Divine Script Golden Page

Big Yellow ran over and kept pressing against Zhou Leng's leg, its tail wagging so fast it blurred.

Zhou Leng examined Big Yellow carefully. Its fur was thick and sleek, and it had grown large. It was clearly a village dog, yet the more it grew, the more it resembled a big golden retriever.

Without a word, Zhou Leng turned and ran home.

The smile on Big Yellow's face abruptly froze. It tossed its head, snorted, and whined as it darted forward to block Zhou Leng's path, looking up at him.

His brows were tightly furrowed.

"Fine, go. We'll go today too, all right?" Zhou Leng said.

Big Yellow stuck out its tongue, its face splitting into a grin.

Zhou Leng ran home, made breakfast and ate, then returned to the village and headed into the mountains with Big Yellow.

The old folks saw them and sighed with feeling.

"Half a year ago, he was sickly and listless. Look at him now—he can run better than a dog."

"Big Yellow seems sturdier too."

"I told you long ago. Big Yellow absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and became a spirit dog. Ordinary dogs aren't this intelligent."

Once again beneath the Frost Giant Tree, Zhou Leng politely greeted it before sitting down to cultivate the Mystic Tide Art.

Without the Meat Medicinal Diet and Qi-Nourishing Pills, his progress was a little slower.

Zhou Leng had yet to exchange for pill vouchers at the Martial Dao Mall. He had eaten too many pills in the past few days, so he would wait a few more days.

After completing eighty-one cycles of the Mystic Tide Art, Zhou Leng's ears twitched.

Opening his eyes, he saw Big Yellow digging a hole over ten meters away, its two front paws moving furiously as dirt sprayed to both sides.

Zhou Leng rose and walked over.

"Whine..." Big Yellow lowered its head, picked something up in its mouth, then turned to look at Zhou Leng.

"Hm?" Zhou Leng reached out and took the object from Big Yellow's mouth.

After only one glance, towering waves surged through his heart.

It was something like a metallic book page, radiating a dim golden sheen. Three-dimensional characters were carved upon it.

The characters were not only moving, but each was composed of six faces.

It was like six Chinese characters assembled into a perfect cube.

Divine Script.

Divine Script was merely its common name. According to the deductions of demigod Demon Spirit Masters from the Demon Spirit World, it was the common language of advanced civilizations.

To this day, no one had fully deciphered it. They could only understand a very small number of characters, and even those interpretations were inaccurate.

Every character of Divine Script was equivalent to a long passage, or even an entire article, in ordinary writing.

"Is there anything else underneath?" Zhou Leng asked.

Big Yellow shook its head.

"How did you find it?"

Big Yellow looked utterly bewildered.

Zhou Leng looked at the slowly rotating Divine Script on the page and fell into thought.

Holding it in both hands, Zhou Leng propped it upright beneath the Frost Giant Tree, sat cross-legged opposite it, and carefully observed the dozens of Divine Script characters.

Zhou Leng recalled all sorts of claims he had read online. Divine Script could not be read all at once; it had to be viewed one character at a time. Only after understanding the first could one understand the second.

Zhou Leng stared at the first Divine Script character and tried to memorize it.

After looking once, he seemed to have remembered it.

He closed his eyes. Hm? He had forgotten everything.

He looked again. It seemed quite simple.

The moment he closed his eyes, what had he just seen again?

Zhou Leng kept memorizing and forgetting.

The feeling was like reciting a text while half asleep and half awake.

Half an hour later, Zhou Leng suddenly shut his eyes and clutched his head.

He remembered it, but his brain had nearly exploded.

That Divine Script character was like a blender, spinning in his mind and churning his brains.

Squinting, Zhou Leng laboriously took out his sleeping bag, crawled inside, and fell into a deep sleep.

A long while later, Zhou Leng woke and checked the time on his phone.

He had slept for a full four hours, yet his mind was still muddled.

Previously, he only needed two hours of sleep beneath the tree to be brimming with energy.

Zhou Leng sat with his back against the tree, too lazy to even lift a finger.

Big Yellow picked up the Divine Script Golden Page and placed it before Zhou Leng.

"You want me to study?"

Big Yellow nodded.

Zhou Leng fell silent. He had never expected that after living his whole life, he would suffer the humiliation of being urged to study by a yellow dog.

"I can't understand it."

Big Yellow looked confused and tilted its head slightly.

