Chapter 2: Growth (Part 1)
September 1st, Year 76,211,343 of the Continent Calendar, was the day Yang Tong started school.
Luoyu County was not a particularly large county, but it spanned a thousand miles and had a population of three million. It was divided into outer, middle, and inner districts.
The inner district was where the population was concentrated; eighty percent of the three million people lived there. The inner district was further divided into eight counties, each with its own school. The middle district was where the poor lived, and the outer district consisted of farmland for crops.
Why open farmland within the county? Because outside the county were areas overrun by savage beasts. Without city walls to protect the fields, they would only be destroyed by the savage beasts. Therefore, Fengxuan Continent was still a high-martial arts world, where everyone practiced martial arts to strengthen their bodies.
Before dawn, Yang Tong was woken up by his father. He had to hold a horse stance for half an hour first. Since Yang Tong was five years old, his father had demanded he hold the horse stance every morning to build a solid foundation.
Around 8:30, his father took Yang Tong out. Parked outside the door was a vehicle that looked like a motorcycle. Unlike the motorcycles on Earth, this vehicle had no wheels, only two grindstone-like air discs. Its body was reinforced with thick armor, and there were six weapon racks on both sides of the vehicle.
If such a vehicle were on Earth, ordinary civilians wouldn't dare to ride it on the street. This was clearly an armed motorcycle, not a civilian vehicle. Yang Tong understood that the value of this vehicle was equivalent to the value of their house. This vehicle was called a disc motorcycle. It was a product of the special civilization and technology of Fengxuan Continent.
The human civilization technology of Fengxuan Continent was called spirit tool civilization. In Yang Tong's understanding, it was a special form of civilization that was half-cultivation and half-mechanical. The powerful tools developed by humans using various crystal stones from the world as power sources were called spirit tools. They were numerous and varied, ranging from everyday household items to powerful combat weapons.
There were nine grades of spirit tools, and this disc armed motorcycle at home was a first-grade superior spirit tool. It could hover up to three meters and reach a top speed of 500 kilometers per hour. Under normal circumstances, it hovered half a meter high, with an average speed controlled at about 60 kilometers per hour. The crystal stone energy consumption of this vehicle was basically zero. This was the advantage of crystal stones. Before they were depleted, they could automatically absorb the energy of the world to recharge. The higher the grade of the crystal stones, the faster the recovery speed, and naturally, the higher the value. Most importantly, this type of energy power source was pollution-free.
Yang Tong was very interested in this special technology, so he was naturally looking forward to going to school.
The Southeast Academy combined elementary and intermediate education. Children enrolled at six years old. There were six elementary levels and four intermediate levels, requiring ten years to complete intermediate schooling. The school was very large, with a total of 50,000 students, so the school's footprint was naturally huge.
"Go in, take your student ID, and find your class." His father hugged Yang Tong down and instructed seriously, "Study hard, you know?"
"Mm, I know. Goodbye, Dad." Yang Tong smiled slightly and answered cutely.
Yang Tong understood that not every child could get into this school to study; the tuition was not cheap. Holding his student ID, he walked into the school gate. Yang Tong wanted to truly understand the unique civilization of this world, and it started here.
Arriving at his class, class five of the first elementary level, there were one hundred students in the class.
A female teacher around forty years old walked onto the podium.
"Hello everyone, my name is Xue Ying. You can call me Teacher Xue. Starting today, I am your homeroom teacher. I am responsible for teaching you about savage beast species. The first year of elementary school includes martial arts theory, martial arts practice, history of the martial artist, cultural subjects, geographic knowledge, and knowledge of savage beast species. Generally, you will cultivate martial arts in the morning and study culture in the afternoon." Teacher Xue introduced, "Now, please welcome the martial arts teacher."
After Teacher Xue finished speaking, she walked out of the classroom, and a young man with a rather scholarly temperament walked in.
"Everyone, my name is Zhang Tianming. You can just call me Teacher Zhang. I am an Apprentice Level Nine Martial Master, and I will be teaching your martial arts courses for the next six years."
"Today is the first day of class, so let's have a relaxed theoretical introduction. Does everyone know why we study martial arts?" Teacher Zhang spoke eloquently: "To protect ourselves, to strengthen our bodies, and even more, for awakening! Our human body is actually a huge treasure trove, but this treasure trove is locked. We start by strengthening our bodies, cultivating our bodies to be more powerful, possessing great strength, agile speed, and a strong physique. All of this is to unlock our own treasure trove, and the first step to unlocking this treasure trove is what we call awakening!"
