The Road to the City

The village was quiet as always, its rhythm unchanged. But Chen Yu's heart—restless.

The days blurred together in bruises and blood. His mornings began with striking stone, his nights ended in icy riverbeds. His body, once thin and fragile, now bore the weight of silent change. His skin had hardened. His flesh had thickened. He had stepped into the second stage of Body Refining—Flesh Tempering.

Yet the world around him felt… too small.

The villagers still gathered herbs, hauled water, and whispered about city taxes. But Chen Yu—he had begun walking a path none of them could see.

When Uncle Tian, an elder hunter, mentioned a trade run to the city, Chen Yu didn't hesitate.

He needed to see what lay beyond the forest. He needed to feel the weight of the world he was about to challenge.

The journey took three days on foot. Uncle Tian and the others talked as they moved, but Chen Yu stayed quiet, his eyes on the winding trails, his thoughts on the pulsing heat within his muscles.

He couldn't explain it to them. They wouldn't understand.

The True Martial Body was no mere technique. It was a path carved into his soul—one that demanded pain as tribute and transformation as reward.

And the city…

The city shattered his understanding of what was possible.

Walls like cliffs scraped the clouds. Massive gates loomed overhead, carved with warding runes and beast sigils. People flooded the streets—merchants hawking pills and talismans, warriors boasting of duels, beggars preaching broken cultivation methods.

Weapons glinted in the sunlight. Spirit herbs steamed in bronze cauldrons.

And Chen Yu—he drank it all in with silent awe.

While Uncle Tian haggled in the trade square, Chen Yu wandered, eyes wide.

He had never seen a real cultivator. But he could sense them—men and women whose very presence stirred the wind, whose eyes carried depth like deep pools.

Then he heard it.

"Sect recruitment is soon."

Chen Yu turned.

Two young men spoke in hushed voices by a talisman stall.

"Crimson Cloud Sect will be here," one said.

"Iron Wind Pavilion too. Even lesser sects are desperate for new blood."

Chen Yu drifted closer, pretending to examine clay pots as his ears absorbed every word.

Sects…

He had heard stories in the village—places where cultivators gathered, trained, fought, ascended. They were myth to most, but to Chen Yu, they were the only path forward.

"I'm going to try," one of the men said.

"Even as an outer disciple, it's a chance to leave this dirt and reach the heavens."

"You don't even have qi sense," the other scoffed.

"I'll figure it out."

"I have to."

They vanished into the crowd, but their words carved themselves into Chen Yu's chest like a brand.

Sect recruitment…

He didn't know when. He didn't know how.

But he knew one thing:

He would go.

Chen Yu clenched his fists. The power of the True Martial Body stirred faintly in his flesh.

Not qi. Not spirit. But something older, heavier—real.

He looked toward the sunlit streets stretching beyond the market.

"If I want answers…"

"If I want strength…"

"I must leave the village behind."