Chapter 98: The Martial Path Revealed

Before the martial arts drama had even begun filming, the director had already gone mad.

In less than three minutes, the news had shot to the top of the headlines.

Everyone was curious.

What sort of lucky man, having been given a chance, had been driven mad by it like Fan Jin?

A glance revealed that the one who had lost his mind was an American blockbuster director.

He had once made several hugely successful commercial films and enjoyed immense popularity.

This time, when he was chosen, countless fans went wild over it.

And yet how long had it been? He was already insane?

Then someone with insider knowledge explained why the director had cracked, and the reason was absurd enough to make people laugh until they cried.

The fellow had actually been driven mad by his wife catching him with a mistress.

Perhaps it was not just one mistress, but a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth too, a private feast of lust on a lavish, decadent scale!

The reason was that after the director was selected, a group of women had tried to ride the wave of his fame and win roles by storming him together. The director failed to resist temptation, only for his possessive wife to discover it. She brought people to block the door, crippled several of the women, and on the spot blew the director's manhood apart with a gun.

With blood and flesh mangled beyond recognition, the director was instantly reduced to a fool.

At once, countless onlookers were delighted beyond measure.

He had been given a chance by fate and thrown away the lifeline himself. What kind of moron could still become a great director?

For a time, the director's country became a laughingstock.

And the other chosen directors were immediately summoned for talks, subjected to all kinds of warnings and reminders, leaving those innocently caught up in the scandal utterly speechless.

Such a good opportunity—who the hell would risk everything for a petty gain?

When could women not be enjoyed?

People who cannot even separate life from work are truly pathetic.

Only a free country could produce such a free and easy attitude, perhaps.

After all, one is better off dead than afraid of poison; that alone proved everything.

The laughingstock was only temporary.

What the onlookers truly cared about was the matter that affected their own interests. Losing one did not matter—there were still six left. Six martial arts dramas were more than enough to look forward to.

While the directors were working feverishly on scripts and casting actors, Zhang Kai was not idle either. He was writing a script too.

To achieve the desired effect—to make all of humanity willing to borrow money for the sake of martial arts—he had to push the frenzy to its absolute peak, to the point where everyone would throw caution to the wind. Only then might he become the creditor of all humankind.

And to do that, television dramas were only one part. He also needed to create several key figures, so that they could stir the winds and fan the flames at crucial moments.

For the script, Zhang Kai also had to devise a few roles for himself, characters who would appear at key times to heighten the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the ones who were the most troubled, and also the most diligent, were the foreigners.

Because what the giant hero was providing was martial arts.

Although martial arts existed overseas too, this was clearly in the style of the Central Kingdom.

They did not even know the Central Kingdom's characters. How were they supposed to practice?

If they were drawn in but could only stare helplessly, wouldn't they miss the chance?

So regardless of what they thought, they immediately signed up for the Chinese-language version and began learning the characters of the Central Kingdom.

Even people on the Central Kingdom's side had begun studying the specialized terminology.

Cultivation, after all, involved the eight extraordinary meridians, yin and yang, the five elements—difficult subjects indeed. No one expected to master them, only to avoid looking like a fool when the time came.

This was something Zhang Kai had not anticipated.

One plan had set the entire human world into spontaneous motion, studying and striving on its own.

Time passed slowly.

In the blink of an eye, more than two months had gone by.

Earth Home had become the only website with a permanent human presence across the entire species.

It had even developed high-tech methods of communication.

For example, the virtual world, and identity wristbands.

These were all being managed by Bone Dragon, working in secret with the Central Kingdom to build factories.

In the first month, virtual-world base stations sprang up all over the Central Kingdom. Two months later, most of the world's virtual-world base stations had already been built.

Along with them came the virtual-world brainwave helmets.

Once worn, they allowed a person to enter the virtual world and communicate within it.

For now, the functions were still basic. According to the various categories of Earth Home, corresponding virtual spaces had been constructed, where people could walk about and converse freely.

And the largest Earth Home of all could hold every human being within it, expanded by a hundredfold according to the displayed map, without the slightest feeling of crowding. On the contrary, it was spacious beyond measure.

Where there are people, there is the martial world; and within Earth Home, where there are people, there is commerce.

The people of the Central Kingdom discovered that before they had even found a way to earn points, they had already found a side business to make money on the side.

Within Earth Home, countless foreigners began seeking out teachers from the Central Kingdom to learn its culture. Whether it was a three-year-old child or a decrepit old man of seventy or eighty, even farmers were pursued by foreigners and hired at high prices.

Earth Home was bustling, while the real world, by contrast, seemed desolate. Many places that had once offered entertainment became quiet and empty, and many venue owners, helplessly, could only follow the crowd.

In such circumstances, one day a building suddenly caught fire.

The scale of the blaze was so great that anyone who saw it was frightened.

It was seven or eight stories tall and seemed to be a commercial building. From the fourth floor upward, flames spread in a near-total sweep, thick smoke billowing as the fire swelled.

Firefighters rushed to the scene at once, raising ladders and hoses, and some even began charging into the building to rescue people.

In the past, there would have been crowds of onlookers.

But now there were only a few scattered people watching from nearby high-rises, all of them filming videos.

Then, at that very moment, something astonishing happened.

A figure came leaping through the air and landed atop a three-story building.

The figure revealed his true form: a burly man dressed in ordinary clothes, with only a mask covering his face so that neither his features nor his age could be seen.

The man spread his legs in a stable stance and swung his hands. Streams of golden light danced between his palms.

“Heavenly Crane Control!”

With a grab of his hand, from a river channel several hundred meters away came a thunderous roar, and a massive torrent of water surged skyward. Spiraling through the air, it transformed into a hundred-meter-long water dragon, which let out a mighty roar.

At the sight of this, countless people around the riverbank were stunned speechless.

Then, under everyone’s gaze, the hundred-meter water dragon wound through the air and plunged toward the burning building, weaving back and forth inside it.

Before long, the flames inside the building were extinguished, leaving only wisps of black smoke.

Having done this, the masked man turned, rose into the air, leaped away, and vanished.

Yet this entire scene had been captured by more than ten mobile phones.

Once the video was uploaded, it exploded in popularity at once: the Central Kingdom had hidden masters, and the whole world was shaken.

But less than half an hour later, another video was uploaded, and this one was even more astonishing, because this time the man was not wearing a mask, and everything looked like special effects.

The video showed a street, filmed surprisingly by a surveillance camera.

A bus, as if out of control, was charging toward a building.

Just then, an old monk passing by was being shoved around by a middle-aged fat man at the entrance of a shop. He seemed furious, as though he wanted to bully the monk.

But the bus was heading straight for them.

The middle-aged man was terrified.

Then the old monk suddenly brought his hands together before his chest. Golden light radiated from his body, a swastika appeared, and behind him loomed the shadow of a Buddha. Then, with one palm strike, a gigantic hand manifested out of thin air and pressed down on the bus, forcing it to a halt.

Seemingly realizing that he had exposed himself, the old monk restrained the golden light. Then he turned and walked away. He appeared to move slowly, but in the blink of an eye he was already more than a hundred meters distant.

Only the bewildered middle-aged fat man remained at the scene, his mouth agape, his eyes vacant.