Secret passage to the desert

In a desert covered with brown soil and huge sand dunes, a figure of a human statue could be seen all covered in sand.

In the period the Sand city was taken over by the bandits and things have not changed much, other than collecting money and resources from the city occasionally and demanding more from the rich families in the city the bandits also seemed to have forcefully taken away some women.

Wang and Ago have stopped staying in the underground room, but in the past three months with the help of resources, he obtained he taught him some basic fist-techniques and planned to pass them on to the others when his foundation was normal.

Wang has no interest in having people around him with the ability to protect themselves in this chaotic world.

He was careful and that is how the lives of the two of them were, he would sneak around the residences and collect everything of value from food to money, especially with the abandoned residences. Even though the horse bandits are fierce, they can't stop those that wanted to escape the village, and the period they spent trying so hard to enter the gate, those that could escape, escaped.

That includes a huge portion of the population and thus Wang was not polite at all the first night as he sneaked around several times and even obtained medical herbs from the clinics in town, and in one place he managed to collect some ginseng, a very rare product.

In that way, his cultivation speed become faster, and the food they had gathered was also not a small amount.

With some tricks, Wang came up with some ways of storage, that seem to have been learned from his previous life in school.

The city seems calm but Wang can already see the gloomy nature and even some people still sneak away, but that is not very advisable for him though.

The desert is not very much easier to traverse and he has no idea about the world outside of this city, running around carelessly is very dangerous, especially for him. He remembered being captured by that Wudi fellow, and though everyone else did not have much interaction with him he thought things were indeed very tricky. How could he just be allowed to marry the family of the gang leader? 

Even now he did not bother to understand it as it was not beneficial to him at all.

He focused his time on practicing the fist-art, and in the end, he can feel that he is going to make an improvement soon. This is something he said he can attribute to the potential value being as high as 17.

Suddenly the sand sculpture seemed to shake slightly pushing sand off its body and a person could be seen exposed from the sand.  When Wang's figure could be seen clearly, his face had a smile on his face.

Compared to before, now his speed of practicing martial arts has indeed risen considerably. Him standing there he was confident in defeating him from a few months ago without any hustle.

The sun was also very hot, making it such that he thought he had been thrown in an oven, but he found that training in such environments seemed more favorable at the end of the day.

His White Tiger Fist had already reached the peak of level 3 but he did not seem very surprised, the resources he had consumed also finished up the inventory he collected that night when the bandits entered the city.

When he was still thinking about some plans for his resources acquiring, he seemed to have heard a familiar movement.

Wang looked some distance there were boulders, and all of them had cracks running along their surface and shouted, "Come out!"

The nine-year-old from some months back didn't seem to have many changes at all. Except he seemed to have some light in his eyes.

He was not surprised to see the person stepping out. " Ago! why are you out here again? I thought you were going to stay in the temple today too."

Ago, a nine-year-old seemed to have come all the way from the city, close to three hundred meters away from their residence. Yes the two of them indeed found a way out from the temple. It is also the reason the two have kept staying in the temple all this time despite the situation in the city.

  Wang was not in a rush to leave the city at all since he had already learned some more information, according to it, organ refinement is referred to as flesh forging, which takes into account the muscles and bones then internal organs. The current state Wang is in is just on the muscles, and to forge his bones the martial arts exercise needs to break through. The same is for internal organs but also for the most dangerous stage. 

Above it is a focus on the blood-forging realm and Wang is sure far from there and yet he did not hear anyone calling martial arts from this stage a grandmaster, this made him very wary, as he had the term internal energy too and that was what was associated with grandmasters.

In this current state, Wang can feel the change that is happening to his body from just the training of muscles, and he seemed to have realized that the novels in his previous life cheated him so much. He developed muscles but his physique did not become a hulk as it is exaggerated in some of them. He obviously wanted to increase his body size in the beginning when he came to this world for intimidation but after realizing that martial arts had a long way to go no longer had those delusions as his goal.

Speed, stability, and even flexibility for him are way beyond that of normal people. Perhaps in his previous life, he might have had the make to act in action movies without many special effects. He, however, did not know that on average people take close to five years to step into this level. Well but there are always exceptions to the norm, and those with enough resources could do it in a year too.

In other words, this stage is based on the accumulation of resources and the martial arts talent does not have to be particularly good. Some people can eat their way into this level especially those with unique physiques.

When it comes to bones and internal organs the level of martial arts practice is necessary to be able to take this step. No amount of resources can be used to assist in this unless it is a very precious material, but who would be willing to give it to a person without talent in martial arts to consume anyway.

With improvement in strength, he had even heard there were people that could be capable of fighting an entire army. He for one knew he could not accomplish such a feat at all and thus decided to be honest and train until this place could no longer be capable of supporting his growth, rushly leaving is not what he wanted.

In the city, things were becoming more and more difficult as the gang seemed to be exploiting everyone, especially the wealthiest families every day.

He could see that the people that were once lively had become very dull, and on the same note, the food supply and water seemed to have been hoarded by the bandits. 

People did not say anything but could only grumble secretly in their hearts, while Wang carrying a nine-year-old boy on his back sighed at the situation.

Some of the people here were having it way better than him a few months back but now things were not like that anymore.

But knowing the state of this world he did not have any sympathy for them. He only sighed as he sneaked around the city from time to time observing it. His days passed like that without much drama.

He also knew that only by being strong enough could he be capable of overlooking all of this, after all, even bandits can only plunder from the weak. No one wants to offend a strong man without the assurance they could handle them. The best example is the Black Left Gang that according to rumors had already turned to ruins, and when Wang had it he did not even pause his eating at all and continued swallowing as though he never heard of them.

Based on his thought process, it would be very stupid and naive for someone to show sadness for the gang that kidnapped him. He even suspected his so-called wife had already escaped and that was far from enough, he even suspected the realm she showed was what she wanted others to see. In that case, he thought it best to not meet again or some problems might indeed pop up.

So when he put Ago on the bed, he went back to the desert to practice and could feel he was only a thin paper away from stepping into the fourth level.