The little cutie was reeled in, then promptly sent off to be deep-fried. Meanwhile, the mercenary carefully tucked away the piece of tissue paper from Qi Yuan.

Kang Huan studied Qi Yuan and asked cautiously, "Do you need sea monsters, Mr. Qi?"

Though sea monsters were precious, getting hold of one was still fairly simple for a nobleman like Kang Huan.

Qi Yuan answered honestly, "I probably need more like the one just now. Ordinary ones are fine to look at, though."

What he needed was probably some kind of mutated sea monster. Having watched the sea during the whole fishing session, he had already spotted more than one. Yet none of them gave him the same feeling that little cutie had.

Kang Huan said swiftly, "There are quite a few sea monsters in the Hai Xing Ya. I'll have some collected for you right away."

Qi Yuan nodded. "Mhm."

Since the sea monsters appeared to be connected with the Martial Dao, he wanted to study them. Unfortunately, his Martial Dao cultivation was still too weak to figure out what that connection actually was.

Before long, the deep-fried mutated sea monster was served. The chef had clearly put in a real effort, but the finished product was hideous. It was not something that inspired appetite.

The actresses at the table all pressed hands to their mouths and frowned.

Kang Huan couldn't help himself. "You’d struggle to find such a mutated sea monster even at the most exclusive banquets. Don't let the small portion fool you. What's on that plate is worth a million."

The knitted brows around the table relaxed.

Wu Qi's eyes went wide. "It’s that expensive?"

Even she, who'd had zero appetite a moment ago, felt her mouth start to water. After all, it would be a waste not to eat something this expensive!

Qi Yuan picked up a chopstick and gave the mutated sea monster's head a light tap.

A single drop of blood that was impossibly vivid appeared. Everyone at the table stared. Qi Yuan stared at that drop of blood with an unreadable expression. He could feel something stirring within him. His blood was running hot.

Amusement flickering in his eyes. "I'm starting to suspect this mutated sea monster and I might share a common ancestor."

The woman laughed, "How is that possible? Sea monsters are just irradiated fish. How could they share an ancestor with humans?"

"Exactly!"

Nobody bought it. They all assumed he was joking.

Qi Yuan said quietly, "Everyone dig in. It's very nourishing."

For him, the blood was the only part that mattered. The football-sized mutated sea monster was carved into a dozen or so portions. Everyone got a share.

Wu Qi held her plate with barely concealed smugness. Again, if she had brought her phone, she would’ve posted this straight to the group chat. The meat on her plate alone was worth tens of thousands, even more expensive than gold! Normally, someone of her level in the industry didn’t get to eat like this.

The moment she took a careful bite, the crispy and rich aroma hit her all at once.

She exclaimed, "It's good. Really good!"

Wu Qi licked her lips, satisfied. Something this expensive had a head start on tasting good!

Everyone else felt the same way. To them, mutated sea monster meat was a revelation.

Yet instead of touching the meat, Qi Yuan swallowed that drop of blood. In an instant, he sensed a faint shift within himself. His blood blazed. He closed his eyes and turned his focus inward. A dozen or so breaths later, he opened them again, his expression peculiar. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

My Martial Dao aptitude actually went up...

If he went to the Mingwu Martial Arts Gym for a test, he'd find that the lines marking his martial aptitude had added a few more.

So sea monsters really are connected to Martial Dao? Or rather, it seems to be connected to bloodline.

Qi Yuan had already begun to piece it together. The Martial Dao of this world ran on bloodline. The stronger one’s bloodline, the greater their Martial Dao aptitude, and the faster their cultivation progressed.

Still, perhaps because the bloodline had grown so distant over generations, it had thinned down to almost nothing. Martial Dao practitioners had grown so weak that leaping twenty meters in a single bound was considered a peerless feat. He suspected it was the cost of a diluted bloodline.

Kang Huan had noticed him drifting off. "Is something wrong, Mr. Qi?"

Qi Yuan replied, "Nothing. Just thought of something interesting. In the ancient records, were the strong ones from back then really as powerful as the texts say?"

"They were very powerful. There are even accounts of a single warrior charging through an entire army, though it’s probably historical embellishment. Modern science has established that Martial Dao has limits. A hundred-man foe was considered the absolute limit."

A high-grade gene serum could easily surpass such a feat.

Kang Huan hesitated, then lowered his voice. "Could the Immortal Dao's ceiling be ten thousand men?"

Legends about the Immortal Dao existed on Arch Star too. However, the most impressive figures in their mythology didn't get further than flying through the sky or crossing the sea. Perhaps the people here simply lacked imagination. Their tall tales couldn’t hold a candle to a single footnote from a certain densely populated nation on the Blue Planet.

Ten thousand men was, to Kang Huan, already an absurd exaggeration. Should he reach the peak of the Immortal Dao and surpass even those absurd tales, he would earn a place among the great houses of the Seven Martial Stars.

Qi Yuan smirked lazily. "You're still underestimating the Immortal Dao. I may be weak right now, but killing ten thousand people or so is still easy."

Kang Huan's heart lurched. The look he gave Qi Yuan was pure awe. Though he still had doubts, it had lessened considerably.

They didn’t have to worry about being overheard, since they were speaking quietly and sitting some distance from the others.

Qi Yuan murmured, "As for the Martial Dao, it may have fallen into decline now, but it may have been something else entirely in ancient times."

The blood from the sea monster had made that clear. The Martial Dao was not as simple as it seemed. Modern people just had too little of it left in their veins to draw it out.

Unfortunately, my best guess is that the Martial Dao does have a ceiling: the ancestor.

In principle, since the limit of the Martial Dao lay with whoever sat at the source of the bloodline, their descendants could never surpass their ancestors. Everything a successor had came from the ancestor, after all.

Nevertheless, the Martial Dao had one upside. If the ancestor broke through again, the bloodlines of every descendant would leap forward—a surge of inherited power rippling down the line.

Looking at thousands of years of Arch Star's history, though, there was almost no record of such things happening. It suggested that the ancestors were either dead or had simply never broken through again.

At the same time, it raised another question. If Qi Yuan's power eventually surpassed the ancestor's, would that ancestor's bloodline also surge upward? Would their potential rise too? And if the ancestor was already dead, would even their bones start to boil?

The thought made him want to laugh. If that was how it worked, couldn't he just lie low and have a bunch of kids? All he had to do was wait for his descendants to shatter the bloodline limits, which would, in turn, trigger his own surge and push him higher.

Idle speculation, of course.