Night.
Linjiang Road. Starriver Bar.
The music was deafening, gorgeous lights splashing recklessly through the dark space.
In midair, projected dancers twisted their bodies, scantily dressed.
Beneath their phantom bare feet, figure after figure swayed and tossed their heads, venting to their hearts' content.
Smoke, liquor, and sweat, all laced with the smell of hormones, fermented in the sealed room.
"A whole month now, and I still can't get used to this stink."
In a security guard's uniform, Li Qingshan walked along the edge of the crowd, brows furrowed, and came to the bar's entrance.
Phew—
Li Qingshan let out a long breath and lightly pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Maybe I should just find a different job. There's no shortage of part-time gigs anyway."
"Then again, the Martial Dao Class starts tomorrow. I should see how they've got it set up first."
"Took me forever to save up 60,000 star coins, and who knows how long that'll last."
60,000 star coins wasn't a small sum — his rent, after all, was only 1,000 a month.
But set against Martial Dao cultivation, where even the lowest-grade nutrient fluid ran 3,000 a bottle, that money was undeniably a drop in the bucket.
"Good thing I've got a cheat!"
Li Qingshan's mouth quirked into a grin as he looked toward the phantom screen.
[Li Qingshan]
[Realm: Body Forging 9/100]
[Technique:
Radio Calisthenics Set No. 36 — 《The Starry Sky Beckons》 7/1000 (Mastery)]
[Function: Martial Dao Space] (Locked)
That last line, [Martial Dao Space], was still grayed out, not yet unlocked.
Even so, the technique-proficiency stat alone had already done Li Qingshan a world of good.
Effort always brought returns.
In just two short years,
《The Starry Sky Beckons》 had climbed from Entry 53/100, through the Skilled grade, all the way to Mastery.
Raising a technique's proficiency didn't directly raise his Body Forging progress.
But what it represented was cultivation speed,
and with each grade-up, the effect grew exponentially.
At its current Mastery grade, 《The Starry Sky Beckons》 gave him a cultivation speed at least eight times what it had been at Entry.
Body Forging was a major realm, divided into ten layers, the road every formal martial artist had to walk.
His progress of [Body Forging 9/100] was already close to Body Forging Layer 1.
This was the fruit of Li Qingshan's two years of effort,
and now,
he was confident he could reach Body Forging Layer 2 within half a year.
And as his technique proficiency rose, it would only grow faster and faster.
"I still don't know what the [Martial Dao Space] actually does, or what it takes to unlock it."
Just as Li Qingshan was mulling it over, a slender hand reached from behind and settled on his shoulder.
"Hey there, handsome, why so lonesome? Why not keep big sister company for a drink?"
Li Qingshan stepped forward, slipping out from under the hand, and turned to look at her.
A woman in her twenties, a wine glass in her left hand, her right still held out in the gesture it had just made.
Long, wavy magenta hair, a pretty face, eyes hazy with drink.
Below her neck, a stretch of snowy white was especially eye-catching.
Li Qingshan swept the "minefield" with one glance, then quickly reined himself in and said with a straight face:
"Ma'am, if you want a drink, the bar's that way. I'm security, I'm on the clock."
"Security can be a handsome boy too!"
The woman gave a besotted giggle and pressed closer again.
"A young thing like you, working a place like this — it's all for the money, isn't it?"
Li Qingshan's retreating steps slowed.
True enough — even the lowest-grade nutrient fluid cost 3,000 a bottle, and 60,000 star coins wouldn't last long.
The woman's eyes lit up, and she struck while the iron was hot:
"Name your price, handsome. Big sister's very generous."
Generous?
Li Qingshan's eyes lit up — then he shook his head hard.
No. He couldn't let himself fall that low!
But after looking her up and down, his gaze sweeping the "minefield" once more,
he... hesitated.
Maybe... it wasn't entirely out of the question?
In the end, face twisted with conflict, Li Qingshan held up a single index finger to her.
