Auto-Cultivation System

Spark Town.

It is a small, declining border town located to the west of the Magic Beast Mountain Range, the primary mountain range of the Yulan Continent.

As the morning sun rises, Spark Town still retains the chill of early dawn, yet the Central Plaza is already teeming with a massive crowd engaged in morning exercises.

In Spark Town, everyone from grown men to children of seven or eight years old gathers at this plaza to perform brief morning drills as the sun comes up.

On the Central Plaza, the warmth of the sun shines upon the trees bordering the open ground, casting dappled spots of light onto the earth below.

As time passes, the grown men finish their brief exercises and head off to their daily labor, leaving behind only the children. There are about two hundred of them, divided into two distinct groups.

Both groups are arranged in several rows, the children standing quietly on the open ground with serious expressions.

The smaller group consists of fifty or sixty children, all between the ages of six and ten.

The other group is made up of youths ranging from ten to fifteen or sixteen years old.

The two groups remain separate, and standing before them is a sturdy, middle-aged man wearing a white tank top and coarse cloth trousers.

This middle-aged man is the youth instructor of Spark Town, named Kaven, a Level 6 Warrior.

With a stern expression, he stands with his hands behind his back, head held high, looking coldly at the children. Seeing that they are all pursing their lips and staring at him with wide, bright eyes, he nods in satisfaction and says, "To become a great warrior, you must train diligently from a young age."

"You are all commoners without the powerful Battle Qi manuals that the great nobles possess. If you want to get ahead and avoid being looked down upon in the future, you must train using the oldest, simplest, and most fundamental methods: train your bodies and temper your strength. Do you understand!"

"Understood!" the group of youths roars back loudly.

"Very good."

Among these youths, most of the children under ten are still naive, coming here to train for several hours each day simply to avoid being looked down upon by their peers. However, the youths over ten all have determined gazes, for they understand the truth behind those words.

On the Yulan Continent, almost every child is raised to train hard, regardless of gender. If one does not train diligently, they will be looked down upon in the future, possessing neither status, strength, nor wealth.

A man without strength will be looked down upon by women, and the same principle applies to women as well.

Because they want to make their parents proud, achieve glory, earn the approval of their peers, and gain the favor of the opposite sex in the future.

They must become great warriors.

Since they are all commoners, they lack precious Battle Qi manuals and rarely have access to magic. Their only path is to temper their bodies and hone their strength from a young age. If they can successfully pass the assessment of the Security Team, their families will earn the respect of all of Spark Town.

This is the ideology instilled by their lord, Karl Talos.

Not far from the Central Plaza lies a group of stone houses built from bluestone; that is the place of highest status in all of Spark Town: the Security Team.

It is a force directly under the command of the lord, Karl Talos, and everyone in Spark Town takes pride in joining the Security Team.

The Taros Family estate is located behind the Security Team headquarters. It is an old mansion, and every time a member of the patrol passes by, they look at it with reverence.

In the main hall of the mansion, a man in black robes with a determined face and a mustache sits quietly, sipping flower tea.

It is hard to imagine that this man, who appears to be only thirty years old, is actually over two hundred years old.

As a Level 9 Warrior, Karl Talos has a lifespan of five hundred years; by the standards of an ordinary person, he has only lived through half of his life.

To the right of Karl Talos sits a middle-aged man in his forties. The man looks somewhat anxious, but decades of upbringing have taught him that it is best not to interrupt his father while he is drinking tea.

Karl Talos holds his teacup, mechanically sipping the lukewarm tea, his gaze fixed on the void before him, seemingly unfocused.

A pale blue screen, visible only to him, flickers slightly, with numbers occasionally appearing on it.

This is the Golden Finger belonging to Karl Talos.

[Auto-Cultivation System]

Just as the name suggests, it allows Karl Talos to cultivate automatically. It is precisely because of the existence of this system that Karl has been able to cross the barriers of Level 7 and Level 8 over the long years, eventually stepping into the ranks of a Level 9 Warrior.

On the Yulan Continent, everyone takes pride in diligent cultivation, because cultivation truly brings improvements in strength, wealth, and status.

However, on the Yulan Continent, those with talent are always a tiny fraction at the tip of the pyramid, while the vast majority are ordinary people with mediocre talent.

For these commoners with average talent, even if they train hard from childhood, their own innate talent limits their potential from birth.

The gap between a Level 6 Warrior and a Level 7 Warrior is one of these barriers of talent.

Those lacking talent, no matter how hard they train, cannot cross this barrier to become a Level 7 Warrior.

A Level 7 Warrior can easily live for two or three hundred years, and with the power of Battle Qi, one is even capable of wiping out an army of a thousand men alone. This is the true foundation of a kingdom.

If one does not become a Level 7 Warrior, even with a fortune, one will eventually run out of resources. The Yulan Continent is not peaceful, and through various twists of fate, one might lose their precious Battle Qi manual, lose their stable home, and gradually fall from a position of high status to become a commoner.

On the Yulan Continent, every major kingdom has an iron rule.

No title or land is granted to those who are not Level 7 Warriors.

Karl Talos belongs to the commoners with average talent. As a transmigrator, Karl once thought himself extraordinary. He had trained hard with the town instructor at age six, became a Level 1 Warrior at fourteen, and reached the level of a Level 2 Warrior when he joined the army.

At sixteen, a Level 1 Warrior could easily join the army.

But after ten years of military life, having luckily survived until his discharge, he was only a Level 4 Warrior.