Chaotic Times and Disasters: I Hunt Down Martial Arts Masters and Become a God

After doubling, strength, endurance, and agility all jumped to over 6,700, with each value firmly surpassing the threshold of the first level of the Meridian Opening stage.

Fu Qing was overjoyed. They've arrived!

The deputy walked up to him, looked down at him, and raised his fist.

"You're quite the man to break through the Body Tempering Realm on the battlefield, but that's about it."

A punch came down.

Fu Qing threw away the knife and raised his hand to meet the attack with a punch.

The two fists collided in mid-air.

The calluses on the deputy's hands cracked open, and blood seeped from the cracks.

He looked down at his fist in disbelief. The fist that had shattered countless weapons had actually been struck head-on by a Body Tempering Realm cultivator and bled.

"What kind of demon are you using...?"

Before he could finish speaking, Fu Qing stood up and threw a second punch.

The assistant raised his hand to block, but the fist slammed into his arm, leaving a purplish-blue fist mark.

Fu Qing pounced on him, throwing punch after punch.

The two men used no weapons, just bare fists against bare fists, and each punch produced a thunderous roar.

The two exchanged over twenty punches in the open space in front of the tent, leaving the ground riddled with craters.

The twenty-sixth breath.

The deputy finally revealed a weakness, leaving his side wide open.

Fu Qing punched him in the ribs, his fist sinking an inch into the muscle.

But at that moment, a blade of light slashed from the side.

Zhou Tie's saber struck his deputy in the back, and the deputy groaned and staggered forward two steps.

Before he could turn around, Fu Qing's fist had already slammed into his temple, and the deputy's eyes went out of focus for a moment.

It fell to its side, its massive body crashing to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.

Kill the Deputy Commander of the Di Kingdom (Level 1 Meridian Opening), gain 6733 plunder points.

Thirty breaths have passed.

As the doubling effect was withdrawn from his body, Fu Qing's legs went weak, and he knelt on one knee on the ground.

My blood and energy were forcibly retained at 1%, my vision blurred intermittently, and I didn't even have the strength to speak.

Zhou Tie stood beside his deputy's corpse, leaning on his broadsword. He looked down at the fist mark on his deputy's temple, then at Fu Qing's still-bleeding right fist.

He pulled Fu Qing up from the ground and slapped him on the back. The slap landed right on the wound on Fu Qing's back, making him wince in pain.

"Damn it... I'm about to die and you're still filming..."

Zhou Tie wasn't angry; instead, he grinned.

"You fucking crossed borders and killed a Qi Refining Realm cultivator with your bare fists, are you even human...?"

"The knife...the knife can't cut it." Fu Qing leaned against him and replied with her eyes closed.

"That's normal. Those at the Meridian Opening Realm aren't vulnerable to ordinary weapons. I'll forge you a good one later, you'll have to pay for it yourself..."

"Damn it, I'll just keep scrimping until you drop..."

...

Han Yue's left arm was cleaved in two by the centurion's sword. When Fu Qing was dragged over, Han Yue was leaning against the stockade wall while the army doctor set his bones.

The military doctor aligned the broken bone and fixed it with a splint. Han Yue bit down on a strip of cloth without making a sound, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

Fu Qing looked at him. "How's your hand?"

"It can't be broken."

...

After entering the city, Zhou Tie held a brief memorial service on the drill ground. More than forty border troops had died in the battle of Langya Village.

Old Zhao died earlier, and Old Sun, one of Han Yue's men, died under the blade of the Nine-fold Centurion. There were also forty-odd brothers lying on the frozen ground outside the stockade wall.

Their names were written one by one on the list of the dead by the clerk. The list was very thick, with another page after each turn of the page.

Fu Qing, who could now move with difficulty, took Old Zhao's pipe stem out of his pocket. The copper stem was worn shiny, and half of the pipe bowl was chipped off.

He dug a hole in the open space behind the barracks and buried the tobacco pipe stem in it. Xiao Lu whittled a piece of wood next to it and carved the words "Old Zhao" on it with a dagger. He then placed it next to the tobacco pipe as a monument.

The two stood in front of the simple tombstone, neither of them speaking. The shouts of the new recruits running laps came from the drill ground, just like always, as if nothing had happened.

...

That evening, Fu Qing returned home, took off his centurion's badge and placed it on the table. Song Yawei poured him some wine, and he sat under the jujube tree with his wine glass in hand, looking at the old jujube tree in the yard that had already sprouted tender buds.

The jujube tree branches are covered with new green leaves, and a few dried jujubes that were not picked last autumn are still hanging on the branches, swaying gently in the wind.

People have feelings.

Old Zhao and he fought side by side on the grassland. During the battle of transporting grain in Black Wind Gorge, Old Zhao stood at the back of the grain cart, waving his knife and cheering him on. He even said he would treat him to drinks for a month.

After the Battle of Black Stone Ridge, Old Sun squatted by the campfire, smoking and telling him about the rules of the border army. Now, one of the two men's pipes is buried in the ground, and the other is lost on some battlefield.

He used to have little concept of war, probably because it wasn't the people around him who were lost.

This time, however, he genuinely disliked the chaotic world.

If it weren't for the invasion of the Di Kingdom, they would probably still be joking around in the border army and being comrades-in-arms for life.

...