"Ten thousand? Sure, that works..."
All smiles, the woman lifted the comm-band on her wrist, about to make the transfer.
"Ten thousand nothing — 1 million!"
Li Qingshan drew a deep breath and said with grim resolve:
"1 million, and I'll have one drink with you."
Ten thousand could buy only three bottles of nutrient fluid — what good was that?
Besides, this was his first time ever keeping someone company for a drink!
Faced with Li Qingshan's expression of noble martyrdom, the woman rolled her eyes and turned to leave.
"1 million for a single drink? Lunatic!"
"Didn't you say you were generous?"
Li Qingshan smacked his lips, a touch wistful.
He'd worked the bar for a month, and it wasn't as if no one had ever hit on him — but he'd flatly turned them all down.
This time, only after a good deal of inner wrestling had he decided to take a gamble for the sake of the Martial Dao.
"Haah."
Li Qingshan sighed and went back to dutifully manning his post.
The night deepened, the raucous music gradually softened, and the crowds dispersed.
Li Qingshan changed his clothes and went out the side door.
Outside was a narrow alley, dim and poorly lit.
As he reached the alley's mouth,
Li Qingshan stopped short — three figures up ahead were blocking his way.
"Drink... I wanna keep drinking... hic~~"
The dead-drunk woman was being hauled up between two yellow-haired punks, her feet not touching the ground.
But the two punks weren't steady on their own feet either; the three of them strung together swayed like a clothes-rack caught in the wind.
"Wobbling like that, and you still come out 'corpse-collecting'?" Li Qingshan shook his head with a wry laugh.
He'd seen these two yellow-hairs a couple of times before, always up to the same thing.
At the sound of his voice the two hastily stopped, turned, and fixed wary glares on him.
"Mind your own business, kid."
One of them deliberately bared his arm to flaunt a tattoo of an evil dragon with beating wings.
"That lizard's hideous. I'd suggest getting a new one."
Li Qingshan shot it a disdainful glance and walked straight forward.
The two punks instantly put on a fierce front to mask their nerves, about to make a move.
"Excuse me, move it. You're in the way."
As the words left him, his palm pushed past one punk's shoulder.
Both of them, along with the woman hauled up between, lurched and stumbled helplessly against the side wall.
By the time they came back to their senses,
Li Qingshan had already left the alley and was standing by a bus-stop sign at the roadside.
Just then a bus pulled in and its front door opened.
Li Qingshan stepped aboard.
First, he was only a security guard.
Second, he was off the clock.
"Bus departing. Please hold the handrails and do not move about."
Li Qingshan took a window seat and looked back toward the alley.
The two punks were visibly relieved; the woman hauled up between them hung her head, her long wavy magenta hair unmistakable.
"I wonder — who's the hunter, and who's the prey?"
The bus rocked and slowly pulled away...
SCREECH!
A piercing brake-squeal rang out, and the wheels stopped turning.
"Now arriving. Please exit through the rear door."
Li Qingshan stepped off and jogged toward the residential complex not far ahead.
The complex he rented in was neither new nor old, the surroundings decent enough, with a small park that held a fair number of exercise installations.
As he ran, the passing scenery flowed into his eyes and, once again, he couldn't help but marvel.
"Is this really the interstellar age?"
Whether the exercise gear or the complex's amenities, none of it was anything especially high-tech.
Even the complex itself looked much like Blue Star in his last life.
"Is the gap between the Old Continent and the New really this wide?"
The thought flickered past, then Li Qingshan tossed it to the back of his mind.
It was a question he'd learn the answer to sooner or later.
The place he rented was a typical one-bed-one-living-room; the living room was utterly bare, without a stick of furniture.
Once inside, Li Qingshan went straight to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out two one-kilogram lumps of beef.
The beef had been stored a week, yet it was still a ruddy red, the flesh firm and springy.
"Not bad — at least the preservation tech has come along."
