Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Meng Chao read the messages, but did not reply.
He was thinking about how he should use the internet to contact more of the people in the Yan family and more of the powerful fighters in the future.
He was in the era of information explosion. There were plenty of things online that declared themselves to be the secret techniques of martial arts, ultimate techniques, and peerless divine arts.
Some of the secret techniques contained inborn weaknesses, and they were test versions that contained all sorts of flaws.
Some of the secret techniques were very difficult to practice, and they could easily result in people’s energy deviating.
Some of the secret techniques had great side effects. They were a Fist of Seven Injuries, which would deal heavy damage to both the enemies and the user itself.
Most of the normal martial arts lovers with normal brains suspected every brand new martial art when they saw it online. They smiled and forgot about it.
If it were not for the fact that they were at the end of their ropes, no one would be willing to be a labrat.
Trying to contribute through creating a post was an incredibly inefficient method. No matter how strong the force execution formula was or how great the calculations for damage output were, they would be drowned out by the surging flow of information online.
But what if he got to know an online celebrity like Yan Feirou who had a great background and the powerful people behind her so that they could fan the flames?
Then, he would need to solve two problems.
First, Meng Chao could not explain how he came about the future martial art and other high-end techniques.
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Second, he did not understand them fully himself. He was purely relying on remaining enigmatic to bluff his way through. He could pretend to be mysterious and awesome, so the people would just use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.
But if they met up, everyone would start respectfully asking him to explain the scientific logic behind this and that formula. How would he have to answer them?
‘It’s better if I create the image of a mysterious, inscrutable, and peerless martial artist. I’ll just push all the responsibility to this mysterious elite, and it’ll make sense. My words don’t carry weight, and no one will believe many of the things I say anyway.
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“Even if I warn others that the Monster War is about to become more dangerous, and the Other World is actually very big and dangerous, who would listen to me? But if there’s a mysterious elite around, I’ll allow the Yan family and other powerful people admire him first before I use him to send warnings. Then, the things I say will be much more convincing.’
After thinking about this, Meng Chao returned to his room and locked his door. He turned off the private messages that Yan Feirou kept sending him and went to the deep web.
Meng Yishan and Bai Suxin looked at each other in the living room.
“Our son locked his door again.” The mother was worried.
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“Ah, such is youth.” The father sighed.
After Dragon City transmigrated, they did not have communication satellites anymore since connection to them was cut off, and the Internet broke down for many years.
Then, after the zombie crisis, things gradually calmed down, and the scientists made major breakthroughs in terms of biochemical technology and spirit energy, which allowed them to rebuild the Internet.
The new Internet made use of a different concept compared to the one on Earth. It was said that it used the concept of crystalized chips made from crystals and made large use of biochemical brains, which were imitations of monster brains. This increased the distance of the transfer of information in an environment filled with powerful spirit magnetic fields and allowed to resist interference.
The weakness of the new technology was that it made it very difficult to lockdown on terminal addresses. Hence, the difficulty in monitoring and shutting down websites was one hundred times harder than it was on Earth. The Internet was filled with places that the survival committee and Supernatural Tower could not control.
When more than one hundred of such lawless places were connected together, the deep web was born.
This was the playground of mad scientists and cultivation maniacs. Many monster organ smugglers and even criminals showed up there as well. They tossed around all sorts of whimsical creations and made all sorts of shady, bloody deals. Together, they created an information forest filled with savagery.
With familiar motions, Meng Chao logged into a comprehensive forum that he often went to in the deep web.
A familiar talking style popped up before him.
[I recently noticed a nest of Bloody Moon Wolf pups. Are there any superhuman above two stars who would dare to form a party to snatch those pups before the military and major establishments?]
[For those who seek truthful verifications, a professional scientific martial arts research team has recently developed the Thirteen Secret Killing Moves with Thunder Rapier. It’s incredibly powerful and has absolutely no side effects whatsoever. It’s free for all to learn, and those who learn it will definitely master it. We’ll even give you a compensation of five thousand for enteral nutrition should anything happen to you.]
And in very small fonts were written: [But we won’t care if you end up disabled. You’ll have to bear the consequences yourself.]
[Have you ever been in conflict with superhumans? Did you have your prey snatched in the fog by your enemies? Do you want to have your problems solved forever? We can talk about this in detail through private messages…]
These were not the things Meng Chao was looking for.
He clicked on the section for life science and human anatomy research. The people here spoke normally… Well, they were not really that normal, but still.
‘What sort of image should I come up with?’
Meng Chao shut his eyes and came up with the image of countless mad scientists and cultivation maniacs.
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Since he called himself Old Fire Relayer, he should be someone with messy white hair, disagreeable, temperamental, flaunt his seniority, but be really strong.
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Meng Chao nodded. He got out the all new email that he had prepared in the morning and which was absolutely clean.
To learn the deviant ways on the Internet, he had once done his homework regarding the deep web. He knew how he should avoid being monitored and how he should create a brand new fictitious identity.
He used the email to create a new account. Then, he started going to other people’s posts to create his presence.
