That was a cold winter night; the sky was black-purple, and the earth was silver-white.

Yuan Qi emerged from a tavern, slightly drunk, and walked into a quiet street.

It was his thirtieth birthday.

At thirty, Yuan Qi was still a third-rate figure in the martial world.

In terms of appearance, he was ordinary, not even handsome.

In terms of wisdom, he was sensible, but not particularly clever.

As for martial arts talent... he was indeed a bit stronger than the average person. Unfortunately, his master, like him, was a third-rate figure, only able to teach him some basic, low-level skills.

In short... he was a man of average looks, average intelligence, and average martial arts skills.

In the martial world, people like him mostly never had a chance to stand out.

If someone had told him then, "You will become the Wulin Mengzhu (Martial Arts Alliance Leader) in the future," he would have thought it was a joke, or even a mockery.

But someone did say that...

It was a blind fortune teller, hunched over, with a face full of sores.

On this cold winter night, the blind man was still sitting at a dilapidated square table by the roadside, holding up a long banner, waiting for customers.

Yuan Qi, passing by, saw the blind man and walked over to sit at the table.

"Sir, it's late," Yuan Qi said.

"So what?" The blind man's voice was strange, very hoarse, as if someone was strangling his neck.

"There's no one on the street anymore," Yuan Qi said.

"I know," the blind man replied, "I can hear it."

Yuan Qi shook his head with a smile, "Sir, I have some loose silver here, take it and go back..."

"I'm not begging," the blind man knew what Yuan Qi meant and interrupted him directly.

Yuan Qi curled his lip, feeling that the blind man was a bit ungrateful, but then he thought that the blind man had some integrity.

"Then... please give me a fortune reading," Yuan Qi thought for a moment and continued.

"Alright, what do you want to ask?" the blind man asked.

"Heh..." Yuan Qi chuckled.

He didn't want to have his fortune told; he just felt sorry for the blind man... standing by the street in the cold, so he wanted to give him some silver to go back.

But now that he was going to have his fortune told, Yuan Qi casually replied, "Then I'll ask about my future."

Yuan Qi knew something about the fortune-telling profession... it was a skill of talking, paying attention to people's expressions and speaking ambiguously.

This kind of empty-handed business was difficult to do. Praising, coaxing, provoking, scaring... there had to be different responses to different people. To make a living, at least dozens of prepared speeches were needed; not only had to be memorized perfectly, but also had to be able to improvise. If you spoke well, it was not difficult to earn some money; but if you said the wrong thing, not getting paid was a light consequence, being scolded or beaten was also common.

Yuan Qi had been in the martial world for many years and had dealt with all kinds of people, knowing a little about everything... At this moment, he didn't want to make things difficult for the blind man, so he asked a "beginner" question, thinking... he would just listen to him bragging for a few words.

Unexpectedly...

"Alright," the blind man said, extending his hands, "This guest, let me feel your face."

Yuan Qi looked at the blind man's rough, skinny hands and shook his head with a wry smile, "Okay."

He was a big man, and he wasn't afraid of being taken advantage of by the blind man, so let him touch him.

So, Yuan Qi guided the blind man's hand and placed it on his temples.

To Yuan Qi's surprise... the blind man's hands were warm, not as cold as he had imagined, and the hands were also very strong, giving a sense of solidity that did not match his appearance.

Soon, the blind man touched Yuan Qi's forehead, cheeks, chin, and even the top of his head and behind his ears, and then withdrew his hand.

"Heh..." Yuan Qi saw the blind man lowered his head and did not speak, so he guessed that he was preparing to start mystifying. He chuckled and asked, "How is it, sir?"

"You asked about your future, so I will point you a path forward..." the blind man replied in a deep voice, "From today onwards, you continue to practice martial arts and travel the martial world; within ten years, there will be no more than three people in the entire martial world who can compare to you. By then, if you have not strayed from the righteous path, the position of Wulin Mengzhu will be yours for the taking."

Yuan Qi was stunned for a while before he could react, then he burst out laughing, "Ha! Hahahaha..." He laughed so hard that he could barely open his eyes, "This sir, hehe... According to you, as long as I diligently practice martial arts and don't do evil... I can achieve great things in ten years at most?"

The blind man did not answer his question but instead asked him a question, "Is today your birthday?"

"Hmm?" Yuan Qi was startled by these words, and a look of suspicion appeared on his face, and he replied, "It is..."

He didn't know how the blind man guessed that today was his birthday, he only knew... this was not a brain-dead question like "Are you having any troubles in life lately?", but a fact with a probability of less than three percent of being guessed correctly.

"Good!" After receiving the answer, the blind man exclaimed "Good!" and then said, "It seems this is the will of heaven."

