The Disciples’ Explosive Growth

Raven had sped up as much as possible, but establishing a new organization involved countless trivial matters, including choosing a base, securing a financial source for the members’ daily needs, and figuring out how to keep the traces of their lives from being noticed by the enemy.

Despite hurrying the entire way, more than a month had passed by the time Raven returned to the Martial Arts School.

During that time, another group of people had successfully passed the initiation and entered the Current Drive realm.

This batch of disciples was basically made up of elites dispatched by various organizations. They were of good quality to begin with, had clear goals, and trained hard and seriously, so they had gradually passed the initiation one after another.

Over the past week, more than a dozen disciples had suddenly passed the initiation in an explosive burst.

They included Emil Blonsky from the military, Justin Hammer from Hammer Industries, Grant Ward from S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye from the Rising Tide, and a group of familiar and unfamiliar names known to Zhan Liu.

But that was beside the point. As time passed, more and more disciples would pass the initiation.

As the only War God-level martial arts sect in the Marvel world, Zhan Liu would be too embarrassed to call himself the leader of a major sect without at least eight or ten thousand initiated disciples.

Of course, to Zhan Liu, numbers were unimportant. Quality was what mattered.

What mattered most was whether they could cross the Magnetic Field Rotation hurdle.

Even after crossing that hurdle, whether they could reach the ultimate realm of the Fifty Heavens was still uncertain.

Zhan Liu felt that, aside from the protagonists and major villains, it would probably not be easy for ordinary people to reach the Fifty Heavens.

Take Old Wang, for example. An ordinary person like him might be able to enter the Magnetic Field Rotation Realm, but if he wanted to advance to the Twenty-Five Heavens or higher, he would probably have to wait until Earth had been magnetized before it became possible.

As more and more people from the various organizations passed the initiation, the importance of the fourth disciple, Wang Yunxiang, declined accordingly. No organizations were still trying to recruit him.

Old Wang did not mind. He continued training peacefully at the Martial Arts School, regularly collecting his allowance from the sect and living a comfortable, satisfying life.

He was already quite old and saw everything clearly. He did not compete for power and profit with those senior and junior fellow disciples who rose to prominence later.

If anyone wanted to become a teaching instructor to gain prestige, he would give up the position and use the opportunity to slack off.

Whenever anyone wanted to form cliques within the Martial Arts School, he merely watched. He did not join either side, nor did he offend either side.

The ordinary disciples in the Martial Arts School had now become the main targets of recruitment for the various organizations.

Many new disciples were taken out to eat and drink, attend parties, and build personal bonds by their senior brothers and sisters immediately after becoming apprentices. Only after establishing those relationships did they seriously tutor and teach them.

After roughly a month, based on a new disciple’s attitude toward martial arts training, they could generally judge whether that person might pass the initiation assessment. Then the second round of recruitment would begin.

All sorts of temptations and promises came crashing down, and very few people could withstand this barrage of sugar-coated bullets.

After receiving such enormous benefits, these ordinary people naturally became role models for those around them, attracting even more ordinary people to come and study under a master.

The original Martial Arts School could no longer hold everyone. Fortunately, the senior apprentice-brother had money. He directly bought all the buildings within several hundred meters, leveled them, and incorporated the land into the Martial Arts School.

Not only were the Chinese training schools around the Martial Arts School doing better and better, but the salaries and benefits of Chinese teachers throughout New York City were rising as well.

Many universities had even established Chinese courses specifically to attract more students from out of town.

As for Professor X, he claimed internally that they were undergoing intensive training and sent over the first batch of Mutant students to become disciples under Zhan Liu.

Raven had been a little slow to act and sent over only the two children who had learned Chinese the fastest. However, she had also successfully passed the initiation and become a formal disciple.

Immediately after gaining the status of a formal disciple, Raven left the Martial Arts School and returned to the base. She began intensive lessons alongside the Chinese teachers, striving to lead everyone onto the Path of the Martial God as quickly as possible.

Pepper also passed the initiation smoothly. She had a great deal of work to do and immediately returned to Stark Industries, but Old Obadiah still stubbornly refused to come, leaving Tony utterly helpless.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s upgrade plan ultimately ended in failure. Peter had wasted vast amounts of time and energy defeating supervillains one after another and rescuing countless people in distress, making the name of the superhero Thor even more famous.

But his realm had not advanced in the slightest.

Sharon Carter’s realm was relatively low, so she had still made considerable progress.

She could already use a current of Two Hundred Thousand Volts, but several of the junior brothers and sisters who had passed the initiation later and stayed at the Martial Arts School to train had caught up with her. Their rate of progress was no worse than Sharon’s.

Storm Ororo, in particular, had originally been a sorceress capable of controlling the natural phenomena of the world, with lightning being one of them. Thus, after passing the initiation, her progress was astonishingly fast. She had now overtaken those ahead of her and reached the realm of Five Hundred Thousand Volts.

In the learning competition between humans and Mutants, it was obvious that Mutants advanced faster than ordinary people.

Even when a Mutant’s talent was unrelated to lightning, it often interacted with Qigong in some way while practicing Ultimate Limit Qigong, mutually promoting the two and accelerating the practitioner’s progress.

Practicing Qigong also allowed Mutants to control their bodies and abilities with greater precision.

In the beginning, some Mutants frequently lost control of their abilities and needed Ororo to suppress them based on her understanding of them. But after a month of training, none of the Mutants had lost control of their abilities again.

The good news made Charles grin from ear to ear every day.

This also spurred Charles and Raven to tighten their focus on Chinese instruction. They had even suspended many other subjects to concentrate on learning Chinese.

Now Charles personally taught the students one Chinese lesson every day, then spent time chatting with his old friend Erik and helping him pass the time. He was living a leisurely life.

It seemed that everything had already fallen into place, with all matters developing in a positive direction. But both of them knew that the hidden danger had never truly disappeared. Sooner or later, it would explode with a deafening roar. They simply did not know who would be blown to pieces when that time came.

What they had to do now was delay the outbreak of that hidden danger as much as possible, give the Mutants greater self-protection, win over more allies, control the scale of future losses, and so on.

Truth could not remain hidden forever. Raven finally learned about Erik.

She secretly visited Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and saw the scene of Erik sitting in a wheelchair, all four limbs crippled and fitted with prosthetics specially made for him by Beast, drinking tea face-to-face with Charles.

The two old men sat in wheelchairs facing each other, the atmosphere extraordinarily harmonious.

She hesitated for a long time but ultimately did not disturb her two old brothers. She turned and left.

Charles and Erik watched Raven’s departing figure, turned to look at each other, and said nothing. They simply continued drinking their tea.

After afternoon tea, Charles pushed his wheelchair away and took his leave. He still had a class that afternoon.

Erik sat alone in his wheelchair, staring blankly at the heavy snow swirling outside the window.

After an unknown amount of time, he grew thirsty.

He did not use his high-tech prosthetic hand. He merely lowered his head and glanced at the purple-gold teapot on the table. The teapot automatically floated into the air and refilled the white porcelain teacup without spilling a drop.

He opened his mouth, and the porcelain teacup flew up and delivered the tea into his mouth before returning to its original position, precisely in place.

Thanks to reader CatBox for the reward!