The Martial Dao! Ferocious Beasts!

"This is the Martial Dao."

"After the Spiritual Energy Revival."

"Humanity groped out a cultivation system of absorbing spiritual energy to strengthen the physical body."

"Martial Artists."

"A First-Order Martial Artist corresponds to a First-Tier Ferocious Beast."

"A Second-Tier Martial Artist corresponds to a Second-Tier Ferocious Beast."

"And so on."

"Each tier is further subdivided into early stage, middle stage, late stage, and peak stage."

"Right now, I am limited by the currently extremely sparse spiritual energy environment and am only at the First-Tier Early Stage."

"Placed in the future, this is just an entry-level standard."

"..."

Su Qingxue withdrew her hand and patted the iron filings from her palms.

She was not lying.

This bit of martial dao level was indeed not worth mentioning in the future.

Yet Nie Dingguo's breathing grew heavy.

He forced himself to calm down, and his brain began to spin frantically.

"If humans can also cultivate."

"Then can we fight against those Ferocious Beasts you mentioned?"

Su Qingxue, however, let out a bitter smile.

Her smile was filled with bitterness and despair.

"It's hard."

"Extremely hard."

"Under the same tier, the physical strength of Ferocious Beasts far exceeds that of humans."

"A single First-Tier Ferocious Beast often requires three First-Order Martial Artists to join forces in order to barely kill it."

"Only a very few one-in-a-million human geniuses can achieve single-combat at the same tier or even counterkill across tiers."

Speaking of this, Su Qingxue's gaze dimmed.

"Eighty years later."

"The Blue Star human defense line completely collapsed."

"Our highest-level martial artist was only at the Seventh-Tier Stage."

"And the one that destroyed our last sanctuary... was an Eighth-Tier Ferocious Beast."

In an instant, the temperature in the interrogation room seemed to drop by more than a dozen degrees.

Nie Dingguo fell silent for a full five minutes.

He was digesting this information, which was enough to subvert human history.

"What do you want me to do?"

Finally, Nie Dingguo spoke again.

"Popularize the Martial Dao."

"Take advantage of the fact that spiritual energy has already begun to dissipate."

"Promote the Basic Breathing Technique comprehensively in the military and among the populace."

"We have a half-year time difference."

"As long as we can cultivate a batch of martial artist backbones in advance."

"During the Spiritual Energy Revival half a year from now, we can seize the initiative."

Su Qingxue said with burning eyes.

Why else did she come here, if not for this very matter?

"Impossible."

"Comprehensive popularization has too huge an impact and can easily cause social panic."

"It might even be utilized by hostile forces to create turmoil."

Nie Dingguo shook his head.

He slowly stood up and said to Su Qingxue.

"For now, we can only conduct secret trials within the military."

"I will pull the top elite soldiers from across the entire army for you to train."

Su Qingxue nodded in agreement.

The military was naturally the absolute main force in combating ferocious beasts.

Arming the military first made complete logical sense.

"Give me one hundred men."

"The most elite special forces."

Three days later.

A certain training ground in the Northwest Military Region.

One hundred shirtless, muscular men sat cross-legged on specially made mats.

Every single one of them was a top soldier from various companies.

Su Qingxue wore a combat uniform, pacing back and forth within the formation.

"Clear your minds."

"Feel that trace of warmth drifting in the air."

"Guide it into your respiratory tract and let it settle in your dantian."

Time passed day by day.

Early morning, one week later.

Looking at the various physical test data in front of her.

Su Qingxue's brows knitted into a tight knot.

How could this be?

One hundred top soldiers.

A full seven days of hellish meditation and breathing training.

As a result, only one person had a faint current of heat flash through his dantian.

And it merely flashed.

Let alone officially stepping across the threshold of a First-Order Martial Artist.

The other ninety-nine people had ached backs and sore waists, performing entirely futile work.

The base's senior military doctors and scientific researchers walked over carrying thick inspection reports.

