Blue Star, year 3025, Jiangnan City Third High School.
Before the alloy stake array at the edge of the training field, dull thuds rang out without end. Pale white spiritual energy halos flowed around the students as their punches and kicks whistled through the air, leaving dents of varying depths in the specially made stakes.
"Ha!" With a sharp cry, a tall male student's right fist suddenly glowed crimson as he slammed it into the alloy stake before him.
"Bzzz—" The stake shook violently, and a bright red number flashed across the screen at its top: 998 kilograms!
"Wow! Senior Brother Zhang Kuang is incredible!"
"Nearly a thousand kilograms—that's already the strength of a Quasi-Martial Artist, isn't it?"
"Brother Kuang's Blazing Fist has apparently reached the introductory level. As expected of the number one genius of our Third Middle School!"
The crowd immediately erupted in cries of amazement. The eyes of quite a few girls were filled with adoration as they looked at the tall student.
Zhang Kuang basked in the praise around him and arrogantly withdrew his fist, but his gaze passed over the crowd and landed on a solitary figure in the corner.
"Hey, Lin Feng, why are you hiding so far away? Come over and let everyone have a look," Zhang Kuang said, a teasing smile curling across his lips. "Don't tell me a 'theoretical genius' like you doesn't even dare touch a stake?"
Laughter burst out all around.
Everyone's eyes instantly focused on the lean young man leaning against the wall in the corner, dressed in a school uniform faded white from too many washes.
Lin Feng kept his head lowered, his black hair covering his eyes. His lips were pressed tightly together, and his hands silently clenched at his sides.
It had been three years since spiritual energy returned, and the world had entered an era of high martial arts. The old order had collapsed, and martial artists had become people above people. Yet during the first spiritual energy tide, he had been diagnosed with "Blocked Meridians." Unable to effectively absorb spiritual energy, he was an out-and-out "martial arts good-for-nothing."
No matter how outstanding his academic grades were or how deeply he understood martial arts theory, in this new era where strength reigned supreme, he was nothing but a joke.
"Brother Kuang's talking to you. Are you deaf?" One of Zhang Kuang's lackeys hurried forward and gave Lin Feng a hard shove.
Caught off guard, Lin Feng staggered several steps and nearly fell, drawing even more ridicule from the crowd.
"Forget it, Zhang Kuang. Don't make things difficult for him." A crisp female voice rang out.
Lin Feng looked up and saw Liu Feifei, who had once studied with him in the library and discussed martial arts theory with him, now standing beside Zhang Kuang and lightly tugging on his arm. She wore a brand-new dress today, carrying faint ripples of spiritual energy that made her appear even more radiant and beautiful.
When she saw Lin Feng looking at her, Liu Feifei's gaze flickered. She turned her head slightly away and said in a low voice, "Lin Feng, we... we should break up."
Though he had long sensed it coming, Lin Feng's heart still felt as if it had been pricked by a needle.
Liu Feifei continued, her voice not loud, yet clear enough for everyone to hear. "In this era, theory alone isn't enough. Zhang Kuang... he's about to become an official martial artist. We're not people from the same world anymore."
"Did you hear that? Feifei isn't from the same world as you!" Zhang Kuang smugly wrapped an arm around Liu Feifei's shoulders and looked at Lin Feng with open provocation. "Trash should have the self-awareness of trash. Don't let a toad dream of eating swan meat! Next month is the national martial artist unified exam. I advise you to give up early and find a factory job screwing in bolts. Maybe then you can still contribute something to the Federation, hahaha!"
The cutting words were like icy blades. The gazes cast his way held pity, disdain, and, more than anything else, detached indifference.
Lin Feng clenched his teeth hard, and a rusty, sweet taste spread through his mouth. He hated this era, and he hated his own helplessness even more.
After school, a drizzling rain began to fall from the sky.
Without an umbrella, Lin Feng wandered down the cold, wet streets like a lost soul. On the massive holographic screens by the roadside, promotional footage of frontline martial artists battling savage demon beasts was playing, drawing pedestrians to stop and exclaim in amazement.
Strength, dignity, a future... because of the two words "strength," all of it had nothing to do with him.
When he returned to the cramped low-rent apartment of barely a dozen square meters, the place was cold and empty. His parents had died three years ago during the first large-scale demon beast attack on the city, leaving him only this room and a meager pension.
He collapsed exhausted onto the bed, his chest so stifled he could barely breathe. The scenes from the training field kept replaying in his mind—Zhang Kuang's arrogant face, Liu Feifei's resolute eyes, and the piercing laughter all around him.
"Why... why did it have to be me..." he muttered. His right hand unconsciously clutched the dark green jade pendant hanging against his chest, one he had worn since childhood. It was the only keepsake his parents had left him, warm and smooth to the touch.
Just as his emotions sank to their lowest point, his heart filled with unwillingness and indignation, an abrupt change occurred!
Without warning, the jade pendant became scorching hot. A blazing current surged out of it, rushed through the meridians in his palm, and violently charged into his body!
"Ah!" Lin Feng cried out in pain, feeling as though every meridian in his body was being seared by blazing fire and pierced by countless steel needles.
His vision went black. Countless chaotic, intricate runes flashing with strange light flooded into his mind like a tidal wave, and the violent stream of information nearly blew his consciousness apart.
