Entry: Heaven Rewards Diligence

Entry: Heaven Rewards Diligence

Frost Descent!

Cold wind howled like a blade across the wilderness, sounding like weeping ghosts and howling wolves.

In the wilderness outside Fengle City, Lu Chuan lay prone among the wild grass on a small hillside, his eyes locked desperately onto a green wolf strolling up the slope, his tension wound to the absolute limit.

Without even realizing it, his entire body was drenched in sweat. The longbow gripped in his hand was trembling slightly.

"One hundred meters... eighty meters..."

Lu Chuan muttered to himself, calculating silently in his heart: Fifty meters. With my current archery, the moment this brute enters the fifty-meter range, I can definitely shoot and kill it with a single arrow.

If I kill this brute, I'll finally know what on earth that bronze ancient tree in my mind is all about.

Amidst his murmuring, Lu Chuan's mind sank into his Sea of Consciousness, where he saw a bronze ancient tree two to three meters tall standing proudly at the center of the Sea of Consciousness, as if rooted in endless void, eternal and unchanging.

Actually, calling it an ancient tree was somewhat inappropriate.

Because the entire bronze ancient tree, apart from a main trunk nearly three meters tall, only had a half-meter-long branch growing out at a height of a little over one meter.

So the entire bronze ancient tree looked completely bare; rather than an ancient tree, it looked more like a bronze staff.

At this moment, hanging from that branch was a fist-sized fruit, purple-gold throughout. Faintly visible on its surface was an abstruse rune flickering, as if about to burst out of its shell.

Lu Chuan did not know the origin of this small tree. A year ago, heaven and earth underwent a drastic change once again, and Lu Chuan was struck by a meteor. When he woke up, this bronze ancient tree had appeared in his mind.

When this bronze ancient tree first appeared, it was just a bare staff, and that branch had not even existed.

This branch had slowly grown out over the past year.

After a full year of exploration, Lu Chuan had gained some understanding of this bronze ancient tree. This thing seemed to be able to devour a certain kind of origin essence from living beings to strengthen itself, sprout branches, and nurture fruit.

As for what effects the fruit had, Lu Chuan was completely clueless.

However, after today, everything should have a definitive conclusion, because this fruit had reached the final moment of maturity.

According to his calculations, the moment he slayed the green wolf down the slope, the fruit would fully mature.

I hope it doesn't disappoint me.

Lu Chuan secretly conjectured in his heart, his eyes unblinking as he stared fixedly at that green wolf.

The brute suddenly had no inkling that a pair of eyes was watching it, and it still leisurely made its way up the slope.

Seventy meters!

Sixty meters!

Fifty meters!

Swish!

Suddenly, the moment the green wolf entered the fifty-meter range, Lu Chuan finally moved, leaping up abruptly from the wild grass. The longbow in his hand was already drawn into a full moon.

Accompanied by a dull muffled bang, the sharp arrow shot forth instantly, cutting across the sky like lightning and fiercely piercing the green wolf's hard skull.

In an instant, the green wolf collapsed to the ground, struggled violently a few times, and completely lost its life force.

Right at that moment, an abstruse, eerie force melted into Lu Chuan's body and then converged into the fruit upon the branch of the bronze ancient tree in his Sea of Consciousness.

Boom...

The next moment, the purple-gold fruit shook violently. One of the purple-gold runes condensed out within it, instantly blooming with a dazzling radiance, illuminating the entire Sea of Consciousness like the Great Sun. Then, in a flash, this rune actually transformed into a curtain of light.

[Entry: Heaven Rewards Diligence]

Suddenly, an abstruse thought blended into Lu Chuan's heart, instantly giving him a flash of comprehension.

He now knew the origin and use of this purple-gold rune.

This so-called entry was like a kind of skill blessing in online games.

The so-called Heaven Rewards Diligence was actually the ability to grind proficiency through arduous practice, continuously elevating various cultivation methods and martial skills to reach a state of eternal mastery and never regressing.

On the light curtain, rows of characters evolved, forming a system panel.

[Name: Lu Chuan]

[Cultivation: Unranked]

[Cultivation Method: Five Elements Stance Training (Beginner, 12/100)]

[Martial Skill: Basic Archery (Proficient, 87/100)]

The panel was crude, but the information displayed on it basically matched his own strength. In this world, ever since the drastic change of heaven and earth a hundred years ago, a terrifying spiritual energy tide had surged between heaven and earth.

The spiritual energy of the entire world underwent a comprehensive revival, and its territorial area expanded by a hundredfold, even a thousandfold, within a mere span of a year.

The rules of heaven and earth seemed to have undergone a certain change, and countless high-tech weapons completely became obsolete waste. World civilization transformed from its original technological civilization into a martial dao civilization.

The pattern of the world also changed drastically along with it, and countless countries vanished.

After a hundred years of development, the martial dao of the world gradually flourished and prospered, and today it could be said that everyone practiced the martial dao.

Lu Chuan naturally was no exception.

Ever since he turned fifteen, he had begun practicing this foundational Five Elements Stance Training under his father's guidance.

However, his innate bone talent was not great, or rather, it was very poor.

He had practiced the most basic body-forging stake technique for a full year without even reaching the beginner stage, so his bone talent could well be imagined.

In fact, Lu Chuan had long since held out no hope for martial dao and had already given up on it, until a sudden change a year ago when that bronze ancient tree appeared in his sea of consciousness, which made him breed hope once more and thus pick up this Five Elements Stance Training again.

Moreover, through a year of bitter cultivation, he had finally brought the Five Elements Stance Training to the beginner stage.

Yet if it were only like this, he was destined in this lifetime to never cultivate the Five Elements Stance Training to perfection, refine internal strength, reach martial arts rank, and become a true martial artist.

Yet now, with the emergence of this divine ability, it had given him hope anew.

Heaven Rewards Diligence. Being able to raise one's cultivation realm simply through grinding proficiency is equivalent to defying the existence of talent; as long as one continuously trains bitterly, results are bound to follow.

Furthermore, it is permanently proven once and for all, with the realm never regressing...

Lu Chuan muttered to himself, a sharp light flashing in his eyes as he said, "If all of this is real, then my martial dao road shall henceforth be smooth sailing."

In the future, to say nothing of cultivating internal strength to become a martial artist, I can even catch a glimpse of what lies beyond martial artists.

A multitude of thoughts flashed through the bottom of his heart, leaving Lu Chuan's inner self burning with heat.

Swish, swish!

Thinking thus, he suddenly nocked an arrow and pulled the bow, shooting toward a patch of wilderness weeds the size of a small tree thirty meters away.

The arrow flashed, striking the target dead-on.

[Archery +1]

The next moment, a message flashed across that system panel within the sea of consciousness, and he saw that the proficiency behind the basic archery entry had indeed changed.

[Martial Skill: Basic Archery (Proficient, 88/100)]

"Hahaha..."

Upon seeing this scene, Lu Chuan could not help but burst into laughter, his eyes brimming with excitement and a wild intensity.

Everything was real; he could indeed rapidly raise his strength by grinding proficiency.

"Good, very good... Today I am going to grind archery to perfection."

After a long while, Lu Chuan finally took a deep breath and steadied his emotions. He paid no heed to that green wolf he had shot dead, but instead carried his bow and arrow and walked toward the other end of the wilderness.