Martial arts immortality begins with upgrading buildings.

The cheat code has arrived!

Upon seeing the few lines of text that appeared before him, Chen Qing was incredibly excited and chose to unlock without hesitation.

[The training room has been successfully unlocked. Current level: lv1. The next upgrade will require 500 silver coins.]

As these words appeared, a picture suddenly flashed into Chen Qing's mind.

In a space shrouded in mist, a solemn and ancient building stands quietly.

He was looking down at the building from a god-like perspective, as if viewing a panoramic map.

He guided his gaze through the roof and into the building, and a sudden realization dawned on him.

"This is the meditation room? As long as my consciousness stays here, it will produce results?"

Chen Qing pondered to himself.

According to the information he just received, he only needs to keep his consciousness in that building to use the effects of the training room anytime, anywhere.

In addition, he can directly enter the cultivation room to cultivate.

With a thought, he instantly vanished from the shack and appeared in the building in his mind.

"Could this be a real building existing in some unknown space?"

Chen Qing stroked the cold wall of the training room, secretly speculating in his heart.

The meditation room was only about ten square meters in size, and there was nothing inside.

After watching for a while, Chen Qing felt it wasn't very interesting, so he returned to reality.

He returned to the shack and found that the cloth bag in his hand had become much lighter.

Upon opening it, it was indeed empty.

He got out of bed and dug out a pottery jar in a hidden corner of the shack.

When they poured it out, they found that the 198 silver dollars they had saved had vanished, leaving only three dollars.

In other words, the five silver dollars given to him by the villagers gave him assets worth two hundred silver dollars, thus meeting the conditions for activating the system.

Then, another two hundred dollars were spent to unlock the training room.

"From now on, if I just keep taking on assignments, will I be able to quickly gain professional experience?"

Chen Qing looked at his personal panel and wondered what was going on.

The porter experience on the panel is 73 points, which should be the result of his hard work and accumulation over the years.

For porters, carrying heavy loads is a kind of spiritual practice.

He possesses a cultivation room that can directly enhance cultivation effectiveness by 50%, and ensures progress with each cultivation session.

With a little effort, I believe it won't be long before I can max out my professional experience.

Chen Qing had once heard Uncle Zhou say that as long as one masters a certain profession to the extreme and enters the field, one can gain extraordinary abilities.

Legend has it that a porter in Micang Ferry once mastered the art and gained the ability to shrink distances.

One step can cover several meters in an instant.

With this ability, he was noticed by a powerful force, which allowed him to rise above his circumstances and completely change his destiny.

If Chen Qing can max out his experience as a porter, he will likely be able to master the profession and gain special abilities.

This is also why he chose to spend two hundred silver dollars to unlock the training room.

After all, under the suppression of Zhang Mazi of the Qilu Gang, it would be difficult to maintain the same income as before.

If you can't save up three hundred silver dollars, you can't pursue the path of a martial arts master.

Instead of wasting my youth holding onto two hundred dollars, I'd rather gamble on a chance to gain special abilities.

With this in mind, Chen Qing immediately decided to go out and do some work to test the effectiveness of the cultivation room.

As soon as he stepped out of the shack, he saw Zhou Tao leading a strange man toward him.

The man had dark skin, a towel around his neck, a faded blue cloth jacket, and wide-legged black cloth trousers with neatly tied legs. He wore black cloth shoes covered in dust.

Although he was also dressed like a peasant, he looked much more presentable than Chen Qing and the others, who were dressed in rags.

"Ah Qing, why are you out here? Didn't I tell you to rest at home?"

Seeing Chen Qing standing outside the shack, Zhou Tao quickly ran over and said with concern.

"Uncle Zhou, I'm fine."

Chen Qing shook his head, then looked at the man beside him and asked curiously, "Who is this?"

"Ah Qing, this is from Master Liu's mansion in the city. They came here specifically to see you."

Zhou Tao began to speak.

Upon hearing this, Chen Qing's gaze turned cold.

This Liu family was none other than his mother's family.

Not long after my father arrived in Songjiang County, he unexpectedly saved my mother's life, who was the eldest daughter of the Liu family.

Under his mother's arrangement, his father went to work as a long-term laborer in the Liu family.

Gradually, the two developed feelings for each other and secretly started dating.

When Master Liu discovered this, he was furious and wanted to beat his father to death on the spot.

