Great Yong, Great Yan, and Bei Tang.
The Shattered Star Continent consisted of three major empires, each with their own distinctive trait. Though controlling roughly equal-sized territories on a worldview map, the difference between the empires was rather obvious to the ordinary citizen.
Great Yong, who specialized in developing cultivators and practitioners to seek the divine and godly realms of cultivations.
Great Yan, who diligently believed in benefiting the overall welfare of the mortal world via well-practiced administration and government structure.
Bei Tang, who believed that nothing in the world could be solved in a more efficient manner than overwhelming military might and capital.
The differences of the Three Great Empires were even projected onto the Three Great Sects.
The Taiyi Sect housed within Great Yong attempted to raise any many cultivators focused on advancing their attainment in the path of cultivation. Great Yan’s Heavenly Sword Sect, despite its name, possessed the most efficient and impartial internal structure, truly allowing for the cultivators present to obtain what they deserved – devoid of any background corruptions.
As for the Violet Jade Pavilion, the last Great Sect lacked either the greatest achievement in cultivation or a decent internal structure to satisfy the disciples, but possessed fearsome combative prowess. Many, many people speculated that when the three sects were destined to clash in a life-or-death struggle, the Violet Jade Pavilion would be the remaining sect simply due to its disciples’ fighting stupendously overpowered strength and capability.
By throwing a group of ambitious disciples into a jungle environment as they sought to improve their cultivation state, how could it not produce “heroes” capable of surmounting their limits?
Although these “heroes” could not directly surpass the immense disparity between the realms of cultivation, they could still retain their life and obtain a victory in a non-lethal fight.
The Violet Jade Pavilion took pride in quality and such features, forcing each disciple into a fearsome training regime that could invoke dread in even the most iron-willed man alive.
Each day, the disciples were to train their martial arts techniques until their physique had “surpassed” its limit and incurred an overdraft of spiritual essence, to the extent of jeopardizing their current attainments in cultivation. Moreover, on the next day, such training schedule would receive an upgrade in its intensity by a slight margin – slight, but sufficient to cause the disciples’ limits to “break” once more.
This regime would repeat, repeat, and repeat, for an entire year, of which they were allowed to return to the grounds of the Sect. The training grounds in which these disciples were reforged anew were tenderly called “battlegrounds”.
The name was appropriate, for they quite literally fought for their lives each passing day.
Chunwoo Battlegrounds was one such training ground for the Violet Jade Pavilion. It was located deep within the jungle, far from any civilized town to force the disciples to concentrate wholesomely on their development.
If referenced onto the map possessed by An Fei, Chunwoo Battlegrounds was a “short” distance away from the coastline of the continent. That being said, such short distances were liable to spanning a short distance of a few dozen kilometers, or a few hundred kilometers.
“Hah! One, two – three!”
Standing bare-clothed save for a pair of baggy pants, a youth spun a long metallic staff over his head at a rapid pace. His lips chanted the passing time as groupings of three seconds each, and with every third second he counted, the youth shifted the center of gravity of his body.
Regardless of his changes in posture, the spinning staff remained perfectly parallel with the ground in which he stood. The youth didn’t even glance upwards towards the staff, but his arms moved with awestriking precision and speed.
“One, two, three!”
<Buddha’s Fist>!
Suddenly, on the third second counted by the youth, he did not shift body posture like his usual routine, but instead unleashed a heavy stomp onto the ground with his right foot, sending a cascade of dirt and debris into the air. Propping the staff against his back with his left hand in a reverse grip, the youth leaned forwards, the fingers of his right fist curling into a tight fist.
Dong!
His fist hit nothing but the empty air, yet an immense roar echoed throughout the jungle, the nearby trees, plants, and animals trembling as they attempted to resist the ensuing shockwave. At three hundred paces from the youth, a large boulder quivered as the shockwave passed over it, the aged stone gritting its agony and torment with clenched teeth.
Upon its grainy and rough surface, a major dent the shape and size of an adult human male’s fist was imprinted, carving seven centimeters into the hard and durable rock. On either side of the fist imprint, several others overlapped to create a massive collection of craters.
From the sheer amount of craters and how each imprint drilled seven centimeters into the stone, it was easy to estimate that before the youth had entered the Chunwoo Battlegrounds to practice, the stone boulder was formerly a small mountain.
And yet…
“…I messed up,” the youth patted his forehead with a grumbling smile, proceeding to stare at his right palm.
“Just what is going on at the final stance? Regardless of what I attempt to do, my body automatically dispels all of the accumulated spiritual essence – the overlapping strikes simply won’t manifest, ah.”
<Buddha’s Fist> was the martial arts technique that the youth had elected prior to coming to the Chunwoo Battlegrounds to begin his “ritual of reforging”. Of the several dozen of complete martial arts techniques, the youth had decided to pick the seemingly weak <Buddha’s Fist> martial arts technique.
As per its description, the <Buddha’s Fist> was not sufficiently developed by its creator, and could only achieve the Five River Stones stage at best. However, the benefit attained by attaining the Five River Stones limit in comparison to other martial arts techniques, was that the <Buddha’s Fist>’s successive attacks overlapped the strength of its predecessors.
Theoretically, if the youth’s physique could handle the strain imposed by constantly circulating spiritual essence throughout his meridians, <Buddha’s Fist> could be utilized to its maximum potential by continuous attacks. The only barrier holding him back was that the creator of the martial arts technique was unable to sufficiently describe the process of actually overlapping strikes imposed by <Buddha’s Fist>.
Thus, many had laughed at the youth when he had decided to use his only chance to pick a martial arts technique that was effectively “garbage.”
However, by the will of the sky, his destiny was to change this afternoon.
As well as in the form of a human meteorite.
“Alright, then I’ll try once mor –“
BOOM!!!
The Chunwoo Battlegrounds suddenly quivered intensely as an object buried into its soil at an immense velocity. The transfer of momentum was far too intense for the naturally developed jungle to sustain, nullifying all existence in the vicinity into mere dust.
The youth, who was much more farther from the epicenter, was only hurled several times against the backs of trees and the soft earth.
When he attempted to raise his head to better orient his senses, the subsequent shockwave rammed his forehead onto to ground with his palms pressed tightly, eliciting an utterly sincere and genuine kowtow.
And since he was making a sincere and generous kowtow, shouldn’t the beneficiary be equally generous and sincere, granting him a miracle?
“I wish to master the <Buddha’s Fury> martial arts technique and manifest its full potential!”
The youth cried out with a sincere voice with his mouth stuffed full of weeds, soil, and small, indescribable creatures that were packed tightly into the mud.
His clothes, body, and staff were stained by the cascade of natural materials, but the youth dared not complain.
His current experiences could be a test; a test to determine whether his sincerity, was true sincerity. Hence, the youth remained silent, unyielding, and loyal to his suffering and blessing of soil.
If he could withstand this, then surely the heavens would grant him the –
“YANG JIAN!!! YOU’RE DEAD, YOU’RE SO DEAD, YOU’RE SO F*CKING DEAD!!!!!”
The angry shriek of a budding young maiden stunned silly the eviscerated trees, soil, animals, and a youth who had prayed his most sincere wishes to the goddesses and deities of Heaven.
