gang Qi, and achieve Bu Huai! I will see the limits of human physical cultivation! I will see this surging American Continent, and I will see what kind of world this truly is!" James's eyes shot out a sharp light, filled with high spirits.

Suddenly, a scorching heat, as if emanating from his bone marrow, permeated every blood vessel, nerve, muscle, and even cell in his body. This feeling was so familiar—the strange illness that struck two or three times a month had returned. And it was more violent and painful than ever before...

James collapsed to the ground, his body twitching uncontrollably. The pain was so intense that he couldn't even put up his usual weak resistance. He dug his hands deep into the soil, struggling to keep them from trembling. Kneeling on the ground, James broke out in a cold sweat. His pitch-black pupils began to dilate, vaguely taking on an olive shape, shimmering with a faint green light.

An unprecedented pain flowed through his arms, as if his bones were being forcibly ripped out of his flesh. Long, strip-like bulges, like parasites, rose beneath his skin, twisting and writhing from his forearms all the way to the backs of his hands. Tortured by the agony, James let out a sky-piercing howl. The mournful, blood-curdling sound tore through the sky, startling the birds in the forest, which circled and shrieked above his head.

The dark forest suddenly felt ghostly and ominous.

Panda, lying on the ground nearby, trembled incessantly. Even when James had been practicing his martial arts in a frenzy, it had only been startled, but it did not feel the terrifying, shivering dread it felt now—as if a top-tier predator were sniffing at its throat.

The fists he held high toward the sky gradually became wrapped in blackened, bulging veins.

"Squelch."

A pair of bone claws pierced through the skin between his knuckles.

Silence. Absolute silence.

It was as if the world had been muted; even the wind stopped breathing. All the pain receded like a tide. There was only a lingering, itchy sensation in his body, which vanished in an instant, replaced by an unprecedented sense of relief.

James stared blankly at the six pale bone claws protruding from his two hands, his mind momentarily blank.

After a long while, he finally caught his breath and examined the sharp claws, his face filled with complex emotions.

All six bone claws were at least twenty centimeters long, with the middle one in each set being slightly longer; they were roughly the same length as his forearms. They were as thick as a thumb, shaped like triangular pyramids, with tips like slender daggers, slightly curved, and each claw had knot-like protrusions resembling vines.

"This is... this world, this world is..." James whispered to himself, almost groaning. He didn't know whether to be happy that he had solved the mystery of his illness or distressed by a fantastical result that shattered his brain cells.

"Logan, Victor... it seems that's it. Am I that... Wolverine?" James's mind rapidly connected details he hadn't linked before: Victor's strange fingernails, the surname Logan, and this story that felt vaguely familiar.

In his past life, he wasn't a Marvel movie or comic fan, but he had watched some Marvel-related films or videos here and there. It just so happened that he had seen the first Wolverine movie, and he remembered the child who stabbed his biological father to death, and his brother Victor, who was also a mutant.

"The fate of the original story hasn't fundamentally changed..." James thought about how, whether it was John Howlett or Thomas Logan, although the process differed, both men had died in the end. He just knelt there quietly on the ground, thinking and recalling every possible impression he had of this world.

So far, the world background seemed to be based on the movies, at least consistent with what he had seen. But he didn't know if this was a world with only mutants, or a vast universe where half of all life would eventually turn to dust with a snap of fingers.

James suddenly laughed and shook his head. His earlier grand ambitions and soaring spirit seemed small in the context of such a world...

A long time passed. The sun had set, and the shadows cast by the trees on the ground gradually disappeared. James stood up and walked toward Panda, letting out a soft whistle. He gently stroked its long face, leaning against it to soothe it; the horse, still just a colt, had been truly terrified today. It stretched out its tongue and licked James's cheek, as if confirming whether this scent still belonged to its master.

James hopped nimbly onto the horse's back: "Panda, let's go home!"

Feeling its master's urge, the horse galloped away, seemingly wanting to hurry back to its stable to have a good meal and rub against that pretty white mare, soothing its own frightened nerves.

James smiled slightly on the fast-bouncing horse, then gradually laughed out loud, even shouting with a somewhat manic, hearty cheer. As he galloped, bursts of neurotic laughter echoed through the valley.

Suddenly, he seemed to remember something and muttered: "I forgot to bring a rabbit for O'Hara..."