Chapter 1 - An Odd Fate (1/2)

Winter nights began a bit earlier than the nights of other seasons. It was already dusk by the time school was let out. Students walked on the path that led to the school gate in twos or threes. The atmosphere rippled with a relaxed vibe.

“Hurry up! Let’s check it out! Song Jian, a first-year paleo martial artist, and Liu Yisi, a first year neo martial artist, are going to fight at the field!”

The hoots of the group of busy bodies engulfed the area near the entrance to Founding Central, a high school of Treasure Island City. Their voices were like a waves, rising and falling in succession, and they attracted the students who were about to leave. The students stopped one after another, looking afar with expressions of astonishment and curiosity. Practically only a breath of time passed before they made wild dashes back to school. They headed straight to the scene—the field.

What had once been a school gate that had been crowded like a surging tide instantly turned into desolation. Everyone’s attention had been completely shifted onto the field. Qin Fen had come to watch the fight as well. He looked at the byzantine style building in front of him, built with red bricks, and sighed emotionally. The easiness of the lives of those who had money was far too different than that of those without money. At the very least, those who had money didn’t have to moonlight after school for the sake of three meals a day and paying tuition. Those people spent their entire days fighting it out on the Sky Martial Battle Network, their dueling hearts still burning upon returning to reality. They established fight after fight to exhaust their excess energy. As for him, not only did he had deal with tuition, he also had to spend a lot of time working and making money. It was simply a life more tiresome than a dog’s.

“What do you think? Will Song Jian win? Or will Liu Yisi win?”

“It’s hard to say. I hear that Song Jian is already quite proficient at the first stage of his paleo martial arts: the Prajna Palm.”

“Pff. Like that can do anything. I heard that Liu Yisi’s family spent money to give him a new implantation surgery. They spend money to buy the neo martial art’s Coursing Electric Wolf Claw. I heard that Liu Yisi is already skilled at the first stage of it. He is a genuine one-star warrior.”

“So you’re saying it’s hard to tell who will win and who will lose?”

“That’s right. That’s why the fight is worth seeing.”

The conversation between a few excited onlookers drifted through the air from afar. Qin Fen could only shake his head with a wry smile when he heard it. He really wanted to ask,  Are you really a part of one of the three best schools in East Asia? How do you students lack the fundamental ability to distinguish between fighters? It’s hard to determine victory and defeat? It’s possible for Song Jian to beat Liu Yisi? There was another possibility; Song Jian could violate the school’s dueling rules and take a Berserker Pill in secret, getting a surge in combat power. Otherwise, Song Jian’s defeat was certain.

Qin Fen suddenly felt bored and empty. There was no suspense in this match from his perspective. He looked up, drew in a deep breath, and ran out of the school. He had zero interest in watching the fight. He was a poor student from the countryside. He didn’t really have a lot of time to be leisurely lying around like his classmates, who would waste their energy on dueling fights in leisurely fun. There was a lot of work waiting for him after school. The entrance exams were coming up, and he had yet to gather the funds for the tuition fee for his freshman year of university.

He walked along the South Chongqing Road of Treasure Island, gazing at the cars whistling past him all around. It was an unending flow of maglev cars. Envy was involuntarily shown through Qin Fen’s gaze. It had been a hundred years since mankind had found the historical remains of the legendary city of Atlantis. Ever since then, technological progress shot up like a rocket piercing the highest of clouds.

Then, mankind unlocked the second level of Atlantis’s vestiges. They discovered a few ancient scripts on that level. Several thousand enormous mysterious slates were deciphered, and they were discovered to have concealed sets and sets of secret martial arts techniques. These martial arts were extremely similar to the many martial arts around the world.

The differences between the techniques were large enough that one could say the arts and techniques left behind in the world were all simplified, junior versions of Atlantis’s martial arts. They couldn’t compare even to one percent of the original versions.

Humanity had already entered the interstellar era. People sought to possess tenacious and powerful survivability in the cosmos and to stimulate more adaptability in the face of crisis. For this sake, martial arts, which had long since been reduced to fitness programs, rose from the ashes once more. They embarked on a new beginning across the entire world and across all of humanity. They were summoned forth with new life.

These martial arts emerged around the world, blotting out the skies. A wave of paleo martial arts fever was unleashed throughout humanity, but soon people discovered that cultivating the paleo martial arts was a very slow process. Plus, cultivating these high level arts and techniques was much more dangerous than cultivating the original, junior versions in the world. It was very easy to descend into the flames of madness with one mis-slip, resulting in one’s entire body to be paralyzed. Some had even exploded and died. Even in the less severe cases, it was very likely for the awkward situation of impotence to occur. There were even some cases where a man would find himself waking up a woman after cultivating overnight.

