Chapter 894 A New World
Was he really dead? If that’s true, then he would have to forego whatever he once had and start all over again here.
Li Mu paused and began to think. Hard.
He grew up fatherless and motherless. It was his mentor — or rather, the Old Faker, as he usually called him — who looked after him and nurtured him. He had little to eat and little to wear, and although life was tough with the Old Faker drilling lessons into him, forcing him to pick up various skills, he enjoyed the freedom and liberty that came with it. Since his arrival here at the Heavenly Land Planet, life had turned the other way round. He spent every waking minute worrying about saving Earth. Every second in his life he devoted it to the responsibility of protecting and preserving. That was the same even after he returned to Earth.
For seven years, he had never been able to relax at all.
Following the ma.s.sive upheaval on Earth and the subsequent emergence of the Divine Clans of the Celestial Court that engendered the end of the threat that the six Traitorous Devils of the Ziwei Star Zone posed, Li Mu began to feel that his life had become devoid of purpose.
Earth could ask nothing of him anymore.
It was his loved ones and his friends that deserved his attention and care.
“This could be just a vision. I need to think of something. I need to go back! Back to my own life! Hua Xiangrong is still waiting for me back at the Divine Land!”
Li Mu balled his hands into fists as his gaze turned sharp and bright with resolve.
“Boundless is the Great Way; Limitless is the Great Way. There must be some ways that I can use to get back!”
Now that he has set his mind to the task, he felt more relieved.
He decided to spend some time leafing through the memories of this twenty-year-old youth whose body he just occupied.
The young man was originally known as Li Zhiyuan, an Elder of an order known as the Creed of Divinity.
The Creed of Divinity was one of many militant orders and sects that scattered the lands of Molderad. There were no kingdoms here nor were there any armies commanded or led by any monarchs here.
Being dwarfed by other stronger and more influential orders, the Creed enjoyed only a modest reputation with barely a hundred acolytes to boast of. But Li Zhiyuan was the Creed’s first and most gifted prodigy for almost a century, having achieved masteries in various martial arts disciplines that made him the third most skillful Cultivator after the Chieftain and his mentor the Ascetic Yundao.
With such hopes and expectations of his elders on his shoulders, the leaders.h.i.+p of the Creed of Divinity devoted all their attention and resources to him. All so that he could achieve both glory and prestige for the Creed by winning the five-year-once Tournament that would be attended by all militant orders and sects of the Northern Steppes region of Molderad.
Everything seemed fine and all. Since Li Zhiyuan embarked on his first pilgrimage, he had been diligently garnering as much experience while making a name for himself, saving the helpless and protecting the weak that he became known as a hero. His swashbuckling exploits became synonymous with his Cloudwater-styled bladesmans.h.i.+p, earning him a moniker of his own: the Cloudwater Crusader while making him one of the ten best young prodigies in the Northern Steppes.
His outstanding talents and infinite potential made him a highly coveted prospect, especially by larger and more influential militant sects and even great families. Olive branches and gifts often arrived for him with hopes that he might consider switching his allegiances and if he would, vast amounts of supplies and resources, as well as access to various rare and potent martial disciplines in addition to prestige and social rank, shall be his.
But none of all those enticements could manage to sway Li Zhiyuan, who has always been steadfastly true and loyal.
With awe-inspiring resolve and grit, he declined every offer that ever came his way, pledging his loyalty only to the Creed of Divinity, the school which had nurtured him like a son.
As much as this became an epic worthy of praise and honor, Li Zhiyuan’s rebuffing turned out to be an object of insult to the militant orders and great families who had tried to recruit him.
Then came the Great Northern Steppes Tournament a year ago.
Warriors, knights-errant, as well as acolytes of various militant sects and orders of the Northern Steppes, all gathered at the mecca of warrior s.h.i.+p Rydorburg for the five-years-once Great Northern Steppes Tournament. So was Li Zhiyuan, who, with the Chieftain of the Creed, his mentor, and the rest of his fellow students, arrived at Rydorburg with the burning ambition of winning this champions.h.i.+p.
