Chapter 16 - 15: [Five Animals Fist], The Truth of "Heaven-Stealing"!

Chapter 16: Chapter 15: [Five Animals Fist], The Truth of "Heaven-Stealing"!

The next day.

Liu Zimo was the first to wake up again. To be precise, he hadn’t slept at all. He spent the entire night meditating, adjusting his breathing, and absorbing Spiritual Energy. This was a habit he had developed over the past thirty years—replacing sleep with cultivation, unwilling to waste even a single second.

As the saying went, hard work makes up for a lack of talent. If he wanted to survive in the crisis-ridden Post-Apocalypse and live through wave after wave of Demon Beast sieges, he had no other choice but to cultivate as if his life depended on it!

After a simple wash, Liu Zimo put on a hat and quietly left the house.

He returned to the same park where he had done his morning exercises yesterday. Taking advantage of the fact that there was no one around, he assumed his stance and began practicing the Five Animals Fist. Unlike yesterday, this time Liu Zimo set up a phone nearby while he practiced. He turned on the camera’s recording and night-vision functions, maximizing all the beauty filters. He only started recording when the figure on the screen looked completely different from his actual body shape and appearance, to the point where even his gender became somewhat ambiguous.

That’s right. This was the second gift he had prepared for his dad, his young uncle, his little brother, and millions of ordinary people just like them!

Similar to the Guiding Breathing Method he had previously released, this Five Animals Fist was a foundational supplementary Cultivation Technique derived by the future Federation Government, combining the strengths of various martial sects. One trained the Inner Breath, while the other tempered the external muscles and bones. Together, they formed a complete, introductory Martial Arts cultivation system.

Although they were both Mortal Level Martial Arts—easy to learn but not particularly powerful—they were highly universal. Even an ordinary person who had never studied the Martial Dao could master them. This was especially true after the outbreak of the Demon Calamity. The humans who survived the first wave of Spiritual Energy baptism would experience a qualitative leap in their physical fitness. For them, practicing the Guiding Breathing Method and the Five Animals Fist would yield twice the result with half the effort.

Unfortunately, these two Cultivation Techniques were only created and promoted by the Federation Government two years after the Demon Calamity erupted. By then, transportation was paralyzed, all communications were completely severed, and the wilderness was teeming with countless dangerous Demon Beasts. Contact between major cities was practically non-existent. By the time the Guiding Breathing Method and the Five Animals Fist reached Liu Zimo’s Sanyuan City, it was already the fifth year after the disaster began.

Otherwise, if he had the Guiding Breathing Method to regulate his Inner Breath and refine Spiritual Energy, along with the Five Animals Fist to stretch his muscles and strengthen his physique right from the start, Liu Zimo wouldn’t have had to suffer for two whole years in the Post-Apocalypse before successfully completing Body Refining and stepping into the threshold of the Martial Dao on his own.

Ten or so minutes later, the recording of a complete set of the Five Animals Fist was finished. Since it was an instructional video, Liu Zimo moved very slowly, striving to display every stance and form clearly and accurately. After finishing the recording, he watched the entire video. Once he confirmed there were no mistakes, he put his phone away in satisfaction.

Next, he just needed to find some time to upload this video to the internet using the same method. Given the current popularity and influence of the Guiding Breathing Method, he believed its supplementary Five Animals Fist would soon become widely known as well.

After doing all this, Liu Zimo didn’t sit idle. He continued to stretch his muscles and practice his Martial Techniques on the spot. It wasn’t until the sky was completely bright and the number of pedestrians in the park gradually increased that he withdrew his stance and quietly left.

He didn’t go straight home. After sending a text message to his dad, Liu Zimo took a detour to an internet cafe on another street. He pulled his hat down low and hunched his shoulders, covering most of his face to perfectly evade the internet cafe’s surveillance cameras.

This time, he didn’t ask the owner to use someone else’s ID to activate a computer for him. Instead, he walked directly into one of the private rooms under the pretext of looking for a friend.

