Martial Path Classifications

Above Chen Wu's qi sea dantian, unnoticed by him, the Essence-Tempering True Seed began to operate on its own, absorbing the qi of heaven and earth that entered through his seven apertures and pores.

Wisps of white vapor rose from all over his body. The flow of qi within him gathered into a river, cleansing his meridians and reforging his channels. As it nourished his flesh, his fourth-turn essence tempering rapidly strengthened until it finally reached its limit.

His tempered true essence suddenly collapsed inward, reaching the realm of the fifth turn.

The moment it succeeded, Chen Wu's mind returned. Neither arrogant nor servile, he became even more certain of the path his martial arts would take.

The path of martial arts, when all was said and done, consisted of no more than three paths: "essence, qi, and spirit."

Essence meant tempering one's vital essence into flesh and blood, strengthening the body, building fitness, and laying a solid foundation.

Those who cultivated this path needed to hone their bodies until their flesh became powerful. In battles among novice martial artists, its advantage was the most apparent.

Qi meant refining both internal and external qi. Internal qi was one's own human qi, while external qi was the spiritual qi of heaven, earth, and all things. Cultivating both within and without, one stored all the qi within one's dantian and acupoints throughout the body.

When still, it was as calm as an unruffled sea; when moved, it became crashing waves and raging tides.

As the saying went, "All qi returned to its ancestral source." Without qi to support them, no matter how high the other two paths were cultivated, they would be castles in the air and flowers reflected in a mirror—ultimately nothing but illusion.

Thus, the path of qi cultivation had the greatest number of practitioners among the three, and its strength was also the most balanced.

Those who cultivated spirit followed the path of the heart. It was not obvious in the early stages, when most focused on alchemy and artifact refinement. In combat, they relied on weapons, artifacts, poison, and the like as support.

Once they reached the later stages, they could reach the heavens and penetrate the earth, riding qi through the air. Of the three paths, it was the most mystical.

During the preparatory martial artist stage, the three paths were not yet distinct, and cultivators usually practiced them together.

For example, the fist and palm techniques Chen Wu practiced had the effects of cultivating both essence and qi. Movement techniques, meanwhile, combined the abilities of cultivating essence and spirit.

Only after officially entering the realm of ninth-rank martial artists did formal distinctions begin.

Those with powerful physiques mainly cultivated the paths of essence and qi.

Those with strong souls mainly cultivated the paths of qi and spirit.

There were also those who cultivated both life and nature, cultivating spirit and form together as they advanced side by side.

How one chose depended largely on the individual.

Once one cultivated to the deepest reaches of martial arts, all different paths would ultimately converge.

For Chen Wu, who possessed the Holy Demon Embryo, two bodies, and three souls, the choice was naturally the same as always—he wanted all of them!

Dual Qi Flow provided Chen Wu with an unending supply of spiritual qi to temper his body. This was a blessing that body cultivators across the world could only dream of.

His innate three souls had also allowed him to enter the path of the heart and mind early, deducing martial techniques.

With such conditions, if he still could not cultivate all three paths together, it would be the most shameful waste of his heaven-defying talent.

Having decided on his future path, Chen Wu looked toward where his secondary body, Zhu Wu, stood.

Zhu Wu had also just emerged from his state of enlightenment.

Their minds were linked, so there was no need for words. They transformed into two swift shadows and crashed together.

Bang!

After a dull impact, Chen Wu struck with the Primordial Palm while Zhu Wu answered with the Eight Extremes Fist. Neither yielded an inch, and fist and palm collided in a rapid series of thuds.

The qi of heaven and earth flowed into their bodies of its own accord. Under the mystical effects of the Holy Demon Embryo, it was tempered into true essence, which they poured entirely into their fists and palms.

With no need to worry about exhaustion, the two fought faster and faster. Their qi flowed endlessly, and the afterimages of their fists and palms grew increasingly dense. The sounds of bang, bang, bang also became ever more rapid and continuous.

At last, they unleashed their strongest strikes.

Fist and palm collided head-on, their forces crashing against each other.

