Few things in this world could stir the heart of Abbot Huiwen. As a martial artist at the peak of the Xiantian Realm, his emotions were as placid as a deep mountain lake. The martial arts of the Buddha Gate were designed to calm the mind and tame one’s qi. After nearly eighty years steeped in the Buddha’s teachings, while he might not be so stoic as to not bat an eye at Mount Tai collapsing before him, he came close. But in this moment, a storm of shock and amazement raged within him. “Is that the Arhat Fist? No, this isn’t the Arhat Fist!” Abbot Huiwen’s gaze was fixed on the young novice practicing the fist technique. The hundreds of adult monks executing the Arhat Fist were a tempest of explosive energy, their movements bursting with vitality. The young novice, by contrast, created no disturbance at all. Yet in Huiwen’s eyes, the boy’s form was like an antelope hanging by its horns—a work of sublime, untraceable art. A natural masterpiece. Every punch, every kick the young novice executed carried an inexplicable depth. “How is this possible?!” “How can a mere child grasp such a profound technique?” Huiwen could scarcely believe his eyes. Any martial art, even those of the Buddha Gate, required immense time and comprehension to master. The Arhat Fist was not an overly complex art, but an ordinary person would still need six or seven years of arduous training to achieve proficiency. And yet, the fist technique this young novice practiced clearly surpassed the Arhat Fist by several orders of magnitude. And he had already mastered it to perfection. It was utterly inconceivable. What staggered Huiwen most was that he had never seen this fist technique before. It bore traces of the Arhat Fist, yet it was infinitely more sophisticated, approaching the profoundness of the seventy-two supreme skills of the Great Chan Temple itself. For Huiwen, a man who had lived for nearly a century, to encounter a superior martial art of the Buddha Gate that he had never even heard of was unthinkable. The other novices soon noticed where Huiwen was looking. One by one, they paled and stood frozen in place. Only Wei Boda remained lost in his practice of the newly comprehended ‘Great Arhat Buddha Fist’. At that moment, Huiwen paid the transgressive novices no mind. He waved a hand, signaling for them all to leave, while his own eyes remained locked on Wei Boda’s solitary practice. “Great Arhat Buddha Fist!” As Wei Boda moved through the forms of this martial technique he had just realized, a tingling sensation radiated through his limbs and bones. It was as soothing as soaking in a hot spring. He lost all track of time, but at some point, a strand of Qi silently condensed within the Dantian below his abdomen. “Could this be Inner Qi?” Wei Boda wondered to himself. “The Xiantian Qi that only Xiantian Realm martial artists can wield?” Being only three or four years old, his knowledge of the world was limited. He knew only that Xiantian Inner Qi was a power exclusive to the great experts of the Martial Dao. The moment the Inner Qi formed, a wave of ravenous hunger washed over him. He instinctively stopped his practice, sensing that to continue might just starve him to death. When Wei Boda finally looked around, he found that the hundreds of martial monks and the dozen or so novices had all vanished. In their place stood seven elderly monks. The old monk in the center, distinguished by his long eyebrows, had a piercing gaze that made Wei Boda’s scalp tingle. Among the seven, Wei Boda recognized three. They were the heads of the Martial Monk Institute and the Discipline Academy, as well as the current abbot of the Great Chan Temple. He did not recognize the other four, but seeing them stand beside the abbot and the institute heads, their status was clearly just as high. Venerable Kongjian was especially prominent; even the abbot stood a respectful half-step behind him. The current abbot of the Great Chan Temple, Huiwen, offered a gentle smile. “Where did you learn the boxing technique you were just practicing?” he asked. After dismissing the other novices, Abbot Huiwen had immediately summoned the heads of the other institutes. These true Dashi of the Great Chan Temple understood the gravity of the situation at once, dropping whatever they were doing to rush over. Their judgment was unanimous. The fist technique Wei Boda demonstrated possessed a profound intent, easily rivaling any of the known superior martial arts. Moreover, this technique was a fist style of the Buddha Gate that none of them had ever heard of. If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they would never have believed that a superior Buddhist martial art existed in this world that was unknown to them. “Where I learned it from…” Hearing the question, Wei Boda breathed an internal sigh of relief. Performing the ‘Great Arhat Buddha Fist’ had been a calculated risk, a way to showcase his talent. He had already understood that to maximize the effects of his Ni Tian Wuxing, he needed to be exposed to the world’s most profound martial arts. Observing sparrows and earthworms had allowed him to comprehend ordinary techniques like the ‘Divine Sparrow Sky-Crossing Skill’ and the ‘Earth Dragon Rolling Skill.’ But watching the martial monks practice the Arhat Fist had allowed him to comprehend a superior martial art, the ‘Great Arhat Buddha Fist,’ in a single leap. If he could observe an actual superior martial art, what kind of technique might he comprehend then? Though Wei Boda didn’t fully grasp the status of superior martial arts, he knew that any art that allowed him to form Xiantian Qi in a single step was far from simple. To gain access to the superior arts of the Great Chan Temple—or even more profound techniques—his current status as a mere novice would never be enough. “Replying to the abbot,” Wei Boda began, “I saw the elder brothers practicing their forms and wanted to try, too. As I practiced, I just… came to understand this technique. I’m not sure if I was supposed to…” He let a hint of trepidation creep into his voice. He wasn’t lying. In the Star River Human Federation, such a candid admission would have earned him a laboratory and a team of researchers studying his every move. But in this world, a place reminiscent of the martial dynasties of old, and especially within the sanctified walls of the Great Chan Temple, such extraordinary talent would not be seen as an anomaly to be dissected. It would be seen as a miracle: the reincarnation of a true Buddha, a living holy child. “To watch the martial monks practice the Arhat Fist and then comprehend a superior martial art that far surpasses it…” The abbot of the Great Chan Temple and the other institute heads fell silent. Venerable Kongjian, whose sharp eyes had been scrutinizing Wei Boda, also remained quiet. Had anyone else made such a claim, they would have dismissed it as nonsense. Did he think superior martial arts were as common as cabbages in the market? Most of the world’s superior arts were the crowning achievement of a lifetime of painstaking effort by experts of the Grand Master Realm. The Great Chan Temple stood as a sacred ground of the Buddha Gate, one of the Great Martial Sects, largely because its seventy-two unique skills allowed it to continuously cultivate experts of the Xiantian Realm. Those seventy-two skills were precisely seventy-two superior martial arts. And now a child of three or four was claiming to have comprehended a new one just by watching others? Yet, the more they considered it, the more bizarrely plausible Wei Boda’s story seemed. First, the Great Arhat Buddha Fist was undeniably a superior martial art of the Buddha Gate. While other Buddhist sects existed, the Great Chan Temple was unquestionably the foremost authority. There might be superior Buddhist arts beyond their seventy-two skills, but the abbot and institute heads would surely have heard of them. The technique Wei Boda practiced, however, was entirely new to them all. Second, it was plain to see that the Great Arhat Buddha Fist was deeply connected to the Arhat Fist. This lent credence to Wei Boda’s claim that he comprehended it by observing the more basic form. A silent, knowing look passed between the abbot of the Great Chan Temple and the other heads. A single, astonishing thought surfaced in each of their minds. Could it be that among the newest disciples of the Great Chan Temple, they had just discovered a prodigy of the Martial Dao, the likes of which appeared only once in a thousand years?

Chapter 4: A Natural Masterpiece