[You guys seriously missed out by not coming to the martial arts base today. There was a master who was fucking explosive!]
[Huh? Which master's dick exploded? Who did it? That's brutal!]
[Not his dick exploding-he was fucking awesome! Dozens of people there broke through their martial skill realms with his guidance. My Savage Bull Heart-Shattering Butt has reached major accomplishment!]
[Holy shit?! For real? Is he still at the base? I'll head over right now!]
[Hehe, of course he's already gone. And the master said he won't be coming tomorrow. Otherwise, would I tell you guys?]
[Fuck, you really deserve to die...]
Similar conversations played out in the martial arts class group chats of all five high schools in Yang City.
Those who had learned something were all grinning.
Those who practiced those same three martial skills but hadn't gone to the martial arts base were all cursing their mothers.
The senior martial arts class group chat at No. 3 Middle School was no different.
Zhang Chao, Yang Xiaoyu, and several others were wildly hyping up how incredible that master was. Reading their messages in the taxi, Xu Yuan found his lips harder to keep down than an AK's muzzle.
Honestly, watching other people show off like crazy on his behalf felt pretty damn good!
"We're here."
The taxi stopped outside a shop called the Cloud-Soaring Pavilion. Xu Yuan paid and got out, then spotted the fatty, who had left the base ahead of him.
The fatty was sitting on a bench outside the shop, holding yet another bag of steamed buns and eating them with relish, one per mouthful.
"Y-Yuan... Brother Yuan..."
Seeing Xu Yuan arrive, the fatty immediately stood up from the bench.
His chubby face showed more restraint than before.
Xu Yuan's performance today had been so astonishing that he couldn't help feeling Xu Yuan was out of his league.
"Don't act like that, damn it. Since you call me Brother Yuan, I'm still your Brother Yuan."
Xu Yuan reached into the bag and took two buns, eating as he walked into the shop. "Come on. Let's check out this legendary money pit."
The Cloud-Soaring Pavilion was Great Xia's largest martial arts department store chain.
Martial skills, divine weapons, cultivation methods, body-tempering liquid... practically anything a divine martial artist needed could be bought here!
Every single item, however, was staggeringly expensive!
Even the cheapest tier-one body-tempering liquid cost two thousand a vial.
Tier-two martial skills like the Tiger Roar Sky-Piercing Spear easily cost a hundred or two hundred thousand!
Buyers also had to sign a contract with the Cloud-Soaring Pavilion forbidding them from passing the martial skills on. Anyone caught doing so would have to pay astronomical damages to the Cloud-Soaring Martial Arsenal!
Xu Yuan had made this trip partly to broaden his horizons and partly to buy tier-two divine medicinal liquid.
He could have bought divine medicinal liquid at the Azure Cloud Martial Arts Base, but Xu Yuan's performance there had drawn a little too much attention, so he had abandoned the idea of buying it directly at the base.
After a circuit around the shop, Xu Yuan felt as though he were browsing a luxury store in his previous life.
That feeling came not only from the shop's minimalist, upscale decor, but also from the price tags:
[Tier-three Cold Cloud Frost-Congealing Sword: 970,000.]
[Tier-three movement technique, Shadowless Step: 1,140,000.]
[Tier-three cultivation method, "Thunder Tiger Vajra Body, First Part": 3,850,000.]
"So expensive! No wonder Zhang Juye and the others who cultivate the Thunder Tiger Vajra Body are so much stronger than everyone else at the same realm!"
Looking at the Thunder Tiger Vajra Body, First Part inside the transparent display case, the fatty couldn't help speaking with envy all over his face.
Cultivating the Savage Bull Skin-Toughening Method increased one's steady punching force by around two hundred jin per tier.
But Zhang Juye, Zhou Ling, and the others cultivating the Thunder Tiger Vajra Body could gain around two hundred and fifty jin per tier.
The further they progressed, the greater the advantage became.
