New to This World

In July, Golden City, Cool Province, the mother river ran through the city, and lush green trees and grass lined both banks.

From high above, the mountain ranges stretching along both sides of the city resembled slumbering dragons.

Traffic flowed without cease across the bridge connecting the two banks of the Yellow River.

Inside a three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment in a residential complex beside the Yellow River, a boy of fifteen or sixteen sat on the sofa, watching the news on television.

Though the boy did not have an ounce of extra flesh on him, his fair features and broad frame kept him from looking especially frail.

He wore a short-sleeved jacket over a long-sleeved shirt, with jeans from his school days below.

"Hello, viewers before your screens. It is now 18:00 on July 3, 2110, Blue Star Calendar. Welcome to... At 14:40 this afternoon, the Xichuan XXXXX base established under the leadership of XXXX in our country was officially completed. Effective today, it will be handed over to the Military Department for use. This is the thirteenth base our country has established within a secret realm. In the future, our country will... the entire nation..."

After watching the news for a while, the boy, who had remained motionless all this time, suddenly began muttering to himself from the sofa. "What transmigration and martial arts? It was nothing more than the dying fantasy of a young man in his twenties. Once those words came out, I imagine plenty of people's Dao hearts would shatter."

As a new youth of the twenty-first century who had let his dreams soar, Chen Wu had never imagined that a shut-in like himself would one day join the great transmigration army.

He had neither acted bravely for a just cause nor encountered a cement truck to be reincarnated by.

He had merely stayed up a little late gaming with friends. When he woke from a single sleep, he was already in this world.

He had returned to the age of sixteen, a student about to advance from the second year of high school to the third, and his mind now held many memories that had never belonged to him.

After spending an entire day searching for information online and combining it with the memories of the original owner of this body, Chen Wu finally gained a preliminary understanding of the world he was in.

The world had changed. Aside from the different timeline, with technologies from his previous life appearing ahead of schedule, there were also countless martial arts.

Through cultivation, humans could obtain the extraordinary powers described in myths—moving mountains and overturning seas, shifting stars and changing constellations, tearing open the void, and crossing the river of stars. Such things no longer existed only in fantasy.

Of course, the prerequisite for accomplishing such feats was becoming a high-level martial artist.

The reason this world had become this way was the appearance of secret realms.

No one could determine where the secret realms had first appeared.

All that was known was that around sixty years ago, vast numbers of secret realms had suddenly emerged across the world. Large hordes of ferocious beasts poured out from within and struck at human society.

History called it the "Great Cataclysm."

Along with the secret realms and ferocious beasts came another discovery: as humans resisted the beast tides, they found their bodies becoming stronger than before.

Whether it was strength, speed, or endurance, so long as they trained, they could easily break world records.

After the nations deployed their militaries to crush the first wave of beast tides and studied the corpses of ferocious beasts, they discovered the truth of spiritual energy's resurgence.

Every appearance of a secret realm was often accompanied by a beast tide.

Flowing into the human world alongside the beast tides was the spiritual energy within the secret realms.

It was both an opportunity and a crisis.

Humans were not the only ones to benefit from this resurgence of spiritual energy. The birds and beasts of nature did as well.

Tempered by spiritual energy, they evolved into ferocious beasts.

The most outstanding among them even gained intelligence comparable to that of humans.

The war between humanity and ferocious beasts had begun to unfurl.

In the ten years after the Great Cataclysm, humanity gained the upper hand through modern weaponry.

Yet they also realized that the ferocious beasts were constantly growing stronger.

Ordinary bullets could not even break through the scales and armor of those high-level ferocious beasts.

Only heavy firepower could injure them. Moreover, as time passed, humanity's advantage in this regard grew smaller and smaller.

Some people had considered using nuclear bombs to attack the core regions occupied by ferocious beasts, and they had done so.

Yet unexpectedly, while the terrifying power of nuclear bombs could indeed eliminate vast numbers of ferocious beasts, it also weeded out the weak from the herds while killing them.

The ferocious beasts that survived the nuclear blasts became stronger. Not only were they immune to nuclear energy, they even absorbed that energy in turn and completed their own evolution.

Ten years after the outbreak of the beast tides, ferocious beasts evolved from the enormous biological base of the oceans officially came ashore and began attacking coastal regions everywhere.

This undoubtedly made an already fierce war even bloodier and crueler.

After the first ten years of war, the human population plummeted from its peak of three billion to two billion. Fifty percent of the land had been occupied, and countless cities had been destroyed.

Many small nations were either wiped out by ferocious beasts on land or sought refuge with major powers and became part of them.

Many people moved to small islands to escape the ferocious beasts on land.

Yet when the oceanic ferocious beasts came ashore, the island nations once regarded as havens were all annihilated.

The framework of the modern world was first formed at that time.

Facing the fierce onslaught of sea and land ferocious beasts, as well as the beast tides from secret realms that opened from time to time, humanity held on bitterly for three years before finally reaching a turning point.

After years of occupying and researching some of the secret realms, scientists discovered that secret realms contained not only ferocious beasts, but also all manner of rare treasures, resources, mineral deposits, and, most importantly, martial arts manuals.

By exploring these captured items and combining them with their own practical experience, the nations created the "martial path," which could help ordinary people gain extraordinary power that should have existed only in fantasy.

Afterward, the nations swiftly adjusted their policies, selecting ten thousand elites from the military for training and cultivation.

After several years of preferential resource allocation and scientific observation, the nation formed a martial artist force of ten thousand.

During those eight years, as humanity faced the attacks of increasingly powerful ferocious beasts, its sphere of influence on land continued to shrink.

On February 21, 2068, Blue Star Calendar, a day destined to be recorded in human history.

The first human martial artist force entered the battlefield. Assisting the military, they fought the ferocious beast hordes and carried out decapitation strikes against high-level ferocious beasts, successfully repelling the beasts' assault.

Though their own losses were not light, compared with the horrific battles of the past, the results had improved greatly.

Through research into materials from ferocious beast corpses and metals produced within secret realms, scientists combined and forged weapons capable of breaking through the scales, armor, and fur of ferocious beasts, further bringing out the strength of martial artists.

In this battle, nations across the world witnessed the might of martial artists.

Having already been secretly cultivating martial artists, they officially joined the ranks of those systematically training them.

Two years later, in 2070, Blue Star Calendar, the second batch of martial artist forces, numbering roughly two hundred thousand across all nations, entered the battlefield.

Working in coordination with the military, they infiltrated the rear like special forces and carried out precise, targeted strikes.

In just one day, they killed more than a thousand high-level ferocious beasts.

This battle lasted for over a month. Ninety percent of the human martial artists were lost, while the military suffered more than two million casualties. Only then did they finally stabilize the front lines and win a precious opportunity for development in the rear. History called it the "Battle of Dawn."

It was also during this period that many powerful figures emerged across the world.