However, he had once heard the elders in his hometown’s mountain village say that, according to legend, martial arts in the jianghu were incredibly powerful—leaping across rooftops, tearing tigers apart, rending wolves, capable of anything. They should be able to do just about everything, right?

Henry Clark thought for quite a while before finally voicing the kind of martial arts he imagined, a bit lacking in confidence.

“Senior brother, is there a kind of martial art that can give me enough stamina, let me endure hunger when there’s no food, withstand the cold in winter, and survive droughts without needing to drink water?”

The young man was genuinely stunned by Henry Clark’s pitiful request. He hadn’t expected Henry Clark to ask for such a “strange” technique. Other children all wanted something powerful, something for fighting, or something that made them run especially fast. Why did he want a technique for endurance, hunger, cold, and thirst?

The young man couldn’t help but frown.

To endure labor, hunger, cold, and to need less water—this should fall under the category of internal cultivation methods. External techniques simply couldn’t achieve these things.

The young guard thought for a moment, then went over to the bookshelf holding basic internal cultivation manuals and searched through it. He picked out a few relevant internal cultivation secret manuals.

“Drunken Man’s Long Slumber Formula”—this method is great for enduring hunger; you could go ten days or half a month without eating, but it requires drinking a lot of alcohol. This kid probably doesn’t have money for wine, so it’d be hard to get anywhere with it.

“Xuan Yuan Internal Classic”—an offensive internal cultivation method, not suitable.

“Health-Nourishing Classic”—hmm, this one seems to enhance the physique, so it should help with endurance, hunger, cold, and thirst.

The young guard took it down from the dusty bookshelf.

He had been stationed here for over ten years and had browsed through all the secret manuals here, so he had some impression of them. But for a core disciple of the Herb Gathering Hall like him, it was impossible to practice such low-level internal cultivation manuals. The core disciples of the Herb Gathering Hall only practiced the most advanced internal cultivation methods of their hall.

“This basic internal cultivation manual, ‘Health-Nourishing Classic,’ isn’t bad. I don’t know which small gang it came from, but the techniques inside should fully meet your requirements. Take it back and practice this internal cultivation method well. If you can survive the herb gathering, after a few decades you might make a name for yourself in our Herb Gathering Hall, maybe even get promoted to apothecary or pharmacist or something.”

After taking down the book, the young guard casually flipped through the attached introduction to check its origins.

“Oh, the introduction says this manual was a family heirloom, but later the family couldn’t survive and was forced to sell it for money… The introduction also says that practicing this has the miraculous effect of strengthening the body and prolonging life. Hmph, I guess you might live a few years longer after practicing it.”

The young man’s expression was indifferent as he explained the function of the manual and tossed it to Henry Clark. He secretly mocked in his heart, wondering what kind of small jianghu family would treat a low-level internal cultivation manual as a family heirloom.

What the young guard didn’t know was that the book did indeed come from a family, but it wasn’t as simple as he imagined.

A thousand years ago, legend has it that a mysterious and powerful family appeared within Pingzhou. This family possessed a secret manual passed down through generations, and the clan leader relied on that manual to dominate the entire prefecture and its eight counties.

The original name of this manual was “Sitting Forgetfulness Classic,” not “Health-Nourishing Classic.”

But the family’s fortune did not last forever. Over the course of a thousand years, it rose and fell twice, and ultimately declined.

According to the family disciple who sold the book, only those with a special constitution could cultivate this manual. In every few dozen generations, among thousands of disciples, only one with the right constitution might appear. After the first generation clan leader died, several hundred years later, a descendant with the special constitution once again mastered the techniques in the book, bringing the family back to glory. But in the following centuries, no one else succeeded, and the family eventually faded away.

This mysterious family gradually became a legend within Pingzhou of the Martial Kingdom.

The person who sold the book was the last male descendant of the family, reduced to begging on the streets, and was forced to sell it for the meager price of ten gold coins to a mid-tier jianghu gang in Pingzhou—the Carp Gang.

The Carp Gang had nearly a thousand members and made their living off river transport in Pingzhou. After obtaining the manual, they immediately organized people to study it carefully, hoping to uncover its secrets. They pored over every page, every line, every hidden layer, trying to find out if there were any treasures, treasure maps, codes, or hints hidden within.

But unfortunately, after decades of painstaking research and pouring in all their resources, the Carp Gang found nothing in the book.

They even mobilized dozens of the most talented children in the gang to practice it, dreaming of cultivating a group of top-tier martial artists. But sadly, not a single child achieved any results. When they grew up, they weren’t even as good as ordinary jianghu folk.