Chapter 174: The Hidden History
“Even a newly awakened martial artist can live to eighty!” Abu said firmly, “And that’s only because most martial artists have hidden injuries in their bodies—if they train with a balance of work and rest, and avoid damaging their foundation in fights, they can even live beyond a hundred and twenty!”
“If they reach the Grandmaster level or Human Sovereign peak, they can live even longer!”
Unlike the Nine Provinces, martial artists in the Huan Yu World constantly battle for their lives. With martial arts poorly disseminated, most martial artists train with flawed methods, which leads to chronic internal injuries and suffering in old age.
Even so, it was still far better than the current norm of considering forty-five as a long life.
Living peacefully to a hundred and twenty suggested that the martial arts of this world had merit—they could cleanse postnatal impurities and bring the body closer to the innate physique of a newborn.
“There’s a restaurant here, let’s eat and talk, it’s my treat.” Bai Hongtu wasn’t one to shortchange himself. Exploring a new world had to begin with its culinary culture.
“You got money?”
“Come on, even if I don’t, can’t I just make some?” Bai Hongtu picked up a stone from the roadside, tapped it lightly, and it turned into a piece of gold.
This wasn’t an illusion, but the alchemical art of turning stone into gold through material transformation.
Of course, you could also turn gold into stone.
However, such a technique couldn’t be spread freely, or it would easily throw the economy into chaos.
Bai Hongtu noticed that the people here also used gold and silver as currency.
In the Nine Provinces, not everything was traded with spirit stones. Mortals generally used copper coins and gold or silver for daily goods and low-grade cultivation supplies—like low-cost pills from the Spirit Herb Sect, which could be bought with silver.
Cultivators at the fourth to sixth level of Qi Refining would mix spirit stones with gold and silver to purchase better cultivation materials. By the seventh level of Qi Refining, spirit stones became the real currency for trades among cultivators.
As soon as they entered the restaurant, all eyes turned to their group.
Mainly, they were staring at Yu Yin.
No matter where she was, Yu Yin’s unparalleled beauty and noble aura always drew attention.
“See what you want to eat.”
The restaurant’s menu was a wooden board hanging on the wall. Abu scanned it and looked lost—he didn’t recognize the writing.
“Do you have to poke at his sore spot?” Jiang Li sent Bai Hongtu a sound transmission, his tone slightly reproachful.
Bai Hongtu suddenly remembered—back in the Human Sovereign Hall, Ji Zhi had told him that after a great upheaval, the language in this world was different from Abu’s.
“My bad, my bad.” Bai Hongtu called over the waiter, handed him the gold, and spoke in the new language of this world, “I want one of everything on the menu.”
The waiter’s eyes lit up at the sight of the large gold nugget.
“Please wait just a moment, honored guest.”
Jiang Li and the other two had powerful divine senses and vast spiritual platforms, so learning a new language was effortless. But Abu had to learn little by little.
“I apologize.” Bai Hongtu tapped Abu’s forehead. Abu immediately felt his body lighten, his six senses sharpening—nothing around him could escape his perception. He could even see the grain on a wooden pillar ten meters away.
More than just seeing in six directions and hearing in eight, Abu could now identify people by their scent even with his eyes closed.
His mind became exceptionally alert, quickly absorbing and processing information from his surroundings. Based on people’s conversations, he began to deduce the logic of the new language.
Abu soon mastered the local language.
“This is the fully awakened six senses only peak-level cultivators have!” Abu was stunned.
Normally, you needed to reach the Nascent Soul Stage to develop your spiritual platform. Bai Hongtu, to express his apology, had prematurely awakened Abu’s platform. The clarity of the six senses was just a side effect of its expansion.
“Now that everyone practices martial arts, tell us how you cultivate your martial path,” Jiang Li said, curious about the difference between their era and Abu’s.
“Back in our time, studying martial arts was a serious matter. First, you had to train your heart—it was emphasized that before cultivating martial arts, one must cultivate their mind. Otherwise, it was easy to fall into madness and become a threat to society. Even though my father was at the peak of the Human World, before he taught me, he made me go through hell to understand that there were no shortcuts in martial arts—you couldn’t rush.”
“Plus, martial cultivation consumes a lot. To strengthen the body, you had to train from dawn to dusk and enhance the effect with medicinal baths. Martial artists had high nutritional demands. Even beginners ate the equivalent of five normal people. In later stages, they needed huge amounts of meat. Most families couldn’t afford it—that’s why people said ‘the rich train warriors, the poor study literature.’”
“It’s not that we didn’t want to spread martial arts—it’s just that hardly anyone could afford it.”
Productivity in this world wasn’t advanced. Famines were frequent. After paying grain taxes, people barely survived the year. In that situation, cultivating martial arts was impossible.
The martial techniques issued by the Twelve Heavenly Kings didn’t have that issue. They required no medicinal baths or food—just lifespan sacrificed in exchange for martial cultivation.
“Do martial artists ever feel the urge to kill?”
“Of course not.” Abu denied it immediately. “What does martial arts have to do with killing?”
“So martial artists wouldn’t participate in wars voluntarily?”
“No, martial chivalry forbids it. The Martial Alliance has strict rules—martial artists can’t participate in wars. My father was the Alliance Leader, so I know this best.”
“The only exceptions were two scenarios: one, an unjust war of aggression causing mass suffering; two, a tyrant emperor, in which case the Martial Alliance would rise to overthrow him.”
What Abu said was completely different from what Teacher Meng had taught.
“Looks like the Twelve Heavenly Kings have rewritten history thoroughly. First, they published lifespan-burning martial arts manuals to shorten lifespans and speed up generational turnover. Then they changed the language, cutting off access to real history. Finally, they wrote a new history to cast themselves as righteous, making people forget the past.”
Saying that people used to live only twenty or thirty years, and now martial arts extended life to forty-five—that kind of claim wouldn’t fool anyone in the Nine Provinces. It was absurd.
But Teacher Meng, a scholar, believed it. That showed people in this world deeply believed it.
They didn’t know the true history. They didn’t know a mortal’s natural lifespan. So whatever the Twelve Heavenly Kings said, they believed.
Now that everyone was a martial artist, there were no ordinary people—and therefore, no one who lived beyond forty-five.
The Outer World Demons had pulled this move in the Nine Provinces before, too. Stuff like “Outer Demons are righteous, don’t resist” was too stupid for most to believe. It never gained traction. After the Nine Provinces Council Meeting, all the major powers acted to eliminate the demons’ lingering influence.
Nothing ever came of it.
Jiang Li figured the Twelve Heavenly Kings probably weren’t Outer World Demons themselves—but they were definitely connected.
He still remembered the system mission’s description.
[A stranger arrived in the Huan Yu World and sent out the Twelve Heavenly Kings]
Now that the Twelve Kings had shown up, where was the uninvited guest? Could it be an Outer World Demon?
Jiang Li thought so.
After traveling through various worlds, Jiang Li was gradually piecing together the motives of the Outer World Demons. They wanted to destroy worlds—but not directly. It was as if they feared something.
In the Nine Provinces, one demon after another consumed the world’s foundations. From over twenty Tribulation Stage cultivators nine thousand years ago, only five remained. If not for Jiang Li’s rise, the Nine Provinces might not have lasted much longer.
In the Mingzhong World, they turned spirit beasts into fierce beasts and invaded human territory.
In the Zombie World, they spread the zombie virus and almost succeeded. Apart from Luo Ying’s planet, the entire universe had become a zombie nest.
Now in the Huan Yu World, if the Twelve Kings really were sent by an Outer World Demon, then after rewriting history, they were definitely planning their next move.
The plan to destroy this world.