Inside the room, a young man around twenty years old was gaming with his friends. Wearing headphones and frantically mashing the keyboard, he was so engrossed in the game that he didn’t even notice someone had entered. Looking at his bloodshot eyes, flushed face, and puffy eye bags, it was obvious he had stayed up all night.

Liu Zimo casually walked up to him and patted his shoulder, just like greeting an old friend.

SMACK!

The young man’s body went limp, and he collapsed onto the desk, falling into a dead sleep.

Seeing this, Liu Zimo gently pushed the young man and his chair to the side, taking over his computer as if he owned it. He took out his phone, plugged in the data cable, and copied the video file onto the desktop. Then, he logged into the same forum account and published a new post, once again using the title "November 11th, the Apocalypse is Approaching. A Self-Help Guide!"

The first half of the post was exactly the same as yesterday’s. Only at the end was there an additional section explaining the cultivation of the Five Animals Fist, along with the corresponding instructional video.

Immediately after clicking publish, Liu Zimo logged out, got up, and left. Before leaving, he didn’t forget to move the sleeping young man back to his original position, even thoughtfully draping a hanging jacket over his shoulders.

At the same time.

The various factions that had been secretly monitoring this account’s activity immediately locked onto this computer in the internet cafe through its IP address and dispatched personnel nearby to investigate. However, by the time they arrived, Liu Zimo was long gone. They only saw an internet-addicted youth snoring soundly on the desk, with a "GAME OVER" screen displayed on the monitor.

After leaving the internet cafe, Liu Zimo intentionally transferred between several taxis before arriving at Jingcheng Food Industry. Under the guise of inquiring about the procurement progress, he met with Lou Yuchen again. As they sat close and conversed, Liu Zimo quietly observed the changes in the aura surrounding Lou Yuchen.

"His breathing is orderly, his divine essence is overflowing, and his skin has taken on a faint golden hue. He has indeed reached the Copper Skin realm!" Liu Zimo thought in amazement.

"Moreover, his foundation is solid, and his Inner Breath is abundant. His total cultivation base is at least equivalent to fifteen years of effort!

"What a freak!

"To acquire such a massive amount of Inner Breath Cultivation in a single go during his very first time practicing the Breathing Technique... With such cultivation speed, I’m afraid it would be impossible to find a second person like him in the entire Great Xia!

"Comparing oneself to others is just asking for misery!

"Back when I first practiced the Breathing Technique, I think I only managed to intercept and refine two points of Spiritual Energy, failing to condense even a single shred of Inner Breath.

"Compared to this future Martial Saint, my Martial Dao aptitude really is..."

Liu Zimo couldn’t help but marvel inwardly once again, his eyes red with envy.

Since it was his first time cultivating, Lou Yuchen clearly hadn’t yet mastered the method to conceal his Qi Blood, making it very easy for Liu Zimo to sense the total amount of Martial Dao aura within his body.

While burning with envy, Liu Zimo also heaved a long sigh of relief in his heart, feeling a bit lighter all over. Last night, he had shared roughly eight years’ worth of Martial Arts Cultivation from Lou Yuchen. Since the fortune was split evenly, it wasn’t hard to deduce that Lou Yuchen’s total gained Martial Arts Cultivation should be sixteen years.

Originally, Liu Zimo thought that by using his Heaven-Stealing Superpower to siphon off so much of Lou Yuchen’s cultivation boost, the latter would be left with a maximum of eight years’ worth of total cultivation. He had felt a bit guilty about it and wanted to make up for it in other ways.

But now, after seeing with his own eyes that Lou Yuchen’s Martial Arts Cultivation hadn’t diminished in the slightest, Liu Zimo suddenly realized that his understanding of his newly awakened Heaven-Stealing Superpower was still far from sufficient.

It turned out that the so-called even split of fortune didn’t mean he directly "cut" half of the other party’s gains. Instead, using the other party’s fortune as a medium, he had additionally "copied" half of their gains.

One was a "cut," and the other was a "copy." Although the final reward was the same for him, the outcome for the original owner of the fortune was completely different!