I Am Your Natural Enemy

The world outside was getting more and more chaotic. With the spiritual energy resurgence picking up speed, all kinds of things were waking up, especially legendary stuff coming back—Wen Yan was really starting to feel the pressure.

He set a goal for himself now: practice martial arts at least eight hours a day. No less.

He already started out later than everyone else. If he slacked on training any more, he might not be able to keep up with everyone else—or even with the times.

Even though he knew martial training couldn't fix everything, having enough hard power meant he could handle most things when push came to shove.

After all, when your own power is strong enough, you basically get to make the rules.

If martial arts were useless, why would so many people bother with it?

To reach the very top in martial arts takes talent, but if you're just aiming for the middle tier, then honestly, you don't need crazy good talent. Just grit, hard work, guidance, and—yep—plenty of money.

Besides talent, all those other boosts are at least not set in stone.

Wen Yan was willing to drop cash, grind like a lunatic, and with the Scorching Sun Blessing, his progress was off the charts—estimated to catch up with ten years of other people's progress in just one year.

Wanting to catch up to Qin Kun's progress, though? That'd probably take over two years.

At first, Wen Yan thought that pace was already way fast, but after the stuff that happened these past two months, he started feeling maybe he'd been a little too optimistic.

For decades, the spiritual energy resurgence was crawling at a snail's pace, barely any qualitative change for years and years.

Back then, at least among humans, there basically weren't any truly "not human" powerhouses.

Ten years ago, the process suddenly sped up a bit.

That's when guys like Qin Kun, who'd hit the non-human level of martial arts, started popping up.

The Mount Mao Sect Master mastered the Lightning Thunder Punch.

The Old Celestial Master's fame exploded around then too—waving his hand, summoning heavenly thunder.

According to Third Great-uncle Master, it was also around that time when his flying sword started developing special spirituality.

And actually, before that, the great zombies of Fuyu Mountain had also all fallen into deep slumber in the Zombie Cave.

Back then, even water gods in the water system could get fished out by some fisherman by accident, brought home, and cooked for soup.

There weren't any world bosses showing up either. Or, if there were, nobody knew about it.

And now, this year, Wen Yan felt like a new decade had kicked off.

The speed increase was even more obvious than during the last ten years.

If he didn't hurry up and push harder, he might really get left behind by this wave of spiritual energy resurgence.

It wasn't just Wen Yan grinding at the Martial Path—after nightfall, when Pei Tugou finished his day's work and fell asleep, his other self would come out and quietly hone his skills too. Everyone was putting in the work.

A lot of people had also noticed that as the spiritual energy surged, the ceiling was getting higher and breakthroughs became easier than before.

Under the West River riverbed, after dark, whole schools of fish and aquatic creatures would start digging up the buried King Guilong Temple again.

King Guilong had pretty much given up hope by now—he knew it was nearly impossible to rebuild the Dragon King Temple on the shore, and he just couldn't keep waiting.

All he could do was dig up the old Dragon King Temple—at least have a place to stand and manifest his golden body back in the real world.

The digging at Stone Mountain had completely stopped too. They'd originally planned to excavate the collapsed passage to the Nether Soul Realm, but now that they'd discovered it was tied to the Mountain Lord, they wisely backed off.

Cai Qidong personally got in touch with contacts up north, asking his colleagues to help look up any records on the Mountain Lord.

This Stone Mountain showing up in Nanwu County had to mean something. First step: figure out what really happened a few hundred years ago.

Judging by the timeline, it was right around the days when Old Zhu's Family was in charge of the world. If there weren't any records, they'd have to go ask the ghosts from that era.

On the bright side, quite a few of those ghosts who might know the story from back then had already awakened.

On the downside, not a single one of those ghosts was from Nanwu County.

After all, Nanwu County—sure, people say it used to have a capital, but honestly, those in the know don't even bring it up. They rarely mention it themselves either.

Otherwise, anytime it comes up—Guanzhong County folks start with "Brother Zheng," and if you start with "Nanyue Country" for Nanwu County, it's just awkward as hell.

Especially now, when dead people might come back as ghosts. Imagine if someone says, "Oh, I remember now, my little bro's little bro once beat you up." If you didn't mention it, I wouldn't even remember who you are.

So now Cai Qidong could only suck it up, ask for help, and still nothing might come of it.

He'd pissed off plenty of people before—couldn't always go running to headquarters for everything. Weighing it all up, he figured being turned into Wen Yan's "ghostly bell ringtone" was better than having his old rival stomp his face and shade him with sarcasm.

So, he called Wen Yan again.

"Xiao Wen..." Cai Qidong's voice was warm and friendly.

Wen Yan immediately held his phone away—goosebumps all over.

"Minister, if you have something you need me for, please just spit it out."

"Here's the thing. I need you to go to Guanzhong County and help gather some information."

Cai Qidong explained the situation, and Wen Yan was a bit confused.

"Why not just ask the Guanzhong County's Scorching Sun Department directly?"

"Ahem, well, the Nanwu County Scorching Sun Department and Guanzhong County's Scorching Sun Department—our relationship's kinda rocky. You know that, right?"

Wen Yan thought for a moment—yeah, he'd heard some things about that. Plus, last time he was in the warehouse, he noticed the Nanwu County Scorching Sun Department had a special Everbright Lamp set up, with the whole story written out, just to mock the Guanzhong County's Scorching Sun Department.