Marvel Universe's Ultimate Martial Arts School

The Kamar-Taj Temple in New York.

The person who opened the door for Lin Feng was a monk named "Wang," a chubby Chinese man who spoke fluent Mandarin. He smiled and said to Lin Feng, "It's rare to see a fellow countryman knocking on the door in New York. Hello, Lin Feng, I am Wang, and I am now the guardian of the New York Temple."

"I didn't see you here last time."

"Haha, I was originally a librarian in Kamar-Taj," Wang said with a smile. "The Sorcerer Supreme said you were Chinese, so he let me come here. With our shared culture and birth, perhaps it will be easier for us to communicate."

He invited Lin Feng inside.

I didn't get a good look at this temple last time I visited, but this time I really appreciated its unique interior.

The corridors here are long and maze-like, and the main hall of the Holy See looks about the size of a small football field. Y-shaped staircases lead to the second floor, and the walls are decorated with simple oil paintings as well as medieval armor and lances.

The interior space here is obviously much larger than it appears from the outside. Lin Feng felt it was similar to his own mental space, perhaps created by the Ancient One.

But isn't she proficient in the laws of time? Does she also understand the laws of space?

These are all superior laws, and even immortal powerhouses cannot control two of them at the same time. The Ancient One's strength and identity made Lin Feng feel even more mysterious.

The king led him to a door, turned the handle, and pushed it open precisely at the mark.

But outside, a completely different world unfolded. It was nighttime in New York, but here it was broad daylight. White clouds filled the sky, and the air was crisp and refreshing. In the distance, a towering snow-capped mountain could be seen, its peak hidden in the clouds.

Nearby was a quiet training ground, where occasionally a man in a monk's robe would pass by, and upon seeing the teleportation portal and the king, he would simply nod politely in acknowledgment.

The area is surrounded by single-story buildings with corridors and temple-like structures, with a large house standing out in the very center.

"The Supreme Master has been waiting for you there," the king said with a smile. "Please come in."

Gu Yi was indeed in the room's hallway, looking much older than when I last saw her in New York, with more wrinkles on her face.

She seemed to be in good spirits, and smiled at Lin Feng, saying, "I thought you would take two more days to come."

"I plan to go into seclusion for a while, so I came ahead of schedule."

Gu Yi was quite direct: "Is there anything you want to ask?"

"Last time you said that Earth would face a great calamity a year from now, with enemies that I can't handle right now." Lin Feng asked, "I want to know what kind of opponent it is? Perhaps I can make some targeted preparations during my cultivation."

"You're not worried at all, you're actually quite excited. You're even more combative than I imagined," Gu Yi said with a smile. "But your question will probably disappoint you."

"As I've said before, I can't see the details of anything involving you, so naturally I can't tell you who your specific adversary is. As for the future disaster, I only see the dark beginning."

"However, I can make a deduction for you," the Ancient One said with a smile. "I can sense that the enemy does not come from within the Milky Way or from humanity itself, because that chaotic darkness is filled with the aura of the primordial universe. I can basically conclude that the enemy comes from the Nine Outer Realms on the Tree of Life."

Lin Feng pondered for a moment: "What are the Nine Outer Realms?"

The Ancient One said, "The so-called Nine Realms are scattered throughout the universe. They are the nine star systems in the universe with the most life. They were not originally connected, spanning billions of light-years. But the Creator created something called the Tree of Life, which connected these nine realms together. Or you could say that it was the Tree of Life that connected these nine star systems, giving birth to a large number of life forms..."

"You can think of this Tree of Life as a tree-shaped wormhole that connects the boundary of the universe to the Midgard. Without it, even gods with infinite life would find it difficult to traverse the universe."