The mother threatened suicide, which ultimately led to her severing ties with her family and moving into a shantytown with her father.

Years later, Chen Qing's mother took him back to the Liu residence once.

He was met with a barrage of insults from his grandfather, as well as glares and disdain from all the relatives in the room.

Later, when his mother became seriously ill and was about to die, his father came to deliver the news.

Only the eldest maternal uncle's family came to see their mother one last time.

From then on, the two families had no further contact.

Now that so many years have passed, it's unclear what the Liu family's intentions were in seeking him out.

"You must be Chen Qing. My master needs to speak with you. Please come with me."

The man glanced at Chen Qing and said expressionlessly.

Chen Qing initially wanted to refuse, but remembering her mother's dying words, she finally nodded.

He and the man walked out of the shantytown and saw a Japanese rickshaw parked at the entrance, its black body polished to a shine.

A metal enamel license plate was nailed to the back of the carriage, with white background and black lettering that read "Class A rickshaw, No. 018".

There was also a bronze plaque hanging next to it, which read "For Liu Family Use".

Beside the rickshaw stood a boy of about thirteen or fourteen years old, who respectfully greeted Chen Qing as "Brother Qing."

The man tossed a copper coin to the boy, who happily caught it and dashed into a nearby shack.

The man walked to the front of the car, squatted down, gripped the handlebars, and turned to Chen Qing, saying, "Get in."

Once Chen Qing got into the rickshaw, the man stood up, pulled the rickshaw, and ran towards the city.

The road was bumpy and uneven, with dilapidated mud houses on both sides.

Every so often, you could see some refugees huddled in the corners of walls, so thin they were just skin and bones.

Some of the straw mats contained several corpses with bluish skin and lividity, emitting a pungent stench.

The situation only improved after the car passed through the city gate.

The path beneath our feet had become a smooth bluestone road, lined with shops made of blue bricks and gray tiles, and every few feet there was a brand-new street lamp.

The cries of vendors and the shouts of children chasing each other rose and fell, and the aromas of various pastries and snacks mingled together, creating a lively and bustling atmosphere.

The car drove through the bustling city, turned down several clean streets, and finally stopped in front of a high, vermilion gate with continuous walls.

Chen Qing got out of the car, knocked on the gate, and entered the Liu residence under the guidance of the gatekeeper.

After walking for a short while, they heard a series of rhythmic crackling sounds coming from afar, like firecrackers exploding.

As I passed through the garden, I saw a young man practicing martial arts, with an elderly man standing upright beside him.

The crackling sound was the sonic boom produced by the young man swinging his arms through the air.

He stepped out with his left foot, and his right arm rose up, initially like a drawn bow, then straightened as it was raised above his head. He then slashed down fiercely, drawing a wave-like arc in the air, like a long whip being lashed out.

It landed low, like a thunderclap on flat ground, suddenly exploding with a crisp sound.

Snapped!

As soon as the sound fell, he quickly stepped forward with his right foot, raised his left arm high, and then swung it down rapidly.

Snapped!

He kept walking, swinging his arms back and forth, and with each step he took, a loud bang exploded in the air.

"If that palm strike were to land on an ordinary person, they would probably be torn to shreds immediately!"

Chen Qing was secretly alarmed, and his desire to learn martial arts became even more urgent.

He looked away and followed the gatekeeper further inside.

After passing through the garden and around a screen wall, you finally arrive at a bright and spacious hall.

"Go inside, the master is waiting inside."

The doorman gave a brief instruction and then turned to leave.

Chen Qing walked into the hall and saw a middle-aged man sitting on a grand chair on the right side of the main hall.

Wearing a gray silk long gown, a black gauze hat, and gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he was slowly blowing on a blue-and-white porcelain teacup.

He didn't even lift his eyelids when he saw Chen Qing come in.

Chen Qing waited a moment, and seeing that the man remained silent, he asked, "Did you want to see me?"

The middle-aged man took a sip of tea, slammed the teacup down on the octagonal table beside him, and immediately reprimanded him with a stern face: "You don't even address your own uncle properly, just calling him 'you'? You have no respect for elders! Is this how your father taught you?"

Chen Qing was very displeased upon hearing this. Although he did not recognize the person in front of him, he guessed that the person was his uncle Liu Jingheng, whom he had only met twice.