Helplessly, Zhou Leng said, "This is Divine Script. It's different from the writing I knew before. I can't understand a single character. Even memorizing one almost made my head explode. Bang... Do you understand?"

Zhou Leng spread his hands apart.

Big Yellow looked at the Divine Script Golden Page, then at Zhou Leng, going back and forth several times. Its dog eyes grew even more puzzled.

"You find it strange that I can't understand it?" Zhou Leng asked.

Big Yellow nodded.

"Do you think it's normal for a dog not to understand, but shameful for a person not to understand?"

Big Yellow nodded, then froze before shaking its head repeatedly.

Man and dog stared at each other.

Zhou Leng suddenly shuddered and pretended to rise. Big Yellow spun around and sprang far away with a kick of its hind legs. After looking back, it narrowed its eyes, grinned foolishly, lowered its head, tucked its tail, and walked back.

"Big Yellow, you're getting more and more impressive. You could even find something like this." Zhou Leng pinched the Divine Script Golden Page between his fingers.

Big Yellow grinned, secretly glanced at the Frost Giant Tree's canopy, then hurriedly lowered its head.

Seeing that, Zhou Leng's gaze flickered.

Zhou Leng vaguely guessed at certain possibilities. They were somewhat fantastical, but not absolutely impossible.

Zhou Leng picked up the Divine Script Golden Page, looked toward the second character, and strained to memorize it.

Soon, two cubic Divine Script characters rotated in his mind, joining forces to churn his brains...

Zhou Leng crawled weakly into his sleeping bag.

When he woke again, Zhou Leng sat blankly for a long time.

His body was still there, but his soul was gone.

Zhou Leng blinked.

The second Divine Script character was gone from his mind. He had not the slightest impression of it; he had forgotten it completely.

Even his memory of the first Divine Script character had become blurry.

Zhou Leng hurriedly looked at the Divine Script Golden Page and spent quite some time before fully memorizing the first character again.

As for the second, Zhou Leng glanced at it and decided to leave it alone for now. He would firmly memorize the first one first.

Zhou Leng checked his phone. It was already late at night.

Zhou Leng slowly stood and warmed up with a light jog.

Afterward, he cultivated his internal arts and external martial techniques as usual.

After waking from another sleep, he went down the mountain, returned home to eat and cook, packed food, exchanged for seven Qi-Nourishing Pills at the Martial Dao Mall, and then went back up the mountain.

The first Divine Script character had blurred again. He memorized it once more, slept, then cultivated.

With a treasure mountain in hand, he could not do nothing. Even learning one character would be enough.

After cultivating, he returned home and contacted Li Linhan.

"I've decided to join their Martial Path Study Team. My classmate Feng Wenhao wants to go too. He said he can take less compensation."

Not long afterward, Li Linhan replied.

"Okay. Once your results are out, I'll take the two of you to meet him."

Zhou Leng stopped by the hospital on the way. After an examination, he removed the green wristband.

Then Zhou Leng plunged headfirst into the Mysterious Forest and cultivated beneath the Frost Giant Tree.

Time passed.

Before dawn, Zhou Leng sat beneath the Frost Giant Tree and slowly opened his eyes.

His true qi had broken through, advancing to grandmastery.

Qi-Nourishing Great Accomplishment. With a ten-second breath, qi reached his skin.

Zhou Leng took out his phone, started the timer, gathered his true qi, and ran at full speed.

Big Yellow chased after him from behind.

Before long, Zhou Leng stopped and looked at his phone.

4 minutes 56 seconds.

That was a full 33 seconds faster than on the day of the Martial Examination.

Zhou Leng continued using Martial Path Perception. His external martial techniques had not improved.

Internal arts could be aided by Qi-Nourishing Pills and high-grade spiritual lands, but external martial techniques could only be cultivated step by step.

His rapid improvement over the previous days was because his body had grown stronger. In essence, he had merely been making up for past deficiencies.

Even someone as strong as Zhang Xinglie had only reached the fifth level of grandmastery in his strongest boxing art.

Zhou Leng sat on the ground and circulated his qi. The tide-like true qi within him rapidly rose.

The Mystic Tide Art piled wave upon wave, its later force fierce and powerful.

Once the Mystic Tide Art reached grandmastery, whenever his true qi was exhausted, it would rise again at an extremely rapid speed.

Great Tide Rebound.

In only a few dozen seconds, the true qi in his dantian had recovered to half. After that, its recovery speed returned to normal.

When his true qi filled his dantian, Zhou Leng examined himself inwardly and found his body completely different from before.

