The Path of the Martial Arts BOSS

"Sigh," Qing Yu leaned against the inner wall of the bathing tub, savoring the rare leisure he had after a day of hustling. After giving away the last bit of money from his purse, Qing Yu managed to get the innkeeper to offer him a bath, and even that took quite some effort to haggle for. He was thankful for the harrowing job-hunting days after college, which had honed his ability to speak to all kinds of people, even though just thinking about that time often made his clothes soggy with tears.

After reflecting, Qing Yu took a short rest, experiencing the different atmosphere from the one up in the mountains. Beicang Mountain's air was fresh, rarely trodden by humans, making it a great place for a peaceful hermit life, where one could perhaps live happily ever after. But Qing Yu wasn't there to retire. Setting aside the fact that he wasn't old, a knife could fall on his head at any moment, leaving no room for a comfortable life.

Of course, after obtaining the villain's legacy system, Qing Yu had thought about nesting in the mountains for a decade or so. Once his Divine Skill had reached great success, he would emerge to overwhelm the world. After all, which distinguished villain wasn't invincible the moment they appeared, spreading bento boxes all over the world? Leveling up by fighting monsters was the main character's privilege, after all. Even though protagonists start as weaklings and wander everywhere, they always encounter benefactors who help them out, meeting the seemingly mad and always goofy old men of the human world over a meal. Qing Yu, on the other hand, had nothing but enemies from the entire True Martial Dao Sect—pots left behind by that deceased master.

So, Qing Yu's initial plan was to lay low in the mountains until he reached the level of the "Ten Miles Slope Sword God." Then, once his Divine Skill reached great success, he would step out of the mountains, proclaiming, "The human world has become filthy again," and proceed to flatten everything. Yes, Qing Yu's goal was to be like Emperor Qi Tian, Lord Qi, nicknamed the "Bento Emperor."

In Qing Yu's heart, Emperor Qi Tian was the epitome of villainy. He was full of style from beginning to end, and even his exit was done with grace—a far cry from other villains whose idea of an exit was to face-plant, making him the ceiling of all villains.

Regrettably, Qing Yu had no Divine Skill to practice, nor did he have the resources to speed up his training. Beicang Mountain was also a godforsaken place where no old man would fall from the sky to pass on his skills, let alone offer a beautiful granddaughter as a gift. Even though this type of event with an old man falling from the sky, severely injured and near death, usually happened in godforsaken places. ╮(─▽─)╭

Qing Yu gathered his thoughts, which had wandered far off, and began to think about how to complete the task given by the system—to gain the power to determine the future of Yang City within a year.

"Although Yang City no longer has the splendor it did three hundred years ago, with countless experts stationed in its military, only four squabbling small families remain. However, the Li and Sun families must have backers in the Daqian Military's upper echelons; otherwise, Yang City wouldn't be left without a single official from the court. Thus, overt displays of force or even slight indications of an attempt to take over the discourse in Yang City are out of the question. If these attempts are too slight, they won't shake the four families' rule over Yang City; if they're too ambitious, they might draw the attention of the powerful military backers. After all, it's been three hundred years—there must be a significant motive for those big shots to have supported the four families for so long."

"Therefore, I have to take an unconventional approach—that is, to tread a wild path."

"But, the most crucial thing right now is to improve my own martial strength. With my current weak arms and legs, even the simplest and crudest attempts at seizing power through force are delusional. In these three hundred years, the four families of Yang City have undoubtedly declined, but there must still be experts at the Innate Realm. More certainly, there are experts at the Postnatal Ninth Layer—and not just one. After all, the Postnatal Realm mainly involves cultivating one's Inner Strength, and with Yang City being a commercial hub connected to Qing Province, it's hard to believe they haven't stacked enough resources to produce several Postnatal Ninth Layer experts."

Qing Yu touched his smooth chin, silently contemplating.

Determined on his next steps, Qing Yu relaxed his body and thoroughly enjoyed this rare bathing experience, something he couldn't have on Beicang Mountain, where a shower was the norm.

