Seven World Martial God

นักเขียน: Ye Zhifan

บท 1: Martial Spirit

บรรณาธิการ: Caron_

The Ye Family Village - among the top three most famous villages in the White Cloud Town area.

The morning sun rose, shedding a pale light over the chill that yet to disperse, but the hardworking people of the Ye Family village were already up at work. Even the six and seven-year-old children were rushing around under the watchful gazes of their parents, beginning their morning exercises.

Out on a stretch of empty land to the eastern side of the village, a group of children of varying ages was gathered before three strong men wearing beast skin clothing and rough linens. The children formed ten neat lines in front of the three adults, and there were over a hundred children gathered in total.

The warm, rising sun spilled over the faces of the gathered children, illuminating their naive and energetic expressions.

"If you want to become a powerful Martial Warrior, you must cultivate diligently and work hard from a young age. Lazy people will never become Martial Warriors. Even with great luck, a lazy person will never make great achievements."

A middle-aged man stepped forward, passing the three burly men beside him and stopping in front of the children. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his keen eyes sweeping over the group of children, his voice cold and serious as he spoke.

He was the captain of the Ye Family Village's team of hunters and was also the teacher in charge of the village's children - Ye Feng.

"You are all ordinary village people. You will never have an unlimited supply of rare Spirit Pills or expensive herbal medicines that the rich brats from the cities use. If you want to become a powerful Martial Warrior and make a name for yourself, hard work and body training is the only way. Do you hear me?!"

Ye Feng's cold gaze passed over the faces of the children, terrifying some of the kids to the point of quivering. As he called out his question, the group of kids hurriedly called back, "Yes!"

"Good, let us begin!" Ye Feng nodded with satisfaction, leaving the bulk of the training to the three burly men in the coarse, beast skin clothing. As the captain of the Ye Family Village's hunting team, he also had to lead the village's hunters into the mountains to hunt beasts and stockpile food to help the village last through the winter.

"Drill these young brats fiercely. Don't let them laze around!" Ye Feng reminded his three trainers.

"You can rely on us, Captain. We understand!" The three burly men called out in unison.

Ye Feng nodded and was turning to leave when a frown crossed his face. The three trainers followed his gaze curiously, turning.

In the near distance, a young teenage boy slowly walked out of the village and headed towards them. His stride was quite energetic in the warm embrace of the sun, but the boy's eyes seemed empty and listless.

"Ye Tian." The three trainers had complicated expressions, and they all seemed to sigh with sympathy and helplessness.

"Okay, go teach!" Ye Feng said, sighing as he pulled his gaze away from the teenage boy, continuing on his way with his long, powerful stride.

"Look! It's Big Brother Ye Tian! I heard he's our village's top genius and he's reached the peak of the tenth level of the Martial Apprentice realm even though he's only fifteen."

"Genius? You haven't heard, but when this genius went with the Village Chief to awaken his Martial Spirit yesterday, they found out that he's a spiritless piece of trash."

"No Martial Spirit? Then Big Brother Ye Tian will never be able to become a Martial Warrior?"

The children watched as the listless young man walked over, whispering and gossiping amongst themselves.

"What are you all doing? Quickly begin your exercises - or are you so free that you can relax? Listen up everyone, all of you will do ten laps around the village!" one of the three trainers called out.

The children stuck out their tongues behind the trainer's back as they immediately started running, making laps around the village while calling out as they had been taught.

"We are the good children of the Ye Family Village!"

"We train hard without pause. We exercise with all our might. We will become powerful Martial Warriors…"

The scene of the various children running and singing brought a special air to the plain, ancient village.

The listless young man lifted his gaze and looked over at the running children but quickly lowered his eyes once more, his eyes still empty and dead.

"Martial Warrior? Hehe, what does it matter how hard I train? Without a Martial Spirit, I will never become a Martial Warrior!" the young man murmured to himself. He dragged his lonely and weary body forward as he headed away from the village.

"Little Tian, there are many dangerous beasts in the mountains. Don't wander too far from the village." A woman washing clothes by the river called out kindly as Ye Tian walked by.

Ye Tian remained silent and continued walking forward.

"This child…" The woman sighed helplessly, shaking her head as she murmured. "Such a good child, and if it weren't for his lack of a Martial Spirit, he could've definitely become the most powerful Martial Warrior in our village and might've even led us away from this poor land."

Indeed, that was the importance of a Martial Spirit. On the Shen Zhou Continent, only people who possessed a Martial Spirit could become powerful Martial Warriors, and only then could they survive in this land ruled by the law of the jungle — only power afforded status, position, and respect.

…

A waterfall stood not too far away from the Ye Family Village, and Ye Tian often came here to meditate. Although he was the most talented genius of the village, he was a quiet boy, and other than exercising and training with all his might, he didn't do much else, rarely playing with other village children his age.

It was only here by this waterfall that Ye Tian could open up his heart.

"Martial Spirit!"

"Why don't I have a Martial Spirit?"

"Heavens, since you brought me into this world, why did you make me trash?"

…

He cried out to the heavens, eventually falling to the ground and lying prone, listening to the pounding of the waterfall as he thought back over the past fifteen years.

No one around him knew that inside this body of a fifteen-year-old teenager was actually the soul of a thirty-year-old man.

The truth was that Ye Tian wasn't from this world, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that his previous life hadn't been lived on this land. In his previous life, he lived during Earth's 21st century, and he had been an accomplished soldier in the Special Forces of Hua Xia country.

On Earth, Ye Tian had been injured during a mission, and to allow his squad to retreat, he lost both of his legs and become a cripple.