Right from the preliminaries, the Cloudwater Crusader never failed to leave his admirers swooning and his foes licking their wounds in defeat.
Then came the unexpected.
Immersed in confidence and some bits of hubris, Li Zhiyuan, failing to discover that his enemies were laying a “honey trap” for him, did not see that the sweetheart whom he thought would be the woman who would accompany him through the rest of his life’s journey was complicit to the plot. She surrept.i.tiously poisoned him, causing him to lose his next round where he was not only defeated but his tendons were also snapped. With his entire future and hopes shattered, Li Zhiyuan’s fall from grace made him the biggest object of ridicule across the whole Northern Steppes region.
All the efforts and antic.i.p.ation that the Creed of Divinity had in him had been for naught.
Just when Li Zhiyuan thought that the zenith of his achievements was nigh, he plummeted precipitously into ruin.
It was a crus.h.i.+ng and devastating blow to him and to all of the Creed.
But the woes were not yet ended. On their way back from the tournament, more a.s.sa.s.sins were sent to make sure that the once-proud Cloudwater Crusader would never be able to set about on another crusade ever again. That saw the death of the Chieftain and many of his fellow students who lost their lives out in the wilderness.
It was only by his mentor Ascetic Yundao’s staunch and ardent defense that spared him certain death — that, and the fact that his enemies had a sudden change of heart to let him live the rest of his life in disgrace and disrepair.
In the meantime, this proved such great a blow that the Creed of Divinity became a wreck that never recovered.
Unable to face the elders and the rest of his fellow acolytes at the Creed, Li Zhiyuan chose to fade away into obscurity. He left the stronghold with two of his servant girls and build a little hut by the shoulder of the hill, languis.h.i.+ng his days in misery and privation as he fought a losing battle against the poison that still lingered inside him and the gnawing torment of guilt and dejection.
His mentor Ascetic Yundao roamed far and wide for his sake. For years, he rarely returned to the Creed’s stronghold — wandering through fields and forests all by himself, begging and groveling as he endured countless litanies of ridicule and humiliation — while he banked on the hope that one day he could find any remedies that could cure the poison in his prized student and heal him.
It could be the shame or it could be the misery that ultimately extinguished what remained of his will to live, that in the end, the once das.h.i.+ng and debonair boy genius who was, for one time, slated to wield both fame and power at his fingertips in a brutal world of warriors, died a lonely and broken man. That was how Li Mu’s soul managed to occupy his body when he was transported here.
“Thank you for this body, my friend. Rest a.s.sured that I shall take it upon myself to fulfill your last wishes, whether I’m staying here or not.”
Li Mu vowed quietly, hoping that the soul of Li Zhiyuan would hear him.
Now that he knew what had happened, he began to examine this newfound body of his.
He could feel that Li Zhiyuan had honed his physical const.i.tution to the best possible condition. But for the last several months that led up to his demise, he had allowed the maladies — the unknown poison gnawing at him and his broken tendons and meridians — to fester. To call this body a sinking s.h.i.+p with leaks and holes everywhere or a house with cracks and rots would not be an understatement at all for Li Zhiyuan during his final days was not any better than an ordinary man at all.
“Looks like it’s back to basics…”
Li Mu wondered as he flexed his joints.
But if he was going to start all over, he would need to select a cultivation discipline to work on.
The first one that came to mind was the Writ of Divine Perception, the Tier-five heirloom discipline of the Creed of Divinity. It was also what Li Zhiyuan had dedicated much of his blood, sweat, and tears into studying and cultivating.
Li Mu raked through the memories of Li Zhiyuan and went through what he could find out about this cultivation discipline thoroughly.
“No,” he said finally, “This discipline might be good, but it still pales in comparison to the Xiantian Skill. It is the latter that I need to rebuild my power.”
Having been a master warrior in his own right before being transported here, it wasn’t hard for Li Mu to quickly discern how should he proceed.
First, he would need to get rid of the internal wounds inside his body.
