It was late at night. No one was around, and the cold wind howled!
After a brief conversation with the other two, Ye Li went out alone to practice martial arts.
He jogged through the night until he found a shady spot several hundred meters from the residential area.
Ye Li surveyed his surroundings.
"Beautiful moonlight tonight, but I have to be extra careful!"
"Otherwise, why would those people from the Li Family curse me?"
"I have good reason to be afraid."
As the saying went, after reading three hundred webnovels, even if you couldn't write one, you could still recite them!
According to Chekhov's Gun, since Li Xi's stubborn, self-important nature had been described earlier, a conflict was bound to come next!
One Li Xi wasn't frightening, but in classic stories, the righteous families were divided while the villains stood united. Beat the young one, and the old one came after you.
He had neither power nor influence. Though he had no parents, he still had his aunt and uncle's family to worry about. He would have a hard time standing against the Li Family's might.
"The villains have already come out on their own! Li Xi is one of them! And there's the Li Family, too!"
A chill crept up his spine and into the back of his head. Ye Li felt a sense of danger unlike anything he had ever experienced.
Life was one enormous Galgame with no way to reload a save. Every decision meant choosing an option.
The information he had gathered so far had made the main quest he was about to trigger clear:
"Faced with the Li Family's threat, you decide to—"
A: Train hard
B: Slack off and laze around
Choose correctly, and life would be perfect. Choose wrong, and his family might be destroyed!
Clearly, choosing A meant the classic opening of a martial-arts novel: protect his family from harm!
As for option B, it might trigger a "family destroyed" Bad Ending, sending him down the revenge protagonist's path of "Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west"!
"Are the tropes of extreme-martial-arts novels starting to force my hand? I can't slack off!"
"For my family, I'll use Blue Silver Entanglement on the Li Family!"
At that thought, he decisively took the starting stance of Azure Dragon Force!
"Hiss... hoo..."
"Hiss, hiss... hoo—"
"Hiss... hoo... hiss..."
Matching the distinctive rhythm of the breathing technique, Ye Li began twisting his body again and again beneath the night sky.
With every repetition, his understanding of Azure Dragon Force deepened, and his next attempt took on more of the Azure Dragon's majesty.
In the darkness, his figure looked like a flood dragon lurking in an abyss, ready to unfurl at any moment!
Sweat soon soaked through his thin clothes, sticking to his skin and bringing a faint chill. The heat surging within his body quickly drove it away.
Under the efficient tempering, his muscles groaned with a dull ache. Every stretch brought a sharp, clear pang of pain, but it only sharpened his focus!
After about an hour, Ye Li finally finished and relaxed his stance.
He looked as though he had just been hauled out of the water, drenched from head to toe, steam rising from his body.
Waves of soreness rolled through his muscles, announcing that he had reached the limit of tonight's training.
Feeling the ache and swelling in his muscles, he calmly glanced over his status panel.
"Mortal (8/1000)"
"Azure Dragon Force (33/100)"
"Phew... good progress."
A faint smile appeared on Ye Li's weary face.
At this rate, Azure Dragon Force would reach perfection within three days!
He was eager to see what effects this core technique, treasured by the gang, would reveal once it reached perfection—and what kind of miraculous power it would display.
Ye Li moved to the stone steps in the corner. Maintaining the breathing technique, he used his trembling hands to knead and slap his aching muscles, especially those in his thighs and lower back.
His fingertips pressed into the taut bundles of muscle, bringing waves of intense, tingling soreness.
"I've never exercised this strenuously in this world. My muscles will probably hurt so much tomorrow that they'll cramp."
As he thought it over, Ye Li did his best to massage the blood-swollen muscles loose, one little bit at a time, preparing for tomorrow's training!
Two quarters of an hour later, after washing up, he dragged his heavy body back to the communal bunkroom!
The room was pitch-black, broken only by the soft snores rising and falling around him.
In the faint moonlight filtering through the crack beneath the door, Ye Li's gaze passed over the three sleeping men.
Without disturbing anyone, he felt his way up to his own bunk.
His head had barely touched the pillow when a heavy drowsiness dragged him into darkness.
Yet in the depths of sleep, his body did not completely rest.
After learning the technique through World-Shocking Wisdom, everything seemed to have become instinct.
Even while unconscious, Ye Li imitated Azure Dragon Force as he breathed.
With each passive breath, his chest rose and fell rhythmically.
His organs, the skin covering his body, even the blood rushing through his veins—all continued to vibrate.
Like a pair of invisible hands, the vibrations smoothed away the fatigue accumulated from the day's strenuous exercise at an unimaginable speed, tempering his transforming body.
At dawn, before the sky had brightened, a thin mist hung in the air.
Years of poverty had trained his body clock to rise with the sun.
He almost instinctively rolled over and sat up on the wooden bed.
"Mm..."
The intense soreness he had expected, as if he had been struck by a heavy hammer and could barely move, never came.
Instead, an indescribable lightness enveloped his whole body. He felt remarkably well, his muscles brimming with a solid fullness.
"People in this world really are built to take a beating. I'll increase the training load a little today."
Puzzled, Ye Li summoned his status panel. The information on it made him freeze.
"Mortal (9/1000)"
"I remember it was only eight last night, even when I went to sleep. One night later, it's already nine?"
Ye Li was astonished. That was one less hour of training he needed.
"Passive breathing with Azure Dragon Force: training progress +1"
"Passive breathing..."
Only when the panel reminded him did Ye Li realize he had been maintaining the breathing rhythm of Azure Dragon Force all along, as though it were an instinct.
But now that he had noticed it, his breathing switched from automatic to manual.
The discovery left him utterly shocked!
Because it meant that even if he did nothing, maintaining this breathing technique would earn him two points of training progress every day.
He could simply sleep every day, as long as he kept breathing and didn't die. With time, little by little, the grains of sand would pile into a tower, and he could easily reach the threshold within two years.
"Brilliant! Isn't this the legendary 'getting stronger just by sleeping'?"
"World-Shocking Wisdom really hasn't held back my astonishing talent!"
"That works too. The daily increase in training progress is an extra bonus."
The discovery filled him with energy.
He glanced at his three roommates, still fast asleep, then quietly slipped out of the communal bunkroom without disturbing them.
After washing and eating, Ye Li headed straight for the gang's Martial Arts Arena.
The training ground was empty and quiet in the early morning. The morning mist had not yet fully lifted, and dew left the ground damp.
A dozen or so figures had arrived before him, practicing Azure Dragon Force in the arena!
Like him, they were all outer-gang members who had yet to enter the martial-arts world.
Those who had officially entered the martial-arts world simply didn't practice in the same area as these people.
The gap in their levels was too great. One careless move, and they might run into them like speed bumps and get smashed to pieces.
Ye Li took a deep breath of the cool air, rich with the scent of grass, joined them, and began practicing with focused attention.
Three days passed in the dull grind of hard training.
The Azure Dragon Force he had been cultivating was about to reach perfection!