In the Zhen Realm.
Inside the small dark room, Yu Xian sat cross-legged on a single-seat sofa, digesting all of Li Zhenlong's martial arts experience.
Li Zhenlong was a genius, but Yu Xian knew very well that he was mediocre. His own abilities had never been earned through sheer effort—they either stemmed from his bloodline or from outright cheating.
If left to train on his own, he probably couldn't master anything even if he practiced till the end of time.
However, right now Li Zhenlong's experience was like an epiphany poured directly into his mind. Concepts Yu Xian hadn't understood or grasped before now clicked as if he had slipped into them from another perspective, gradually understanding that sensation and making sense of those profound, deep intricacies.
Martial arts, in essence, was the development of the human body and the perception of the world, ultimately integrating those insights back into oneself and reflecting them on the level of technique.
Aligning strength, aligning force, aligning essence, aligning qi, aligning spirit; uniting heaven and man; martial arts attaining divinity.
These were the martial realms of Li Zhenlong's world: first sorting out one's strength so it was no longer scattered, then coordinating the force within tendons and bones to merge into one with muscular strength.
After that came unifying one's essence, qi, and spirit to comprehend heaven and earth, comprehend techniques, and comprehend the meaning of life, forming one's own unique worldview, philosophy of life, and outlook on wisdom and the cosmos, condensing martial intent and upholding it consistently throughout.
This, too, was a road without an end in sight, and Li Zhenlong had already walked very, very far along it.
At this moment, Yu Xian seemed to follow in Li Zhenlong's footsteps, advancing slowly, thinking what Li Zhenlong had thought, understanding what Li Zhenlong had understood. Every stance and strike was like a shadow, learned in full by mirroring Li Zhenlong.
Yu Xian sat like this for several decades, only stopping once he had thoroughly absorbed all of Li Zhenlong's martial arts experience.
"So tired."
"Right now, all I want to do is sleep."
Yu Xian grumbled to the Death Emperor beside him as he slowly opened his eyes.
It was mainly because Li Zhenlong possessed far too much martial arts experience; even after stripping away his memories and emotions, the sheer volume was still terrifyingly vast.
If Yu Xian's head had previously been empty, now it was completely crammed with martial arts knowledge.
He felt stuffed to the brim.
The Death Emperor looked at Yu Xian and asked, "Then, Master, did you get stronger?"
"Of course I did. Even without using Li Zhenlong's power now, I should still be able to exert some martial might," Yu Xian replied with a firm nod.
Why had he gone through the trouble of learning Li Zhenlong's methods when he had already inherited his legacy? To become stronger, of course.
"Then can I learn too?" the Death Emperor asked immediately.
Yu Xian nodded. "If you're willing to learn, of course you can."
Martial arts experience wasn't a single-use consumable. After he used it, others could continue to use it. Even a pig, after using it, ought to be able to display a fraction of Li Zhenlong's martial prowess.
Heck, a pig could even become a martial arts grandmaster in some worlds.
"I'll learn!"
The Death Emperor gritted his teeth and declared, recalling how brutally Li Zhenlong had thrashed him.
Besides, this was an avenue to grow stronger. He had yet to meet the one who created him, so he needed to become even more powerful to assist Yu Xian and have a shot at fulfilling his purpose.
Yu Xian smiled. "No problem. Away you go!"
As he spoke, he channeled Li Zhenlong's experience directly from the Book of the Primordial God into the Death Emperor, who promptly sank into a sweet slumber.
"I wonder how everyone else is doing?"
Yu Xian smiled at the Death Emperor, feeling a bit of longing for the rest of their group.
He opened the surveillance feed and soon located the Aska. On the deck, everyone was sipping tea and chatting. Zhang Shou, Chi Feihong, and Feng Mingge weren't around—only Nora and a few others were present.
After confirming everyone was doing fine, he shifted his gaze to several other locations. Mighty Ones were still waging war and slaughtering one another to plunder Calamity Origin, leaving devastation everywhere in their wake.
