High Martial Arts: The 27th Century

High Martial Arts: The 27th Century is a fantasy–high martial arts web novel by author Caoyu L, serialized on Qidian Chinese Network from February 25, 2019, and completed on May 25, 2020, with 713 chapters and about 4.14 million characters. The story is set in the 27th century, several hundred years from now: by then the technological era has long ended, humanity flourishes and martial arts shine, people measure worth by vital energy and martial prowess, and other races and conspiracies stir beneath the surface. The novel does not focus on a single protagonist at first; instead it opens with a group portrait that sketches the world—a fat old man under the shade of a retirement home tree flicks a walnut and averts a catastrophe; a young security guard at 26 South Street fires an ice-soul milk needle from his milk tea and takes down an opponent; a girl whose eyes shine like eight-heart-eight-arrow diamonds likes to ram trucks with her head; a soldier whose tombstone reads "The nation is at peace, the mountains and rivers remain." The story then settles on the protagonist, Su Yue: originally the son of the governor of Cengyan City, he falls to commoner status after a family upheaval, hauling cement at night for weight training, delivering food by day to pay tuition, and using three silver needles to suppress his true vital energy value. With help from his classmate Wang Lufeng and class monitor Gong Ling, he prepares for the martial arts college entrance exam while gradually loosening the needles' hold. The work centers on the "Diligence System": hardship, beatings, and fatigue can all be exchanged for diligence points, which in turn buy various abilities, echoing the old saying "Heaven rewards the diligent." The book's style is light and humorous, packed with jokes and memes, with both combat and hot-blooded scenes, making it one of the more representative long high-martial-arts novels after Global High Martial Arts.