The reason I don't shout is simply because I don't want to.

The Liu family has never treated him as family, so what right does he have to call him uncle?

He was about to retort when he suddenly remembered the boy practicing martial arts in the garden and the imposing old man.

Feeling this might be an opportunity to learn martial arts, he suppressed his displeasure and changed his question to, "Uncle, what brings you here?"

Seeing that Chen Qing was relatively honest, Liu Jingheng stopped arguing with him, picked up his teacup again, took a sip, and said slowly, "I've heard about what happened at the docks. So your father has been dead for quite some time. Why haven't you come to the Liu residence to see me all these years?"

When Chen Qing's mother passed away, she begged Liu Jingheng to look after this nephew.

Liu Jingheng wanted to take Chen Qing back to live at the Liu residence, but was refused.

He then instructed Chen Qing that he could come to Liu's residence to find him if he encountered any difficulties.

But so many years have passed, and Chen Qing has never come to look for him.

In recent years, he has taken over the family business and has been busy managing it, so he has stopped paying attention to Chen Qing.

It wasn't until today, when his business partner mentioned the brawl at the Micangdu Wharf, that he sent someone to investigate and learned that Chen Qing's father had died four years ago.

Chen Qing was also injured in the brawl.

So they arranged for servants to bring this nephew, who was nominally their nephew, to the Liu residence.

Chen Qing remained silent upon hearing this. He still remembered the experience of coming to the Liu family mansion with his mother back then. Anyway, he wouldn't starve to death working at the docks, so why come to the Liu family mansion and be looked down upon?

Seeing that Chen Qing did not answer, Liu Jingheng did not press the matter further. He leisurely sipped his tea before continuing, "The docks are too dangerous. Don't go there anymore. From today onwards, you will stay at the Liu residence as a long-term laborer. Consider it your son following in his father's footsteps!"

When he mentioned the phrase "son inherits father's business," his tone became noticeably stronger, carrying a hint of resentment.

Chen Qing paid no heed to the sarcasm in Liu Jingheng's words, nor did he agree to his request. Instead, he asked, "When I came here, I saw people practicing martial arts in the garden. Was the old man giving instructions a martial arts master?"

"That's right, that's a well-known internal strength martial arts master in Ningjiang. My Liu family spent a lot of money to hire him as a retainer."

Liu Jingheng's tone was full of smugness, but then, as if remembering something, his face darkened, and he asked coldly, "Why are you asking this?"

"Can I learn martial arts from him?"

Chen Qing asked bluntly.

"Do you think just anyone is qualified to train with an internal energy master? Master Huang only took your cousin as a formal disciple because he saw his talent. You should just give up."

Liu Jingheng said irritably.

"Maybe I have a talent for martial arts, Uncle. Could you ask around for me?"

Suppressing his anger, Chen Qing asked humbly.

"Look at you, so pale and thin, like you've been smoking opium. You must have ruined your health a long time ago."

To learn martial arts, you first need a good physique. With your terrible appearance, what's the point of learning?

Besides, Master Huang is an internal energy martial artist who only accepts martial arts geniuses. You? You'd better stick to being a farmhand for now!

Liu Jingheng launched into a tirade against Chen Qing, his tone full of disdain.

He did look down on Chen Qing, but he was being so blunt because he had other concerns.

He had no emotional connection with Chen Qing whatsoever. The reason he brought this nephew to work as a farmhand at the Liu family was entirely because of his sister's dying wish.

He knew nothing about what kind of person Chen Qing was.

Nobody knows if this kid will hold a grudge because of what happened back then.

Moreover, learning martial arts is extremely expensive; it's a complete money pit.

He couldn't possibly spend that much money on a stranger with whom he has no feelings.

What if we raise an ungrateful child who takes revenge on the Liu family after completing his studies?

So without even thinking, he immediately rejected Chen Qing's request.

"In that case, I won't bother Master Liu any longer."

Seeing that he had no hope of learning martial arts, Chen Qing stopped pretending, immediately put on a stern face, and turned to walk outside.

Seeing Chen Qing's disrespectful attitude, Liu Jingheng was so angry that he smashed the teacup in his hand to pieces.

"You worthless wretch! If it weren't for your mother's sake, would a peasant like you even dare to step foot inside the Liu family mansion? So ungrateful! Don't blame your uncle for being heartless if you die out there!"