Inner and Outer Cities!

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

"Hahaha! Sorry to make a fool of myself in front of my new junior brother. Martial training gets tiring, so fighting a few rounds of crickets is truly 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 jar. He strode over in a few steps, familiarly slung an arm around Zhou Chen's shoulders, and led him toward a waterside pavilion. As they walked, he laughed. "Come, come, sit here. By the way, where's your family from?"

"Qingtian District."

"What a coincidence, my family is in Qingtian too." Lian Taoze poured him a cup of tea and asked, "How many people are in your family?"

"Four, including my younger sister."

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

"She's only ten this year."

Zhou Chen could barely keep up with his senior brother's erratic temperament.

"Still far too young."

Lian Taoze's face was full of regret.

Zhou Chen's eyelid twitched. Fortunately, this senior brother did not add, "A rose need not grow up; those who love it will bow on their own."

A set of rough clay teaware sat on the stone table in the waterside pavilion. Lian Taoze poured each of them a cup. The tea was pale and clear, with a faint mist of white steam rising from it. "Have a taste. This tea was 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 small sip. It was bitter with a touch of sweetness, indeed far fresher than the murky tea dust sold in the markets outside.

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

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

"Oh, right, right, right!" Lian Taoze slapped his forehead, cleared his throat, and said solemnly, "To put it bluntly, martial training means practicing skills that can kill people. If you practice martial arts without aiming to kill people, then you're practicing blind. It's all empty flashy moves!"

"So martial training only involves two things: strengthen yourself, and kill the other guy!"

Zhou Chen clasped his hands at the right moment. "Senior Brother's summary is profound. Such a great skill appearing clumsy—only Senior Brother could have come up with an insight like that."

Lian Taoze beamed at the praise. "Good that you understand! Now then, I'll explain in detail what techniques our martial arts hall teaches."

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

Lian Taoze said seriously, "Our Zheng Family Martial Arts Hall mainly cultivates one internal art and one external art. The internal Stake-Standing Exercise is called the Coiling Python Stance Technique, a method for nourishing Blood Vitality and strengthening the body. The external fist art is called the Wild Bull Fist, a means of defeating enemies..."

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

To put it bluntly, martial training required one internal art and one external art, like walking on two legs. Neither could be lacking.

Lian Taoze gave an analogy: a Martial Warrior was like a furnace. Practicing Stake-Standing Exercise was like adding coal and firewood to the furnace, making the blaze burn ever more fiercely and nourishing Blood Vitality until it grew ever stronger.

Martial arts, meanwhile, were the means of tempering that furnace fire into form, guiding it outward, injuring enemies, and securing victory.

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

Zhou Chen shook his head. "I don't. Please enlighten me, Senior Brother."

"Whether fist arts, sword arts, saber arts, or any other skill, 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 took a sip of tea, deliberately keeping him in suspense before continuing. "But a very small number of supreme martial arts have another realm beyond Perfection: 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 its fist force, you can use a secret technique called Wild Bull Force! With one punch, you can kill a man from one meter away!"

"So powerful?"

Zhou Chen's eyes immediately lit up. Knocking away an enemy one meter away with a punch through the air was simply beyond imagination.

"If it weren't powerful, why would only Master Zheng in this huge martial arts hall have reached 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, lack confidence when you go out, and disgrace Master Zheng. To tell you the truth, although the masters of the other two martial arts halls are also Third-Rank Martial Artists, which one of them wouldn't be polite when meeting Master Zheng?"

"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 need to pass the three stages of skin, flesh, and bone tempering, corresponding to the three ranks of Martial Warriors. As long as you thoroughly and completely master the Stake-Standing Exercise within three months, smoothly enter the Skin Tempering Realm, and become a First-Rank Martial Artist, you will count as a Formal Disciple. At that point, you will also be qualified to learn our martial arts hall's fist techniques."

Zhou Chen silently committed all this to memory.

