Scholar Lv5

The term "training partner" was like a tiny needle, lightly pricking Li Wen. It was a concept both distant and extravagant to him.

His classmates at school were all around the same level. Their practical sparring, limited to stopping at the point of contact, had limited effect—and it was easy for someone to lose control and cause an accident.

What Xinhuo Hall provided were Warriors whose skill levels far surpassed one's own to serve as training partners. The highly targeted practice was naturally worlds apart from sparring at school.

But the price... The cheapest Level 1 Training Partner cost 500 an hour. The ten thousand yuan scholarship he had just applied for was enough to hire one for only twenty hours.

A Level 2 Training Partner cost as much as two thousand an hour, to say nothing of the eye-watering five thousand for Level 3... Li Wen silently calculated it. His scholarship was enough to hire a Level 3 Training Partner for only two hours.

He had fantasized countless times about becoming a Level 1 Training Partner, the lowest rank there. It was quite a good source of income. But dreams were plump, while reality was painfully thin.

There were two hard requirements for becoming a training partner: one had to become an official member of Xinhuo Hall and pass the national training-partner qualification examination.

The latter was not too difficult for someone who had graduated from a formal martial arts university and possessed adequate skill. The difficult part was the former—the selection for official membership in Xinhuo Hall. Its standards were astonishingly strict, far beyond what he could reach in his current state.

Forcibly suppressing that trace of lament over the gulf in resources, Li Wen shook his head and drew his attention back to the meal tray before him, burying his head in his food with single-minded concentration.

There was no use thinking about these things for now. Filling his stomach and improving himself was the proper path.

After finishing his meal, Li Wen rose and prepared to head downstairs to cultivate. Just as he stepped out of the cafeteria, he happened to run into the two male students who had been discussing training partners.

They walked straight toward a dedicated elevator on one side, whose appearance was clearly more upscale and which had access control.

One of them raised the smart bracelet on his wrist and waved it over the scanner. The elevator buttons, which had been dim, instantly lit up with a gentle glow.

The elevator doors slid open without a sound. The two men entered amid laughter and conversation, their figures promptly vanishing into the elevator car as it ascended.

Li Wen calmly withdrew his gaze and walked toward the broad staircase on the other side, proceeding steadily downward one solid step at a time.

The hard texture of the stairs came through the soles of his shoes, as though firmly telling him that his path could only be walked one solid step at a time.

The first floor was a vast, open training area divided into a Basic Technique Zone, an Advanced Technique Zone, and a Peak Technique Zone.

Li Wen's goal was clear—the Peak Technique section.

The farther in he went, the fewer people there were.

When he passed the basic area, figures filled the space and shouts rang out without pause. The advanced area had somewhat fewer people, but the atmosphere remained lively. By the corner where the Peak Technique Zone was located, only a scant twenty-odd people were scattered among four spacious classrooms, forming a stark contrast with the hubbub outside.

Those able to practice here were either top students like Li Wen, who had entered using the free quota for students from impoverished families, or true seekers of the martial path from similarly ordinary families who gritted their teeth and paid for the basic area.

After all, truly wealthy young martial artists with potential had long since gained access through membership or official status and were cultivating in the advanced martial arts rooms above, where professional teachers provided guidance.

Those private rooms for one person, fully equipped and staffed with dedicated instructors, were rumored to be the "ceiling" of this place—the privilege of only the most elite.

Li Wen found the most spacious Peak Technique classroom and pushed open the door.

The layout was familiar: benches for resting and racks holding various weapons lined both sides, while the center was occupied by a vast floor paved with hard, specially made stone.

This material had been designed specifically for high-intensity martial arts training. As long as the practitioner did not deliberately destroy it, even the full force of Peak Technique was unlikely to damage it.

Li Wen walked to the weapon rack and smoothly drew out a Standard Quick Blade. He weighed it in his hand. Its heft and feel were about the same as those at school.

He then went to a corner far from the others and placed his schoolbag, filled with various cheap supplements, on a bench.

After some simple joint exercises, stretching, and warm-ups, Li Wen cast aside his distracting thoughts, and his gaze became focused.

