As for why martial artists were hard to find, it was because in this day and age, martial arts could lead one into the Dao. Once one entered the Dao through martial arts, one became a Daoist and was no longer a martial artist.
A so-called martial artist was someone who had reached the threshold of entering the Dao yet chose not to cross it, instead taking another path. Only then could one be considered a true martial artist.
Take Wu Yuan, whom Zhao Cheng had killed back then. He could be called valiant indeed. Not only had he practiced martial arts since childhood, but his talent had been astonishing. Yet on the path where Zhao Cheng did not exist, he only touched upon the threshold of entering the Dao ten years later.
Of course, by then he had already joined Cao Zheng. If he had truly dared to enter the Dao, blades and weapons would have been upon him the very next moment.
Officials and generals were not permitted to enter the Dao. That was the rule.
However, when it came to entering the Dao, if one's talent was too great—great to a certain extent—then the greater it was, the harder it became to enter the Dao through martial arts.
Take the Overlord of old. His martial arts had been peerless, yet from the moment he began, his path had been locked shut. He could not condense a Dao Seed and could only excavate the potential of his own body to the utmost, even breaking through the limits of his species to a certain degree.
If one had to trace the reason, it lay in the difference between the earth and the void. The Dao came from the void, while martial arts arose from the earth. Their origins had