"But don't blame Senior Brother for pouring cold water on you. There are plenty of people who thoroughly and completely master the Stake-Standing Exercise within three months, yet pitifully few ultimately take that step and become First-Rank Martial Artists. The reason for all this 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 towering mountain standing before you. Mountains are hard to cross, and who knows how many people they have blocked!"

At this point, a trace of helplessness crossed Lian Taoze's face. "Otherwise, why do you think I fight crickets every day? When your Senior Brother was trying to break through to Second-Rank Martial Artist, I tried three times. Generally speaking, if you fail three times, you won't get another chance in your life. For that final chance, I paid an enormous price before barely managing to break through. But after entering Second-Rank Martial Artist, my aptitude had reached its limit. My progress has been slow. If I had any other way, I wouldn't be using this to pass the time. So, becoming a Martial Warrior is hard, hard, hard!"

He sighed.

But Zhou Chen was dumbfounded!

There were obstacles to realm breakthroughs?

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

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

His heartbeat suddenly quickened.

Lian Taoze later explained a few methods for tempering skin and bone, but only touched on them lightly. He said they could discuss them after 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 try to eat less food that has been heavily contaminated by Black Mist. Otherwise, if too much Miasma Poison accumulates in your body, it will clog your meridians and acupoints, causing Blood Vitality to circulate poorly. You'll find it difficult to make any major breakthrough for the rest of your life."

Lian Taoze explained that martial training emphasized thirty percent practice and seventy percent eating. Dietary supplements and medicinal supplements were necessary. Without sufficient nutrition, martial training would instead harm the body.

Yet poor disciples could not afford meat with little contamination and could only buy heavily contaminated meat. Eating too much of it would damage their bodies and limit their future achievements. It was essentially a vicious cycle!

Thus, Lian Taoze did not expect Zhou Chen to take these words to heart. For someone from a family like Zhou Chen's, lightly contaminated meat was outrageously expensive. How could he possibly afford it?

He was merely giving the usual reminder.

Lian Taoze then said enviously, "Take the Inner City, for example. I've heard that they can eat meat with almost no contamination. More importantly, they possess special methods for expelling the Miasma Poison from their bodies. That is why the Inner City can stand forever without falling. Even if I fought a Martial Warrior from the Inner City at the same realm, I probably wouldn't be a match for him! So if you encounter an Inner City Martial Warrior, remember to keep your head down!"

As he spoke, he raised his head toward the towering Inner City walls and said faintly, "Back then, Senior Brother went to the Inner City with Master and had his eyes opened. Only then did I truly understand what it meant to treat pearls and jade as dung, and gold and silk as dust and sand. I saw the lords inside eating: more than ten dishes were brought out one after another, and they would take just one bite of each before it was removed and thrown away. The Qi-Blood Soup we drink is something even their pet dogs wouldn't touch."

Zhou Chen followed his gaze and looked back as well.

Beyond the densely packed houses, an incomparably enormous circular wall stood towering and majestic. It was the wall of the Inner City.

No matter which corner of the Outer City one stood in, one only had to lift one's head to see it.

The city wall stretched across heaven and earth, separating the Inner and Outer Cities, while also blocking 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. The extravagance of its people's lives was beyond imagination. Unlike the Outer City, where people went hungry, exhausting all their strength merely to stay alive. When someone died, it did not make as much of a splash as a stone thrown into water.

"I understand, Senior Brother!"

Zhou Chen withdrew his gaze and silently nodded. Wine and meat stank 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 great clans and wealthy households of the Inner City could stand firm without falling. Miasma Poison alone had cut off the path for commoner children to ascend to the heavens through martial arts.

But he did not care. After all, the Divine Statue in his mind could purify Miasma Poison.

He did not need to buy lightly contaminated meat. He only needed to see which kinds of meat provided him with the most nutrition and Blood Vitality. 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 pinnacle of this world.