In this era where the strong were revered, only by continuously climbing the martial path could one escape hardship and change one's fate. It was the most reliable road!

He angled the blade tip toward the ground, steadied his breathing, and began cultivating the Rainbow Light Blade Art for the day.

He did not immediately activate the Absolute Focus skill. Instead, he began practicing normally.

This was an efficient method he had recently worked out. He first practiced in his normal state, accumulating the doubts and bottlenecks encountered during cultivation. Once enough had built up, he would activate Absolute Focus and rely on its terrifying boost to comprehension to concentrate his firepower on overcoming the difficulties.

If he used the skill from the start, his precious period of concentration might be wasted solving ordinary problems. The mental fatigue that followed could instead drag down his overall efficiency.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The blade sliced through the air, emitting sharp whistling shrieks.

Li Wen's figure moved rapidly through the corner of the empty classroom, the long blade in his hand transforming into streaks of Rainbow Light, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, moving with astonishing speed.

He had reached Initiation, and his movements had become much smoother. Yet in the later techniques he had not mastered, or at the points where the movements connected, there were still problems with stiffness and inaccurate force.

Sweat soon seeped from his forehead and slid down his resolute cheek.

Time always flew when he practiced with complete concentration.

When Li Wen smoothly sheathed his blade after completing a full cultivation cycle, he glanced at the enormous electronic clock on the wall. The time had just reached two o'clock in the afternoon.

Breathing slightly hard, his back soaked with sweat, he walked toward the bench to rest and replenish his water. As was his habit, he silently recited the words in his mind, awakening his personal panel.

The instant his consciousness sank into the virtual panel—

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! A long stream of information refreshed and poured out like a waterfall!

[You completed a Chinese exam. Your results were excellent. Scholar experience +100]

[You completed a mathematics exam. Your results were excellent. Scholar experience +100]

[You completed a foreign-language exam. Your results were good. Scholar experience +80]

[You completed a history exam. Your results were excellent. Scholar experience +100]

[You completed a politics exam. Your results were excellent. Scholar experience +100]

[You completed a geography exam. Your results were excellent. Scholar experience +100]

[In this final examination, you placed third in your class. Scholar experience +160]

[In this final examination, you placed 58th in your entire grade. Scholar experience +320]

[Your understanding of knowledge has deepened, and your ability to analyze problems has greatly improved.]

[Profession: Scholar Lv3 (304 → 1364 / 400)]

[Conditions met. Profession upgrading...]

[Profession: Scholar Lv4 (964 / 800)]

[Conditions met. Profession upgrading...]

[Profession: Scholar Lv5 (164 / 1600)] ```

"Lv5!?" Li Wen's consciousness seemed to freeze for an instant. The few concise lines on the panel struck him with the force of thunder exploding beside his ears!

The instant the scores for every subject on the final examination had been entered and the class and grade rankings confirmed, the accumulated experience had surged forth like floodwaters bursting through a breached dam, smashing through two solid level barriers with unstoppable force.

[Scholar] had risen directly from Lv3 to Lv5!

Before he had time to savor what this tremendous leap meant, an unprecedentedly strange sensation suddenly swept into the depths of his soul.

It was like a parched traveler in the desert drinking sweet, clear spring water, or a shivering body in the depths of winter bathing in warm sunlight.

An indescribable, extreme comfort originating from the soul spread through every limb and bone of Li Wen like an electric current.

The feeling did not act upon his physical body. It was more as if his thoughts had been immersed in an incomparably warm, clear, luminous ocean, with every thought becoming extraordinarily lucid, lively, and nimble.

The faint fatigue and sluggishness accumulated over a long period of intense study and using Absolute Focus were swept away.

His brain seemed to have been thoroughly cleansed and had its hardware upgraded. Its operating speed, information-processing ability, depth of understanding, flashes of insight... all underwent an unimaginable leap at that moment.

This intense sensation of the soul's sublimation lasted nearly half a minute before slowly ebbing away like the tide, leaving behind a Li Wen who seemed utterly renewed, his thoughts clearer and more penetrating than ever.

Li Wen stood rooted to the spot in a daze, his gaze seeming to pierce through the void. He clenched his fist and clearly felt the powerful support brought by the changes at the soul level.