Then another batch of slates were deciphered, and humanity learned a portion of the neo martial arts method—high tech martial arts.

The so-called neo martial arts was where gene insertion surgery was carried out upon one’s body or where a small machine or the internal organs of a super-organism were implanted within one’s body. There were even cases of them being implanted with a high tech power source. After this, not only could people be allocated with new weapons of considerable power, the greatest benefits came from the fact that you just needed to have money for the surgery to have….

“Ye Xin, you can’t get away even if you’re a three-star neo martial artist. If you don’t hand over the thing you stole from the remains of Atlantis, then you will die here today!”

A voice filled with killing intent interrupted Qin Fen’s thoughts. He slowly moved toward the alley in the corner, wondering,  Is a robbery going on? I can’t believe it. His body shuddered slightly when he thought this, and he quietly stopped walking as the other party’s dialog could be heard coming from afar.

“Thing? I’ve already sent it away from earth. You’re just looking to kill me, but it’s pointless!”

“Sent it away from earth? Like you have the time to. If you hand over the goods now, I’ll give you a good time seeing how we had a past friendship.”

Oh man, it’s the real deal? They can’t be coming over, right? Qin Fen secretly imagined the development of the situation. He thought about it, then decided he didn’t want to be drawn into this bizarre event. He tiptoed backward.

“You want to leave?” A cold voice rang from behind Qin Fen, and a fiery hot palm struck his back.

Fuck! It’s probably a three-star neo martial artist! Qin Fen cursed in his mind before immediately hearing the sound of his own spine snapping. It was like how a powerful man could shatter a porcelain cup just by squeezing it. Qin Fen fell to the ground with a torn body and crushed bones. The intense pain was almost enough to make him faint. Then, the person picked his body up and threw him high. Qin Fen’s entire body spun twice in the air before dropping down to the ground and raising a cloud of dust. This made it so that he was unable to see the things before him clearly. It also made the pain in his spine even more unmanageable.

He should of known to squeeze more time into cultivating the paleo martial arts. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have fallen to this degree today!

Qin Fen gasped from the intense pain. He struggled to raise his head, and he happened to see the man, who launched the sneak attack, step ever so closer….

At the same time, the intense sounds of fighting rang out from over in the alley. The man who had first spoken said hurriedly, “Forget about the kid. Hurry up and help get rid of Ye Xin! Treasure Island’s electronic surveillance eyes aren’t just for show. The police can appear at any moment.”

“I won’t let you guys get ‘it’ even if I die!” the man, Ye Xin, roared. Then he suddenly spread open his arms and screamed, “Uranium Blast!”

“Speed….” The man didn’t even have time to shout the word ‘flicker’ when Ye Xin’s body suddenly burst into intensive and dazzling green rays. The other man who had charged into the corner of the alley and attacked Qin Fen didn’t even have time to utter a word. His body rapidly decomposed in the blink of an eye. “Flicker….” The first man’s body was completely disintegrated by the time he yelled the final word.

The alley instantly restored its normal calm after the intense fight just now. A metal ball the size of a fist rolled down from Ye Xin’s body. It rolled away from his shattered flesh and blood, and continued down the corner of the alley.

Cough….

A fit of pain. Qin Fen felt fresh blood spurt out from his mouth. In this very moment, he could feel the breath of death drawing closer and closer with absolute clarity. Only a moment’s effort was needed for his life to vanish in a puff of smoke.

He drew in a deep breath as he quietly mobilized what remained of his internal strength. Once a person receives a serious injury, the best thing he could do was to try to maintain steady breathing. Only then could he prolong his life to the greatest degree and wait for medical respondents to arrive and rescue him.

The metal ball collided against the wall, bouncing back to roll toward his position. In the end, it actually stopped upon the pool of his freshly spat blood.

What was this thing? It’s actually totally unharmed even after the Uranium Blast? Qin Fen gazed at this odd metal ball with curiosity, forgetting the pain coming from his crushed spine.

Rumble….

The metal ball started acting like a soft caterpillar that had entrenched itself into the leaves of a tree; it began to wriggle its body. It seemed to move once more in the blink of an eye.

