Written by Enkai_64

Roughly Edited by Enkai_64

2,000 words long

Illustration:

Kyra

Chapter 4

The Martial Forest

Guang or gong or whatever his name had pulled me up, despite him attacking me, he had a friendly smile – and it being genuine bothered me the most.

“Sorry about that, I just wanted to test your ability, so far you’re very good. Anyway, wat style did you practice before, those blocks, were out of this world?”

“You could say that…anyway, why were you testing me out!”

“So, you could be my disciple of course!”

“Phh… Are you kidding me… How many disciples do you have, and what sect are you from, and what is cultivation!?”

Guang laughed nervously at all my various questions.

“If you’re interested in cultivation you’ll have to become my disciple.”

I don’t have anywhere else to work anyway, and this cultivation things sounds kind of interesting. I’m pretty sure cultivation is like cultivating weed or flowers, right? And to add to peculiarity of the situation, is that this guy has a Chinese name.

“That’s a deal, I guess my last hope.”

__

We were nearing the area, where the ‘monarch’ is established. I was in an area where their dense population of tree’s, and these mysterious Magical Beast roamed freely.

I looked from high above a mountain. Onto something out of this world. There were a few houses here and there, filled with monks.

(The Town of Martial Archives)

As I walked into the town, a board with the characters imprinted 【軍事檔案】.

Now what the hell do those mean?

“This town is home to the Shandong Monastery, and the Martial Archive. The sign is telling us that this is where the Martial Archive is located.”

“Okay, that was creepy, how did you know what I was thinking?”

Guang simply replied by laughing.

As we entered the lit room, we were greeted by a group of people. Two of which was two muscular Indian guys one of which was clean shaven with a man bun facing upwards, the other had a beard. Both wore orange robes and were eating some rice.

The other were two other old Chinese guys, both having been clean shaven and having long grey hair.

They were surrounding a bulb displaying a video of the me.

It was me throwing the other guy with the sword, and the blade master getting angry.

“HAHA, here comes that idiot!”

“He threw the other idiot!”

Okay, what the hell is so funny about me throwing the other guy? Maybe it was stupid to grapple a guy with a sword, but it worked.

“Okay, what’s so funny about throwing that guy!”

They all fell into silence, and then broke into laughter.

Guang bowed to the four bastards.

“Masters, this is the disciple I bring upon you.”

“This guy… I like him...! And he’s very funny.” Said the clean-shaven master.

__

Okay, I’m not sure if this world got a whole stranger or cooler. The two masters with a south Asian appearance said they were from a fallen kingdom, they’re names Bodhi and the other Simasita, Bodhi was the bearded one. The two Chinese masters were called Tian Qiu and Yin Choi. These people were of the Brahmin caste.

This had a strong resemblance to the actual history of Buddhism and Chinese martial arts.

Guang said that my first activity as his disciple was to go through the essence of cultivation or Daoism.

He handed me a scroll.

“外在的武術 - 武俠風格的特點是快速和爆炸性的動作。 他們專注于培養體力和敏捷。內部武術） - 武術風格的特點是流暢的動作。 他們注重培養思想，精神和氣….”

There were more of these strange characters in the manual.

“Ah, of coarse you would be bewildered by these texts… Of course, … I shall transmit the information.”

Transmit the information?

He sat in the lotus position and silently meditated.

The information buzzed in my head. He was able to transmit information directly to my head?

Cultivation is the practice of harnessing the world energy known as ‘qi’ into the dantian or the elixir field. The first stage to gather this qi is the qi condensing layer, in which you will gather the qi and let it enter your bodies meridians, the meridians are for the circulation of qi. You can manipulate the qi in your body for health regeneration, amplifying a techniques power and for various other uses. One of the most basic cultivation method is the basic breathing technique, by breathing in a specific way you can gather more qi.

As I awoke from thought, Guang sent me to the meditation chambers to practice the breathing techniques.

The chamber was in the mountains, built into the massive stone. It was completely dark, and there was a single torch in the in the corner of the chamber. There was a similar blonde haired green eyes scruffy looking kid meditating in the corner. It was Colin, wasn’t his dad extremely powerful? So why would he be in this sect?

As he saw me his eyes lit open bright red but almost instantly cooled down to his usual green eyes.

He faced went from his relaxed face into his usual scrawny and excited expression.

“Hey Zhao, what’re you doing here!?”

“Quiet. The sect masters will hear us, anyway to answer your question I had nowhere else to go. The real question is you not being able to get into any of the other training sects?”

