It turned out that Arhat Fist could cleanse the marrow through Muscle Tendon Changing. This was something Li Su had never expected.
He quickly filled a bucket with water and rinsed himself from head to toe, feeling out his body.
His inner power had already formed a Circulation Realm, circulating on its own inside him.
Feeling the seemingly inexhaustible inner power, Li Su was a little surprised.
He realized that even if he left it alone, this energy would grow stronger by itself. In other words, even if he stopped practicing martial arts from this moment on and let it circulate for thirty or fifty years, it would still become tremendously powerful.
That meant he didn't have to practice in order to grow stronger.
So that was how it worked.
At this realization, a look of sudden understanding spread across his face. For the first time, he also became aware of how terrifying and powerful Shaolin Temple really was.
What?
You think Shaolin Temple was terrifying?
In Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, the mighty abbot was driven onto the back foot by You Tanzhi, while Jumozhi swept through the Shaolin Seventy-Two Arts single-handedly, leaving all of Shaolin unable to raise their heads. If Xuzhu hadn't shown up, Shaolin would have lost every last shred of face.
And things were undoubtedly even worse later on. If they hadn't introduced a Nameless Divine Monk, probably the only impression people would have had of Shaolin Temple was that it didn't live up to its reputation.
In fact, Li Su had felt the same way. When he first read Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, before the Nameless Divine Monk appeared, Shaolin Temple had seemed like a second-rate sect to him.
But now, looking back, Li Su could only say that it made his scalp crawl.
Was Shaolin Temple weak?
Honestly, it wasn't weak. Not in the slightest.
Damn, it was terrifyingly strong—and in a way that made absolutely no sense.
Everyone knew the saying: expert marksmen were made by piling up bullets.
Some talent was involved, sure, but there was no doubt they'd also fired a hell of a lot of bullets.
But think about it: what kind of sect was Shaolin Temple?
It was a great martial arts sect, but in reality, its main focus was Buddhist cultivation.
Take Li Su and the others. They practiced boxing and kicking, sure, but they only practiced.
Look at Xuanci. After mastering Arhat Fist, he stopped taking it very seriously. Of the group, pretty much everyone except Xuancheng put in only halfhearted effort.
And the fact was, aside from the lay disciples, Shaolin's monks hardly ever had many chances to fight. Even when they did, it was usually just light sparring. At most, they'd decide who won, and most of the time, they didn't even care about that.
What kind of experts could such an environment produce?
Jumozhi, Ding Chunqiu, and the rest, on the other hand—hadn't every one of them been through battle after battle, fighting for their lives again and again?
Even You Tanzhi had been through plenty of fights, especially during the time he spent with Ding Chunqiu. He'd learned no shortage of vicious tricks.
Ding Chunqiu's techniques might have been sinister and disreputable, but they were aimed at taking lives. They were killing techniques.
What was there to celebrate about beating a bunch of people who'd never even killed a chicken?
That was why, in Li Su's eyes, it made no sense for every member of Shaolin's Xuanci generation to be a first-rate expert the moment they showed up. How the hell was that supposed to be believable?
Now he understood, seeing how this inner power worked.
No wonder the Xuanci generation was so formidable. Even against a pack of killers, they could hold their own for a few exchanges.
It had taken Li Su only a year to cultivate inner power and form a Circulation Realm. Xuanci and the others might have been slower, but by the time they appeared, they'd probably accumulated around forty years of skill.
Shaolin's martial arts might not have been the best in the world, but they were among the very best.
What did it mean to cultivate forty or fifty years of inner power with martial arts of that caliber?
No wonder Shaolin Temple had only been stormed once in Jin Da's stories, during Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre. In every other period, it had stood as a pillar of the martial world, untouchable. There was no point speculating about Jin Da's reasons for writing it that way. Now that these tales had become World Fragments, it finally made sense.
Damn, they were a whole bunch of monsters.
If you really fought them to the death, you might win at first. But the longer it went on, the more you'd realize what kind of beings you'd provoked.
A whole crowd of people with thirty or fifty years of inner power, who'd gone through enough life-and-death battles—just how much fighting strength would they unleash?
A single Nine Yin Manual had been enough to throw the entire martial world into turmoil, with even the Five Greats unable to sit still.
