Huo Min City, The Golden Fish Restaurant…
The Golden Fish Restaurant was known as the finest eating establishment in the city. Its reputation rested on its signature dishes: the high-quality Blaze Wine brewed in the Huo Min region, the roasted Golden Carp, and its celebrated Shark Fin Soup.
It was the peak of the midday meal, and the restaurant was bustling. Common citizens, wealthy merchants, and martial artists—each group clustered around their tables, talking quietly and enjoying their meals in a state of tranquil ease.
In the farthest corner of the dining room, a young man consumed a bowl of noodle soup with his head bowed, never looking up. A simple, small bamboo hat obscured his features. This young man was Little Monkey.
A short while later, three men entered the restaurant. They wore identical black, tight-fitting uniforms, and each carried a sword on his back. Gold embroidery on the left breast of their uniforms—a pine bough crossed with two golden swords—immediately identified them as members of the Golden Sword Sect from the Jinxi region's Pine Forest.
The Golden Sword Sect was a white-path faction, renowned for its virtue and high standing in the martial world. Although small in number, the sect commanded respect due to its advanced martial arts. They were a force that the black-path martial artists generally avoided provoking.
Upon entering, the three Golden Sword disciples were seen huddled together, whispering animatedly as if engaged in a low, intense argument. Moments later, the most handsome of the trio, who appeared to be their leader, strode purposefully toward the table where Little Monkey was seated.
Customers inside the restaurant immediately sensed the shift in atmosphere. They quickly settled their bills and rushed to leave the premises.
The good-looking man stopped directly in front of Little Monkey's table.
"Friend, we know you are the one who killed the Shaolin novice and fled. Therefore, please submit to capture peacefully. Justice prevails in the end, and you will be treated fairly. By now, the entire martial world, not just the Shaolin Temple, is hunting you. You cannot escape."
The man's words, befitting a high-ranking sect disciple, were polite, gentle, and conveyed a tone of sincere persuasion.
However, Little Monkey was in a state of bitter defiance against the world. He immediately felt that the man's gentle words were akin to offering honey to loosen his bowels—a sweet way to poison him.
"If I refuse to surrender, what exactly do you intend to do?" he shot back harshly.
In truth, the entire martial world accepted the Golden Sword Sect as a just faction, and the death at the Shaolin Temple was purely an act of self-defense. The matter could likely have been resolved through negotiation. Yet, Little Monkey's fundamental resentment toward the world led to another tragic incident.
"In that case, please forgive me, friend," the handsome man said, and with lightning speed, he thrust a single index finger at Little Monkey's left shoulder. It was the Golden Sword Sect's proprietary technique: Petals-Scattering Finger.
The Golden Sword Sect was not only famed for its sword arts but also for its difficult-to-avoid and intricate pressure-point sealing techniques.
Observe the attack: as the Golden Sword disciple's right index finger flew toward the pressure point on Little Monkey's left shoulder, his left hand simultaneously drove toward the boy's chest. Little Monkey's only available course of action was to leap backward.
When faced with sudden shock or danger, a human's instinct is to automatically evade or defend. Now, confronted by an immediate threat, a certain martial technique—one ingrained into Little Monkey's blood and bone—emerged automatically.
Little Monkey spun his left hand in a circular motion and thrust his right fist directly into the center of that circle. It was a movement driven purely by instinct.
Though he had trained the White Horse Fortress Master's notes sequentially, in this moment of danger, his natural instincts compelled him to use the technique best suited to neutralize the opponent's attack.
It was the tenth technique from the notes, named Reincarnation and the Chariot Wheel. The circular motion of the left hand deflected the opponent's attack, while the thrust of the right fist sent the enemy directly into the realm of the dead.
In reality, Little Monkey's internal energy had already reached the level of a high-tier martial artist.
This was the benefit of his ceaseless Quanzhen training. However, because he could not yet control the application of this energy, all his strikes were overwhelmingly powerful. If the opponent failed to evade, only death awaited them.
The Golden Sword disciple collapsed without even a sound, coughing up a torrent of blood before dying instantly.
"You are truly a merciless fiend! You will pay this debt one day, I promise you!" cried one of the remaining Golden Sword disciples.
