Beneath a mulberry tree a young girl sat while reading a book.
The book was titled 'Legends of the Continent' and as she looked through the book she brushed her hands through her short wavy brown hair. 'In the olden days before the humans took the lead of the continent beasts ran rampant and humans could only hide and cower. Until one day the first martial artist rose up and fought back against the beasts. Through inspiration and development breathing or qi arts and martial art forms were developed and passed on to their bloodline. Body tempering arts, foot or movement techniques, qi arts, fist arts, palm arts, claw arts, finger arts and many more were being developed to combat the beasts and enemy human tribes to take back a part of the world for themselves. After many years passed someone reached the transcendent stage and then many humans followed in their footsteps. The humans could finally have enough strength to take a part of the world for themselves and improve their lives but their greed could not be satisfied after they achieved what they needed so the war of humans and beasts continued. The humans could not defeat the mythical and divine beasts of legend so they could only retreat. Dragons, white tiger, snake headed tortoise, pheonix of the olden times were the ultimate beasts to defeat for the humans but they could not defeat them but there were still so many mythical beasts that the humans could not even scratch with their power. Some humans turned to search for other forms of strength and found the mythical arts and even demonic sacrificial arts and turned away from the path of martial arts but with enough time a group of humans found the path to the unrestrained realm but they did not stop there and continued to the bright realm before their lives reached their end. In order to pass the methods and ways to practice they had developed through much trial and error but also many life and death experiences they left behind their research to their bloodline and went to fight the beasts with the remaining time they had left. Not only did this group go to open up a path for humanity but they also left behind their legacy which quickly spread. The world was filled with abundant qi so many rose up to the bright realm within the next generation and humans finally took a step forward to becoming gods by conquering life and death, they no longer had to worry about their lifespan running out. Humans finally had the strength to combat the ancient beasts and lead a large number of human experts to defeat them. After they killed the beasts they ate their flesh, drank their blood, made weapons or armour from their feathers, skin or scales and their bones were made into weapons. The ancient beast weapons were split among the tribes but in the end the humans could not be satisfied. So many humans had become immortal but because of this they quickly became bored with how peaceful the world had become so eventually war broke out among the humans. Many life and death realm experts perished in the Great War of the Gods. As more time passed the humans began to notice a change within the continent, the qi of the world was weakening gradually and the humans could no longer produce as many life and death experts but by the time they noticed most of them had already perished in the war. There are two theories about the true cause of the continents weakening qi and the humans reduced ability to produce many experts. The first was that the four divine beasts were really the worlds guardian beasts or the balance of the world so after they died the worlds qi was weakened. The other theory was that the war between the life and death realm humans caused far too much damage to the world that it could not recover from the harm humanity had done to it so the qi had been reduced greatly. After that life and death martial artists were incredibly rare to produce and even bright realm martial artists were in much lower numbers as time passed. For every bright realm martial artist born there would be around ten unrestrained realm martial artists and for every unrestrained realm martial artist there would also be around ten transcendent realm martial artists. These eras were known as the desolate era, the war between humanity and the divine beasts, the Great War of gods and then finally the next chapter of the story…'
Around another year had passed and now Ki was already eleven years old but she had already put all of her focus on reading through most of the books within the inheritance that was underground.
She had read all of the martial art books and gained a lot of insight from them but also read anything else that was useful, even her herb knowledge had been improved greatly so her abilities to make and understand poison and medicine had been greatly enhanced.
The book that she had found was an ancient book that the family had bought many hundred years ago at an auction that they had done their best to restore and copy to make the present book Ki Was reading.
It seemed like a story book for children to warn against greed and having too much ambition at first but the more she read it the more the story sounded like it had documented past events on the continent.
Humans had to have had a time when they were weak and had to discover, research and develop ways to enhance their strength to get to their present state.
Once they reached the limits of their martial arts they would defeat their long time enemy but once their enemy was gone they were no longer united and turned on each other.
The biggest issue Ki had thought about within the story was… "If this is true then even to this day some life and death realm martial artists may still exist but then what happened to them and the weapons created from the divine beasts? They could be considered as divine artefacts or heirlooms that would be heavily coveted by many and there has never been any rumours of a life and death realm martial artist within the world as if they went into hiding or could not stand their boredom during the long passage of time and ended their lives. If its true then either they would be living in seclusion from the world or there would be some who are silently controlling the world from behind the scenes and do not wish to expose themselves. The fact that someone with enough potential hasn't appeared in a long time means they may have acted in secret to remove anyone with the potential to reach that realm so to not disrupt the balance of the world they built or humanity can no longer reach that realm and haven't in a very long time."