Academician Zhou, who was leading them, pushed up his presbyopic glasses.

"Instructor Su."

"We compared the soldiers' blood samples and muscle fibers before and after training."

"There are no substantive changes whatsoever."

Academician Zhou looked at Su Qingxue.

"If your cultivation method isn't wrong."

"Then there is only one explanation."

"The environment doesn't support it."

Su Qingxue froze in place.

It was as if a bolt of lightning flashed through her mind.

That was right!

The environment!

When she began cultivating in her past life.

The Spiritual Energy Revival had already fully erupted, and the concentration of spiritual energy in the air was frighteningly high.

Back then, as long as someone was a normal person with four functioning limbs, they could sense spiritual energy by casually practicing basic cultivation techniques.

But what about now?

There were still six months left until the full eruption!

The spiritual energy in the air was so thin it was practically like water vapor in a desert.

Under such harsh conditions.

If humans wanted to capture spiritual energy.

That was equivalent to being blindfolded and trying to find an embroidery needle in a massive football field.

This was no longer a problem that could be solved by hard work or physical fitness.

This required an extraordinarily terrifying innate affinity.

In other words, talent.

The analytical report provided by the expert panel also corroborated this point.

"The current concentration of spiritual energy is like an extremely weak radio signal."

"The body antennas of ordinary people are simply too short to receive it at all."

"Only those born with super antennas, what you call martial arts geniuses, have any possibility of resonating at this stage."

Su Qingxue rubbed her temples in distress.

She had overlooked the most critical time gap.

She herself had been able to reach the First-Tier Early Stage so quickly because she possessed the soul experience of eighty years from her past life, which was equivalent to turning on a cheat code.

Nie Dingguo also received the report.

He called Su Qingxue to the main command room once again.

"The trial run failed."

"The threshold is too high."

"These one hundred people are already one-in-a-ten-thousand elite soldiers."

"Even they can't do it, so relying on finding a needle in a haystack is unrealistic."

"Since you come from the future, you must know those truly top-tier experts."

"Tell me."

"Who are those top martial artists of the future?"

Nie Dingguo's train of thought was extremely clear-cut.

Since they couldn't be mass-produced, they would take the elite route.

They would directly round up all those proven geniuses of the future into the military right now, smashing the country's entire resources to cultivate them.

Su Qingxue's spirits lifted.

This was indeed a good method.

She immediately walked up to the holographic projection sandbox.

"In my past life."

"The Dragon Country military had four War Gods, and the civilian sector had seven Grandmasters."

"These people all reached the level of the Sixth-Tier or even Seventh-Tier in the future."

"Ye Qingshan, the future number-one War God of the military and a Seventh-Tier martial artist, should be in Magic City right now."

"Chu Tiankuo, a Sixth-Tier Peak Stage expert, his hometown is Mohe in the Northeast, and he might still be working in a lumber yard right now."

"Xiao Zhan, a saber-technique grandmaster..."

Su Qingxue reeled off more than twenty names in one breath.

A high-ranking official nearby immediately entered these names into the military's top-secret archives.

"Go investigate immediately!"

"Deploy the dual intelligence networks of State Security and the military."

"Within twenty-four hours, I want all the information on these people to appear on my desk."

"Once found, no matter the cost, specially enlist all of them into the army!"

Over ten minutes later.

Nie Dingguo slammed his hand down abruptly.

A group of officers acknowledged the order and turned to leave to deploy the tasks.

"Wait."

Su Qingxue suddenly spoke up, stopping everyone.

Her expression grew extremely complicated.

A flash of struggle, pity, and deep awe crossed her eyes.

"What?"

"Are there still names left out?"

Nie Dingguo stopped in his tracks, turning back to look at her.

Su Qingxue bit her lower lip hard, as if making some kind of enormous determination.

"There is one more name."

"I don't know whether I should say it."

"But he... is perhaps the most important one of all."

Nie Dingguo's spirits soared.

Even more important than those Seventh-Tier War Gods just now?

"Who?"