"A new type of energy detector? Blocking energy electromagnetic radiation signals?" Hathaway looked intrigued.
Taro smiled and spoke to the ceiling, "Jarvis, also consider the possibility of actively emitting energy signature signals in specific directions when necessary."
"If you wish," Jarvis's voice replied evenly from the ceiling.
"Time to work hard again, huh," Hathaway chuckled.
"It's a pleasure to work with you and Mr. Fabeli," Jarvis responded. If they were home on Martial Immortal Island, Jarvis would likely have projected a hologram of himself bowing like a gentleman from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the materials of this building couldn't support that function.
"You've worked hard, my lady." Taro sat beside Hathaway.
"You're welcome, my knight," Hathaway replied with a charming wink.
"Knight?"
"Well then… how about my 'divine warrior'? Right?" Hathaway smiled with pursed lips and leaned her forehead against his. They gazed at each other, and Taro smiled too.
The phoenix flapped its wings, tilted its head, and felt quite unnecessary in this moment.
---
A few months later, in East City.
Satan was a boy with a heart set on martial arts. The reason was simple… he often got beaten up.
At only eight years old, he'd already been getting beat up by kids his age for three or four years.
He couldn't win fights, so he just kept taking beatings.
"Beauties belong only to the strong! Got it, punk?" A tall boy with messy hair stomped on a scrawny boy lying on the ground with his arms covering his head, shouting harshly.
"Yeah, yeah! Satan, trying to get close to Daisy? You're just asking for it!"
A bunch of little punks laughed and strutted off after dealing with Satan.
Once he heard their footsteps fade, Satan finally lowered his arms from his head, sniffed, wiped his face, and cursed, "Damn… I've got a nosebleed."
"Ugh…" he groaned, rubbing his hands and legs as he slowly stood up, feeling like every bone in his body had been beaten to pieces.
But he was used to it. Still, it was ridiculous that just chatting with a girl a little had brought on such a beating. What did he even do?
"Hmph… One day, when I join the Martial Arts Association and become a disciple of the second greatest martial artist under the heavens, the great Mr. Gohan, I'll learn the strongest techniques and bring justice to punks like you!"
He flipped the bird in the direction those jerks had gone and muttered threats for a while before sighing to himself, "But… Dad's still lying in bed at home…"
Satan glanced at his wrist, where a sleek, metallic wristband full of mechanical elegance gleamed. The reason those punks hadn't stolen it was simple—they knew it was useless to them. He tapped the wristband, and a mechanical voice rang out, "Daily task progress: incomplete…"
"Yeah, I'd like to complete it, but how can I when I'm starving?" Satan pouted and grumbled at the gadget he had bought by scrimping and saving. Ignoring its reminder, he started walking toward home.
This device was called "Babata", a product of the Virtual Earth Network Corporation. Although its price was unusually low—uncharacteristically so for a VENC product—Satan still had to save up for quite a while to buy it, and later regretted the purchase immensely once he realized how useless it was.
But he had no choice. Once the thing was bound to a user, it was theirs and theirs alone.
Naturally, nobody else would want it. That's why those punks hadn't even bothered to steal it.
Back home, Satan prepared some food for his bedridden father, fed him medicine, then sat alone in a chair, staring blankly at a makeshift sandbag in the corner.
"Cough, cough… Hey, son, today's November 7th, isn't it? A few more days and…" His father, seeing him dazed, let out a wry chuckle and spoke hoarsely from the bed.
Satan thought for a moment, his eyes lighting up, then dimming again with a pout.
"Dad, someone like me has no chance of passing the assessment."
He sat in the chair, rubbing his still-sore thigh, his back to his father. Despite his earlier bold words about pursuing martial arts, becoming Gohan's disciple, and beating up the bullies one day—he knew the truth. A sickly, scrawny, malnourished kid like him had no chance of passing any test. How could he possibly join the Martial Arts Association?
Currently, there were only three ways to join the Earth Martial Artists Exchange Association.
The first: join a martial arts school.
Most reputable martial arts schools or dojos had the authority to recommend new members to the Association. In East City alone, there were over a dozen such organizations with that qualification. This was the most stable path into the Association.
Examples included the Wolf Fang School, the Orin Temple, and various other sects and styles. Many of them had a set number of recommendations they could offer. Chief among them was the Muten School. Unlike other sects, most of Muten School's disciples were already Association members, and everyone accepted this as natural—the founder of the Association was from Muten School, after all. It was considered the Association's direct bloodline.
But Muten School's entry standards were also the strictest. Each year, only a handful managed to pass the entry trials. This was a rule laid down by Gohan himself, the disciple of the Martial God. Muten School didn't need to be large. What was the use of size? Prestige didn't matter. Who dared to look down on Muten School?
Muten School valued character and virtue above all. No matter how talented a person was in martial arts, if their behavior was improper or their heart impure, they had zero chance of joining. There had been a case where someone sneaked in pretending to be decent, only to later commit evil. When Gohan found out, he confronted the man in the street the very next day, listed out his crimes one by one, and killed him with a single palm strike. The Muten School leader at the time was even "retired" by Gohan on the spot… but that's another story.
The second path was through the Virtual Earth Network Company's assessment.
This was both the easiest and hardest way in.
It was "easy" because anyone could qualify—all it took was purchasing a Babata device from any official store.