Greenwood Project

To break free from this maddening time limit and achieve a twenty-four-hour continuous state of enlightenment boost? Li Wen had absolutely no idea how.

How formidable would his physical foundation need to be? How terrifying a mental strength? And how many precious life-energy potions would he need to sustain it? This path was probably far longer and more arduous than he had imagined.

After a short rest, recovering some of his energy, Li Wen stood up again and returned to the blade training area of the martial arts room.

He needed to test another key metric—now that his mental attribute had increased, just how much longer could a single activation of [Absolute Focus] last?

The long blade swept, rainbow light flowing. Li Wen deliberately slowed his training pace, focusing more on sensing the rate of mental energy depletion.

Time slipped away quietly amid the consumption of focus and stamina. The winter sunlight shifted slowly across the floor through the high windows.

When Li Wen felt the familiar prickling sensation begin in his brain, his train of thought turning sluggish, and even a faint protective dizziness looming as a warning, he decisively stopped and glanced at the electronic clock on the wall.

"One hour and forty minutes..." he murmured to himself, calculating rapidly in his mind. "Compared to the one-and-a-half-hour limit at Lv3, that's an increase of about ten minutes!"

This result lifted his spirits once more.

Although the improvement wasn't huge, it was significant—after all, upgrading [Scholar] to Lv5 had brought a 50% boost in enlightenment! That was an enormous increase!

Generally speaking, higher skill effects came with exponentially greater costs.

Yet, with the powerful support of his mental attribute, his maximum duration hadn't shortened—it had actually extended!

That extra 20% enlightenment boost hadn't added any additional physical burden; instead, it had granted him ten more precious minutes of sustained time!

"The mental attribute from leveling up Scholar is practically the perfect partner for the [Absolute Focus] skill—it's indispensable!" A genuine smile of delight spread across Li Wen's face.

If he reasonably distributed this one hour and forty minutes across several time slots throughout the day, with sufficient recovery periods in between, his total effective activation time per day should stabilize at around two hours!

This anticipated "endurance" was already enough to support more planned and deeper cultivation.

The sun slanted westward, nearing six in the evening.

Li Wen looked at the final gains on his panel:

[Skill: Blade Mastery (Entry 29→38/100)]

In one afternoon, from 29 to 38—a full 9-point increase! This not only verified the ultra-high efficiency of the new-level [Absolute Focus] but also highlighted the enormous hidden dividends brought by the mental attribute.

"Not a bad haul!" Satisfied, Li Wen packed his bag and left the steaming peak-technique area.

The lights on the second-floor cafeteria of Xinhuo Hall flickered on. Compared to noon, the crowd hadn't grown much.

Li Wen quickly grabbed a high-energy meal set, found a corner seat, and started tackling the food before him. After a full afternoon of training, his body was sending out strong hunger signals.

He buried his head in eating, focused, until the large TV screen mounted on the cafeteria wall caught his eye as he happened to look up.

"...Welcome to Qingshi Live News. It's six o'clock in the evening. This afternoon, our county's leadership, led by ***, inspected the Greenwood Project site. Regarding the large-scale collapse of the Greenwood Project... According to preliminary statistics, the collapse has caused over two hundred injuries, fifty-three deaths, and thirty-two missing persons. Rescue operations are still ongoing..."

"Greenwood Project?" Li Wen's chewing abruptly stopped, the food in his mouth instantly losing its taste.

That name was all too familiar. He lifted his head, locking his gaze on the TV screen.

The screen was playing aerial footage of the scene: a familiar structural framework, but nearly half the area had collapsed as if gnawed by a giant beast, sinking into a massive, bottomless black pit surrounded by rising dust.

Rescue vehicles looked as tiny as ants, the cordon stretched far and wide—a shocking sight.

"It really is the Greenwood Project!" Li Wen's heart tightened. Before his father Li Hong fell ill, he had been a longtime employee of the Greenwood Project, working there for many years.

As a child, Li Wen often went there to find his father, and later, when taking the bus to school, he always had to skirt around the massive construction site.

But now, the construction site on the TV screen was unrecognizable. That bottomless pit exuded an indescribable sense of doom.

"No wonder there are so many casualties..." Li Wen murmured.

After the spiritual energy resurgence, ordinary people's physiques had been subtly strengthened, so typical natural disasters rarely caused such heavy losses.

A collapse of this magnitude was almost a death sentence for anyone caught inside.

A thought flashed through his mind, tinged with absurdity and bitterness: "Looking at it this way, Dad actually dodged a bullet by being sick and resting at home..."

For a moment, a profound sense of absurdity enveloped him.

His father's severe illness was the boulder weighing on the whole family's hearts, the start of their financial shackles, and the most direct motivation for Li Wen to push himself to get stronger.

But now, this deadly disaster had, in a twisted sense, become his father's "lucky charm"? The irony and dark humor of fate left him at a loss, stirring up an indescribably complex emotion.

"Ah..." In the end, all his thoughts condensed into a heavy sigh. He lowered his head and continued eating from his plate, but the food now tasted bitter and astringent.

Burdened with heavy thoughts, he returned home. Pushing open the door, he saw his father Li Hong staring grimly at his phone screen.

The phone screen was lit, showing a chat app interface. Rows of profile pictures and chat windows displayed many unread messages. The avatars were mostly middle-aged men in work clothes and hard hats—faces Li Wen vaguely remembered, mostly Li Hong's coworkers.

"Ah..." Li Hong looked up, just as Li Wen stepped through the door. He sighed before speaking, his face a mix of shock, sorrow, and an unspeakable sense of relief.

"A blessing in disguise, who knows?" His voice was low and hoarse, thick with exhaustion.

"Little Wang... Old Zhang... and Old Man Liu... they're all... on the death list..."

His former squad leader had posted a partial list of confirmed victims in the group chat. Every familiar name struck his heart like a cold stone.

Was he happy? His own broken body, though suffering, was still alive—he could sit here and watch his son come home.

But thinking of those coworkers who might have been laughing and joking that morning, who had carried cement and steel frames alongside him, now gone forever—how could the immense grief and the sorrow of shared fate allow him to feel "happy"?

Was he worried? He knew his illness was rooted deep in his lungs, the heavy financial burden pressing down like a mountain, the future uncertain. Watching his son rush about tirelessly, his heart was consumed with anxiety.

Li Wen quietly walked over and sat down on the stool beside his father. He didn't speak, nor did he know what to say at this moment.

The complex expression on his father's face—he had already silently experienced it once in his heart while eating alone in the cafeteria.

The irony of fate, in this moment, presented itself in such a cruel way before this silent father and son.

The room was dead silent, with only the cold north wind outside occasionally scraping past the window frames, bringing a low, mournful howl.

Heavy pressure, eerie relief, helpless worry, and confusion about the future pressed down thickly in the air, making this small living room feel especially cramped.