Shaolin Temple had so many peerless arts. It was a treasure that invited disaster. People had tried to steal from them, but hardly anyone had come right to their door to seize them by force. So everyone must have understood what kind of old monsters were sitting inside.
Murong Bo, the man who'd spent his life plotting rebellion, had lurked in Shaolin Temple for decades. He probably hadn't never considered making a move. He'd simply not dared.
After resting for a while, Li Su took up his stance and began practicing Arhat Fist again.
By now, he wasn't in a hurry.
The odds that Shaolin Temple currently possessed Nine Yang Divine Skill were very low. Muscle Tendon Changing Classic, on the other hand, was only a matter of time. Jin Da had made it clear: plenty of people had practiced the book's methods, but no one had mastered them.
In other words, it wasn't hard to get hold of it. The hard part was mastering it.
Most likely, it was like the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth, a martial art with so many requirements that getting your hands on it was useless if you couldn't meet them.
Now that practicing Arhat Fist came as naturally as swimming in water, there was no need to rush off looking for Muscle Tendon Changing Classic. Besides, he was a little monk who'd lived at Shaolin Temple since childhood. If he went off, found the manual, and mastered it, how could he explain that?
Better to take things step by step. Once his inner power was high enough, he could always wait a few decades, until Duan Yu went to Wuliang Mountain, and get his hands on Northern Dark Divine Skill.
Practicing the fist again felt completely different.
With every hand and every stance, his inner energy rose of its own accord. The Six Qi Yang Extension Meridian flowed through the Twelve Standard Meridians and down the Ultimate Yin Meridian, producing several times the effect it had before.
By the time he finished one set, after the time it took to brew a pot of tea, Li Su was drenched in sweat as if he'd run dozens of kilometers. Every pore on his body had opened wide, and his blood surged through him.
He drew in a breath, then let it out in a long exhale.
He couldn't help clenching his fist, delight written across his face.
The effect of one round was simply beyond his imagination.
If he'd just let his inner power circulate on its own, it would have taken at least three days to achieve the same result.
One round of fist practice equaled three days.
A hundred and fifty rounds equaled a year.
At eight rounds a day, he'd get through two thousand nine hundred and twenty rounds in a year, equivalent to nineteen years of progress?
He hissed in a breath. Li Su's eyes gleamed. By that reckoning, a hundred years of inner power would take only five years?
Of course, it wouldn't be that fast.
But even if it took ten years—no, twenty or thirty—if he could build up a hundred years of inner power, was there anywhere in the world he couldn't go?
At the thought, Li Su couldn't stop himself from smiling.
The Seven-Turn Grandmasters in the modern world had only three or four hundred years of inner power. If he could gain a full sixty years in one go, he'd catch up to them at the third turn and crush them in five years.
Thinking of that, Li Su felt his motivation grow even stronger.
Meanwhile, somewhere else.
In the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre world.
Inside Zhuwu Serial Manor in the Kunlun Mountains, a young boy was sweeping the courtyard.
Unlike the other boys who'd been brought here, he kept his head bowed, but his eyes darted about, glinting with ambition.
Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu, along with the Golden-Haired Lion King, Xie Xun, had already disappeared. The time was drawing near.
"Excellent. Everything is going according to plan. I just need to wait for Zhang Wuji to arrive, then steal his place..."
Clearly, he was the son of the Xie Family who planned to seize Nine Yang Divine Skill.
But contrary to what outsiders said, his goal wasn't just Nine Yang Divine Skill. For a full century, countless members of the Xie Family had struggled one after another. They'd acquired plenty of martial arts, and had long since set their sights on Nine Yang Divine Skill, yet they'd never made a move.
The reason was simple.
He didn't just want Nine Yang Divine Skill. He wanted to replace Zhang Wuji completely, become Zhang Wuji, and take everything Zhang Wuji had.
Nine Yang Divine Skill, Great Shift of Heaven and Earth, Holy Fire Tablet Divine Skill, Taiji Sword.
"Zhang Wuji, what have you done to deserve so many martial arts?"
"They're all mine!"
In the same Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils world.
At the entrance to Wuliang Palace, a rather brooding young man was counting on his fingers.
"It's 1090 now. Duan Yu will reach Wuliang Mountain in two years. Northern Dark Divine Skill, Lingbo Micro-steps, Six Meridians Divine Sword, Dali One Finger... It's almost time. Almost..."