Becoming a Martial Saint: Starting with the Mountain-Breaking Fist

Perseverance yields its reward, and heaven favors those who endure. Duan Xuan found himself reborn into a world of high martial arts, where demons stalked the land and human life counted for little. He awoke as the son of a poor hunter in Snakehead Gully, a secluded mountain village tucked away in the northwest. His father had been drafted by the imperial court three years prior to hunt demonic beasts and harvest their cores in the deep forests—and had never returned. Now, only Duan Xuan and his mother, crippled by a broken leg, remained, struggling to survive amid the spreading chaos. Bandits plagued the region, and local gangs held a chokehold on the valley's meager lifelines. Under the weight of countless predatory levies—dressed up as "mountain spirit tributes," "mountain god offerings," and "rites to drive away demons"—the mother and son were ground down into misery, their days spent on the brink of starvation. Yet just as despair threatened to consume them, a string of characters that only Duan Xuan could perceive flickered into existence within his mind.