Bone Tempering Speed

He continued looking down the list. Hmm, 147 Slaughter Points, and then nothing else had changed.

Wait!

How did the Slaughter Points become 147???

Lu Hao stared at the points on the panel with a puzzled expression. At first, he thought he had missed a zero, but looking again, it was still 147—no change at all.

This wasn't right. He hadn't spent any Slaughter Points, so how did it drop to 147?

Lu Hao thought carefully. The only change in his Slaughter Points before and after was his advancement to a martial artist.

Could it be that the yield of Slaughter Points decreases after advancing? The original 1,475 Slaughter Points had shrunk to 147.

Doesn't that mean slaughtering a pig now only yields 0.2 points?

Lu Hao felt his guess was likely correct. After all, if the points didn't decay, he could reach the rank of a high-level Grandmaster just by killing pigs, which was impossible.

It seemed his plan to become the Sword God of Ten Mile Slope had fallen through before it even began.

Lu Hao pondered. Previously, as a quasi-martial artist, killing livestock granted Slaughter Points.

Now that he had broken through to a First Grade martial artist, perhaps he had to kill opponents of the same rank to gain points.

Did farm animals with First Grade strength even exist?

In the Earth Cave, animals might be born with First or Second Grade strength, but on Earth, there were no such livestock.

If he wanted to gain Slaughter Points, he would have to target humans—specifically, those wanted martial artists.

Lu Hao walked to the washroom, thinking about what to do next while he cleaned up.

He tried using Slaughter Points to restore his vitality and mental energy, but there was no change; it still restored 10 units of vitality or 5 hertz of mental energy per point.

It seemed only the acquisition method had changed.

He had broken through to First Grade after three bone-tempering sessions. A typical First Grade martial artist usually had between 180 and 250 units of vitality. Even those who broke through after only one bone-tempering session reached about 250 units at their peak.

His current vitality was 241, which was already on par with them. Furthermore, those criminal martial artists were usually rogue martial artists, rarely students from a Martial Arts University.

This meant these rogue martial artists relied on crude techniques and rarely possessed complete, foundational combat arts.

Although their bones were tempered and their defense had increased significantly, he could forge a high-quality weapon. Combined with his exceptionally high vitality and the ability to restore it at any time, he had an edge.

This plan was viable.

Lu Hao made up his mind. Tomorrow, he would check how much the slaughter points had dropped. If it really was 0.2, he would start training his combat arts diligently. Once he achieved minor success, he would begin taking on missions to increase his Slaughter Points.

However, there was one problem: taking on missions would inevitably involve his mother, and she would certainly never agree to it.

He would have to take it one step at a time, first raising his foundational combat arts to minor success, then finding a way to persuade her.

After washing up, because he had exhausted so much vitality, he skipped his Stance Technique practice and went straight to bed.

The next day, After breakfast, Lu Hao went to the training room to practice his foundational combat arts and Stance Technique. However, because his vitality had increased significantly after his recent breakthrough, he found he had poor control over it.

Previously, a single strike could barely split a bluestone into three or four pieces, which showed his improved control. Today, however, the bluestone shattered completely upon impact; his control over his vitality was unbalanced.

With no other choice, Lu Hao started over from the most basic leg techniques, fist techniques, and simple strikes, beginning to familiarize himself with his surging vitality.

However, thanks to his previous memories, his improvement in vitality control was not as slow as it had been before.

In the afternoon, Lu Hao went to the slaughterhouse.

The moment he slaughtered a pig, his face darkened. The panel didn't even display a notification, let alone an increase in Slaughter Points. It seemed that from now on, only killing martial artists of the same rank would grant points.

Fortunately, the batch of Slaughter Points he had saved up was enough to restore his vitality two or three times, even with the shrinkage.

But since he was already there, he finished his work for the day before planning to resign.

In the evening, after finishing his slaughtering tasks, Lu Hao told his boss he was resigning, claiming he had to start school and could no longer work there.

The boss didn't say much. After settling his wages, Lu Hao left.

Walking down the road, he weighed the five thousand yuan in his hand. It wasn't even enough to apply for a Martial Arts University; the entrance exam alone cost twenty thousand.

Ordinary people struggled to scrape together even that twenty thousand, let alone the various medicinal pills required for martial arts training, which were unimaginable in cost.

After dinner, Lu Hao's vitality had fully recovered, so he began bone-tempering. There were 62 bones in the lower limbs for the First Grade; once tempered, he could break through to the Second Grade.

Lu Hao began consuming vitality to temper his toe bones. As the vitality surged in, the toe bone began to turn translucent, and black impurities were expelled.

Half an hour later, feeling that his vitality was nearly exhausted, he stopped.

[Vitality: 27/241]

Lu Hao estimated the degree of tempering on this toe bone; it would take a little more than one more session to finish it.

Since it took a full day for his vitality to recover naturally, it meant it would take nearly three days to temper a single bone.

Lu Hao used his Slaughter Points to restore his vitality and continued tempering; he wanted to see exactly how many Slaughter Points it would cost to temper one bone.

Half an hour later, the toe bone was fully tempered, and Lu Hao felt his vitality increase.

Lu Hao opened the panel.

[Vitality: 23/242]

[Slaughter Point: 117]

Tempering one bone increased his vitality by one cal.

It cost 30 Slaughter Points, equivalent to three hundred cal of vitality, and when added to the vitality consumed during the initial tempering, tempering a single bone required roughly 500 cal of vitality, or 50 Slaughter Points.

If he didn't use Slaughter Points, it would take about two days to temper one bone; 62 bones would require 124 days. And that was a conservative estimate; the actual time consumed would be significantly more.

In other words, without using Slaughter Points and relying solely on self-tempering, it would take about four months to reach the peak of Rank One. It was currently March, so he wouldn't reach the peak of Rank One until sometime in July.

This was simply too slow. It seemed he needed to start taking on missions to earn Slaughter Points as soon as possible.

If those who had only tempered their bones once or twice heard this, they would surely curse him for being unreasonable. If he considered this slow, there was no need to even mention their tempering speeds.

Right now, Lu Hao was so envious of Fang Ping's Wealth Value System. Relying on Wealth Value allowed one to temper bones directly. If he had Fang Ping's Wealth Value System, Lu Hao was confident he could break through to Rank Two within a month.

As for now, he could only practice combat techniques first. Once he reached minor accomplishment in his combat techniques, he would tell his mother about his plan to take on missions.

This damn panel was forcing him to kill people, to kill martial artists.

Cheating was satisfying, but the price was not small either.