"No need to envy them. Who knows? You might get to cultivate it yourself before long."
Xu Yuan smiled and patted the fatty's shoulder, then walked over to a staff member. "A vial of tier-two divine medicinal liquid, please."
"One moment."
The staff member was a sweet-looking young woman. She immediately went to fetch the medicine for Xu Yuan.
Xu Yuan went to the checkout counter and chatted with the manager sitting behind it as he waited.
"Brother, isn't the Cloud-Soaring Pavilion the biggest martial arts department store chain in the country? Why are your highest-tier goods only tier three?"
Holding an old-fashioned book, the manager replied without looking up, "To see the higher-tier goods, you need assets of over thirty million or strength at the Bone Forging realm or above. Which category do you fall into?"
Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow. There was a threshold just to look?
Sure enough, without sufficient strength, he couldn't even see what this world truly looked like.
Just then, the staff member brought over the divine medicinal liquid: an elongated glass vial nestled in a custom-made box, somewhat like a small test tube.
The liquid inside was pale blue, with a few faint specks of light drifting up and down within it.
Xu Yuan accepted the medicinal liquid, paid without hesitation, and prepared to leave with the fatty.
But just then, the fatty suddenly caught Xu Yuan's arm. "Brother Yuan, do you have any money left? I-I'd like to borrow ten thousand."
"Hm? What do you need that much money for?"
"I feel like I'm close to breaking through to Skin Tempering Fourth Stage. I want to buy a vial of tier-three body-tempering liquid and give it a shot. If I can reach Skin Tempering Fourth Stage, then with my minor-accomplishment Mountain-Crushing Strike, I'll have a chance of passing the assessment."
In Third High's senior martial arts class, Skin-Toughening tier four plus a minor-accomplishment martial skill placed someone in the middle of the class.
Everyone at that level had a chance of passing the assessment. It mainly depended on how they performed during it.
Tier-three body-tempering liquid wasn't as expensive as other tier-three items, because all it did was increase cultivation speed at Skin Grinding Third Stage.
"I see."
Xu Yuan gave an appreciative smile, then turned to the staff member. "Then please get us a vial of tier-three body-tempering liquid as well."
As the sky darkened, Xu Yuan and Luo Han took a taxi back to the area near No. 3 Middle School.
Luo Han got out first, clutching the box containing the tier-three body-tempering liquid to his chest, his chubby face full of solemn resolve. "Don't worry, Brother Yuan. I won't let you down!"
"All right. I'll wait for the good news about your breakthrough." Xu Yuan smiled and waved.
The fatty treated him as a true brother, even a real big brother, so he was naturally happy to lend him a hand.
Besides, if the fatty could also pass the assessment and stay in the martial arts class, Xu Yuan would have someone to help him.
The morning's experiment and the afternoon's stall, for instance, wouldn't have gone so smoothly if he had been handling everything alone without the fatty.
The taxi drove for another few minutes, bringing Xu Yuan to Prosperous Age Grand View.
With the divine medicinal liquid tucked away on him, Xu Yuan entered the residential complex in high spirits.
All he had to do was take it tonight and sleep until tomorrow evening, and his abdominal injury would be completely healed!
Then he could put his "reforming the brutes" plan into action and shear some wool off the Beast Ranking.
As for the martial arts class assessment, wouldn't that be as easy as eating and drinking?
With these thoughts, Xu Yuan arrived at apartment 305, unit two, building seven.
He was about to take out his keys when he heard Xu Kexin crying inside.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I was wrong. I won't do it again, boohoo..."
Xu Yuan frowned slightly. This girl had barely cried even when his predecessor beat her. What was going on?
"Don't cry, don't cry. I'm not blaming you."
Zhang Yaying's gentle voice rang out, then turned deeply humble. "Zhang Yu's father, I'm truly sorry. We'll definitely pay for the phone. It's just that I haven't been paid for this month yet. Could you give us a couple more days?"