After soaking for quite some time and the bath water starting to cool, devoid of comfort, Qing Yu finally stood up, dried off his body, put on clean clothes, and opened the door to call for the attendants to take away the bathing tub.

Two attendants, hearing the call, came upstairs and entered the room to remove the tub.

Qing Yu took out Ping Yizhi's Medical Book from his bundle and started to study it carefully under the dim candlelight. In martial arts, medicine was not separated from the practice, understanding medical skills not only allowed for timely treatment after injuries but also acquainted a person with the meridian acupoints and the functioning of various organs of the body, thereby bettering their martial arts training. Any expert would have self-awareness not inferior to some physicians.

Moreover, Ping Yizhi was involved in the underworld, and naturally, he wasn't a rule-abiding good person to have earned the moniker "Murder Doctor." For his research into medical texts, Ping Yizhi sometimes resorted to stealing corpses and exhuming them for dissection and the study of the human body.

One should know that the rapid development of Western medicine in the last few centuries, to the extent of its current widespread acceptance over Chinese medicine, owed much to anatomy.

And these very human experiment data were all recorded in Ping Yizhi's Medical Book.

Qing Yu, who came from an era of information explosion in his previous life, naturally wouldn't consider corpse dissection as something wicked, and besides, he wasn't much of a good person himself. Although the medical book's descriptions of human dissection were quite nauseating, to become stronger, Qing Yu felt this was all bearable.

In the blink of an eye, four hours had passed. Qing Yu set down the medical book and rubbed his aching brow. Although Ping Yizhi's book was very detailed in its descriptions, Qing Yu came from an unschooled background. Having relied solely on self-study over the past three years and even considering his past life's exposure to medicine, it was quite straining to read such a lofty medical text.

After summarizing the gains of the past four hours, Qing Yu recorded his own understanding into another notebook, his study notes.

After finishing his entry, Qing Yu slipped off his boots, crossed his legs on the bed, and after circulating the Quanzhen Heart Method for one Grand Circulation, he lay down and fell asleep. The Quanzhen Heart Method continued to operate slowly in his sleep—it was the beauty of this mental method. As long as one maintained tranquility, the method could be practiced while walking or during other activities, and though the progress was slower compared to active cultivation, it would accumulate over time into something substantial. Unfortunately, Wang Chongyang and the others, including the Quanzhen Seven Sons, had turned to the Dao halfway through their lives. With their temperamental nature, despite forcibly advancing through years of Daoist Skill, their innate characteristics barely changed, rendering the subtle improvements of this method nearly non-existent. Of the two most outstanding disciples that followed, Dragon Knight and Zhao Zhijing, one was filled with infatuated thoughts, and the other was downright crafty; it would be a surprise if they could keep their minds undisturbed.

As midnight approached, a soft sound came from the roof of the room where Qing Yu was staying. He immediately got up and listened intently.

"Can it be, is this some rapist's tactic? This familiar feeling, could it be I'm not the villain, but the protagonist, and the villainous legacy system got the wrong person?" Qing Yu silently ridiculed in his mind. (System: You chose your own path.)

The person who had passed over Qing Yu's roof didn't excel in Qinggong, causing the noise, and since Qing Yu's state of tranquil sleep made him even more sensitive to external disturbances, he woke up immediately at the sound.

However, with such low-level Qinggong, attempting to commit a burglary could get one beaten to death.

As Qing Yu hesitated over whether to chase after them and confirm whether he was the protagonist, footsteps were heard on the street outside the inn. Qing Yu cracked the window slightly and saw several dark figures dashing westward.

Qing Yu hesitated even more. After a while, a few more shadows came down the street. They seemed to be talking, not in the hurried pace of the previous group. Qing Yu strained his ears and faintly thought he could hear words like "market" and "purchase."

"There's something going on." Without further hesitation and dressed in the new black clothes he had just changed into, Qing Yu climbed out of the window and followed the figures heading west.