"Grandpa! He has woken up?" Suddenly a shout came from the wooden room, making the bandaged man turn to look to his left.
At this point, other than shock, he was excited that he could move.
The man was Tian Chen, and he had indeed survived the life and death experience. But even so, his body was clearly not in a good shape. The damage he had sustained from the eruption was already shocking.
Looking at the young girl shouting in excitement as she danced around the door, he was confused.
But then seemed to realize something, "Someone has saved me? How is that possible? I was clearly burried in the mountain when it started to collapse!"
He was aware of his situation clearly.
It was impossible for him to have survived to this point, and yet he had. He was obviously grateful for it, but wondered where this place was.
But he didn't say anything, after all he could barely make sound, clearly he was seriously injured.
The sound of footsteps from outside suddenly could be heard. When he turned his head over, he saw an old man, even though most of his hair had turned grey, he was mostly still energetic in his walking.
"Grandpa! He has woken up!" The little girl kept pointing at Tian Chen, and seeing his turn his head her way, she hid behind her grandfather. Her head sneaking glances at the young man masked in medical paste.
"Good girl!" He rubbed the little girls head before walking before Tian Chen.
The little girl was elated to hear praise and even dimples appeared as she smilled.
She didn't forget to hide behind the old man. Who appeared before Tian Chen.
"My granddaughter, Qin Mei is very shy when facing strangers!" He spoke without even waiting for Tian Chen to reply, he moved his hands towards his chest.
He then proceeded to apply pressure on several parts of his body, before nodding slightly.
He then appeared slightly relieved, "I'm relieved! At least nothing has stopped functioning yet!"
But Tian Chen was almost about to scream. Listening to the old man's words, he was thinking, "At least you are relieved, but I have started to doubt if you are a good person!"
The pressure was making the pain he had almost neglected became intensified and his reaction was viewed as a good sign.
But he couldn't act out after all the old man might have saved his life.
"You are lucky that my son picked you up on his way hunting. But that fire really got you good. If you where not lucky, and it just burned your skin, even miracles might not save you." The old man added.
But the information he had just provided, gave Tian Chen some idea of what was going on.
"I was picked in a river somewhere, not the mountain! Then how did I get there?" He was very uneasy, not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Perhaps the snake brought him to this place to observe his meal regaining some hope before crushing it again. But either way, he was not going to focus on this issue.
"This is a world of gods and Immortals! In a way, one can rise step by step as long as they have Bloodline, spiritual roots or qualifications to walk a certain path."
He looked at the old man walking away with Qin Mei and thought."My original path has already been cut off, and the spiritual roots is a dead end. What it leaves me with is martial arts. But this path, I'm afraid is being spread by those that are keeping humans as livestock to fatten them."
He had no choice in this matter and the path of martial arts was his first contact with the supernatural.
All other paths had been cut off, as such he was forced to take this path.
"If I don't do anything, my ending is already going to be tragic anyway." He thought about it with a distressed look in his eyes.
"Since I have come to this world, some of the things I read in those fictional novels back in previous life might not be all useless." He wasn't stupidly thinking that he could regain the bloodline of the god clan.
The bloodline was fused with the soul, and it was stripped along with it. He even had a feeling the resentment inside him wouldn't allow the bloodline to resurface again.
Right! Resentment! He could feel the hatred inside his bones, when he thought about the Ancient Wu God clan.
"In this world one thing is for certain, without support things would not end well for me. It would be a delusion to want support from the stronger factions. How could they allow an ant to sit on the same table as them. Even those humans calling themselves immortals due to their spiritual roots would be the first to cut me off." As he sat in the place he was, his mind was racing.
"I need my own faction. With the power to grow and catch up with my enemies. I can't gather information on my own, and resources as well. Since that is the case, let's focus on humans without spiritual roots that are the weakest without anything to lose. But doing this will turn me into a enemy of everyone else." He thought about this and felt helpless.
"I don't need to openly establish a faction, rather it can be done secretly until I have the ability to stand on the Outer Reaches!" He thought about this with determination.
"But before that, I need to have the ability and means to gather others and even train them." He calmed down and pushed the delusions to the side for a moment.
Having dreams was a good thing, but he had to be able to accomplish something first.
"Let's see if I can recover then seek some martial arts technique to practice. If I can't even practice it would be like creating castles out of bubbles." He closed his eyes and hid his ambitions deeply.
At the moment, he was unqualified to be arrogant and overconfident. He had to heal first.
Daily the old man would show up and put on medical paste on his wounds, and before he knew it, close to a year had passed.
It was eight months since he came to this village, and finally the bandages on his body where being removed.
He had healed up pretty decently as he could already move around three months ago, but the old man insisted he rest for an entire month. Just like he had suspected, a martial arts stele was present in the village.
A few individuals practiced it, and most of them vanished, clearly they where being hunted or chose to go into hiding.
He wasn't able to practice because he followed the old man's instructions. But after that bandages where removed, he planed to get immersed in the practice. That was not all, as early as eight months ago, he discovered a Legacy of the demon race. The Primodial Demonic Codex. The technique was almost impossible for him to practice, but he had other ideas when he checked out the martial arts stelles located in the village.
The Primodial Demonic Codex was not a specific technique, but rather insights into the Dao of power, once practiced by a strong demon. From the foundation all the way to higher levels, and his hope was in this codex.
As long as he could grasp the martial arts movements he would start thinking of possible ways to integrate and possibly even create some path to follow the route of power.
Demons where born strong, and thus Codex only explains to them how to harness that power and manipulate it in each stage, how could he not see the importance of this legacy.
He might fumble a bit in the lower levels, but if he was able to rise, he was sure it could become a massive asset.
It was even possible to come up with a technique that humans could practice that would make them stronger than current martial arts.
He didn't think that the martial arts being spread came out if nowhere.
Someone created it, or it was taken and simplified from some other path.
But his thoughts were hidden, he just looked at the young girl about five or six standing aside with anticipation.
He didn't know what this kid that always calls him uncle Chen was nervous than him.
What he didn't know was that the old man had told her Tian Chen's body might have serious scars and might be scary to look at.
He was not thinking about the same thing at all. With his understanding of things about this world, the most concerning thing at the moment was his survival value than attractiveness value.
When it came to luck, he concluded it was not bad, but that was it. He didn't think he could survive another dangerous events like he had.
He was not going to act stupidly, neither would be let others stand on his head.
After all enduring only lets others become empowered to bully you. The same was true even in this village.
He had already learned a lot for the past three months walking around.
Every decade, humans sacrifices had to be offered and those villages that managed to produce a group of martial artists would be spared.
It seemed that martial artists were almost worshiped and a lof of people wanted to take this path, but he was not easy.
Only after listening to talk around the village did he learn the truth, practicing martial arts was not difficult, it was just too painful.
The kind if pain only one out of a thousand would be willing to withstand.
The question was, where did he really stand?