The first time I met Wu Laosan, he had just finished fighting a flying foreigner.
He fought evenly against a foreigner who could fly. I couldn't tell who won; I only knew they made a bet: the loser would have to wear their underwear on the outside. When Wu Laosan stood before me, he was dressed normally. Fortunately, Wu Laosan could also fly.
He told me that someone like him was considered so weak in Wu Village that he wouldn't even qualify as a gatekeeper. That was why he took on an easy job as a porter, spending his days helping dump truck drivers lift steel coils.
We hit it off immediately. After finishing his shift lifting steel coils, he led me into the village.
Wu Village hasn't had visitors for many years, as few can tear open this spatial channel. Only those with the Wu surname can find this village amidst the chaotic rifts of the heavens and worlds. Of course, those swept near Wu Village by spacetime turbulence receive help from the villagers to return to their own worlds. Thus, although Wu Village is hidden deep within the world, its stories inevitably spread far and wide.
"Do you know Xiao Yan?" Wu Laosan asked me.
"At his peak, Xiao Yan passed through Wu Village and only managed to kill a mosquito with his Buddha Fury Flame Lotus. He never dared to return."
"And Gojo Satoru? He's actually from Wu Village. But his strength was too weak, so he left the family and changed his surname to Gojo."
"Oh, by the way, do you know Wu Cheng'en? His aptitude was mediocre. He left Wu Village but couldn't find his way back, so he wrote a novel called 'Journey to the West' to reminisce about the village's past."
Listening to Wu Laosan introduce the villagers, I followed him into the village. The scenery became increasingly shocking, helping me fully understand Loki's feelings upon arriving at the Time Variance Authority. Ancient locust trees pierced the sky, hung with Spring-Autumn Cicadas; rolling shade covered the ground, each shadow cast from the gaps of a Dyson Sphere. The roadside gates were magnificent, with golden plaques hanging high. When the free-range roosters crowed, dawn broke; when the stray dogs ran, time reversed.
No wonder I heard that someone inhaled a breath of Wu Village's air and returned capable of destroying 300 googol multiverses; or that stealing a bite of cabbage allowed them to punch the Blood Mist back to Ultraman King. It turns out this land itself is extraordinary, granting those born here earth-shattering power and allowing visitors to share a fraction of that might.
Noticing me staring at the small animals, Wu Laosan casually remarked, "Recently, our village has made some modern products for extra income. The milk produced by these spiritual beasts sells quite well."
"Who is the strongest person in Wu Village?" I asked Wu Laosan curiously, eager to witness the unimaginable combat power existing on this land.
Yet his answer alone surpassed my imagination: "There is no strongest, only stronger."
At first, the ceiling of Wu Village's combat power was an 88-year-old elder. He started practicing with a gun at age eight, achieving perfect unity with his weapon. After eighty years of rigorous training, he mastered the Wu Family Backthrust Spear, a technique even more insane than the Thirteen Fatal Spears. A single thrust could pierce through steel plates fifty meters thick—a thickness that makes tank armor look like paper. The elder could easily demolish even steel fortresses buried deep underground.
The only one comparable to him was his clansman and friend, Wu Feitui (Wu Flying Leg). As another senior figure in the Wu family, he relied on astonishing talent to train the Heaven-crippled Kick for fifty years. His feet, hardened like steel (and notorious for their odor), were impervious even to the Wu Family Backthrust Spear. After kicking Mount Tai into the sky, he hooked it back with a reverse kick, demonstrating ultimate control over power and a protective stance toward ordinary people.
This was precisely during the previous Golden Age. Since then, Wu Village soared to new heights, producing countless martial arts prodigies. The ancestral elders, who had been slumbering in forbidden zones, awakened one by one. With unfathomable power, they stirred up wave after wave of martial arts frenzies in the mortal world, leaving the younger generation of Wu Village in awe of their increasingly formidable lineage.
Perhaps because this power was too dazzling, the Wu Village Council deliberated for months and decided to hide Wu Village in the cracks between time and space, preventing such supernatural power from excessively interfering with the mortal world. Consequently, Wu Village's strength stagnated. However, a few years later, a mysterious external observer spotted Wu Village, causing its power to undergo inflation once again.
"Our village has more ancestors than villagers," Wu Laosan described the new era of chaos to me.
Under the influence of observers, Wu Village spawned countless new possibilities, and the ancestors received unprecedented buffs. The older generation was indeed formidable; they could casually live to be hundreds of thousands of years old, alter the state of matter with a breath, and even delete or modify concepts incomprehensible to mortals.
The origin of the universe was like playdough in their hands, shaped however they wished. A casual strike could shatter reality; with every breath, thousands of universes were born and destroyed. The evolution of all heavens and worlds unfolded within the ancestors' minds.
Perhaps Wu Village is the legendary God Slayer. No matter the god or saint, the ancestors of Wu Village could annihilate them countless times within a Planck time. Regarding negative traits, the ancestors had already established flawless rules, crazier than the effects of pirated Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
No one knows the upper limit of the Wu ancestors' power, not even themselves, despite being nearly omniscient. Perhaps scientific notation was invented for this very moment: open your eyes to write large numbers, shift the units back, close your eyes to add zeros into scientific notation. The numerical inflation speed is faster than all games in human history combined.
An ancestor once muttered to himself, "There is no such thing as absolute strength."
And the observer from beyond the dimensions replied, "You are just afraid."
Under the influence of observers, the ancestors, whose power skyrocketed, began conquering the multiverse. No matter how powerful the strong ones in those universes were, no matter how many layers of immeasurable and unanalyzable boxes they had stacked, or how rigorous or forced their debates were, Wu Village always remained superior with its infinitely appreciating strength. Even the overlords of the multiverse had to give Wu Village some respect. This legend continues to this day.
"Is all this true?" I turned to ask Wu Laosan after hearing the history of Wu Village.
"For us, it is real; for you, it can be, or it can not be."
He led me to the other end of the village, where many people stood. There was a young man, the richest in Wu Village, who dared to bring a pack of tissues to school and place them prominently on his desk. He drank yogurt without licking the lid, ate spicy strips without sucking his fingers, and threw away bottle caps even if they won prizes. Such audacity was proof of his Wu family status.
There was also an elder who did not participate in the multiverse war. He dared to sleep facing the wall with his back to the darkness, close his eyes while showering, and even convinced his grandmother to throw out potentially spoiled leftovers in his youth. Truly a hero of the Wu family.
This group of Wu clan members could go to the toilet without their phones, explain to their families why some games cannot be paused, and completely ignore shake-to-open ads, clicking close with 100% accuracy... Although they sound like heroes, compared to the ancestors who casually affect worldly causality, their combat power is indeed too weak.
"To us, they are weak; but to you, not necessarily."
Seeming to read my mind, Wu Laosan said this to me.
"This is the boundary between Wu Village and reality. The people you see here have shadows in the real world. You can treat Everythinggj about Wu Village as a bizarre story, use the ancestors as tools for debate or satire, or connect it to actual reality for some fun."
"But no matter what, if you take it too seriously, you lose."
After hearing these words, my vision blurred, and I left Wu Village.
As someone who had such an experience in Wu Village, I decided to test the strange effect that netizens had mentioned.
In that game of ARAM, I kindly reminded my teammates to build Serpent's Fang against the enemy Karma and Ambessa. Trying to persuade them in the name of returning from Wu Village, the chat was filled with a galaxy composed solely of elegant Chinese profanities.
At that moment, I understood. At least in this context, Wu Village truly does not exist.