Previously, the dark-blue true qi had flowed only beneath his skin.

Now, dense dark-blue nets of true qi emerged within his skin, as though he had gained another layer of fascia.

At the same time, Zhou Leng's breathing changed. His inhalations reached ten seconds, while his exhalations lasted around five.

Zhou Leng opened his eyes, slightly surprised.

The increase in strength after the Mystic Tide Art reached grandmastery was perfectly normal, but for some reason, his perceptive ability had strengthened as well.

It was somewhat like what Teacher Sun Xiong had said: his spiritual will had undergone another tempering.

Though this tempering was far inferior to that month in the hospital, it felt somewhat similar.

To verify it, Zhou Leng exhausted his true qi, crawled into his sleeping bag, and recorded the time.

After waking from a sleep, Zhou Leng turned on his phone.

Previously, his average sleep time beneath the Frost Giant Tree had been 2 hours 9 minutes.

This time, it had taken only 2 hours 3 minutes.

Six minutes faster.

"I wonder whether it's related to the spiritual land or the Divine Script Golden Page."

Zhou Leng glanced at the Divine Script Golden Page.

Over the past few days, Zhou Leng had been continuously studying Divine Script.

Divine Script seemed to possess a strange characteristic: no matter how clearly he remembered it on the first day, it would become blurry the next day.

Zhou Leng decided to study it repeatedly and see how many days it would take to remember it completely.

Zhou Leng checked the date on his phone. Results would be released today, and applications would be submitted the day after tomorrow.

Leaving the Mysterious Forest, Zhou Leng returned to Xiaoru Village, found a red brick, and placed it on a stone platform.

Zhou Leng took a deep breath, channeled qi into his palm, and spread it across his skin.

His right palm came down.

Smack!

Zhou Leng withdrew his hand and looked at the red brick.

The large red brick had shattered into dense little pieces, most about the size of broad beans, even and orderly.

"Once I reach the Late Blood-Circulating Stage or the Body-Refining Stage, I should be able to turn a brick into powder with one palm strike."

Looking at his palm, he saw a faint red mark had appeared.

Zhou Leng returned home and waited quietly.

At nine o'clock, he went online to check his results.

The page froze. He refreshed it.

A full five minutes later, Zhou Leng finally found his scores.

The total score for the three examinations was out of 1,000 points. The written examination, physical examination, and Martial Examination carried progressively greater weight.

Martial arts universities and their affiliated martial schools admitted students based on total score. Non-martial arts university admissions did not consider physical examination or Martial Examination scores, using only the 750-point written examination score.

Zhou Leng silently looked at his total score for the three examinations.

672 points.

City ranking: 12,437th.

Below the top 5,000, martial arts university was out of reach. Below the top 10,000, affiliated martial schools were out of reach.

Zhou Leng looked at his Martial Examination score.

The Martial Examination had three subjects, each worth 100 points, for a total raw score of 300 points.

True qi total score:

True qi strength score:

True qi control score:

Martial Examination total score: 276.

Zhou Leng let out a sigh of relief.

If the Martial Examination total score was high enough, one could directly take the supplementary admission exam for martial arts universities. Pass the supplementary admission, and one could enter a martial arts university.

Yunhua and Jinjing University had a direct supplementary admission cutoff of 290 points.

The other eight of the top ten martial arts universities had a direct supplementary admission cutoff of 270 points.

Ordinary martial arts universities had different supplementary admission cutoffs, but none were below 250 points.

With 276 points on the Martial Examination, he could directly enter Ru City Martial University's supplementary admission process.

Given his martial arts level, his chances of passing Ru City Martial University's supplementary admission exam exceeded 90%.

West Sea Martial University was also in Ru City. It was better than Ru City Martial University, but it ranked among the top ten martial arts universities, and the competition was fierce.

What was more, too many children from wealthy and powerful families had consumed all kinds of pills since childhood. Their total true qi and true qi strength were astonishing, and they were even frequently taken into Demon City by experts for training. In many respects, they held crushing advantages.

"My chances of passing West Sea Martial University's supplementary admission exam won't exceed 30%..."

Messages of inquiry began arriving on his phone.

"Zhou Leng, what's your ranking? How many points did you get on the Martial Examination?" Hu Yi was the first to ask.

Hu Yi followed up with another message: "My ranking went up by three thousand—fifty-two thousandth place. My Martial Examination score was only 199. Time to lie flat!"