Both were sent reeling back by the other's force, each retreating two steps.

After a moment of silence, Chen Wu and his secondary body looked at each other and smiled.

After this exchange, both the Eight Extremes Fist and Primordial Palm had reached the major mastery realm.

The path of martial arts was as vast as a boundless sea.

According to what Chen Wu knew, this world divided cultivation techniques into four ranks: "heaven, earth, mysterious, and yellow."

Each of the four ranks was further divided into upper, middle, and lower grades.

Among these four ranks and twelve grades, techniques were categorized into two major types depending on their nature: internal arts and martial techniques.

The Hundred Arts, meanwhile, followed the nine-rank classification system of martial arts.

Internal arts, as the name implied, were mental methods for cultivating martial arts and formed the foundation of the three categories.

Compared with internal arts, martial techniques were far more varied. They included fist techniques, palm techniques, finger techniques, sword techniques, saber techniques, spear techniques, and countless more.

The Hundred Arts were even more all-encompassing. They included not only artifact refinement, alchemy, spellcraft, formations, and beast taming, but also cooking, chess, music, medicine, tailoring, and much more.

In short, anything related to daily life fell within their scope.

Yet the three were not opposed to one another; they overlapped and contained one another.

For instance, whether musical techniques counted as martial techniques or one of the Hundred Arts had never been conclusively decided.

Likewise, the palm and fist techniques Chen Wu cultivated contained not only martial techniques, but also some internal arts.

The only consensus was that those who cultivated martial techniques were usually body-refinement experts, while those who cultivated the Hundred Arts were usually spirit-cultivation experts.

Mastery of these techniques was uniformly divided into four stages.

They were: beginner, proficient, major mastery, and perfection.

Martial cultivation emphasized perseverance. It was a process of accumulation; there had never been any such thing as reaching the heavens in a single step.

Even if a top-grade heaven-rank manual were placed before you, you would not be able to understand it at once.

(Exceptions included innate techniques like Chen Wu's Dual Qi Flow and True-Absorbing Divine Formula.)

To put it another way, if you were originally studying elementary school mathematics and were suddenly handed advanced mathematics and calculus, it would be a miracle if you could understand any of it.

Of the four techniques Chen Wu possessed, Basic Internal Art was classified as middle-grade yellow rank, making it the highest-ranked of the four. The other three were all lower-grade yellow rank.

If one wanted to cultivate higher-level techniques, getting into a good university would naturally allow one to exchange for them.

If one failed to get into university, one could enter secret realms to hunt Magic Beasts, exchange them for contribution points, then use those points to trade for techniques from the state.

If neither of those paths appealed, there was another route: cultivate one of the Hundred Arts. The state had specialized institutions that purchased the products of alchemy, artifact refinement, and the like. One could use them to exchange for contribution points, then trade them for—

If you did not want to take any of those three paths, that was fine as well.

As long as you cultivated Basic Internal Art to the eighth-rank martial artist realm, the state would freely grant you one lower-grade mysterious-rank technique of your choice, allowing you to cultivate to the sixth rank.

What? You said you had already cultivated to the sixth rank and wanted to go further?

Sixth rank was already considered a mid-level martial artist. With enough strength, one could suppress a small secret realm. Even upon joining the government, one could serve in a section-level position or one of equivalent rank.

To obtain higher-level martial arts, one had to make genuine contributions.

Through this enlightenment, Chen Wu had raised the Primordial Palm and Eight Extremes Fist, which had originally been at the beginner stage, all the way to major mastery. He had also completed fifth-turn essence tempering, already meeting the requirements for top universities.

Only upon reaching the fifth-turn realm could one understand how different it was from what came before.

True essence tempered five times could already allow a martial artist to mobilize a portion of their true qi against enemies without damaging their own foundation.

Together with the robust body forged through previous tempering,

a martial artist who had reached this stage already possessed preliminary combat strength.

Precisely because he understood this, Chen Wu reminded himself that this was merely the beginning of the martial path, not its end.

Even at a true top university, this was no more than the admission standard.