Rapid Growth

The next morning, he found his physique and strength had each increased by 0.1 again—strength hit 106, physique 105. Seeing such a startling rate of improvement, his confidence swelled.

Maybe, before long, he really could pass... the Martial Apprentice exam.

In the morning, he practiced swordsmanship as usual.

After lunch, once noon passed, he quickly hopped on his bike and headed for the Youth Martial Arts Training Center.

He thought he'd be the first one there, but plenty of students were already waiting on the benches outside.

"Chen Shouyi, you signed up for this class too?" Before he got close, Guo Qianqian, whom he'd run into yesterday, stood up and waved. Her boyfriend Lin Feng sat beside her, clearly there to keep her company.

"What a coincidence. I found out about it online—heard this tutor is really skilled, so I came on reputation." Facing Guo Qianqian now, Chen Shouyi could treat her with an ordinary heart. He smiled as he spoke.

Lin Feng glanced up at him in mild surprise. This was an advanced cram class, not cheap. Anyone who signed up basically had a shot at passing the Martial Apprentice exam. He felt he'd misjudged the guy, but didn't think much of it—Chen Shouyi's image posed too little a threat.

As the time neared one o'clock, students trickled in one by one.

Including Chen Shouyi, there were eleven total—four girls, seven guys. They all looked like high schoolers.

The tutor strode briskly into the classroom and clapped his hands:

"From now on, unless otherwise notified, class starts at one on Sunday afternoons. Try not to be late.

Everyone here, I assume, is aiming to pass the Martial Apprentice exam.

Whether swordsmanship is easy to pass, whether you can beat the assessment robot in a duel—simple to say, hard to do. The key is whether your sword moves flow from your heart and your Basic Footwork is polished.

A lot of people get it wrong, thinking the more basic sword forms you master, the better. Not true. Real fights are usually settled in a few moves. Unless it's a spar, you'll rarely see a prolonged stalemate.

A hundred tricks are worse than one mastered!

Even if you only know the simplest Forward Lunge Stab, if you can wield it with perfect ease, you'll pass the exam easily.

Generally speaking, for a Martial Apprentice, if you haven't trained your moves to flow from instinct, it's best not to learn more than three forms. Otherwise, your focus scatters, and you end up mediocre at everything."

Chen Shouyi felt like he'd woken from a dream, snapping out of the joy from learning new sword techniques yesterday. His school's martial arts teacher had said similar things, but never cut so deep or hit the mark like this.

"Any standard sword form, tweaked slightly, becomes a fearsome sword art. In this first lesson, I'm still teaching the Sting Sword. You've already learned the Forward Lunge Stab. Now I'll teach the upward stab and downward stab, plus how to apply Basic Footwork in combat."

Time slipped by unnoticed, and nearly a month had passed since school started. The first monthly exam after entering senior year was looming.

Rumor had it there'd be a parent-teacher meeting after the exam. Sun Xin finally felt a pervasive anxiety creeping in. He could already vaguely foresee his miserable fate.

"How are you prepping?"

"Prepping for what?" Chen Shouyi snapped out of his practice problems and turned, puzzled.

"The exam next Monday?" Sun Xin was a bit exasperated by Chen Shouyi's calm.

"Already prepped what I could. It just depends on how hard the test is," Chen Shouyi said.

He hadn't slacked on studying this past month. He didn't know if his scores would improve, but the stats under that knowledge category had all gone up by one point, with some standout ones even rising by two.

"Ugh, I wish I'd studied hard too." Sun Xin sighed. He'd spent the whole month goofing off and barely cracked a book.

"You're terminal with laziness, and you think you can be cured?" Wang Dage leaned over from behind, gloating. "Might as well spend some cash to hire a 'parent.'"

Sun Xin's eyes lit up, then he turned pitiful. "I wish, but I can't. The homeroom teacher already visited my house. If I get caught faking it, it'll be a bloodbath."

His dad was ex-military—when he beat you, he beat you for real.

"Then you're screwed. Gotta hand it to Yi Ge, he's got the right mindset. Why bother studying so hard? You should be able to pass the martial exam by now, right?" Wang Dage, true to his name, was tall and burly with a naturally loud voice. Quite a few classmates turned to look, curious whether Chen Shouyi could pass the martial exam.

Chen Shouyi looked up. Facing everyone's gaze now, he could take it in stride. He thought for a moment and said, "Still a ways off. Mainly my physical stats aren't up to par. Whether I get into the Martial Arts Academy's spring enrollment depends on luck."

Over the past ten-plus days, with consistent practice of the optimized Thirty-Six Body Tempering Forms, his main stats—except agility—had all hit 11 points. Even agility was at 109.

In concrete numbers, his bench press had reached 150 kilograms. There was still a decent gap from the male Martial Apprentice standard of 200 kilograms.

Of course, if you went by last month's astonishing improvement rate, he'd hit the mark in a month or two at most.

But the closer his body got to its limit, the slower the Thirty-Six Body Tempering Forms improved. He could already feel his progress gradually slowing.

"That's still impressive. You could just take the exam next year. If I were you, I'd have dropped out already." Wang Dage looked envious. His physique was decent, but he could never get the hang of swordsmanship—his muscles were too stiff, no matter how he practiced.

Martial Arts Academy enrollment wasn't limited to high school grads. Anyone under 24 who passed the Martial Apprentice exam could enter a specialized academy for further training.

"Shao Dawei from the class next door took a year off after a few days of school to focus on the martial exam. His physical strength, I remember, was around 160 kilograms, and his swordsmanship was way worse than yours." Heipi from the front row turned around and chimed in.

Chen Shouyi felt a bit helpless too. He hadn't expected his progress to be this astonishing—less than a month in, and he could already see the hope of becoming a Martial Apprentice.

He had no idea how to bring it up to his parents and make them believe that their eldest son, always so ordinary, was actually a Martial Prodigy just like his sister, and that he'd pass the martial exam before long.

Now, even though he still went to class every day and studied seriously, it was more out of habit. He had nothing better to do anyway.

The school bell finally rang. Chen Shouyi pulled his bag out of his desk and headed out.

"Wait up!" Sun Xin quick-stepped to catch up.

"Have you been watching that new show, 'War of the Gods'?"

"Haven't watched it." Chen Shouyi had been busy as a dog every day—when did he have time for TV?

"I heard it's adapted from real otherworldly god-system history. It's super good." Sun Xin recommended it. Seeing Chen Shouyi unmoved, he clicked his tongue in boredom.

Ever since senior year started, Chen Shouyi had been drifting further from the group.

The old trio had become a duo. For some reason, Zhao Yifeng no longer hung out with them, growing more distant. Once, Sun Xin even went over to talk to him, but the guy ignored him and walked off on his own.

Perhaps Chen Shouyi could vaguely understand Zhao Yifeng's feelings, because he had once been the same kind of person—inferior and sensitive. Like snails, they lived cautiously in a damp, dark world, afraid of getting hurt, afraid of strange looks. Only those of the same kind could communicate with tacit understanding.

But now, Chen Shouyi had already climbed out of that mire. To Zhao Yifeng, he was no longer the same kind at all.

Just then, a fighter jet roared past at low altitude and vanished into the distance in an instant.

Chen Shouyi looked up at the jet, his heart sinking. He guessed something had happened again. This month alone, the news had reported over six incidents of otherworldly creatures invading.

The worst was when five smuggled barbarians brutally slaughtered several remote mountain villages. Over a thousand people—men, women, and children alike—were beheaded, their corpses stacked into an altar as if for a blood sacrifice.

That gruesome, eerie image on the news, steeped in religious ritual, made his hair stand on end even with the mosaic blurring.