He muttered two inexplicable sentences, and then... suddenly grabbed Yuan Qi's left arm, which was resting on the table.

At this moment, most of Yuan Qi's drunkenness had dissipated. He took a deep breath of the cold air, making his brain a little clearer, "Sir... what does this mean?"

"You have been practicing martial arts since you were twelve years old, and you have only had one master, from whom you learned four and a half sets of skills, four of which are the lowest of the low..." the blind man suddenly began to speak on his own.

Yuan Qi was shocked, because what the other party said was completely accurate...

When Yuan Qi was young, his family was well-off. He had attended private school for a few years, but he was not a good student, and he didn't make much progress after studying for a few years. So... when he was twelve years old, his father invited a well-known old boxer in the county to take Yuan Qi as his disciple, and from then on, he abandoned literature for martial arts.

Of course, this boxer's "name" was only limited to Yuan Qi's county; in the martial world, he was a third-rate figure. But fortunately... although this old master had limited martial arts skills, his morality was impeccable. He taught Yuan Qi everything he knew and supervised him strictly. Before his death, he also passed on to Yuan Qi the "half a secret manual" that his master had passed down to him.

"You... who are you?" Yuan Qi asked in surprise, "How do you know..."

The blind man ignored Yuan Qi's words, grabbed his arm and continued, "The half set of skills you couldn't learn is called 'Ming Chen Xuan Gong' (Destiny Star Mystic Skill), which is a long-lost supreme divine skill."

As the blind man spoke, Yuan Qi only felt a stream of heat being poured in from his arm and running through his meridians in a specific pattern...

"This kind of martial art is very peculiar. No matter how you practice it on weekdays, you won't feel any increase in your power..." the blind man calmly narrated while guiding his power, "Every year, Ming Chen Xuan Gong can only improve once, and the timing of the improvement... must be on the cultivator's birthday. Once that day is missed, all the Mystic Skill power that the cultivator has worked hard to cultivate for the whole year will vanish."

Hearing this, Yuan Qi's mind buzzed, and he almost fainted.

Obviously... Yuan Qi had practiced "Ming Chen Xuan Gong", and had studied it very hard...

Even if he didn't know that it was a supreme divine skill, or even know what the skills he was practicing were called, he could still see that the mental cultivation method on the "half a secret manual" was much more profound than the martial arts skills taught by his master.

Anyone who mixed in the martial world had ambition. Yuan Qi also knew that for someone like him, who was still very mediocre at the age of thirty, that half a secret manual was probably his last hope to stand out.

However, in the past few years, no matter how hard he tried to practice that half set of mental cultivation methods, he had not been able to improve his power. It felt... it was not as effective as practicing those basic skills, at least he could feel his strength gradually becoming stronger.

Until today, after hearing the blind man's words, Yuan Qi finally learned the secret hidden in that half a secret manual.

"Senior..." Yuan Qi's address to the blind man had changed, because he already understood that the person in front of him was not a fortune teller, but a master he had never seen before in his life.

"Speak less," the blind man interrupted him again, "Focus on remembering the path of my power flow, this is what your half a secret manual doesn't have..."

Hearing this, Yuan Qi immediately closed his eyes and concentrated on remembering.

He was an unlucky person, so he knew better how to seize opportunities...

Yuan Qi knew that he was not the kind of martial arts genius who could learn everything quickly, and this encounter... he was afraid there would never be a second time in his life, so he had to desperately remember the other party's method of power flow.

The north wind howled, and the night grew darker...

He didn't know how long it had passed, the blind man restrained his internal force and released Yuan Qi's hand.

"Alright, I have used my internal force to help you break through the annual barrier of Ming Chen Xuan Gong this year... The Mystic Skill power you have accumulated in the past year has all been activated, and you must be able to feel it..." the blind man's breathing was still steady when he spoke, showing that his internal force was unfathomable, "From now on, you should still practice the mental cultivation method on your half a secret manual on weekdays, and on the day of your birthday, use the method I taught you today to run your internal force... This way, you can unleash the true power of Ming Chen Xuan Gong."

Before he could finish speaking, Yuan Qi had already knelt on the ground and kowtowed three times with his whole body trembling.

"Thank you, Senior!" Yuan Qi almost choked out these four words.

This was naturally not some kind of performance, but an action from the bottom of his heart.

Yuan Qi's forehead had broken and bled on the cold snow... and his eyes were full of tears.

These tears contained too many emotions of an ordinary person, bitterness, helplessness, despair, lamentation, joy, longing, excitement, and emotion.

That moment of realization was unforgettable for Yuan Qi for the rest of his life.