To that end, the Zhenwu Boxing discipline appeared to be the best solution.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
All over him, tiny explosions like popcorns bursting in erratic blasts erupted.
They were coming from his broken tendons and meridian points as well as all other bone fractures in him.
Much of these afflictions were left unattended in the first place, causing the damage, especially to his bones to become worse by growing out of places.
Using the techniques in the Zhenwu Boxing discipline, Li Mu practiced the moves, allowing his body to dislodge the dislocated bones so that they could correct themselves.
It would have been quite an excruciating process if Li Mu had not been accustomed to bodily pain that it no longer was a concern to him.
“The first move, the second, then the third…
“Then the sixth, the seventh and the eighth…
“Ah?”
Li Mu’s face broke into surprised bewilderment.
“What in Heaven’s…”
In the past, whenever he practiced his Zhenwu Boxing discipline, he just couldn’t get further than the seventh move.
Yet here he was, already in the eighth. Despite the difficulties, he felt like he could just go on further.
And he did. He went on.
Minutes later, he did it. The eighteen-move Zhenwu Boxing discipline. After such a long time, he could perform each and every move with success.
The last time he could perform the Zhenwu Boxing moves with such ease was when he was fourteen. Never had he felt such smoothness ever again until today.
Yet there was a difference between then and now. When he was fourteen, practicing the Zhenwu Boxing moves was more like practicing how to drive his fists in thin air. He could barely do any harm. But this time, he could feel something warm coursing through his sinews and his limbs.
“Strange.
“Could it be that the fabric of natural forces in this world suits the cultivation of the Zhenwu Boxing discipline very well?!”
It was the first time Li Mu could fully perform every move in the Zhenwu Boxing discipline since he began his journey of warriors.h.i.+p.
He could feel something strange, something fluid stirring inside him.
This new body of his could barely compare to the ones he had before, yet this strange fluid-like energy streaming and running all over him was something he had never felt before.
Li Mu stood there, utterly drowned in the moment and sensation of how he managed to perform all eighteen moves of the Zhenwu Boxing discipline.
Two hours pa.s.sed just like that.
“Whoos.h.!.+”
White steam-like fumes escaped Li Mu’s pores, swirling around in casual, lazy tendrils. Yet their slow and languis.h.i.+ng gesticulations belied the rippling energy emanating from Li Mu’s body.
Next, coal-black soot oozed out of his pores, covering every inch of him as if he had just fallen into a vat of black oil.
“I guess this is the first time I truly experienced a real makeover of one of my physical bodies.”
Li Mu strode to the pond just outside his tiny little hut and washed away the soot-like excretions.
The wonders of the Zhenwu Boxing discipline have been unveiled for the first time — here, in this world — and the slow poison that the entire Creed of Divinity failed to discover any ways of curing, has been fully extricated from his body.
Li Mu went back to his hut and had a change of clothes.
Next would be the matter of his ruptured meridians and tendons.
Li Mu smiled to himself with confidence and surety.
All good mental-based cultivation disciplines could repair a man’s damaged meridians and the best of them all would undoubtedly be the Xiantian Skill.
Li Mu found himself a bamboo sitting mat and sat on it, then he began activating, for the first time in Molderad, his Xiantian Skill.
Seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours.
The natural energies that teemed the lands of Molderad are called Mana. It was similar in nature to the Spiritual Qi on Earth, but Spiritual Qi on Earth wasn’t rich and vast enough to fully saturate all of Earth and also the Ziwei Star Zone.
Hence, the exploration and study of combat skills, techniques, and cultivation discipline here in Molderad were more detailed, more complex, and more extensive than on Earth and the Ziwei Star Zone.
Even so, the Xiantian Skill could still be regarded as a cultivation discipline of the highest order in such an environment of intense compet.i.tion.
Two hours were gone.
Li Mu’s face broke into a surprised smile.
“Heavens, it’s like the Zhenwu Boxing discipline! I’ve reached the twelfth stage of the Xiantian Skill! It feels like this world exists just for these two disciplines!”