Did Li Wen have any idea how to remove this maddening time limit and reach a state where his comprehension was boosted continuously for 24 hours? Not at all.
How strong would his physical foundation need to be? How terrifying would his Spiritual Power have to become? And how many precious life-energy potions would he need to sustain himself? This road would likely be far longer and more arduous than he had imagined.
After resting briefly and recovering some of his strength, Li Wen stood again and returned to the blade-training area of the Martial Arts Room.
He wanted to test another key measure: now that his mental attribute had improved, how much longer could he maintain Absolute Focus in a single activation?
His long blade swept through the air, Rainbow Light flowing in its wake. Li Wen deliberately slowed his training rhythm, focusing more on sensing the rate at which his Spiritual Power was draining.
Time slipped by unnoticed amid the strain on his concentration and stamina. The winter sun streamed through the high windows, its light slowly shifting across the floor.
When Li Wen felt the familiar pinpricks starting in his brain and his thoughts growing sluggish, with the faint warning signs of protective dizziness beginning to surface, he promptly stopped moving and glanced at the electronic clock on the wall.
"One hour and forty minutes..." he murmured, quickly calculating. "That's about ten minutes longer than the one-and-a-half-hour limit at Lv. 3!"
The result lifted his spirits once more.
The increase wasn't enormous, but its significance was extraordinary. After all, leveling Scholar up to Lv. 5 had given him a 50% boost to his comprehension—a huge increase!
As a rule, stronger skill effects usually came at exponentially greater cost.
Yet thanks to the powerful boost to his mental attribute, his maximum duration hadn't decreased. It had actually increased!
That extra 20% boost to his comprehension hadn't added to the strain on his body. Instead, it had given him ten precious additional minutes of sustained focus!
"The mental attribute gained from leveling up Scholar is the perfect partner for Absolute Focus. It's been a huge help!" Li Wen's face lit up with genuine delight.
If he sensibly spread those one hour and forty minutes across several periods throughout the day, allowing himself plenty of time to recover in between, he should be able to maintain a stable total of two hours of activation time per day!
That projected "runtime" would be more than enough to support a more structured and in-depth training regimen.
The sun sank toward the west. It was nearly six in the evening.
Li Wen looked at his final gains on the panel:
[Skill: Blade Art: Peak (Initiation 29→38/100)]
In a single afternoon, he had gone from 29 to 38—a full nine-point increase! This not only confirmed the tremendous efficiency of his newly upgraded Absolute Focus, but also revealed the huge, hidden benefits brought by his mental attribute.
"Not bad at all!" Satisfied, Li Wen packed up his bag and left the steaming-hot Peak Technique area.
The lights in the second-floor cafeteria of Xinhuo Hall came on. There weren't noticeably more people than at lunchtime.
Li Wen quickly picked up a high-energy meal, found a seat in the corner, and started digging into the food in front of him. After training all afternoon, his body had been sending out powerful hunger signals for some time.
He kept his head down and focused on eating until he happened to glance up and notice the enormous television hanging on the cafeteria wall.
"...Welcome to Qingshi Live News. It is now six o'clock in the evening. This afternoon, County Leader *** led an inspection team to the Greenwood Project site. Regarding the large-scale collapse at the Greenwood Project... Preliminary figures show that the collapse has left more than two hundred people injured, fifty-three dead, and thirty-two missing. Rescue operations are ongoing..."
"Greenwood Project?" Li Wen stopped chewing abruptly. The food in his mouth instantly lost its taste.
The name was all too familiar. He raised his head, fixing his gaze on the television screen.
The screen was showing aerial footage of the site: the familiar framework, but nearly half of it had caved in as if bitten off by a giant beast, forming an enormous, bottomless black pit with dust still billowing around it.
The rescue vehicles looked tiny as ants. The cordon stretched far into the distance, and the scene was horrifying.
"It really is the Greenwood Project!" Li Wen's heart clenched. Before he fell ill, his father, Li Hong, had been a longtime employee there.
As a child, Li Wen had often gone there to see his father. Later, on his way to school by bus, he had always had to go around the vast construction site.
But now, the site on the television had been reduced to an unrecognizable ruin. The bottomless pit radiated an indescribable sense of foreboding.
"No wonder so many people were killed or injured..." Li Wen murmured.
Since spiritual energy had reawakened, ordinary people's physiques had gradually grown stronger. Ordinary natural disasters could hardly cause such heavy casualties.
For anyone caught inside, a collapse of this magnitude was practically a death sentence.
A thought flashed through his mind, tinged with absurdity and bitterness: So Dad was home recovering from his illness... and that ended up saving him?
For a moment, a profound sense of absurdity engulfed him.
His father's grave illness was a massive stone weighing on the whole family's hearts, the beginning of their financial shackles, and the most immediate reason Li Wen was fighting so desperately to grow stronger.
And now, this disaster—one deadly enough to claim his father's life—had, in a sense, become his father's "protective charm"? The caprice and dark humor of fate left him with a tangled emotion he couldn't put into words.
"Ah..." In the end, all his thoughts turned into a heavy sigh. He lowered his head and continued eating, but the food tasted bitter and astringent.
Burdened with worries, he returned home and pushed open the door. Just as expected, he found his father, Li Hong, staring solemnly at his phone.
The phone screen was lit, displaying a chat app. Rows of profile pictures and chat windows showed a host of unread messages. Most of the profile pictures belonged to middle-aged men in work clothes and hard hats—faces Li Wen vaguely remembered, mostly his father's coworkers.
"Ah..." Li Hong looked up and happened to meet Li Wen as he came home. Before speaking, he sighed. His face held a mixture of shock, grief, and a sense of fortune he couldn't put into words.
"Misfortune may be a blessing in disguise..." His voice was low and hoarse, heavy with exhaustion.
"Little Wang... Old Zhang... and Old Liu... they're... they're all on the list of the dead..."
His former squad leader had posted a partial list of confirmed casualties in the group chat. Every familiar name struck his heart like a cold stone.
Was he glad? His frail body might be suffering, but he was still alive, able to sit there and watch his son come home.
But when he thought of those coworkers he might have been laughing and chatting with that very morning, those men who had worked alongside him to haul cement and steel frames, now separated from the living in an instant, how could the immense grief and the sorrow of recognizing his own kind let him feel "glad"?
Was he worried? He knew the root of his illness lay in his lungs. The crushing financial pressure weighed over him like a boulder, his future was uncertain, and watching his son rushing about left him burning with worry.
Li Wen walked quietly over and sat on the stool beside his father. He said nothing; he didn't know what he ought to say.
He had already silently felt his way through the complicated emotions on his father's face while eating alone in the cafeteria.
At that moment, fate's cruel irony was laid bare before the silent father and son in the most brutal way.
The room fell silent. Outside, the cold north wind swept past the window lattice now and then, bringing a low, mournful howl.
The crushing pressure, bizarre good fortune, helpless worry, and uncertainty about the future weighed heavily on the air, making the small living room feel especially cramped.
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