13: Martial Arts House

Martial Arts Home seems to be a nationwide forum, with its own sub-forums in various base cities. The page Zhu Deyuan logged into earlier was the Fengyang Forum, which mainly contained information about Fengyang County.

In reality, there was a threshold to enter Martial Arts Home: one had to become a Martial Apprentice, at least reaching the Elementary Xuan Practitioner Skin Realm, to register. Zhu Deyuan had only recently achieved this and registered, and he had only logged in once. It was during that single login that he contacted the merchant who provided him with the High Grade Blood Coagulation Pill, which ultimately led to his demise. Thinking of this, Long Yuan couldn't help but sigh with endless emotion again…

He carefully looked at the more popular topics on the Fengyang Forum and found that the murder case that occurred at Fengyang No. 1 High School today had already been posted there, and the discussions were very active!

"Strange, didn't Principal Lu say that the county had ordered a gag on this matter? How dare someone still spread this news here?" Long Yuan pondered as he browsed through the comments. He quickly understood why: the murder case happened in plain sight. Not only were there teachers and students, but also parents and staff. Even the assassin had mixed in. It was a chaotic situation. No matter how much the county tried to prohibit it, it was impossible to silence everyone. Someone would always speak out. Moreover, the county's fear was only that this matter might affect the mentality of Mortals, so the gag order mainly targeted Mortals. As for Xuan Practitioners, many of them had long been accustomed to life-and-death bloodshed. A small young boy being attacked and crippled? What did that even count as?

However, because this incident had significant news value, it quickly became a hot topic on the local forum. The person crippled was a Genius boy who had just been tested with S-grade Aptitude a few minutes prior, and he was also a member of the Ye Family, a prominent Family in Fengyang. This sparked many people's imaginations, and everyone began to make their own guesses. They believed the killer was either an enemy of the Ye Family, a Family with business conflicts with the Ye Family, or even someone sent by another high school competing with Fengyang No. 1 High School. Some even suggested that Ye He himself was courting death because he was vying for affection with someone, targeting Luo Ying, the Genius girl from the Luo Family, another prominent Family in Fengyang County. As a result, the other party might have planned long ago to teach him a painful lesson at this Awakening ceremony…

These people's conjectures all had some merit, with each analysis being well-reasoned and detailed, attracting many to agree.

"I didn't expect the Great Ming Empire to have keyboard warriors too, and a very strong internet troll army at that…"

Long Yuan was stunned. These people were using their own conjectures and imagination to solve cases without any reliable evidence. Did they really think that the Great Ming Empire's investigators were all incompetent?

From what he had just searched, the Great Ming Empire, like the ancient Great Ming of Huaxia, had the Embroidered Uniform Guard, as well as secret police agencies like the Eastern Depot, Western Depot, and Internal Affairs Factory to monitor Mortals. It also had a special agency like the Jianxuan Envoy Department to oversee all Martial Arts matters nationwide. It could be said to be a blatant act of monitoring Xuan Practitioners.

Although Fengyang County was just a small third-tier base city, Long Yuan believed that with the Great Ming Empire's “glorious” tradition of supervision, even without the involvement of high-level supervisory agencies from the imperial court, the local investigators’ competence was somewhat guaranteed. The reason they couldn't solve the case in time was simply because the incident happened too suddenly, and too few clues were left at the scene, making it impossible for them to follow the trail and solve the case.

But after Lu Shijie received the crucial clue he provided, Long Yuan believed the case would be solved soon. If it still wasn't solved, Long Yuan would have reason to give a thumbs down to the investigators in Fengyang County!

Even firing all of them would be fine!

"Hmm? Someone on the forum actually mentioned me?!" Long Yuan's eyes lit up as he saw a post discussing the discovery of a special seedling with Mental Energy Aptitude at Fengyang No. 1 High School.

Clicking it open, he found that there were indeed many people chatting there, with most expressing surprise and envy. The majority stated that Fengyang County had seemingly never produced a special seedling with Mental Energy Aptitude in its history, and the emergence of one now was truly exciting!

Some Martial Arts experts also provided Popular Science (scientific explanations) on what Mental Energy Aptitude was, and its content was similar to what Sun Donghao, the homeroom teacher of Elementary Class 4, had said earlier. A Martial Arts expert mentioned that the main direction for Mental Energy development in the future was Mind Power Master, and Mind Power Master's combat power was extremely terrifying because they could kill enemies from a distance, using their powerful Mental Energy to remotely control weapons for attacks, making them impossible to guard against!

If a Mind Power Master appeared on the battlefield, it would be a huge deterrent to the enemy, because no one wanted to be fighting someone else only to be ambushed by a Flying Dagger or Flying Sword flying from who knows where!

The speed of Flying Daggers or Flying Swords was extremely fast, and in the rapidly changing environment of a battlefield, their lethality would be amplified rapidly. Therefore, if one knew that the opponent had a Mind Power Master, one's side would generally prepare in advance, striving to eliminate the opponent's Mind Power Master first, otherwise the consequences would be unimaginable…

Upon seeing the content of this Popular Science (scientific explanation), Long Yuan was shocked, but also inwardly thought, "This is not good!"

Because the more powerful a Mind Power Master was, the more dangerous his situation became. That Fusang People person already knew that Fengyang County had produced a special seedling who would become a future Mind Power Master, so how could they not try to eliminate him first?

The biggest hope now was to capture that Fusang People person before he could spread the news, so that he might have a longer period of safety. However, Long Yuan felt that such a thought was too naive. After all, it was highly probable that the Fusang People person did not come to Fengyang County to lurk alone, so the news should have already been spread.

Moreover, the appearance of Fusang People people in this coastal area made Long Yuan recall the history of ancient Great Ming of Huaxia suppressing “Wokou” (Japanese pirates) along the southeastern coast. Could the same thing be happening in this Otherworld (another world) Great Ming Empire?

If the truth was indeed so, then it might not just be him facing the Fusang People people, but the entire Fengyang County would have to guard against their attacks!

Long Yuan's mind was slightly agitated. He browsed through other people's comments and suddenly his eyes lit up. He noticed that a few people were singing a different tune, saying that although Fengyang No. 1 High School's Mental Energy seedling had a good direction, his overall Aptitude value was too low, only a mere F-grade. Such Aptitude was not much better than a Mortal. No matter how many resources were poured into him, it would be impossible to raise him to a very high level, so his future potential would definitely be very low, making it impossible to reach the terrifying level of slaughtering all sides on the battlefield as mentioned by that Martial Arts expert.

Seeing these people's comments, Long Yuan was not angry but happy. If the situation was as they described, then he wouldn't have to worry too much. Moreover, he felt that what these people said made perfect sense. An F-grade Aptitude, under normal circumstances, would make it very difficult to even embark on the Dao of Martial Arts. At most, he would take a small position in the Mortal district in the future. To cultivate someone with such a weak Aptitude to the point of being able to kill powerful enemies on the battlefield, the resources required would be immense. Would the Great Ming Empire really make such a losing deal?

With such resources, wouldn't cultivating a few more S-grade Genius be even better?

"That's probably how it is. For the Great Ming Empire to develop Martial Arts, resources are the biggest constraint. No one would be so brainless as to invest resources in a good-for-nothing like me, right…"

……