Mike had very good reasons for his selection of martial arts.
First of all, other supernatural avenues, such as emotional masters and spiritual masters, have an extremely high barrier of entry. Through questioning, Mike found them to be very troublesome. Emotional masters, spiritual masters, and queen believers all train the soul. They pursue the same goal through different means; to train one's soul, one must have something known as an "evolving soul."
The soul consists of two main parts: the inner soul, which is related to the creation itself, and the outer soul, which can be strengthened and trained. Through mutation, some people's outer soul remains in its primary stage, where it can change and grow. There is no way for an ordinary person to train their soul in this world if they lack an evolving soul. Those lucky enough to have an evolving soul can enter the path of soul cultivation through one of three broad avenues. The queen is the only chance for those ordinary people without an evolving soul. She is god in her world and can grant evolving souls to whoever she desires, but one cannot count on this. She rarely does it, and compared to the total population, it's not even a drop in the ocean.
Mike lacked this first barrier of entry. To begin with, this "evolving soul" is exclusive to this world. In many other worlds, there is no such barrier at all. For example, in most magician-centric worlds, everyone can train their soul. Of course, even in those worlds, there are limitations, such as magic talent. Nearly all worlds have barriers to entry into supernatural professions. One reason may be that a universal law encourages world creators to set up such barriers. World creation is not easy; one must have some elementary understanding of superficial universal laws. Although that knowledge is widespread, any rank 10 civilization can have access to it.
Even though Mike could, through research, get around this evolving soul barrier, it would require too much effort. Mike has time, but that doesn't mean he would waste it on matters that aren't worth it.
There are other reasons for not choosing the soul path. The government severely limits soul path cultivators. Spiritual masters and emotional masters can have no more than one billion subscribers or believers. This is a great limitation that can slow down one's progress after rank 7. Another reason is that Mike's soul is already powerful. Trying to cultivate the soul path of this world would mean modifying his soul to make it suitable, which is not worth the risk.
Soul cultivators are few and far between, and Mike would have trouble finding sects or groups that could help him find resources. Emotional masters never go public; nearly all are secretive, with only the government knowing their identity. As for spiritual masters, they are usually loners.
In general, across worlds, those relying on faith for power are competitors and rarely befriend one another. Of course, the situation is different in this world. Spiritual masters can have at most one billion followers, so it would be logical that after reaching the limit, they could create a sect and absorb smaller spiritual masters into it. However, the laws set by the queen cannot be circumvented so easily. Even a sect is limited to no more than two billion total believers. Otherwise, many spiritual masters could unite and form a de facto monopoly on faith. Limiting the number of believers is to prevent monopolies, whether by one faith master or one sect. Therefore, sects of over two billion people have been prohibited.
Mike didn't even consider Queen Believers Avenue for apparent reasons.
Martial artists, on the other hand, have many advantages. One is that they can form sects and recruit as many people as they want. Even a martial god is weaker than a soul-body realm practitioner of the soul path. No matter how big the sect is, it can never form a monopoly; at most, it can influence lower levels of government.
Second, martial artists only train their bodies, bypassing the evolving soul issue. The only requirement for martial arts training is a body capable of holding and circulating internal energy. Most mortals have either incomplete or narrow meridians, resulting in no chance of training in martial arts or plodding progress. This barrier of entry may be impossible to solve for pure mortals, but for Mike, it's easy. With the body of the big demon, he can construct his own meridians effortlessly. Though Lana has sealed his battle strength, he can still use other abilities.
Mike anticipates that his cultivation in martial arts will be extremely easy. With the body of the big demon, he will likely break through as long as he has enough resources, and there won't be any bottlenecks. Aside from all of this, another reason for choosing martial arts is that it would complement his soul cultivation. Despite appearances, the body of big demons isn't a physical practice; it's based on a strange energy. Relying on that energy, after millions of years of traveling through endless space, Mike's soul has been strengthened to about the peak of rank 6. Even without his big demon physique, his soul would have the power of a rank 6. Of course, Lana has also sealed the battle strength of his soul power.
Mike wants to develop a power independent of the big demon physique. His soul is rank 6, but without the big demon body, his human physique is frail, only rank 0. Martial arts can strengthen his physique to match his soul.
There is a saying about soul versus physical cultivation: they say that only soul cultivation can lead to immortality. Mike knows this is not accurate. Soul cultivation is more straightforward, but one can reach rank 10 even with pure physical cultivation, and that's what he plans to do.
...
Mike sat cross-legged and started reading the text. He bought a complete manual teaching the narrow avenue of martial arts from beginning to end. As a martial artist, he cannot just sit in one place and meditate; he must look for resources and train hard.
Lana sealed his battle strength, but his mental strength was still strong, so he read and comprehended the entire text in less than a day.
