Chapter 64: A Wondrous Resonance

Roughly half an hour later, the imposing crowd finished their rations and water, then set off along the mountain path deeper into the range.

To temper the younger generation of their households, no specialized chefs were arranged to cook meals here. What they ate at noon consisted entirely of dry rations and spring water, and even the patriarchs of the three great clans were no exception.

As for what they would eat that evening, it all depended on what game they could hunt in the mountains shortly.

Naturally, none of them were regular hunters, but the majority had practiced martial arts since childhood. Generally, by the age of twelve, they would begin drawing bows to train their strength and temper their sinews and bones. At fourteen, they would practice martial arts to forge their intent and spirit. By the age of seventeen or eighteen, even if they had not yet officially stepped across the threshold, their basic marksmanship and accuracy were still reliable.

After all, the so-called hunters of the past possessed no martial arts whatsoever!

Those who practiced martial arts were called martial masters, and their status far exceeded that of ordinary people; it was impossible for them to make a living through hunting.

Throughout history, only the descendants of prominent families treated hunting as a form of recreation and tempering.

Shortly after entering the mountains, the crowd dispersed to search for prey on their own. Only the patriarchs of the three clans, each leading a few outstanding young people, did not separate. Instead, they stayed together, intending to hunt a tiger.

Naturally, among the three clans, only the Li family practiced the Tiger-Form.

However, even for the young disciples of the other clans, the sight of such an extraordinary beast would still have the effect of tempering their minds.

After all, the fierce tiger in these mountains was unlike those in a zoo; its raw wildness and formidable majesty were truly no small matters.

Had it not been for the sake of tempering the younger generations of their households, this tiger would certainly have been slain long ago and would not have been left until now.

"Thinking back to my youth, when I entered the mountains to gather herbs, this very area was completely barren. There was none of this lush greenery you see today."

Carrying a two-hundred-stone bow on his back, Li Changqing gazed around as he stepped into the mountain forest, a look of nostalgia crossing his features.

"In those days, the mountains, rivers, and every blade of grass beneath the heavens had their owners. But when people were driven to extremes by hunger, they would even strip the tree bark to eat—who could care about anything else? As far as the eye could see, the mountain forests were nothing but bare yellow earth."

"Only by venturing deep into the mountains could one catch sight of a trace of green."

"Who would have thought that nowadays, even this region has ferocious tigers roaming about."

Li Changqing's voice echoed through the air.

As for Li Qi, the moment he set foot in the mountain forest, he experienced a sensation of a tiger returning to the mountains, a sudden feeling of vast and unobstructed clarity. It seemed as though the mountains, rivers, and earth bestowed upon him some intangible blessing of spiritual energy.

The Grand Refining of the Mountain Monarch! The Grand Refining of the Mountain Monarch!

Since he was both the Mountain Monarch and undergoing the Grand Refining, it was truly not merely a refining of the flesh; even his spiritual world underwent a tremendous transformation.

Li Qi clearly remembered that when he came to these mountains last year, his sole sensation was that the mountains were high and the waters treacherous, making progress arduous and difficult. If not for the family rules stipulating that descendants who refused to enter the mountains would receive no cultivation subsidies, he truly would not have liked coming here to endure hardship.

But now, Li Qi felt his mind clear and refreshed. If he were to fight others here, his innate advantage would be greater by a fraction.

Martial arts contention relies heavily on one's spiritual state, which exerts a massive influence.

According to what Li Qi had seen in books, certain great enlightened masters would sit in quiet meditation in a particular room or place for a long time, eventually transforming that inch of ground into a Daoist field. At all moments, they would receive a massive spiritual enhancement, resembling the unity of heaven and humanity.

Within their own Daoist fields, their martial arts and mystical abilities would grow several times more formidable.

The marvelous spiritual resonance Li Qi now shared with the mountain forest was undoubtedly worlds away from the so-called unity of heaven and humanity, but the early signs of it had already manifested.

As for sages, according to legends, wherever a sage stood was a Daoist field, and a sage's heart was the heart of heaven, constantly harmonizing with the heavens and operating the transformations of the four seasons...

In short, it was profoundly arcane and mysterious, with descriptions that hardly sounded like those of human beings.