What’s this? Qin Fen believed that there was something wrong with his eyes. He saw the metal ball wriggle once more, like there was some sort of organism trying to break out of its cocoon, but the outside was as tough and sturdy as the film within an eggshell.

Before Qin Fen could react, the wriggling rate of the metal ball suddenly increased. Until now, Qin Fen totally didn’t notice that the pool of blood beneath the metal sphere had totally disappeared. There wasn’t a single trace remaining at all.

After the brief period of wriggling, the tough metal ball suddenly turned into liquid metal.

Liquid metal? How could it be? Wasn’t this the new type of super metal that the government was developing all this time? They hadn’t even completed development yet. Qin Fen stared at the liquid metal with an unwavering gaze, finding it hard to believe.

It was as if this metal had grown an eye. It understood quite well how to face Qin Fen, and it slowly crept over, soon crawling upon Qin Fen’s stomach. The liquid metal had no intentions of stopping. Instead, it crept steadily toward his mouth.

Qin Fen’s heart shivered with fear. The palm strike had destroyed most of the functions of his body. He was unable to complete the simple movement of closing his mouth. He could only silently pray to himself,  Man, this is my mouth. You, liquid metal thing, don’t take it to be your home.

The liquid metal ball did not heed his prayers. It didn’t even have the slightest intent of stopping. It continued moving as it pleased, boldly creeping onto his tongue, trembling in delight as it found his taste buds. Before Qin Fen could react, the liquid metal slipped down his throat.

Qin Fen felt an ice-cold tingling sensation for a moment, and the liquid metal was now within his stomach. He gaped with his mouth, trying to vomit out this rude invader, but the injury to his back caused him to cough intensely. He could only give in silently to this awkward encounter.

Qin Fen’s eyes stared blankly ahead, seeming to look lifelessly into the distant sky. He thought about this series of fate. He had entered through a small alley just to have his spine broken by some man for some inexplicable reason, and God seemed to feel that he hadn’t suffered enough. In the end, God had a bizarre metal placed within his internal organs!

For awhile, it was as if he had the sea churning in his stomach. It was also like the endless rolling of boiling water. Bloody liquid rushed up his throat, and he opened up his mouth to spit out a mouthful of fresh blood. Luckily, he had grown up in the countryside. His many years of training allowed him to possess an endurance exceeding that of normal people. He was able to maintain a clear head even though his body was at this degree in severity; he didn’t faint. This was the first time Qin Fen hated his ability to endure for a time that exceeded that of normal people. It would be much easier to faint and die.

The boiling heat of the liquid metal didn’t even last two seconds when it suddenly turned into something akin to a glacier that wouldn’t melt even after a millennium. An intense and extreme cold energy quickly spread though his limbs and bones, suppressing the restless roasting sensation he had experienced in full earlier. But in the blink of an eye, the ice-cold sensation rapidly caused a thin layer of frost to form upon Qin Fen’s mouth.

Yet it didn’t even take a second for this piercing world of ice and snow to rapidly transform into the most fiery magma of a volcano. The heat pierced through every vein and organ of his entire body, flowing back and forth in a domineering manner. It was as if the liquid metal was completely sliced and broken down by this heat in this moment. It transformed into a myriad of tentacles that pierced into every organ of his body, growing something like roots.

One second it was cold then the other second it was hot. It was a pain so intense that it could make one dizzy within half a second. After enduring for ten seconds, Qin Fen was unable to withstand such torment. His brain was headed for unconsciousness.

Unbeknown to Qin Fen, dusk soon welcomed the pitch-black night from the descent of the setting sun. The Uranium Blast had caused interference with the electronic surveillance eyes of the alley, so the police never discovered this startling scene from start to finish.

Groan….

An unknown amount of time passed, and Qin Fen finally awoke from unconsciousness. The achiness of his head-splitting pain made him subconsciously groan softly. He slowly sat up, suddenly aware of something. He felt about his body with his two hands in haste, wondering,  What the hell is going on? Wasn’t my spine crushed? How can I sit up? And why doesn’t it hurt at all?

What the hell is going on!?!?

There was no one in the empty alley who could answer his series of questions. Qin Fen stood up inquisitively, inspecting his body once more.

What the hell? Could it be that what just happened was all a hallucination? What about that bizarre liquid metal?

The large clock of the city rang out ten times in this moment, neither slowly nor quickly. Qin Fen suddenly had the temptation to go around the corner and confirm what just happened, but he thought about his unlucky experience, and he ultimately stopped his feet in place.