Chapter 1. Lin Yang
/This is a new version of my Martial World fanfic that I'm currently experimenting with. It includes a main side-heroine in the form of Lin Lu. I'm uploading the story on fanfiction as a test. Once I have a lot of chapters and I'm settled on the idea, I'll upload it on webnovel
Sky Fortune Kingdom is a relatively small country at the south of the Sky Spill Continent, having a population of several tens of millions. It is mostly a land of grassy plains and forests with several large cities where the majority of the population is concentrated.
Among these cities, Sky Fortune City is the capital city of the Sky Fortune Kingdom. A major reason for Sky Fortune City's importance is the existence of Seven Profound Martial House which is located before the Great Zhou Mountain, not far from the city itself.
The Seven Profound Martial House is a martial house set up by the Seven Profound Valleys - a grade-three martial arts sect with over 600 years of heritage. It is also the only martial house set up by them in the Sky Fortune Kingdom.
As the biggest martial house in the kingdom, the Seven Profound Martial House possesses a great number of cultivation methods, martial skills and martial masters as its tutors. Becoming a disciple of the Seven Profound Martial House is the dream of all young aspiring martial artists in the kingdom.
Correspondingly, the entrance qualifications for new recruits are set at a high threshold. In order to join, a youth needs to be around fifteen to seventeen years old and at that point have reached at least the 2nd Stage of Body Transformation. It might not be an exaggeration to say that only one in a million would be able to qualify.
…
Under the scorching heat of summer a young man practiced spear moves in a glade of the back Zhou Mountains, a cold and focused expression on his face.
He wore a simple set of gray training clothes that closely stuck to his streamlined and strong body. His facial appearance was handsome and masculine, making one feel that he's not someone you should mess with. The top and back of his long black hair was bound into a practical half-ponytail, waving around as the young man tirelessly practiced a spear move after spear move in a smooth combination of drills, honing his technique to perfection.
The spear in his hand was not made of wood, but of solid iron and a mixture of other metals. It weighed a whole 50 jins (30,2 kg), yet the young man waved it around with ease and fluidity as if it was not a heavy iron bar, but a light wooden stick.
This young man's name is Lin Yang. He possesses an inferior 3rd Grade Martial Talent. He is one of the many youths who came to the Sky Fortune City with the aim of participating in the Seven Profound Martial House's assessment that would happen in three months from now.
In Sky Fortune Kingdom half of the citizens have no martial talent to speak of and are unsuitable to walk the path of martial arts.
Forty percent of them have a Grade 1 Martial Talent, which is the worst among martial artists. Even if these people were to practice martial arts, they would not be able to achieve anything.
Then the majority of the remaining ten percent would have a Grade 2 Martial Talent. If these people were to be diligent in their practice of martial arts, they have a chance of acquiring a small level of superhuman strength. However, becoming a master of the martial arts would be hopeless for them.
With all this taken into consideration, Lin Yang's Grade 3 Martial Talent could be considered top class. He's a one in a hundred talent! A rare talent!
However, it is still extremely difficult for someone with his martial talent grade to be admitted into the Seven Profound Martial House.
To be accepted at the age of fifteen at that, it's only something that rich aristocratic juniors who consumed countless cultivation elixirs since birth had decent chances of achieving; and even then, they would only pass with a bottom-most score and be among the weakest of disciples there.
Lin Yang was well aware of it. Even among the martial artists of a poor mortal nation like the Sky Fortune Kingdom he could only be considered to have an average talent that doomed him to a life of mediocrity. A person with an inferior Third Grade Martial Talent would usually be a foot soldier or an ordinary guard; in other words cannon fodder. Standing out among his peers or reaching higher realms of cultivation such as Xiantian and above was nearly hopeless for him.
Yet even so, Lin Yang had still swore to himself that he would do his best in this life and pursue the limits of cultivation.
Even if his dream was foolish and this kind of aspiration would very likely cause his demise, he was still prepared to stake his life on it and take great risks for the slightest chance that he might become a supreme existence and achieve Eternal Life.
The truth is that Lin Yang is not a native of this world, but was originally someone living on modern Earth. Fifteen years ago he had chanced upon this world and grew up to be the teenage boy of today.
Back on Earth Lin Yang wasn't even able to cultivate, so it was only natural that after coming to this world he had a strong desire to gain great power for himself.