Just when he thought he was about to die, the pain receded like the tide.
A cold, mechanical voice carrying an ancient, boundless aura spoke directly from the depths of his consciousness:
[Detected the host's intense unwillingness and obsession with seeking knowledge. Binding conditions satisfied...] [Energy extraction complete... Core runes activated...] [Myriad Laws Return to Origin System activated successfully!] [Scanning host's physical condition... Scan complete.] [Welcome, my master.]
Lin Feng abruptly sat up in bed, gasping for breath, his forehead drenched in cold sweat. He stared uncertainly at the jade pendant in his hand, only to discover that it had lost all luster. Cracks covered its surface, and with the slightest breath of wind, it crumbled into powder and slipped through his fingers.
In its place floated a pale blue, semi-transparent screen brimming with a sense of technology directly before his eyes.
On the left side of the screen was a three-dimensional model of his entire body, with several lines of data listed beside it:
[Host: Lin Feng] [Realm: Martial Apprentice (Early Stage)] [Strength: 75 kg] [Agility: 8 m/s] [Physique: Weak (Blocked Meridians)] [Mental Power: 25 (Beyond ordinary people)]
The right side was divided into several sections: [Cultivation Methods], [Martial Skills], [Derivation], [Analysis], and [Inventory].
"A... system?" Lin Feng's heart pounded wildly. As a young man of the new era, he had naturally read web novels before. He knew what this meant. In the midst of despair, he had grabbed hold of his only straw!
He tried focusing his thoughts on the [Cultivation Methods] section.
The screen shifted, displaying only a few lines of information:
[Mastered Cultivation Method: Basic Body Tempering Technique (Incomplete Version, Mastery: 32%, Evaluation: Full of flaws, low efficiency)] [Derivable/Optimizable Cultivation Methods: None (Must first be fully comprehended)]
The Basic Body Tempering Technique was the most widespread cultivation method publicly taught by the Federation to lay the foundations of martial arts. Nearly every student cultivated it. Yet because of his meridian problem, Lin Feng had found even this most basic cultivation method incomparably difficult to practice.
"Fully comprehend?" A flash of insight struck Lin Feng, and his eyes locked onto the line reading Basic Body Tempering Technique.
[Would you like to deeply comprehend <Basic Body Tempering Technique (Incomplete Version)>?]
"Yes!"
Bzzz!
A cool current instantly enveloped his mind. Every detail of the Basic Body Tempering Technique's movements, every route through which each wisp of breath circulated, even the errors and omissions caused by the technique's transmission through different versions—all of it appeared in his understanding with incomparable clarity.
The crucial points that had once been obscure and difficult to understand, that even his teachers could not explain clearly, now became as simple and obvious as 1 + 1 = 2.
Within only a few breaths, the information on the screen refreshed:
[Cultivation Method: Basic Body Tempering Technique (Perfect Version)] [Mastery: 100%] [Evaluation: Returning to simplicity, reaching the theoretical limit of this technique. Cultivation efficiency increased by 500%]
"Perfect version... efficiency increased by 500%?!" Lin Feng sucked in a sharp breath and forcibly suppressed the wild joy in his heart. He knew that from this moment onward, his fate had changed completely!
Without the slightest hesitation, he leaped out of bed and assumed the opening stance of the Basic Body Tempering Technique in the cramped room.
This time, his movements flowed like drifting clouds and running water, seamless and natural!
As his movements unfolded, he clearly sensed that the spiritual energy particles in the air, which had always ignored him, had suddenly become extraordinarily active. They surged into every limb and bone of his body, scrambling to be first!
His previously sluggish, obstructed meridians gave off faint crackling sounds as the pure spiritual energy washed through them. Like a frozen river thawing, they gradually began to clear, strand by strand!
An unprecedented sense of power began to emerge and spread throughout his body.
He could feel his muscles trembling faintly, his bones singing with joy, every cell greedily absorbing energy.
When he finished the set of movements, Lin Feng slowly withdrew his stance and exhaled a long breath of turbid air. He opened his eyes, and an unprecedented gleam flashed through them.
Walking over to the old scale and simple Strength Test machine by the wall, Lin Feng took a deep breath. Without using any technique, he simply drove a pure punch into the force-measuring pad.
Bang!
125 kg!
The number on the display made Lin Feng's breathing turn rapid. Before this, his punching strength had been no more than around 80 kilograms! With just one round of cultivating the perfect version, his strength had surged by nearly 50 kilograms!
He raised his head and looked toward the still-gloomy sky beyond the window. Rain streaked trails across the glass, yet it could no longer make his heart feel the slightest bit cold.
Zhang Kuang's humiliation, Liu Feifei's betrayal, his classmates' ridicule... scene after scene flashed through his mind again.
But there was no longer inferiority or rage in his heart. Only an icy calm remained, along with a flame on the verge of eruption.
Lin Feng gently clenched his fist, his knuckles cracking crisply. He murmured in a low voice, yet every word carried an unshakable finality:
"Zhang Kuang, Liu Feifei... and everyone who looks down on me."
"Just wait."
"Everything I've lost, I will take back with my own hands, tenfold, a hundredfold!"
"In this era, there will ultimately be a place for me, Lin Feng!"
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