Following that, Li Tian行 retrieved a tablet from his backpack. After a few manipulations, a topographical map of the mountains appeared on the screen, along with their current location and the marker of a ferocious tiger.

One had to admit that technology changes lives.

Long before discovering the traces of the tiger, Li Tian行 had dispatched a professional team to track it with drones, long since mapping out its movements with absolute clarity.

"To think it's in this very spot—quite a coincidence..."

Li Changqing simply glanced at the terrain map and the tiger's marker, and he already had a clear idea in his mind.

"Roughly fifty years ago, Wang Yongyuan fled all the way to this exact place before I struck him down."

"He was also a formidable figure. His 'Nine Calamities Saber of Upending the Heavens' was practiced to perfection, and he had already achieved a major refining. If I hadn't first used stratagems to throw his mind into chaos, it truly wouldn't have been easy to kill him."

Li Changqing chuckled softly, a sense of the wondrous and enigmatic nature of fate rising within him.

Beside him, the elderly patriarchs of the Mu and Zhang families felt their hearts skip a beat as they recalled that cruel and bloody era.

Wang Yongyuan was a genuinely formidable figure—a proud prodigy of the Wang family. Back when Wang Yongyuan dominated the world, the two of them were still standing around like lowly underlings. How majestic and illustrious that man had been!

Yet in the end, his bones were buried in these mountains...

Listening to Li Changqing recount the past, Li Qi could not help but conjure various scenes in his mind. The past and the present intertwined: victors and losers, the living and the dead, glory and destruction... He too felt the impermanence of fate.

However, Li Changqing only mentioned it in passing and said no more. The group moved swiftly through the mountains.

The mountain trails were difficult to traverse, and in many places, there were no paths at all. Yet this posed no obstacle whatsoever to Li Qi and his party.

Among them, those of the lowest realm had already stepped across the threshold, where every movement of their hands and feet unleashed an explosive force exceeding a thousand catties, and this was merely their baseline explosive power.

No mountain barriers or perilous obstacles could impede them. Coupled with the fact that two young men from the Mu and Zhang families held sabers, clearing away a path through the vegetation ahead, their progress at this moment could be described as blindingly fast.

Wild beasts occasionally roamed the forest, but no one paid them any mind.

Hunting the tiger was the key objective right now; once the ferocious beast was dealt with, there would be plenty of time for everything else.

In this manner, the group traversed the mountains for roughly an hour before finally approaching their destination.

In this vicinity, traces of the tiger's habitat could already be seen.

Even those with sharp spiritual senses felt a sense of oppression rising in their hearts the moment they approached, before they had even laid eyes on the tiger.

Just like Li Qi, who felt a premonition welling up inside him at this moment.

This was a sensation instinctively generated by his body upon smelling the scent left behind by the tiger.

It was something deeply carved into genetic instinct during humanity's long evolutionary history.

Upon reaching this area, the group slowed their pace so as not to startle the prey.

"Indeed a massive beast."

Someone murmured, having spotted the ferocious claw marks on a giant tree—scars left behind when the tiger sharpened its claws.

The hard, ancient wood was as fragile as tofu before the tiger's claws, easily ripped apart.

"Truly an extraordinary beast!"

After another ten minutes or so, Li Qi also let out a sigh of awe. Through the gaps in the mountain foliage, he caught sight of the tiger's silhouette.

At the same time, his sharp mind and spirit also perceived an immense sense of oppression.

Many adult tigers could grow to over six hundred catties, but according to Li Qi's estimation, the extraordinary tiger before him weighed at least a ton!

Its physical size was easily more than three times that of a normal tiger.

A tiger weighing over six hundred catties could strike with a force of one ton; how immense must the strength of this one be, being three times larger?!

One had to know that Li Qi's current weight was only a little over two hundred catties, putting him at a tenfold disadvantage compared to this extraordinary beast.

If Li Qi lacked the techniques to generate force, possessed no formidable mental and spiritual power, and failed to stimulate his body's potential to increase his explosive power, entering into close-quarters combat directly with this extraordinary beast would surely result in him being beaten to death.

And herein lay the true significance of martial arts!