Song Yawei brought a bowl of hot soup out of the kitchen. Seeing Fu Qing holding a wine glass and not moving, she didn't ask anything.

She placed the soup bowl on the stone table, sat down beside it, and reached out to pull Fu Qing's hand to her protruding belly.

Through the thin layer of clothing, I could feel a small, warm thing moving inside.

Song Nini also came over, placed her hand on the back of Fu Qing's hand, and pulled his hand to her stomach. Her stomach was a size smaller than her sister's, but she could still feel life inside. Martial artists are extremely sensitive to qi and blood.

Fu Qing closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she opened them again, the shadow in her eyes had faded somewhat.

...

Duan Tieshan waited for two months.

For two months, he got up early every day to practice his sword, handle city affairs, review official documents, and play chess with his staff, without showing any emotion on his face.

Then news of the great victory at Langya Village came back: Fu Qing not only survived, but also broke through from the eighth level of Body Tempering to the ninth level on the battlefield, and killed a centurion in front of everyone.

When the messenger finished reading the military report at the door of the study, Duan Tieshan was playing chess with Mr. Wu.

He held a black chess piece in his hand, hovering it in mid-air above the chessboard. After a while, he threw the piece into the chess box, got up, and went into the secret room behind the study.

Mr. Wu sat in front of the chessboard without going in. He just looked down at the game that was not yet finished. The black pieces had already been surrounded and killed by the white pieces, with two large groups of stones trapped.

Inside the secret chamber was a heavy, iron-gray sword. The blade was wider than a palm and thicker than a finger joint. It had no edge and was covered with the internal energy cultivation method of the "Iron Mountain Skill".

The characters in the manuals varied in depth; the deeper ones were carved by Duan Tieshan's father, while the shallower ones were carved by Duan Tieshan himself.

The Duan family has practiced the "Iron Mountain Skill" for three generations. Each generation has engraved their own insights on the sword, and the deeper the engraving, the higher the level of skill.

Duan Tieshan ran his fingers from the guard to the tip of the sword, tracing the varying depths of the engravings, before stopping on the hilt and gripping it tightly.

The qi flowed from his palm into the sword, and the iron-gray blade gleamed with a pale white light. The sword moved even though there was no wind in the secret room, and the calligraphy and paintings hanging on the wall rustled loudly in the wind.

He decided to take matters into his own hands.

Mr. Wu advised him, his words were tactful but his meaning was clear: Fu Qing is no longer the centurion he was two months ago, and is only one step away from the Meridian Opening Realm; he is also said to possess a rare battle physique...

Following the great victory at Langya Village, he was riding high, and Tian Jingming had already included him in his list of key talents for development.

After listening to the conversation, Duan Tieshan, holding his teacup, asked in return, "Can Tian Jingming protect him for life?"

Mr. Wu then stopped trying to persuade him. Having served as Duan Tieshan's advisor for so many years, he knew that it was inappropriate to offer advice at a time like this.

...

In mid-April, the border troops received an urgent report that a Di cavalry force had bypassed the main defense line and was burning, killing, and looting several villages on the south side of the border, massacring three entire villages.

Zhou Tie dispatched Fu Qing with a hundred-man team to wipe them out, while also sending Han Yue's scout team to assist.

The operation was not complicated. Fu Qing's hundred-man team, together with Han Yue's scouts, found the traces of the Di cavalry in an abandoned village.

A hundred-odd cavalrymen, led by a centurion at the ninth level of Body Tempering, were huddled in the threshing ground at the village entrance, roasting the sheep they had stolen.

Fu Qing ordered Han Yue to lead scouts to the back of the village to block their retreat, while he led a hundred-man squad to press forward from the front.

A centurion at the ninth level of Body Tempering drew his sword and charged forward. Fu Qing exchanged blows with him for a while. This man was a bit stronger than the two eighth-level guards of Wolf Fang Stronghold, but far weaker than Wolf Fang Stronghold's deputy.

Fu Qing fought with him for a while, found an opening, and slashed at his blade with his own. The curved sword slipped from his hand, and he immediately followed up with a second slash to cut the man's throat.

The remaining Di cavalry were either killed or fled, and the mopping-up operation was carried out cleanly and efficiently from the moment they engaged the enemy to the moment they withdrew.

While taking stock of the spoils, Xiao Lu found several pieces of gold and silver jewelry that had been stolen from the village in the centurion's saddlebag. Among them was a child's silver bracelet, which still had dried blood on it.

Xiao Lu held the bracelet in his hand for a while, then gently placed it into the wooden crate containing the captured supplies.

...

On the way back to the city, Fu Qing led his team through a grove of low trees and heard the sound of bowstrings. It was not a bone bow from the Di Kingdom, but a standard iron bow.

He felt a chill run down his spine, and drew his sword faster than his brain could react. The blade cleaved two arrows flying toward his face, while a third arrow grazed his ear and embedded itself in Xiao Lu's shield behind him.

"There's an ambush!"

Fu Qing shouted and protected Xiao Lu and several new recruits as they retreated behind a sloping hill. Arrows flew out of the woods and stuck into the hill, splashing dirt and debris all over Xiao Lu's face.

Han Yue, who was walking ahead of him, shouted "There's an ambush!" from the woods opposite, and then there was silence.

The person who emerged from the forest was dressed in a tight-fitting, iron-gray outfit, with a thick-backed broadsword hanging on his back.