Inner and Outer Cities!

The attendant helplessly glanced at the young man covered in grass clippings, then tilted his head toward Zhou Chen. "This is your senior brother. He has no hobbies besides fighting crickets in cages. Senior Brother! Senior Brother!"

"Haahaha! I've made a fool of myself before my new junior brother. Martial training gets tiring, and a few rounds of cricket fighting are simply delightful."

Hearing the commotion, Lian Taoze hurriedly scrambled up from the ground, brushed the bits of grass from his robe, then waved to the person beside him to put away the cricket jars. He strode over in a few steps, familiarly draped an arm around Zhou Chen's shoulders, and led him toward the waterside pavilion. As they walked, he laughed. "Come, come, sit here. By the way, where's your family from?"

"Qingtian District."

"What a coincidence—I'm from Qingtian too." Lian Taoze poured him a cup of tea and asked again, "How many people are in your family?"

"Four, including my younger sister."

"Younger sister? Damn!!!" Lian Taoze's eyes lit up as he looked Zhou Chen up and down. "With looks like yours, your sister must be pretty too, right? How old is she? Has she been promised to anyone?"

"She's only ten this year."

Zhou Chen was having a little trouble keeping up with his jumpy temperament.

"She's still so young."

Lian Taoze's face was full of regret.

Zhou Chen's eyelid twitched. Luckily, this senior brother did not add, "A rose need not grow up; the lover will bend down of his own accord."

A set of rough pottery tea ware sat on the stone table in the waterside pavilion. Lian Taoze poured each of them a cup. The tea was pale and clear, with faint white steam rising from it. "Try it. This tea is grown within the city district, so it has suffered less Black Mist contamination. You can drink it without worry."

Zhou Chen accepted the teacup and took a light sip. It was bitter with a hint of sweetness, indeed far fresher than the murky tea dregs sold in the markets outside.

He set down the cup and reminded him helplessly, "Senior Brother, Master said you were to tell me about the basics of martial arts."

Right now, he was still utterly in the dark about martial arts in this world.

"Oh, right, right, right!" Lian Taoze slapped his forehead, cleared his throat, and said solemnly, "Martial training, when you get down to it, means training the skills to kill people. If you train martial arts without aiming to kill people, then you're training blindly—it's all flowery poses!"

"So martial training is only about two things: strengthening yourself and killing the other guy!"

Zhou Chen promptly cupped his hands. "Senior Brother's summary is incisive. Such a view, seemingly artless yet profoundly ingenious, could probably only come from Senior Brother."

Lian Taoze beamed at the praise. "It's good that you understand! All right, next I'll explain in detail what techniques our martial arts hall practices."

The moment he heard that, Zhou Chen immediately held his breath and focused, afraid of missing even a single word.

Lian Taoze said earnestly, "Our Zheng Family Martial Arts Hall primarily trains one internal art and one external art. The internal Stake-Standing Exercise is called the Coiling Python Stance Technique. It is used to nourish qi and blood and strengthen the body. The external fist art is called Wild Bull Fist, a means of defeating enemies and securing victory..."

After Lian Taoze's detailed explanation, Zhou Chen finally understood the path of martial training in this world.

Martial training, plainly put, meant cultivating both internal and external arts—walking on two legs. Neither could be lacking.

Lian Taoze gave an analogy: a Martial Warrior was like a furnace. Practicing Stake-Standing Exercise meant adding coal and firewood to the furnace, making the flames burn ever hotter and nurturing qi and blood until they grew ever more abundant.

Martial arts, meanwhile, were the means of tempering that furnace fire into form, guiding it outward, and using it to wound enemies and claim victory.

Lian Taoze shook his head smugly and said, "Junior Brother, don't be fooled by the crude name of the martial art our hall practices. Among all the martial arts in the Outer City, it is absolutely one of the very best. The other two martial arts halls' techniques cannot compare to ours. Do you know why?"

Zhou Chen shook his head. "I do not. Please enlighten me, Senior Brother."

"Whether fist arts, sword arts, saber arts, or any other technique, they are all divided into four realms: Initiation, Minor Accomplishment, Major Accomplishment, and Perfection. You know that, right?"

"I know a little."

Zhou Chen thought of his Fish-Slaying Method, which had already reached Major Accomplishment.

Lian Taoze slowly sipped his tea, deliberately keeping him in suspense before continuing. "But a very small number of supreme martial arts have another realm above Perfection, called the Force Realm. Once you reach that level, you can comprehend an exclusive secret technique! Our Wild Bull Fist is one of them. Once you comprehend fist force, you can use the secret technique called 'Wild Bull Force'! With one punch, you can kill someone from a meter away!"

"So powerful?"

Zhou Chen's eyes immediately lit up. Knocking an enemy flying from a meter away with a single punch was simply beyond imagination.

"If it weren't powerful, how could such a large martial arts hall have only Master Zheng reach that realm?" Lian Taoze smiled. "I'm telling you this to broaden your horizons, so you won't think our martial arts hall is some second-rate place, then lack confidence outside and disgrace Master Zheng. To tell you the truth, the masters of the other two martial arts halls are also Third-Rank Martial Artists, but when they see Master Zheng, which one of them doesn't have to be polite?"

