Chapter 6: The Temptation of the Two-and-a-Half Dimension

Yotsuba Misako was deeply troubled.

As someone with normal reasoning and logic, she did not believe supernatural forces existed in this world.

But since this morning, she had been seeing things others could not.

Colorful chat boxes floated before her eyes, untouchable, yet vanishing or appearing at will—convenient indeed.

Though she immediately dragged her younger brother Yotsuba Kyosuke over for answers and cautiously asked her good friend Yuriyama Hana, both insisted they saw nothing.

According to someone called “Da Mengshen,” this was a platform connecting other dimensions, and each of them came from a different world.

“Could this really not be my hallucination…?”

If this were fake, she must already be broken.

Her imagination had surpassed normal limits…

This was no ordinary hallucination—it demanded drastic action. She needed to rush to a psychiatric hospital immediately.

But what if it was real…?

Even light novels wouldn’t dare use such an outrageous premise.

She dared not think further.

So far, there was no evidence proving “Da Mengshen” was telling the truth.

And for an ordinary high school girl like her, other worlds felt impossibly distant, utterly meaningless.

Then—ignore it!

Yet, besides that, she had another question.

“Seeing it”—did that mean seeing this chat group?

As she pondered, the girl voiced her doubt directly.

【Seeing: That… why is my name this? @Da Mengshen】

【Forever Seventeen: Yeah yeah, I don’t really care about age either.】

【Flame-Haired, Burning-Eyed Exterminator: I guess it’s based on nicknames or each person’s unique traits?】

【Angel After Death: Agreed.】

Misako hadn’t expected her question to resonate with everyone—but the one person who could answer it had neither the time nor energy to explain.

Because,

Jia Ji’s cultivation

had begun.

…………

The Beidou Qi Refining Dojo was far larger than any newcomer could see or imagine.

The temple was merely its facade.

The true dojo stretched from the thousand-step staircase at the mountain’s base, through the absurdly vast temple complex and grand halls, encompassing the entire rear mountain.

In other words, the whole mountain was Beidou’s dojo—and Jia Ji’s training ground.

After passing the first trial, Jia Ji and the other fist disciples had already gained Dou Qi—the prerequisite for surpassing human limits. Yet to elevate their physical condition to superhuman levels, they still needed unimaginable, painstaking, slow progress.

Whoosh!

A bulky figure dashed through the forest.

Towering trees and vines intertwined; morning sunlight filtered through leaf gaps, spilling onto jagged rocks, where dewdrops still clung to damp moss.

Fresh vegetation shimmered emerald, bursting with vigorous life.

Whoosh!

The harmonious natural atmosphere shattered as another sprinting outsider tore through.

The wind rushing past his ears hammered like a mallet against his skull; his heart pounded violently; heat surged from his limbs into his torso.

Jia Ji desperately wanted to stop and gasp for air—but he dared not pause a single step.

Stop, and he’d fall behind.

He was moving now purely on instinct.

Pain flared from every receptor to his nerve endings; the cool, clean forest breeze he gasped into his lungs became excruciating.

He gritted his teeth, bare-chested, sprinting after his two senior brothers across the mountain, his peripheral vision catching his younger brother Ken Shi Lang close behind.

At the same time, he had to devote most of his focus to his footing to avoid slipping, while the sharp, chaotic branches blocking his path were even harder to dodge.

Even with his skin’s sensitivity pushed to its limit, he still stumbled—by the time he circled the mountain once, Jia Ji’s head and chest bore over a dozen distinct red marks, burning fiercely.

“Alright, warm-up ends.”

Whoosh! His chest heaved violently; lungs contracted; breath erratic; tears, cold and involuntary, spilled from his tear ducts under pressure.

Correct—this was merely the warm-up before the day’s training, designed not just to build strength, focus, and coordination, but to harden flesh until it felt almost “alive,” making skin sensitivity acute enough to detect even the faintest air currents, sensing every tiny disturbance before it happened.

Jia Ji barely lifted his head, gazing at his two senior brothers who had already arrived and were waiting, their thirty-kilogram weights discarded nearby; their bare torsos glistened faintly with sweat.

They had all trained together, started Beidou Divine Fist cultivation simultaneously, shared identical meals and ointments—yet their physical conditions had inevitably diverged.

Luo Han was the oldest, developed earliest, and possessed the strongest innate physical talent among all cultivators.

He was only one or two years older than Ken Shi Lang, yet stood half a head taller, already two meters tall despite not being an adult, terrifyingly muscular, broad-shouldered and thick-backed, sinewy and strong, intimidating to behold.

Moreover, he was still in rapid growth—he changed daily.

Ken Shi Lang wasn’t as bulky as Luo Han, but his proportions were perfectly balanced, his bodily control the strongest; in Jia Ji’s month-plus observation, he had never once slipped or been injured by the terrain.

For them, warm-up was truly just warm-up—even with added weight, it was nothing.

Jia Ji glanced again at Ken Shi Lang; his fierce gaze made the resting boy squirm uncomfortably.

Even the youngest, seemingly only ten-year-old Ken Shi Lang, looked far more at ease.

Today, again, he’d nearly been overtaken.

He didn’t know how many more times he could win.

Each time he felt he’d be surpassed, each time he painfully considered giving up—he knew he was different from these three brothers; he had no special bloodline or divine destiny; his future wasn’t decided by these trivial physical drills.

Yet—he still refused to lose.

Whether from the original body’s obsession or his own pride, the thought “I won’t let him beat me” sustained Jia Ji through every day of training.

“Is this… what Eienjirin feels like going to school?”

Not just self-inflicted suffering—it was pure self-inflicted suffering!

But,

So far, Ken Shi Lang had never truly surpassed him.

“Now, begin standing Zhuang .”

Long Quan announced, expressionless, before them.

This Zhuang was not that Zhuang .

Beidou Divine Fist had no fixed Zhuang techniques.

Though many moves and secrets relied on stable stances and had fixed postures, Beidou’s ancestors never created a specific method to train them—they aimed more precisely.

“Beidou Divine Fist is a thousand-changing fist art. You need not cling to outdated, combat-irrelevant forms.”

Long Quan assigned each of them a different stance.

Their fist art had no fixed Zhuang training because the previous generation tailored the perfect stance for each chosen successor—creating it from nothing—and adjusted it periodically according to the cultivator’s progress.

From muscle group activation to breathing rhythm, even heartbeat frequency had to be controlled, gradually strengthening the Dou Qi hidden within the body, twisting all bodily force into a single cord.

Of course, once fully mastered, every movement in daily life became cultivation, condensing Dou Qi and refining profound cultivation—but now, these specific stances were still necessary as aids.

This was an excruciatingly dull period: nothing but standing Zhuang . Soon, limbs grew weak, sweat soaked through, and this was precisely the lesson Jia Ji hated most.

But thinking of the chat group, this time Jia Ji couldn’t help a quiet chuckle.

“Sink your waist, center your mind!”

Before he could summon the chat interface, Long Quan’s face loomed within an inch, his voice piercing his crown, eyes glaring—Jia Ji instantly silenced his private thoughts.

No chatting during class!

Glossary Entry #3:

1. Da Wuji Yuan originates from the early infinite novel “Infinite Haihu.”

2. Bishoujo Mangekyou originates from the famous visual novel “Bishoujo Mangekyou.”

3. “Eienjirin’s School Hell” originates from the anime “Mahou Sensei Negima.”



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(End of Chapter)