"Huff!" After practicing spear moves for who knows how long, Lin Yang had finally exhausted himself and his form started slipping; he let out a breath as he placed his spear vertically against the ground.
After a brief moment's rest, he placed his spear aside and walked to the side to where he left his backpack. He picked up a towel, brushed the sweat from his forehead and then sat down at the patch of grass.
After searching through his backpack for a few moments, he took out a gourd, lifted it up and took a few large gulps to quench his thirst.
What he drank was not water, but a medicinal tea brewed by using common true essence nourishing herbs that Lin Yang bought on the market for a bit of silver. These were the lowest grade spirit herbs that were picked up in the wild by mortals, the only ones that Lin Yang is able to afford.
This kind of home-made medicinal tea has a very raw and unpleasant taste even with the added sugar. It could be compared to a 'tea' brewed by a child who picked up random weeds and grasses in the forest and boiled them.
The taste of the liquid was quite disgusting and there were even bits and pieces of leaves floating in it, but Lin Yang only slightly frowned as he smoothly drank the tea without a care for the taste.
This kind of tea only had a very mild effect on nourishing true essence, but Lin Yang didn't mind it. It was still very effective for its low price and was better than nothing.
For those who pursue martial arts, the use of cultivation pills and medicinal herbs is necessary to help them keep up with other geniuses their age. Unfortunately Lin Yang's circumstances made it impossible for him to be able to afford any spirit herbs or medicine.
In this world he was Lin Yang, a junior of the Lin family of Green Mulberry City.
Lin Yang's parents are mortals who run a restaurant within Green Mulberry City. However, even this restaurant does not belong to them, but belongs to the main Lin family of Green Mulberry City. Their family line is separated from the main Lin family by several generations, and their status and income is low.
In addition, even though Lin Yang bears the surname Lin, the truth is that he isn't a legitimate member of the Lin family and doesn't have the Lin family bloodline. He was adopted by his current parents when he was a child.
The Lin family is a fairly large and wealthy family with thousands of members. In order to prosper and nurture powerhouses, every respected family concentrates their resources on the most talented among their juniors instead of spreading them thin on the mediocre. The Lin family was naturally no different.
There are many juniors in the Lin family with a martial talent greater than Lin Yang. In addition, Lin Yang isn't even a legitimate member of the Lin family, while his adopted parents' status is extremely low.
With both of these factors combined, it would be extremely difficult for him to become the target of the family's nurturing and acquire ample cultivation resources. Without resources and training material, even if he worked his hardest, considering his weak martial talent his progress would still be slow and he would not be able to keep up with other juniors his age at all.
Lin Yang knew this, so in order to grab the family's attention despite his low talent and the status of an outsider, he used the advantage of possessing a mature intellect in a child's body and displayed some of his early wisdom and talents when he was still a baby, becoming viewed as an intellectual prodigy.
Together with the fact that he was always very hard-working, diligent and talented in martial arts training and in studies of pretty much anything, Lin Yang's parents managed to beg the Lin Family Patriarch into agreeing to dedicate a considerable amount of resources and attention on nurturing their adopted son.
Lin Yang didn't receive any cultivation pills, but the Lin family still offered him a thorough martial arts education just like the other direct descendants, a low-grade human step manual called the 'Foundation Spear Technique', a basic footwork manual called the 'Foundation Movement Technique' and various other training materials.
Thanks to all this he managed to build his current foundation and gained a lot of knowledge, skills and experiences about the world while growing up.
Before reincarnating Lin Yang also read a cultivation themed light novel called the 'Martial World'. He had only read half of it, but after coming to this world he soon enough figured out that he actually lived in the world described in that novel.
In this world he was an adopted son of Lin Fu and Lin Mu, a mortal middle-aged couple who in the novel were the original Protagonist's Lin Ming's parents.
However, what is different in this world is that Lin Ming does not exist. Instead, the Lin Fu and Lin Mu couple have a daughter, a young girl called Lin Lu.
Being aware that it was the Martial World that he came to, Lin Yang always wished to acquire the Magic Cube just like the original Protagonist in the novel. Otherwise, no matter how hard he worked, he knew that he would never achieve much and would only be an insignificant struggling mortal warrior among trillions of trillions of cultivators in this world.
