Chapter 1 : Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Stealing My S-Rank Talent? The Great Sage Told Me to Clench My Fist!
Night.
The rain poured down in torrents.
Inside the Li family villa’s main hall.
“Stop hitting him! Please, stop hitting him!!”
Li Mu felt someone pressing down over him, crying out in despair.
He snapped his eyes open.
Agonizing pain swallowed him whole in an instant. Li Mu felt as if every bone in his body had been broken.
A middle-aged woman was clutching him tightly in her arms.
She was using her back to endure a barrage of brutal kicks.
Li Mu’s memories slowly fused together, and his consciousness became clear.
There was no doubt about it.
He had transmigrated.
He had crossed over from Earth into this high-martial world where monsters from the Abyss ran rampant and martial artists had risen to power.
The person protecting him right now was this body’s mother.
As for the original owner’s identity—
One word like “miserable” was nowhere near enough to describe it.
Yesterday, during the eighteen-year-old Awakening Ceremony, the original owner of this body, Li Mu, had awakened an S-rank talent: Nine Heavens Thunder Surge.
It had caused an immediate sensation.
The probability of awakening an S-rank talent was less than one in a hundred thousand.
Li Mu had returned home in excitement, only for his family to demand that he transfer his S-rank talent to one of his cousins.
They had even prepared the talent-transfer serum in advance.
The medicine was extraordinarily expensive. It had originally been made for people who had awakened powerful talents but did not dare to enter the Abyss and fight for their lives.
It allowed them to sell their talents.
However, a voluntary agreement had to be signed, and it was only effective within twenty-four hours of awakening a talent.
After those twenty-four hours passed, the talent could no longer be transferred.
Li Mu had naturally refused.
So the entire Li family had forced him down and made him sign the agreement.
The matter of talent transfer was, to begin with, an extremely sensitive social issue.
Any talent transfer conducted outside required all kinds of registration and review.
It had to be ensured that the proper legal procedures were followed.
But in this high-martial world, families were a special kind of group. So-called “ancestral teachings” and “family laws” within a family were matters the law was strictly forbidden from interfering with.
Children born into a prominent family enjoyed privilege from birth, and they also had to bear the corresponding fate.
That was an unspoken rule laid down by those “launch-era” families that had rendered great service in the early days.
And as long as a family did not infringe upon outsiders’ interests, the law truly had no way to dig too deeply into internal family affairs.
Even so, after his talent had been transferred, Li Mu had still called the police.
There had not been enough evidence, so the matter had been quietly dropped.
Who would have thought that the Li family would resent Li Mu for calling the police and making the Li family lose face?
So they had used family punishment on him right there and beaten him until he was half dead.
No, that was not right.
He should have been completely dead.
Otherwise, how could he have transmigrated into this body?
When his mother, Yang Suying, received the news and rushed over, Li Mu had already been beaten until he was covered in blood.
Yang Suying had immediately cried out and thrown herself over Li Mu, shielding her son with her own body as she begged the Li family to spare him.
“Enough!”
The elderly woman seated high in the place of honor—Old Madam Ma, Li Mu’s grandmother—struck her cane against the floor.
Only then did the servants stop and back away.
In the current Li family, Old Madam Ma was the one in charge.
And the one she favored most was Li Mu’s cousin, Li Xiaohao.
It had been her brilliant decision to transfer Li Mu’s S-rank talent to Li Xiaohao.
After all, Li Xiaohao had awakened an F-rank talent yesterday and cried over it.
The moment her precious grandson shed tears, the old lady’s heart ached terribly.
So she had immediately made the final decision to have Li Mu hand over his S-rank talent.
Yang Suying held her son’s dying body in her arms, sobbing so hard she could barely speak.
“When Qianfeng was still alive, he made enormous contributions to the Li family.”
“Why? Why are your hearts so vicious?!”
Who would have thought that Old Madam Ma would let out a cold snort and look even angrier than Yang Suying?
She slammed her cane hard and rose to her feet.
“And you still have the nerve to complain!!”
“It was just one S-rank talent, and you still dared to call the police!”
“Now the whole matter has been blown wide open!”
“You mother and son have shamed the Li family completely!”
Old Madam Ma trembled with rage and pointed at Yang Suying as she berated her.
“You selfish, self-serving thing! If everyone in the Li family were like you, how would our family ever rise?”
“You do not have even the slightest sense of the bigger picture!”
The other members of the Li family merely watched, and the emotion written most clearly on their faces was gloating.
Meanwhile, Yang Suying seemed to be able to feel Li Mu’s condition growing worse and worse.
Suddenly, she turned toward Old Madam Ma and pleaded through tears,
“Old Madam, I beg you, please show mercy. Let Xiao Mu get treatment first, all right?”
“He is about to die! My son is about to die!”
“I’m begging you!!”
As she spoke, Yang Suying was about to bow her head to the floor.
Her son was about to die. At this point, she did not care about anything else. As long as her son could be saved, nothing else mattered.
But just as her head was halfway down—
A blood-covered hand blocked her forehead.
Yang Suying looked over. At that moment, thunder exploded in the sky, lighting up Li Mu’s face.
His eyes were filled with defiance as he used the last of his strength to stop her.
Tears instantly burst from Yang Suying’s eyes like a broken dam.
“Your son looks pretty sturdy to me,” his eldest uncle said with a cold laugh.
“According to the family laws, even if we beat him to death, outsiders have no right to interfere. But today, I’ll let him keep his life.”