“Ah, yeah, it’s kind of a disappointments, I actually had an even better magic capability than all of the disciples and even the head warlock, but… None of them knew how to train me after all my ability was dark magic, specifically demon magic, but no one knows how to manipulate that, after all only devils and demons can teach that. But luckily Guang said he could train me, in gathering dark and normal qi! I guess we’re at the same layer, Qi condensation stage. It’s awfully boring though, I’ve had to Meditate for a long time, and according to my status bar I have another 10 minutes before I can accumulate enough Qi.” (Dark Qi is the type of qi devils and demons and dark type magical beast cultivate)

“You can access the status bar?” “Yes everyone can, didn’t you know? You can even inspect other peoples how about I inspect yours?!”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

「Status Screen」

Overall level: 2

【Attributes】

Name: Zhou

Age: 11

Title: Cultivator, Qi condensation stage, Sastrana Rebellion

Race: Human (barely)

Charm: 1

Caste: Peasant

【Attack Class】

Class: Cultivator

Attack Level: -5 (Increases when battles are won)

Defense: 10

Aptitude: None

【Cultivation】

Qi gathered: 2%

Layer: Qi condensing

【Items】

Torn low quality uniform x 1

Knife (-1 damage) x 1

Basic Cultivation Manual x 1

Level 2 huh? And my attack damage has increased by 2, so If you fight and win battles you attack stats increase. And I had a cultivation stat as well.

“Hey Colin, why and how do we have a status screen?”

“Um… I believe pill makers create them and instill them into our bodies, so we may organize ourselves more, but if you enter the rebellion, the pill instilled in your body is ‘edited’ basically replacing some of the key modules and making the status screen different, now we can see our attack and defense stats and some other stuff, anyway we should practice our breathing techniques.”

I sat in the lotus position near Colin and breathed deeply.

__

“Hey Zhao! You might want to come down back here!”

I opened my eyes, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I am floating above the chambers floor in the lotus position, I felt the qi in my body circulating in my vein, the qi felt like I was touching the material existence of power. It was electrifying, my body slowly dispersed to the ground.

As I hit the floor, Guang stood there nodding his head.

“What you did there was pure stupidity, instead of doing the breathing technique, you spent the entire night, using a breathing technique that you made up allowing you to use qi to float. But at least I should congratulate you on being able to harness qi like that, it seems you broke through the first layer into the Earthly Yuan Stage’s first layer.”

“I broke into the second stage in the matter of a night?”

“Yes, Colin also broke into the second stage (Earthly Yuan stage) except he is in the second layer, but you developed an entirely new breathing technique, but let’s move on, today we’re going to be training our martial skills. Come to the training hall at once, it’s near the martial archive by the way.”

Guang ran outside and used his staff which opened two parts of a special type of fabric and glided hastily down to the central village.

“Zhao! last one to the Training hall is a stinky loser!”

And like that were running down the mountain to the training hall. Of coarse Colin was incredibly fast and sped down to the training hall.

There was a tanned white-haired girl who wore similar clothing to that of the blade masters waiting with Guang.

“Hello, this Kyra a blade-master from the fallen kingdom from where Dharma and Simasita are from. She is also cultivator, unlike you guys, she has the aptitude to use blade arts, anyway she’ll be training with us, oh, she’s also at a higher layer than you she’s at the 3rd stage of the Earth Yuan Stage.”

She looks at us shyly and forces herself to talk.

“Uh… Hello I’m Kyra… nice to meet you.”

She bowed down to us.

We started our training. Some exercise that loosened the joints. Guang showed us some basic forms and punches, and we repeated them. As he shouted the numbers, we repeated the forms.

We continued this for a while.

After that we had the infamous sparring session.

“Okay everybody, we’re going to spar, I want Zhao to spar with Kyra, remember what I taught you, tap into the circulation of qi and concentrate it into a strike. And don’t hold back, because we have Tian who is a pill master and an acupuncture master.”

I bowed to Kyra and acclaimed my stance. I tapped into my meridians and tapped into the qi.

I followed through with my first punch, directly to her nose, she blocked the punch and moved to my side and kicked me in the head, but before it could touch I ducked. But she must’ve knew I would’ve done that, she concentrated her qi into the knee strike aiming towards my head.

It pierced my jaw, I felt an Incredible pain. But I was too started to notice the incoming strikes, and again I was greeted with even more pain.

And suddenly I blacked out.

I was felt the soft comfort of the matters beneath me, and a worried Kyra looking at me. I woke up and looked around, I saw Tian holding some herbs mixed into a potion.

“No, silly boy, do not get up take this medicine!”

He handed me the elixir, I quickly gulped the entire thing.

【Your health has been restored】

It was incredibly disgusting, I wonder what that thing was.

Colin and Guang entered in.

“We weren’t worried about you at all, anyway Zhao you’re going to have to get ready I have a scouting mission with you guys. On the north side, there have been repeated perpetrators attacking the slums. It’s your job to take out those guys.”

Well I guess I should get ready.