The Secret Cultivation Manual: Qisha

Chapter 1 Prologue



It was dusk. A brutal battle starting from early morning had finally reached a conclusion. The Pingyuan Kingdom, with its 8,000 warriors and five mystics, finally beat the Luosheng Kingdom—which had invested 10,000 warriors and two mystics—but only at a great cost. This wasn't the first big war for the mystics, but it was the first time so many mystics joined a conventional battle. The desperate struggles of the Luosheng Kingdom and the determination of Pingyuan Kingdom paled in the face of the mystics' creation of a spectacular, Earth-shaking battle. Luosheng instigated the war, but Pingyuan's thorough preparations had them beat until Pingyuan was deep inside Luosheng. Now the enemy was but 300 kilometers away from Luosheng's capital city, Pingyang. Maybe in a month or two, Luosheng, a hundred-year-old ancient empire, with its six-month-old coup, would no longer be part of the world. Pingyuan's 8,000 warriors didn't sacrifice any less than Luosheng's fighters; among the mangled bodies of the battlefield were the dead wearing uniforms from both sides. There were but 1,000 warriors left alive for Pingyuan. The living had to collect any leftover crystal swords, alloy shields, and cut off the ears of the dead Luosheng warriors as war souvenirs. These were their spoils of war, and the only way lower-ranking warriors collected credit to exchange for energy crystals and higher level martial arts. In this world, this brutal method was the only way warriors of low status could climb up the ranks. The dead were already dead; the living had no other way to keep going or to live better. About one-tenth of Luosheng's 10,000 dead warriors were pummeled into pieces by the mystics' magic, so even a fingernail-sized piece of their bodies was hard to find, much less entire ears.　　 The war spoils for Pingyuan was limited to less than 9,000; divided up, each warrior had about nine ears. According to Pingyuan's rules, every ten ears could be exchanged for one low-level energy crystal, or a promotion. Most warriors didn't want to use their spoils this way. They wanted to keep their earnings until they had 100 of these, and then exchange them for a martial arts manual from the high-level war officers. To become stronger and stay alive was more important than being promoted or becoming richer. The warriors who only cared about their immediate benefit had already perished in past battles. Even the veteran warriors who managed to survive couldn't become national heroes like one might imagine. They were only warriors. The fate of warriors was decided the moment they were born. After all, it was their fault they didn't have the gift of the mystics.