"The people living in this era... are truly pitiful," Yu Xian muttered with a sigh upon seeing corpses strewn about.
Before the greater trend of the times, individual strength was insignificant, and Mighty Ones were no exception. Even if Yu Xian wanted to stop all this from happening, he lacked the power.
Not that he actually wanted to stop it, though.
He was a slacker at heart; it was already good enough that he didn't commit evil.
Besides, even if he didn't do evil, plenty of Mighty Ones were out there doing so.
Moreover, many Mighty Ones weren't doing this merely to collect Calamity Origin; some were searching for Transcendence-grade items.
It was like panning for gold, sifting again and again to find the gold. A Mighty One's method was to shatter a world with a single punch, reverting it entirely back to an energy form. Whatever remained undestroyed in the end was guaranteed to be a Transcendence-grade item.
As long as the attack was fast enough, and as long as the Transcendence-grade item wasn't an autonomous defensive artifact, in the vast majority of cases, the original owner would be instantly killed before they could even activate it.
If one world had nothing, they'd simply destroy a few more, gathering Calamity Origin along the way.
Across the myriad worlds of the heavens, the odds of coming across a Transcendence-grade item were slim, but so long as enough worlds were annihilated, there was still a chance of finding what they wanted.
This was difficult for ordinary people, but for Mighty Ones, it was merely a matter of time—and a matter of whether one existed at all.
The Tree Universe had existed for an exceedingly long time, filled with all sorts of miscellaneous things. When Mighty Ones set their minds to searching and used the cruellest, swiftest methods, they would always reap some harvest.
Consequently, many Mighty Ones participating in the war had already obtained Transcendence-grade items of their own.
They didn't care whether the Transcendence-grade items were strong or weak; their goal was simply to counter the Transcendence-grade items of other Mighty Ones, rendering their enemies' items ineffective.
That way, when they clashed, victory came down to sheer strength!
"What's Margot Moxi up to?"
Seeing countless worlds across the heavens being destroyed felt to Yu Xian much like watching the news on TV about some region being bombed again and so many people dying—his feelings were roughly the same.
He quickly shifted his mood, remembered his objective, and decisively tuned the broadcast to Margot Moxi's coordinates.
In the pitch-black void, the Mechanical Empire sailed slowly. Though called "slow," its speed was actually extraordinarily fast, crossing the distance of several worlds every single second.
A Minor Thousand World had a diameter of roughly one hundred billion light-years. From this, one could imagine just how swiftly the Mechanical Empire truly moved; it was only because the void lacked reference points that its speed wasn't apparent.
"I wonder if it's just my imagination, but why does it feel like it's gotten stronger again?" Yu Xian muttered under his breath, stroking his chin as he looked at the Mechanical Empire.
Though it was merely pure intuition, he decided to check the playback footage captured by his summoned beasts. What followed was a plot straight out of an overpowered protagonist story.
At a fork in the tree branches, the Mechanical Empire had been ambushed by three Mighty One brothers. The three brothers were promptly surrounded and slaughtered, their corpses ending up as war trophies for the Mechanical Empire.
Next, it was attacked by the Star Sea Mighty One. This Star Sea Mighty One was actually a pirate by origin, still running a pirate crew that specialized in plundering the myriad worlds of the heavens, even robbing other Mighty Ones.
Leading a flock of Emptiness Realm underlings, he had charged straight in with an all-out attack. With just a single cannon blast from the Mechanical Empire, all his underlings were blasted to ash. Then the Mechanical Dragon Knight entered the fray, leading a horde of Mighty One-grade automatons in a siege, and the Star Sea Mighty One fell.
To sum it up in a single sentence: the Mechanical Empire slew anyone and anything in its path, human or god. In the end, deep inside the Mechanical Empire, Margot Moxi had condensed an Origin Seed!
Chapter 715