As a soldier in the Special Forces, Ye Tian had a steel will, but after falling from such heights, he couldn't bear to live as a cripple and chose death.

But the heavens played a joke on him and when he regained his senses, he realized that he had traveled to Shen Zhou Continent and had become an infant who was also named Ye Tian.

As his body grew, Ye Tian gradually developed an understanding of this world from his parents and his neighbors.

Shen Zhou Continent was expansive and boundless, or at least that was what the people in the Ye Family Village believed.

This mysterious continent didn't have Earth's science or technology nor did it have magic similar to Hollywood movies, and it didn't even have cultivators like those spoken of in Ancient Chinese mythology.

Here, there were only Martial Warriors! Strong and powerful Martial Warriors!

Martial Warriors were prevalent throughout the continent, and it was commonly believed that the martial path was the way to everything in life—wealth, fame, status, and beautiful women…

But to become a Martial Warrior, one needed a Martial Spirit.

The Martial Spirit was the foundation of the Martial Warrior, and throughout all of Shen Zhou Continent's history, there had only ever been seven different Martial Spirits. Every Martial Warrior in the land had one of these seven.

The seven Martial Spirits corresponded to the colors red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue, and purple, and the seven different Martial Spirits were accordingly named the Red Martial Spirit, the Orange Martial Spirit, and so on.

Among the seven different spirits, the Red Martial Spirit was thought to be the weakest, and the Purple Martial the strongest.

For the Martial Warrior, the Martial Spirit was everything—it signified his talent. The higher ranked the Martial Spirit was, the higher one's talent, the faster the speed of cultivation, and the larger the chance of becoming a powerful Martial Warrior.

Among the billions and billions of people in Shen Zhou, the majority possessed a Martial Spirit and could train to become Martial Warrior, but a minority didn't possess a Martial Spirit and were considered cripples, unable to progress along the Martial Warrior path.

And Ye Tian turned out to be one of these cripples.

In the Ye Family Village, the children were taught from an early age to exercise fiercely to strengthen their bodies. Only a strong body could support a powerful Martial Spirit, and it was only with a powerful Martial Spirit that a person would stand a chance at becoming a powerful Martial Warrior.

Before one officially entered the Martial Warrior realm, all cultivators were called Martial Apprentices, and there were ten levels in the Martial Apprentice realm. Throughout this realm, an apprentice would strengthen their body and prepare for the awakening of their Martial Spirit.

When the apprentice reached the tenth level of the realm, they could awaken their Martial Spirit with the guidance of a level ten Martial Artist. Once their hidden Martial Spirit was awakened, the Spiritual Qi that permeated the Heavens and the Earth could enter the body, and only then would one become a true Martial Warrior.

Of course, without a Martial Spirit, there was no way to access the Spiritual Qi of the Heavens and the Earth, and there was no way to become a true Martial Warrior.

Ye Tian possessed the memories from his previous life, and though he inhabited this new weak and childish body, he still possessed the resolute will of a soldier in the Special Forces along with all the memories from his previous life's training and the wisdom from his mature mind. All of these things made him appear ten or twenty times as talented as the other children his age, and when he reached the age of fifteen, he had already reached the pinnacle of the Martial Apprentice realm and was considered the top genius of the Ye Family Village.

All the people on Shen Zhou Continent possessed strong physiques, perhaps due to the influence of the Spiritual Qi in the Heavens and the Earth, but regardless, the humans on this continent typically all lived to the age of a hundred and fifty.

So the fifteen-year-old Ye Tian was still considered a complete child, not to mention the fact that the other villagers had only ever been able to awaken their Martial Spirits when they were at least twenty five years old.

Clearly, Ye Tian had immense talent and was the top genius that the village elders had entrusted their hopes on.

If the accident hadn't happened, after Ye Tian's Martial Spirit was awakened, his outstanding wisdom and will would've catapulted him forward, and even if he didn't become the strongest in the continent, he could've easily surpassed the current Village Chief and could've led the villagers out of this remote and desolate land.

But everything relied on his Martial Spirit and without one, everything else was just a dream.

Yesterday, when Ye Tian had finally reached the pinnacle of the Martial Apprentice realm, he had excitedly approached the Village Chief to awaken his Martial Spirit, but no Spiritual Qi emerged, and the Village Chief could only sigh and regretfully announce that Ye Tian had no Martial Spirit.

When those words came out, Ye Tian felt as though the sky had fallen and almost broke down. If it weren't for his resolute will holding him together, he might've chosen the same path as he had in his previous life and faced another death.

"Ah!"

…

Ye Tian stood on a boulder, his heart filled with pain as he roared into the waterfall, crying out as if trying to scream all his anger and disbelief away.

Suddenly, his ears perked at a murmuring sound and Ye Tian immediately straightened, jumping down off the boulder and swiftly hiding.

Despite everything, he still was an ex-soldier from the Special Forces, and his honed senses combined with all these years of cultivation and training gave his teenage body a sharpness that eclipsed that of his previous life.

In truth, the humans of this world were all much stronger than those of Earth, and even though Ye Tian had no Martial Spirit and couldn't become a Martial Warrior, his current body was already stronger than that of his previous life.

So in short, Ye Tian was no weakling.

But compared to the true powers on this continent, like the Village Chief whom Ye Tian had seen kill a powerful beast from a distance with a single punch, he was nothing.

On Shen Zhou Continent, the legends spoke of powerful Martial Warriors who could pluck the stars and steal the moon, overturn rivers and seas, and even walk through the air like the immortals and gods of mythology.

How could Ye Tian not be moved?

But he had no Martial Spirit!