Old Fire Relayer: Junior, the advanced Seven Spin of your One Hundred Saber Technique is pretty good, but there are three oversights, four flaws, and five fatal weaknesses. Today, I just killed a Grade Five superbeast called Lightning Fire, and I feel good, so I’ll point out one of the oversights for free!
Old Fire Relayer: Heh. This gun technique is pure rubbish. Don’t misunderstand me, boy. I’m not targeting you. I’m saying that the current seventeen mainstream shooting schools in the market are all trash!
Old Fire Relayer: Over the past twenty to thirty years, I seldom saw juniors like you who dare to quarrel against me. How reckless! You should be thankful that I have been rehabilitating over the past ten years, and my killing intent has diminished greatly, or else, you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow’s sun!
Meng Chao uploaded around eight of such posts, which caused the netizens to yell at him, and nodded to himself. He believed that this would be enough.
Then, with Old Fire Relayer’s name, he posted an academic investigation post regarding Ripple Force. It was not as detailed as the one he messaged Yan Feirou, but he did reveal that he had continuously accumulated experience and modified it during his fights in the depths of the fog. He needed to test it further, and he was currently trying to gather test subjects.
‘Now, I can push all the problems I face next on this elusive Old Fire Relayer.’
Meng Chao smiled faintly. He did not care about how the countless netizens cursed him in all the ways possible under his post and just logged off.
Running away after pretending to be awesome felt good.
The strange flame continued flashing at the corner of his eye, and messages continued jumping out. His contribution points started rising at lightning speed. Soon, it increased to more than nine hundred points.
‘I might be able to get three thousand points over the night!’ Meng Chao thought happily.
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He had not slept for two nights, and he was extremely exhausted. He fell into deep sleep right away and dreamt that many aspects of the future changed.
It was three o’clock at night.
Swallow Building was the headquarters of the Yan family, and it was still bright.
Yan Feirou and more than ten of the third generation Yan Family Ripple Force disciples had hurried over.
Even though it was late at night, there were no traces of fatigue on their faces. Their eyes were filled with excitement, which made them turn red. There was delight in their smiles, and they could not hide it.
Hiss…
The door to a cultivation room opened before them. A middle-aged man with a body as built as a mountain, an aggressive presence, and a powerful fighting spirit gushing out of his pores came out with a dark look on his face.
He was the leader of the second generation of people who had learned the Yan Family Ripple Force—Monster Hunter Yan Zhennan.
“Sir!”
“Uncle Nan!”
“Dad!”
The people from the third generation rushed over to greet him, and Yan Feirou said eagerly, “You’ve been practicing the Demonically Modified Ripple Force for three hours. Was it great?”
Yan Zhennan stared at his daughter for half a day before he said coldly, “Of course it’s good, or else, how could it have possibly deceived the mighty Ripple Force Princess?”
When he said these words, the people were stunned.
Yan Feirou was in shock. “Deceive me? Dad, what do you mean by that? Was it fake?”
“It wasn’t fake, but it is very extreme and mad!”
Yan Zhennan’s facial muscles trembled. His heart seemed to be beating in fear. He gritted his teeth and said, “As the saying goes, those who are ahead of the generation by half a step are genii, but those who are ahead of the generation by a whole step are lunatics. This Demonically Modified Ripple Force is at least three huge steps ahead of our era. It’s basically madness!”
Many of the third generation was stunned by Yan Zhennan’s aura, and they did not dare say a single word even after a long time had passed.
Only Yan Feirou could still muster her courage. “Dad, this Demonically Modified Ripple Force is very powerful on the surface and several of its parameters surpass our limits. Why did you say that it’s madness?”
Yan Zhennan sighed. “Feirou and all of you are still young. True, the figures on paper for this technique are very beautiful, and some of the parameters have reached the peak, but what’s the price?
“To be able to push the human body to the limits when it comes to fighting continuously, it completely reformed the current breathing technique. The consumption rate of oxygen went up by twenty percent.
“And to be able to inhale large amounts of oxygen within a short amount of time so that our blood can swiftly circulate to all of our muscle fibers, it requires the practitioners to have incredibly well-developed lungs and active red blood cells.
“If you want even stronger lungs and higher quality blood, you need to use up a lot of cultivation resources and use a brand new stance to build your basics. In fact, the entire practice system will have to be modified. This is what you call affecting the entire system if you try to change one aspect of it.
“Now, he changed a simple basic force execution method that is easy to learn into an ultimate technique that is powerful but very difficult to train!”
The group looked at each other at a loss. An ultimate technique? That was too much, right?
Yan Zhennan spoke in a dark voice. “Did you know that the more I practiced this Demonically Modified Ripple Force, the more terrifying I found it? Whoever created this technique is either a genius or a lunatic. He might even be a complete demon.
“This technique doesn’t seem to have been created for this era… but for an even more brutal era. It’s for martial artists who are ten times as strong as we are so that they can fight against monsters who are ten times more brutal than the monsters right now!”
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