"Your man attacked first. If you are unsatisfied, you are free to settle it as you wish," Little Monkey responded, his voice hard and uncompromising. His eyes were cold, seeming to hunger for blood. The shriek of death had sounded again.
The two remaining disciples, who appeared to be of a lower skill level than their deceased leader, chose not to engage. They turned and fled rapidly.
In his second battle, Little Monkey had committed his second murder. His victim was now a respected member of the martial world's prominent Golden Sword Sect. Due to this incident, Little Monkey's name would, in time, become infamous throughout the entire jianghu.
Zhongnan Mountain…
This was once the mountain that housed the famously brilliant Quanzhen Sect. But due to the incompetence of later generations, the Quanzhen Sect had vanished from the martial world many long years ago.
Zhongnan Mountain had since become a vast, desolate wilderness, rarely visited by man. Aside from the occasional lost hunter, the only beings resembling humans were the monkeys themselves.
The deep forest was teeming with wild animals and beasts. It was a region where the raw, untamed essence of nature could be fully experienced. If you wished to retreat from humanity, Zhongnan Mountain was the most suitable place.
Deep in the forest at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain, there was a beautiful, serene little waterfall where water cascaded softly. And beneath that waterfall was a human figure. To be precise, a human figure practicing martial arts, enduring the crushing force of the massive water column.
This young man was Little Monkey. After his bitter encounter with the Golden Sword Sect, he had grown disgusted with humanity. Wandering aimlessly, he had stumbled upon Zhongnan Mountain. His arrival here was no simple matter.
Along the way, he had been forced to kill two disciples of the Kunlun Sect and a branch leader of the Southern Ocean Sect. The entire martial world was now furiously hunting him. He urgently needed to vanish. This was why he had ventured alone into this deep, forbidding wilderness.
Little Monkey ran through the ten techniques from the martial notes in a continuous sequence.
The first technique, "Mountain-Splitting Fist":
He crouched slightly, keeping his left fist at his waist, and drove his right fist forward in a straight line. He then advanced his right foot slightly and drove his left fist forward.
The next technique was "Dragon from the Heavens":
An explosive, vicious strike where he would feign a low kick with his right foot and then leap in, using both his left and right palms in a devastating joint attack.
Gradually, Little Monkey's movements grew faster and more fluid. His body moved as if possessed by a blood-crazed fiend.
It is a human truth that the more one practices anything, the more proficient one becomes. These ten martial techniques had integrated themselves into Little Monkey's blood, flesh, and spirit; the man and the techniques had become one.
Because of this profound unity, he began to notice something critical: the finishing posture of one technique was not conducive to an immediate, smooth transition into the next.
The first technique ended with his right foot slightly extended and his left fist thrust out. To begin the second technique, he had to retract his right foot. In essence, the transitions between techniques were causing a delay, granting the enemy a window of opportunity.
Unconsciously, Little Monkey was striving to merge the techniques into a seamless flow.
Finally, he succeeded. He could now execute all ten techniques in a gentle, fluid sequence, like the flowing of river mist, without any abrupt interruptions. He had transformed the dead techniques into living arts.
All that Little Monkey possessed were those ten techniques. Yet, through countless repetitions, the martial arts had merged and dissolved into his spirit and soul, evolving into a spontaneous, refined composite.
He had inadvertently stumbled upon a profound path in martial arts—a path rarely discovered by one in a thousand practitioners.
In the transition between one technique and the next, he would automatically interpolate the body posture necessary to seamlessly link them.
Furthermore, with the constant, repetitive practice of only these ten moves, his techniques grew incredibly subtle. Within a single technique, he could now minutely adjust the ebb and flow of his power, the speed of various body parts, and the balance between feints and genuine, lethal strikes.
He could now deliver a strike as scalding and intense as lightning and thunder, yet temper it to be as soft and gentle as a passing breeze or a floating cloud.
The ten techniques of the White Horse Fortress Master had been fundamentally altered—in both essence and form—within the hands of Little Monkey.
With unyielding will, persistent effort, and diligence, nothing in this world is truly impossible. All that is required is the relentless effort of striving.