"Oh, right, I nearly forgot to tell you about the ranks of Martial Warriors." Lian Taoze counted on his fingers. "After a Martial Warrior reaches Initiation, they must pass the three stages of skin, flesh, and bone, corresponding to the three ranks of Martial Warriors. As long as you thoroughly master and fully complete the Stake-Standing Exercise within three months, successfully enter the Skin Tempering Realm, and become a First-Rank Martial Artist, you will count as a formal disciple. Then you'll also be qualified to study our martial arts hall's fist art."

Zhou Chen silently committed those words to memory.

"But don't blame Senior Brother for pouring cold water on you. Plenty of people can thoroughly master and fully complete the Stake-Standing Exercise within three months, yet pitifully few ultimately take that step and become First-Rank Martial Artists. The cause of it all is the Realm Barrier!"

"Realm Barrier?"

Zhou Chen froze.

What was that?

Lian Taoze then explained, "What is a Realm Barrier? Whenever you make a breakthrough, it is the mountain standing in your path. Mountains are hard to cross, and who knows how many people they have blocked!"

As he said this, a trace of helplessness crossed Lian Taoze's face. "Otherwise, why do you think I fight crickets every day? When your senior brother here was trying to break through to the second rank, I made three attempts. Generally speaking, if you fail three times, you will have no chance for the rest of your life. For that final chance, I paid an enormous price before I was lucky enough to break through. But after entering the second rank, my talent had reached its limit. My progress is slow, and if I had any other way, I wouldn't be relying on this to pass the days. So, becoming a Martial Warrior is hard, hard, hard!"

He sighed.

But Zhou Chen was stunned!

There were obstacles to realm breakthroughs?

But as long as I had enough proficiency, wouldn't I naturally level up?

Could it be... I can ignore Realm Barriers?

His heartbeat suddenly quickened.

Lian Taoze later explained some methods for tempering skin and bones, but only touched upon them as lightly as a dragonfly skimming the water. He said they could discuss it once Zhou Chen became a Martial Warrior; otherwise, it would all be empty talk.

"Oh, right, Junior Brother. Since you're practicing martial arts now, you should eat as little as possible of food heavily contaminated by Black Mist. Otherwise, if too much Miasma Poison accumulates in your body, it will clog your meridians and acupoints, impairing the circulation of qi and blood. You'll find it difficult to make any major breakthrough for the rest of your life."

Lian Taoze explained that martial training was three parts practice and seven parts eating. It required nutritional and medicinal supplements. Without sufficient nutrients, martial training would instead damage one's body.

Yet poor disciples could not afford meat with low contamination and could only buy heavily contaminated meat. Eating too much of it harmed their bodies and limited their future achievements. It was basically a dead cycle!

So Lian Taoze did not expect Zhou Chen to take those words to heart. Given Zhou Chen's family background, lightly contaminated meat was outrageously expensive. How could he possibly afford it?

He was merely delivering the usual instructions.

Lian Taoze then spoke to him enviously. "Take the Inner City, for example. I hear they can eat meat with almost no contamination. More importantly, they have special methods to expel Miasma Poison from their bodies. That is why the Inner City can stand firm forever. Even if I fought a Martial Warrior of the same realm from the Inner City, I probably wouldn't be their match! So if you see an Inner City Martial Warrior, remember to lower your head!"

As he spoke, he raised his head toward the Inner City walls high above and said faintly, "Back then, Senior Brother followed Master into the Inner City and broadened his horizons. Only then did I truly understand what it meant to treat pearls and jade as dung, gold and silk as dust and sand. I watched the lords inside eat: more than ten dishes were brought up one after another, and each dish was removed after they took only one bite, then simply thrown away. The Qi-Blood Soup we drink isn't even fit for the dogs they raise."

Zhou Chen followed his gaze and turned to look as well.

Above the densely packed houses stood an incomparably massive circular city wall, towering in solemn grandeur. It was the wall of the Inner City.

No matter which corner of the Outer City one stood in, one only had to look up to see it.

The city wall stretched across heaven and earth, separating the Inner and Outer Cities, and blocking off most of the Black Mist. They were like two different worlds.

Just as Lian Taoze had said, the Inner City was said to be a dazzling and resplendent world, where the extravagance of people's lives beggared imagination. Unlike their Outer City, where people went hungry, where staying alive took every ounce of strength they had, and where a person's death made less of a splash than a stone tossed into water.

"I understand, Senior Brother!"

Zhou Chen withdrew his gaze and silently nodded. Wine and meat rotted behind vermilion gates while frozen bones lay by the roadside—the gap between rich and poor was the same in every era and every world.

No wonder the noble families and wealthy households of the Inner City could stand firm forever. Miasma Poison alone had cut off the path for common-born children to ascend to heaven through martial arts.

But he did not care. The Divine Statue in his mind could purify Miasma Poison anyway.

He did not need to buy lightly contaminated meat. He only needed to see which kind of meat provided him with the most nutrition and qi and blood. The Miasma Poison accumulated in the meat could even be transformed into Mist Incense through the Divine Statue, killing two birds with one stone.

He would use his own way to walk toward the summit of this world.