"No! This gets settled today. I don't have time to make another trip over this little bit of bullshit!" a man said overbearingly.
"Then... then give me an address. I'll bring the money over myself when the time comes."
"Cut the crap. I don't care whether you borrow, rob, or sell yourself. You're paying up today!"
"But... Zhang Yu's father, that's going too far..."
Click!
The sound of the lock springing open cut Zhang Yaying off. Xu Yuan pushed the door open and walked in, his face dark.
In the cramped living room, Zhang Yaying and Xu Kexin stood side by side, while a middle-aged man and a little boy sat on the sofa, looking arrogantly at the mother and daughter.
"What the fuck did you just say?"
Xu Yuan walked straight toward the middle-aged man, grabbing a chair along the way.
The four people in the room froze, then all their expressions changed drastically!
"Yuanzi, don't do anything rash!"
Zhang Yaying hurried forward to stop Xu Yuan, terrified that he wouldn't know his own strength.
After all, in Great Xia, a divine martial artist killing an ordinary person was a capital crime. If something happened...
Merely imagining that outcome filled Zhang Yaying with despair.
"I was wondering what sort of family raised a child like that. Turns out the older one's no good either!"
After his initial fright, the middle-aged man on the sofa immediately sneered mockingly.
"Stop saying things like that!"
Zhang Yaying was so anxious her face went pale. "My son is a divine martial artist. If you keep talking like that and he does something to you, I won't be able to stop him!"
A divine martial artist?
The middle-aged man's expression stiffened, and half his arrogant bluster instantly died away.
Great Xia's ironclad laws might keep divine martial artists from indiscriminately killing ordinary people, but what if he ran into someone who didn't care about his own life?
"Yuanzi, go to your room. Let Mom handle this."
Zhang Yaying looked tense, truly afraid that Xu Yuan would cause a terrible disaster.
Looking at his mother's expression, then at his little sister beside her, Xu Yuan pondered for two seconds and slowly reined in his hostility.
Indeed, violence wasn't good.
At the very least, he couldn't beat someone in front of his little sister.
But leaving his mother to handle it herself was out of the question too.
With her personality, she'd only get bullied.
"Let me handle it. I know where to draw the line."
Xu Yuan set down the chair and looked calmly at the middle-aged man. "First, tell me what happened."
The middle-aged man quietly sighed in relief, his tone no longer as arrogant as before. "Your sister smashed my son's new phone. We're asking for compensation at its original price. That's reasonable, isn't it?"
After a pause, he added, "My older son is a divine martial artist too. Zhang Baosheng, in Third High's senior martial arts class."
Xu Yuan ignored that and turned to his tear-streaked little sister. "Is what he said true?"
In the past, Xu Kexin certainly wouldn't have given Xu Yuan the time of day. But for some reason, the little girl felt that her brother seemed utterly dependable at this moment.
So she sobbed, "Yesterday at school, Zhang Yu said he wanted to take pictures of me. I didn't want him to, so I lay on my desk and hid my face. Then he pulled my hair really hard and tried to make me show my face so he could take pictures. I-I couldn't help it, so I smashed his phone..."
"All right. I understand."
Xu Yuan nodded, gave the little boy a cold look, then turned back to the middle-aged man. "How much was the phone?"
"Three thousand."
"All right. I'll scan your code."
The middle-aged man froze, then couldn't help curling his lip.
With all that blustering earlier, he'd thought the kid was something special. Yet the moment he heard his son was a martial arts student too, he immediately chickened out.
The little brat probably didn't have much talent. Otherwise, he wouldn't have backed down so easily.
With that thought, the middle-aged man snorted, took out his phone, and displayed his payment code.
Xu Yuan scanned it and transferred three thousand, then placed his phone facedown on the table. "All right. I've paid what I owed. Now let's talk about your son pulling my sister's hair, and all the shit you were spewing just now."