Some say the Martial Dao began with the Way of War.
For the character "wu," martial, depicts a person wielding a spear and charging forward.
Martial men would probably not deny this.
The earliest martial men did indeed emerge from the army. As for which person, or which people, first began it, there is no settled conclusion. For the Martial Dao lay dormant for a very long time. Those who first explored it were most likely nameless foot soldiers, and they did not regard it as their path.
The Ancient Military School used qi and blood to open the pulses. In the age before Vein-Opening Pills existed, they created people capable of cultivation through methods that offered but one chance of life in ten thousand—those born with Dao Veins were simply pitifully rare.
Some among them even considered themselves demons, disdaining to be human. They believed themselves to be of a different kind from humans who could not transcend the ordinary.
Though the Demon Race's Heavenly Court also looked down on such people, it would still issue false banners and appointments, grant them a few dispensable positions and a little bestowed glory, using them to consolidate its rule.
The Ancient Military School chose to wring the flesh dry and press the qi and blood to their limits, seizing, at the brink of life and death, at the extremes of body and will, the power to surpass mortal flesh—this was the earliest force of resistance from those without inborn Dao Veins, the so-called "ordinary people," the so-called "mortals."
The Military School's battle formations were likewise collective applications of qi, blood, and Dao Essence. At their core, they were "gathering people into a multitude" and "gathering the multitude's strength."
Yet the Military School's cultivation methods still remained within the framework of the