"No need to thank me, I said... this is the will of heaven," the blind man said, standing up and groping for the wooden banner beside him, "You can meet me here at this time and let me tell you your fortune, these are things that only God can calculate."

He paused and continued, "In fact, before you even sat down, I had already figured out seven or eight parts of your martial arts routines and internal force cultivation. When I raised my hand to touch your bones, I originally wanted to calculate your fortune, but I didn't expect to find half a set of Ming Chen Xuan Gong..."

The blind man said this, he had slowly turned around, "In today's martial world, people who can create superior martial arts are almost extinct, and the divine skills left by the ancients are gradually being lost in the hands of some stupid people who can teach but can't learn, or can learn but can't teach." He shook his head and snorted coldly, "Hmph... I met you, this is due to fate. If my help today... can allow Ming Chen Xuan Gong to reappear in the world, it can be regarded as adding some fun to the martial world, which is not as good as each generation."

At that time, Yuan Qi could not fully understand the meaning of these two sentences from the blind man, but Yuan Mengzhu (Alliance Leader Yuan) twenty years later... seemed to understand.

For those ordinary people who struggled in the martial world, "getting" was the most important thing.

Supreme martial arts, immense wealth, and a prominent name... these were all things they wanted to get.

But for worldly experts like "the blind man," "getting" was not that important.

When martial arts were practiced to the point where defeat was difficult to achieve, what was gained was loneliness; when wealth accumulated to the point where it was difficult to count, what was gained was numbness; when fame was so great that everyone in the world knew it, what was gained was emptiness.

A person who was so strong that he was lonely, numb, and empty would either go to destruction or transcend.

The blind man was obviously a transcendent person. Transcendent people would travel across the ocean for a fleeting scene, or stop for a speck of dust, but they would not work hard for fame and fortune, nor would they be happy or sad for immediate gains and losses.

Unfortunately... although Yuan Qi now understood many things, he was no longer the Yuan Qi of that year. He knew what a transcendent person was like, so he also knew... that he would never become such a person.

...

Twenty years later, in Burial Heart Valley.

Boom—

Palm wind bloomed, palm shadows like mountains.

Who in today's martial world could stop Yuan Qi's seventy percent power?

The answer was... no one could.

Unlike those martial arts celebrities who had become famous at a young age and had a smooth journey, Yuan Qi's first half of his life was bleak. He deeply understood the pain of mediocrity, and the fear of this pain... was his endless motivation.

Driven by this motivation, Yuan Qi's hard work in cultivating the Mystic Skill far exceeded the blind man's expectations... After twenty years of precipitation, after twenty breakthroughs... Yuan Qi's Ming Chen Xuan Gong had already reached perfection.

Since he ascended the throne of Wulin Mengzhu ten years ago with the title of "Number One Martial Artist in the World," he had never used his full strength again. Because since then, he could not find an opponent in the entire martial world who could match him.

In the blink of an eye!

But it was seen that Yuan Qi's palm force easily broke a big tree with a destructive force, and smoothly cut Song Wuqi, who was hiding behind the tree trunk, in half.

The spattered blood and internal organs were particularly dazzling in the green forest, and under the illumination of the light mist, it was as if they would emit light themselves, making them horrifying...

All the martial artists who witnessed this palm were amazed at Yuan Qi's power... For them, that palm had simply reached a realm that they could never reach in their lives.

However, there were also people who showed disdain and complained there, "Tch... it's not that strong... If I develop the performance of the Lan Jiao (Tempest Kick) a bit more, I should be able to kick out a move with similar power."

"I'm quite curious..." Hua Jian ignored Jue Ge's (Brother Jue) words and said, "In martial arts-themed scripts, would this kind of strong humanoid NPC be killed by ordinary bullets..."

"Yes, we've tried it," Ruo Yu directly answered her question, "In fact, bullets have a miraculous effect in this type of script... Most NPCs who are not very strong can be ambushed and killed by ordinary firearms, and they are almost defenseless against this type of attack; Boss-level guys are not so easy, but you can also use powerful shooting-based attacks to kill them from a distance."

"Hmm..." Hua Jian pondered, "Suddenly I feel... the personnel arrangement for this game seems to be a bit problematic."

"Tch~" Jue Ge knew what Miss An meant, and he immediately shook his head and replied, "So what if Xiao Ling restrains the NPCs in the script? We are in a competition~ok? The lineup I arranged is for Hong Ying (Red Cherry), not for the script. Besides... the script is also random, how would I know it would be a martial arts world?"

"The person who is always obsessed with completing the plot actually used this excuse?" Ruo Yu replied coldly, "Then I will take a good look today... how you are focusing on the 'competition.'"