As he spoke, his eldest uncle took out another agreement.
“Sign this, and from now on, none of the Li family’s businesses will have anything to do with you mother and son.”
“After that, we’ll issue a public statement and remove Li Mu from the Li family register. You can keep his miserable life.”
“From this day forward, he will have nothing more to do with the Li family.”
As he spoke, his eldest uncle tossed the agreement and a pen in front of Yang Suying.
If they beat Li Mu to death outright, the Li family would inevitably face even greater criticism, and there was a real chance it would turn into serious trouble.
After all, the Li family’s theft of Li Mu’s talent had already stirred up an uproar throughout the city.
But Li Mu still possessed a lawful share of the Li family’s property.
Now that the Li family had Li Xiaohao, who possessed an S-rank talent, they were about to rise in power and soar to the heavens in a single step.
They certainly did not want Li Mu and his mother to share in that glory.
Expelling them from the family was the best possible choice.
“I’ll sign it!”
Yang Suying did not hesitate in the slightest.
She picked up the pen and signed the contract at once.
Then she took Li Mu’s bloodied hand and, trembling, pressed it onto the document.
There was nothing she needed to think about.
At this moment, the only thing that mattered was saving her son.
She only wanted to get away from the Li family immediately and take her son for emergency treatment.
Besides, there was no point in staying in the Li family any longer.
Nothing good would come of it.
So she did not need to hesitate.
Although Li Mu had regained consciousness, his injuries were already so severe that he could not speak.
All he could do was smile bitterly to himself.
The moment he transmigrated over, he had been forced to sign two contracts.
Only the meaning of those two contracts was completely different...
After signing the contract, Yang Suying said nothing. She wiped away her tears fiercely with one hand.
Then she grabbed Li Mu’s arm and hoisted him onto her back.
Li Mu could even clearly feel Yang Suying’s legs go weak.
She was only a low-rank martial artist herself, and she had also taken quite a few blows just now.
Yang Suying gritted her teeth and carried Li Mu out through the Li family’s front gate.
The torrential rain struck Li Mu the instant they stepped outside, soaking his clothes through.
Every step Yang Suying took landed heavily enough to splash up sheets of water.
“Son, hold on!”
“Talk to Mom!”
By then, the sky was completely black, and aside from a few passing vehicles, the streets were desolate.
Yang Suying hurried toward a nearby clinic while forcing back her tears and speaking to Li Mu the entire way.
She was terrified that he would lose consciousness.
Li Mu could not speak. He only felt an itch in the center of his right palm.
He pried open his hand and took a look through the gap.
A single golden strand of hair was twitching in his palm.
Li Mu’s eyes lit up at once.
Before transmigrating, he had been playing a Chinese AAA game nicknamed Black Monkey. He had just been smashed to death by a boss’s headbutt before losing consciousness.
And when he opened his eyes again, he had arrived here.
Could it be...
A thought flashed through Li Mu’s mind as he slowly clenched his right fist.
The golden hair instantly turned into specks of golden light and drilled into his palm.
【Little one, do not be afraid. If you have fallen out into the world and run into hardship, then just clench your fist for this Old Sun and fight to your heart’s content!!】
【The Victorious Combat System has activated. Defeating or killing otherworldly creatures of the same level or higher will earn Victory Points.】
【Victory Points can be used to unlock and upgrade divine abilities, refine spiritual treasures, and more.】
【Beginner’s Gift Pack issued: 100 Victory Points, Divine Weapon Art, No-Grade Celestial Immortal Art, Ear-Tucked Insight.】
The system’s voice rang out in Li Mu’s mind. He was wildly excited, yet none of this was beyond expectation.
There was no other reason.
It simply felt right.
The instant the No-Grade Celestial Immortal Art replaced Li Mu’s basic internal cultivation method—
Li Mu felt an immensely powerful energy erupt within his body. It rushed out of his dantian in an instant, madly widening and toughening his meridians.
It felt as though all four limbs and every bone in his body had been completely renewed!
【Divine Weapon Art: Grants weight to a weapon. Current weight: 0 jin.】
【No-Grade Celestial Immortal Art: Deepens understanding of one’s cultivated methods by fifty years, broadens the dantian, toughens the meridians, and allows any cultivation method to be used more freely.】
【Ear-Tucked Insight: Hide a divine weapon within the Sumeru space of the ear. Gain constant cultivation insight at a speed equal to 1% of normal cultivation speed.】
Strong!
Li Mu could not think of a second word.
He opened the list of still-locked divine abilities in the system and glanced through them.
Immobilization Art, Body-Protecting Art, Seventy-Two Transformations, Fiery Golden Eyes, Mountain-Bearing Art, Borrowed Wine Might, Alchemy Art, Blessed Field Art, Bronze Head and Iron Arms, External Incarnation, Water-Avoiding Art, Fire-Avoiding Art, and more.
He could even see Heaven-and-Earth Manifestation at the very end.
So it really was the Victorious Combat System...
It was just that the further down the list he looked, the higher the prices became, and Heaven-and-Earth Manifestation was outrageously expensive.
At this moment, Yang Suying had already reached the first clinic.
Unfortunately, it was already closed.
Yang Suying pounded on the door for quite a while, but it did not budge in the slightest.
Left with no choice, she kept moving forward, planning to find a second clinic.
Then her son’s voice suddenly came from beside her ear.
“Mom... let’s go home...”