"These nine worlds are divided into three layers on the Tree of Life. The top three layers are Asgard, inhabited by the Aesir gods; Vanaheim, inhabited by the Celestials; and Alfheim, the realm of the Light Elves." (PS: In Marvel lore, Vanaheim is inhabited by the Vanir gods. For example, Heimdall, the gatekeeper of Asgard, is a Vanir god. Another theory suggests that the Watchers are Vanir gods, modeled after Zeus from Greek mythology, in contrast to Asgard, which was created based on Odin from Norse mythology. However, Vanir gods appear relatively infrequently, have little impact on the plot, and have few familiar characters. The only familiar one is the gatekeeper, so there's not much to write about. Therefore, they were replaced with the Celestials, the group of gods who created the Eternals. Anyway, this is a free version, so I'm not trying to pad the word count. I'll just put the explanation here to avoid criticism.)

"The lower three levels are the world of Svartefheim, where the dark elves reside; Hel, the underworld where the dead gather; and Muspelheim, the world where the demons reside, as the origin of the flames."

"Finally, the middle three layers are the world of Nidavellir, inhabited by dwarves; the world of Jotunheim, where the ice giants reside; and the world of Midgard, inhabited by us humans, which is what people now call the Milky Way galaxy."

Gu Yi smiled slightly: "The Milky Way is the kingdom of mankind. It is the weakest among the Nine Realms, but because it occupies the central position of the Tree of Life, the other Nine Realms will pass through the Milky Way most of the time if they want to pass through each other. Naturally, this place has become a place of trouble. Hundreds of millions of years before the birth of the human race on Earth, countless wars have been fought here. They did not originally happen on Earth, but more often in other parts of the Milky Way."

"The purpose of the war is actually very simple: to occupy the central courtyard of the Tree of Life. This can serve as a springboard for invading other worlds, as well as to control the vital transportation routes of the Tree of Life, thus acting as a buffer zone for them. In this way, even if war breaks out, at least the war can be kept away from our own country."

"Therefore, there are many legends and relics of various races on Earth and in the Milky Way, and even the bloodlines left behind, simply because they all once occupied this place."

"Humanity has always lived in the cracks between the Nine Realms until the appearance of my previous Sorcerer Supreme. He used two Cosmic Stones to control the power of time and space. The powerful laws of space can resist most powerful enemies, while the laws of time can help the Sorcerer Supreme discover the weaknesses of enemies by peeking into the future, and even turn back time at the most critical moment, so that everything is back to the way it was before the defeat, leaving no room for the enemy's tricks to hide."

"...That's how the world is. You only have the right to speak if you have the power. Because of the Sorcerer Supreme, humanity barely had the ability to protect itself. So, after a thousand years of war, the Nine Realms finally reached a consensus due to the need for balance among the various parties. That is, the eight races withdrew from the Central Court, and the Sorcerer Supreme guarded this world. Other realms were not allowed to enter without permission. This brought about a brief period of peace for more than a thousand years..."

The world depicted by Gu Yi is vastly different from the universe imagined by Lin Feng.

Nine worlds? Nine galaxies? Nine races, can they represent the entire universe?

Lin Feng found this rather absurd. The universe should be boundless, but in the description of the Ancient One, this universe seemed too 'small'.

"It's not small at all." Gu Yi said with a smile, "The Tree of Life is so vast that it began at the beginning of creation and spans trillions of light-years, which is more than a hundred times larger than the 930 billion light-year observable universe that human science currently estimates."

"It's said to have nine realms and nine races, but in reality, there are far more than nine races in the universe. Take the Milky Way galaxy, for example. The Milky Way is merely a connecting point in the Midgard. In fact, if we're really talking about it, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, the Barnard Galaxy, and so on, even the entire Midgard Supercluster, can all be considered the domain of humanity... Ah, Midgard is a translation from divine language. In fact, human scientists have another name for this supercluster: the Laniakea Supercluster!"

"This is the birthplace of humanity. There are actually many races, not just Earthlings. There are also the Kree, whom you already know. Earthlings are just a very young and weak race. The only reason why the other eight races regard Earthlings as their representatives here and have become the leaders of the Midgard world is simply because the Sorcerer Supreme is an Earthling."