In order to be able to acquire the Magic Cube, Lin Yang was originally quite wary of making changes that spread far and wide. He was worried that if he made too much impact, then the flow of events might change too much and the location where the Magic Cube appears would also change and it could not be found by him in the stomach of a vicious beast in the capital's Grand Clarity Pavilion.
However, he eventually became aware that it was impossible for the world to remain the exact same as in the novel simply because Lin Ming did not exist in this world, thus it might have been a different world altogether.
Just because Lin Yang had taken Lin Ming's place as a son in the family didn't mean that attempting to imitate Lin Ming could allow him to find the Magic Cube.
In addition, if Lin Yang aimed to be an insignificant person that didn't cause any impact and didn't grasp the opportunities of his youth, then once he grew up, he would have little strength, no skills and knowledge, and would have simply wasted fifteen years of his life!
Although finding the Magic Cube was extremely crucial for his dream of becoming a supreme and immortal existence, even if he did nothing and stayed low-key, there was still a chance that the Magic Cube would simply never be found by him just the same.
If he did not find the Magic Cube and did not make the best use of his first fifteen years of life, then his future would really be gloomy even in the standards of mortal martial artists.
As Lin Yang understood it, the major reason why Lin Ming found the Magic Cube in the first place was because he was fated to find it. In this kind of world of Martial Arts, Earth's logic and Butterfly Effect couldn't be perfectly applied. Here, things like Fate and Destiny exist, thus certain events would still happen even if the past was slightly changed.
With his knowledge of the novel, it seemed to Lin Yang that Destiny might be especially applicable to the 'Martial World'.
In the 'Martial World' novel, Lin Ming's fate was to be betrayed by his childhood crush Lan Yunyue and become heartbroken, thus causing him to harden his determination to pursue the peak of martial arts, which in turned made him come to Sky Fortune City to apply for the Seven Profound Martial House and eventually find the Magic Cube in the process.
Then with the help of the Magic Cube he would complete the karmic cycle related to this divine artifact by helping Mo Eversnow with her revenge, finding the Empyrean Promordiu's Inheritance related to the Demon Bead, and so on, becoming the fated savior of humanity.
Lin Yang knew that Lin Ming was special because even if someone else found the Magic Cube, they would likely never be able to achieve as much as him!
Thus, Lin Yang's assumption was that Lin Ming was simply fated to find the Magic Cube and it was not by chance. Afterwards he even had a clear and predestined path to walk on, receiving challenges, opportunities, and lucky chances at every step of his journey, always making it out alive from incredibly risky situations, leading to the point when he becomes the fated savior of mankind.
In the end, Lin Yang accepted the fact that if he's fated to find the Magic Cube in this world, then he would find it. If he is not fated, then he would not find it no matter what he does. In that situation he can only cry, brush those tears off and continue persevering on his path with a tiny hope that one day he might miraculously reverse his fate.
He could do nothing but hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Lin Yang's only hope was that because of his identity as a transmigrator and the Lin family's only son, he was somewhat special. After all, he did not choose to be adopted by Lin Fu or Lin Mu, but it was decided for him by external factors.
In addition, because he had read the novel and had similar aspirations, if there was anyone who could follow Lin Ming's complicated and winded path in this world, then it would be him! He had both the necessary knowledge and determination.
With all of this in consideration, Lin Yang decided on a compromise.
He had shown off great talent and intellect as a child, and acquired the family's training and teachings to increase his strength and knowledge as much as he could in preparation for the future.
At the same time he also tried to imitate the original Protagonist Lin Ming - he mastered deboning and cooking by helping in his parents' restaurant, had grown very close to Lin Ming's childhood crush in the novel Lan Yunyue and so on.
In turn, Lan Yunyue had not disappointed him. Lin Yang and her were nearly as close as boyfriend and girlfriend, and he was always very kind to her. Just like with Lin Ming they also made a promise to join the inferior Sky Fortune Martial House together, but she still suddenly disappeared and in the end chose Zhu Yan.
Although Lin Yang was prepared for it from the very beginning and even hoped that he might inherit Lin Ming's fate, to say that it did not still hurt him would be a lie. After Lan Yunyue left him, he immediately hardened his resolve and came to the Sky Fortune City just like Lin Ming.
For fifteen whole years he patiently waited for the fateful day when he would register for the Seven Profound Martial House, waiting for the time when he would have a chance to acquire the Magic Cube.
Today this day has finally come!