Made-Up Martial Arts, Have You Really Mastered Them, Disciple?

Li Xuan transmigrated into a small mountain village surrounded by steep cliffs, with only a narrow passage leading out. He had no system, no cheat codes, and could not even leave the village. Over the past decade, all the other villagers either left or died, leaving him as the sole inhabitant. The only way out was through the Esha Forest, where ferocious tiger beasts roamed. Several villagers had died trying to cross it, and Li Xuan himself barely escaped an encounter with a striped tiger after a fellow villager's clumsy tiger-slaying technique ended in disaster. Resigned to a lonely life, Li Xuan believed he could never become a powerful martial artist like in the stories.

A wealthy young master from Donghe County named Xu Yan stumbled upon the village. Having heard Li Xuan mutter about wielding a sword across ten thousand miles, Xu Yan mistook him for a reclusive expert and insisted on becoming his disciple. Despite Li Xuan's repeated denials, Xu Yan stubbornly believed he had found a true master. Half a month later, Xu Yan returned with three boxes: three hundred taels of gold, a thousand-year ginseng, and a nine-leaf ganoderma. Li Xuan, unable to resist the treasures, accepted Xu Yan as a disciple and fabricated a cultivation method on the spot, claiming the path of martial dao involved refining the skin, bones, and organs before reaching true entry. He gave Xu Yan one year to enter the martial dao, confident that the made-up method could never yield results.

Under Li Xuan's guidance, Xu Yan began practicing a horse stance and trying to sense his qi and blood. Li Xuan used the nine-leaf ganoderma to stew chicken soup, feeling invigorated after eating. He planned to eventually leave the village and settle in Wu Kingdom to avoid any consequences if Xu Yan discovered the deception. Contrary to Li Xuan's expectations, Xu Yan successfully sensed his qi and blood before dawn the next day and entered what he believed was the Refining the Skin stage. He kept this progress secret, thinking his master could perceive it without being told. Li Xuan remained unaware and continued to assign mundane tasks to Xu Yan, treating them as part of cultivation. When Xu Yan struggled with cooking, Li Xuan explained that every action was training.

Li Xuan's initial goal was simply to survive in the isolated village, but Xu Yan's arrival gave him a chance to gather resources and plan an escape. He now possessed gold and precious medicines, and through Xu Yan's detailed accounts of the outside world, he learned that the martial strength of this world was limited—strong practitioners could only walk on walls and lift a thousand catties, not move mountains or fly. Li Xuan fabricated a grand cultivation framework, describing ancient geniuses who completed refining the skin in five days and entered the martial dao in a month. This motivated Xu Yan to train even harder, believing he had found the supreme martial art he had always sought. Xu Yan's obsession with storybook legends and his determination to prove himself in Donghe County drove him to ignore Li Xuan's inconsistencies.

The relationship between master and disciple was built entirely on misunderstanding: Li Xuan pretended to be a reclusive expert while planning his escape, and Xu Yan wholeheartedly believed he was learning a genuine martial art. Li Xuan's fabricated system of refining the skin, bones, and organs, followed by bone-shaking thunder and qi and blood forming a cauldron, served as the core of the deception. He insisted that true entry into the martial dao required these stages, thereby setting the bar impossibly high. Xu Yan's accidental success in sensing qi and blood only deepened his faith, and he continued to train diligently, afraid of disappointing his master.

Li Xuan began to enjoy having a disciple to serve him, but remained cautious. He knew the fraud could not last forever, so he prepared to flee to Wu Kingdom, far from Qi Kingdom and Donghe County. The story up to this point establishes the protagonist's transmigration, the isolation of the mountain village, the arrival of the enthusiastic but gullible Xu Yan, the fabricated cultivation method, and the beginning of Xu Yan's training. Li Xuan's ultimate goal shifted from mere survival to securing the resources from Xu Yan and escaping before the truth came to light. The main conflict lies in the deception itself, with Xu Yan's genuine devotion juxtaposed against Li Xuan's fabricated teachings. The story unfolds in a low-martial world, where the protagonist uses his knowledge from writing online novels to create a convincing but false cultivation system, while his disciple unknowingly validates the scam through his own belief and effort.