"Skin training, flesh training, bone training, internal organ training, and blood transformation," Mike thought of a way to get over these initial stages quickly. For others, it may take decades to complete, but for him, it's just a matter of resources.
"Let's just buy my way out of the problem; I have a lot of money anyway!" He decided to cheat.
With a red card, he could be considered extremely rich. Now that the trading caravan is already here, he thought it better to stockpile resources. He plans to stay in this rural village temporarily, at least until he reaches the martial saint realm. The village has almost no resources for martial arts cultivation, so he would buy everything he needs from the caravan for the next few years.
Thinking of this, he began reading other books. When he bought the martial arts practice manual, he also bought many other books related to elixirs and resources needed for martial arts training. After a few hours, he closed the books and went out.
...
The caravan had traveled long and planned to stay in the village for two weeks before moving to the neighboring wood elf cities.
Mike went straight to the main tent to meet the caravan's leader, a spiritual master at the Nascent Soul realm. Under normal circumstances, meeting him would not be easy, but Mike had a red card, so they let him in without too many questions.
The man wore beautiful, golden woven clothes and was simply eye-catching. With fair skin, excessively red lips, and facial makeup, there were jewels hanging from his ears and neck and a silver-colored crown on his head. Simply put, no matter who looked at him, they would assume his gender to be female, not male.
"My Gods, what an honor to meet a contest winner in such a rural town," the man looked at Mike with wide eyes as if highly shocked.
"Lord Silver, thank you for agreeing to meet me!" Mike said.
"Of course, how could I reject a cardholder?" Lord Silver shook his head as if it were unthinkable.
Mike thought, "Maybe I underestimated the prestige of cardholders?" He hadn't expected even a Nascent Soul practitioner to be this respectful. Even though cardholders had many advantages and were very wealthy, compared to a Nascent Soul practitioner, those advantages seemed insignificant. After all, practitioners at the Nascent Soul level can earn billions of RM without much trouble and live for thousands of years. Logically, they shouldn't take red cardholders very seriously.
"My Lord Silver, I am here today to buy cultivation material for martial arts training! I wonder if you have any available?" Mike asked.
"Martial arts training? Your Excellency Mike, your luck is quite good. I have a mountain worth of martial arts resources in this spatial ring. Here, take a look." Silver handed Mike a beautiful ring with a big diamond on it. It was a civilian space ring, meaning even pure mortals could use it. The diamond on top was a concentrated energy crystal providing the power to use the ring.
Even without considering the contents, the ring alone was worth billions of RM.
Mike looked inside and was a bit shocked. The space inside was vast—hundreds of cubic kilometers! Despite being so large, it was packed with rare elixirs and pills. As a quasi-rank 10, he had seen far more wealth. What surprised him was seeing this much in the hands of someone comparable to a rank 5. It wasn't the ring or the resources inside that shocked him.
"This Silver definitely isn't alone. He likely belongs to a sect," Mike thought. There was no way a simple Nascent Soul could have this many resources.
He began going over the items, picking useful elixirs one by one. Mike didn't bother with raw plants to learn alchemy or pill-making. Those concepts were too complicated and time-consuming. Perhaps he would learn them after reaching the Martial God realm, but not now.
Despite having a strong soul and mind, this was a different world, after all. It would take centuries of research to familiarize himself with the specific rules here. It was best to rely on ready-made pills and elixirs to reach the Martial God realm before diving into alchemy and pill-making.
Mike's attainment levels were relatively low. He had never seriously trained his attainments despite living for millions of years. Had he had the master-level attainment in pill-making, he could have quickly familiarized himself with the laws of this world and started refining his pills. Unfortunately for him, his pill-making attainment was only at the common level.
After a few minutes, Mike picked out what he needed and listed the items one by one.
"Hmm, Your Excellency's choices are very wise. These are indeed excellent for martial masters below the Martial god realm. Altogether, these items cost about 32 billion RM. As a show of respect, I'll give you a discount of 2 billion. You only need to pay 30 billion!" Master Silver said with a smile.
Mike had already anticipated the absurd number. He said, "Does Lord Silver accept credit?" as he took out his card.
Red cardholders were guaranteed a 10,000,000 daily allowance and had substantial credit because their pay came directly from the queen.
"Of course! Let's make a deal—5,000,000 daily payments for twenty years. Do we have a deal?" Lord Silver asked.
Mike made a quick calculation, then nodded.
Silver quickly took out another storage ring with a much smaller diamond crystal on it and placed the martial arts resources Mike had bought inside. He then handed it to Mike.
"Here you go; this ring is also a gift from me," Silver said with a smile.
"Thank you, Lord Silver. Should we sign a contract?" Mike asked.
"Of course not! I trust Your Excellency," Silver replied.
Mike nodded and left the room after bidding his farewell.