"Then you might ask, how can one achieve awakening? I tell you, this step is very difficult. If you don't study hard for these six years, you might never reach awakening even when you are old. Generally, cultivating to the Apprentice Level Nine stage is the easiest way to reach awakening. Of course, there are some special cases where people reach awakening at Apprentice Level Seven, and there are even examples of people reaching awakening at a very young age. Perhaps there is such a genius among you."
"If any of you feel a heat flowing in your body, then notify me or your family immediately. Do not hide it, because this is a very good thing."
"Alright, because you have just enrolled today, you don't need to learn anything too complicated. I will introduce the classification of combat professions. We humans are all the same during the apprentice stage, practicing martial arts to strengthen our bodies, but once you reach awakening, classifications will appear. Some people, after reaching awakening, possess both spirit power and mental energy talents. Those strong in spirit power are called Martial Spirit Masters, and those strong in mental energy are called Divine Sense Masters."
Following this, Zhang Tianming talked about many theories, making Yang Tong's understanding of this new world much clearer.
Yang Tong's learning and growth life began here. In the first three years of elementary education, cultural courses taught characters and simple mathematics. Here, you didn't need to learn sentence construction or write articles; as long as you could recognize characters, understand how to read, and do practical calculations, that was enough. Martial arts courses were all about laying a foundation and strengthening the physique.
Through learning in class, and most importantly, self-study in the school library, Yang Tong's knowledge had already caught up with an average adult.
This world was far more dangerous than Yang Tong had imagined. The wilderness was distributed with various savage beasts, which were external factors that threatened human survival. But at the same time, these savage beasts were also the raw materials for the progress of human civilization.
Within the county, there were many martial artists who lived by hunting savage beasts. Generally, a family of three only needed to hunt thirty low-level elementary savage beasts every month to exchange for enough living supplies. And the weakest low-level elementary savage beast was equivalent to a human Apprentice Level Five Martial Artist, a low-level intermediate savage beast was equivalent to a human Apprentice Level Seven Martial Artist, and a low-level advanced savage beast was equivalent to a human Apprentice Level Nine Martial Artist.
In Yang Tong's family, his father was an Apprentice Level Nine Martial Artist, so he only needed to hunt three low-level intermediate savage beasts per month to live quite comfortably. And Yang Tong's father went out for ten days every month, bringing back hundreds of low-level elementary savage beasts and dozens of low-level intermediate savage beasts. No wonder—if people want to survive, they must at least possess the strength of an Apprentice Level Five; otherwise, they can only stay within the county, doing manual labor, chores, or farming.
Through self-study, Yang Tong also learned that after human awakening, above the Apprentice Martial Artist were Earth-rank Martial Spirit Masters and Earth-rank Divine Sense Masters. The former possessed stronger close-combat abilities than Apprentice Martial Artists and could extract a certain amount of Earth power for their own use. The latter possessed divine thought and could remotely control some spirit tool weapons specifically built for Divine Sense Masters to attack.
Most importantly, Divine Sense Masters not only possessed combat functions, but the development foundation of human spirit tool technology was Divine Sense Masters! The professions branched out from Divine Sense Masters included: Spirit Tool Master, Apothecary, Formation Master, and Illusionist. Especially the first three professions, none of which were combat professions—it was precisely these three professions that laid the foundation for the prosperity of human civilization, and every profession required strong divine thought to support it. Of course, Spirit Tool Masters could be refined into countless specialties, and the other two professions were the same.
As for Martial Spirit Masters, besides their combat functions, they seemed to have no other functions. It was precisely because of this that the status of Divine Sense Masters in human society was much higher than that of Martial Spirit Masters!
But unfortunately, the ratio of those who achieve awakening to those who do not is 10,000:1. And among those who achieve awakening, the ratio of Martial Spirit Masters to Divine Sense Masters is 1,000:1. No one knows whether they will become a Martial Spirit Master or a Divine Sense Master before reaching awakening. Yang Tong calculated that the probability of becoming a Divine Sense Master was one in ten million. Normally, only one Divine Sense Master would appear among a population of ten million!