Li Qingshan opened the packaging, dropped the meat into plain boiling water, and tossed in a pinch of salt.
Half an hour later the beef was cooked through. He fished out a piece, rinsed it cool under cold water, then cradled it in his arms and started gnawing.
The taste was nothing to speak of, but he didn't care.
A few quick bites and the beef was gone. Li Qingshan returned to the living room and stretched out.
《The Starry Sky Beckons》 had 108 movements in all, none of them difficult.
Any ordinary person of sound body could run through them all in sequence — that was its foundation as "radio calisthenics."
But as a Body Forging technique, the true nature of 《The Starry Sky Beckons》 was that it was easy to learn and hard to master.
At the Entry grade, you only had to ape the motions and finish all 108; it would strengthen the body.
To achieve a true Body Forging effect, you had to grasp the force-exertion essentials of each movement — which, on the Panel, showed as the Skilled grade.
As for his current Mastery grade, the key lay in the breathing.
Hoo—
With a heavy exhale, Li Qingshan's toes gripped the floor, his waist and hips twisted, and his right arm swept up.
Muscle bunched layer by layer, spreading to his wrist, veins rising one by one across the back of his hand all the way to his fingertips.
At the Entry grade it was just a simple "twist-the-hip, swing-the-arm" motion; now it had become extraordinarily grueling.
As time passed, all 108 movements were done.
Li Qingshan let his frame go slack. His clothes were soaked through, sweat streaming down his forehead, white steam rising from the crown of his head.
Heedless of his exhaustion, he dashed into the kitchen, scooped up the remaining lump of beef, and started gnawing.
Beef finished, Li Qingshan finally let out a breath and looked at the Panel.
《The Starry Sky Beckons》 7/1000 (Mastery) → 《The Starry Sky Beckons》 8/1000 (Mastery)
A single session wasn't enough to raise his Body Forging progress, and even the proficiency gain wasn't from this one session alone.
"Two sessions a day, one point every two days — so it takes four sessions to gain a single point of proficiency?"
Ever since reaching Mastery, Li Qingshan had been piecing together the proficiency-gain pattern of this grade, and by now he was fairly sure of it.
Still, he wasn't satisfied with the result.
"One point every two days, with 992 points left — that's nearly 1,800 days, isn't it?"
"Tsss. Five years!"
Li Qingshan sucked in a cold breath, the road ahead suddenly feeling endless.
"No — I'm forgetting the Body Forging progress."
His gaze swept the Panel and his spirits lifted.
"In another six months, I should be able to push Body Forging to 20/100 — that's Body Forging Layer 2."
"The stronger the body, the better the stamina, and the faster the recovery — by then I'll manage more than two sessions a day."
"The two reinforce each other. Maybe two or three years will be enough."
The time had been cut in half, yet Li Qingshan wore little of a smile, his gaze dim as it drifted to the fridge.
"I really should buy some nutrient fluid and give it a try."
At bottom, what held his progress back was his body's recovery speed.
If recovery were fast enough, he could already be practicing three, four, five times a day, and his Body Forging would climb faster.
Unfortunately, before Mastery, all kinds of meat had been enough to replenish what his body needed.
But now his stomach couldn't hold any more food, and his digestion couldn't keep pace.
"Nutrient fluid..."
Li Qingshan swiped his comm-band, looked at the 60,000 star coins of savings on it, and sighed helplessly.
What limited him wasn't nutrient fluid — it was poverty.
Offhandedly, Li Qingshan thought of that head of wavy magenta hair and curled his lip.
"Reduced to mooching free drinks, and still putting on airs about being 'generous' with me."
***
The outskirts, the second floor of an abandoned construction site.
The concrete floor was soaked with fresh blood, dark-red trails winding and interweaving to sketch out a bizarre pattern.
Beside it knelt two desiccated corpses, withered and gaunt, not a trace of flesh beneath skin that clung tight to bone.
A breeze blew past, and countless yellow hairs lifted from the corpses' scalps, scattering all around.