[Congratulations: You learned Dual-Mindedness and unlocked a new skill—Dual-Mindedness.]
[Train diligently to increase your Dual-Mindedness progress. Once it reaches its maximum, you can advance to the next sequence.]
[Sequence Advancement: Dual-Mindedness → Divine Sense Differentiation → Mirror Flower Water Moon → Three Lives Create Myriad Things]
[Current Dual-Mindedness Progress: 1/1000]
[Dual-Mindedness]: Allows you to perform two different actions simultaneously without interfering with each other.
[Divine Sense Differentiation]: Allows you to actively split your mental power into multiple parts that can operate independently.
[Mirror Flower Water Moon]: Uses half your vitality and mental power to create a real clone with independent agency and some combat ability. Even if the clone is destroyed, its experiences and gains return to the original, but your mental power will be damaged.
[Three Lives Create Myriad Things]: One breath transforms into three pure ones; countless incarnations.
Chen Yan's heart gave a sudden thump.
He understood the usefulness of this skill almost instantly!
Just what he needed, right when he needed it!
As he unlocked more and more skills, grinding their progress would undoubtedly become a huge problem.
He couldn't practice walking, eating, staring into space, and painting nonstop, twenty-four hours a day, could he?
That would be way too hardcore. It went against his core principles of quietly developing his strength and enjoying life.
But now, the appearance of this Dual-Mindedness skill had solved that fundamental problem outright!
This wasn't just doing two things at once. It was practically a built-in cheat, a bright road leading to idle cultivation!
Chen Yan was ecstatic inside, but kept his face as adorably blank as a baby's should be.
As he lost himself in pleasant plans for the future, a soft, sweet voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Found you!"
Yu Qingmeng's tiny figure peeked out from behind the toy box, her face beaming with triumph.
She pattered over to the door, wrapped her arms around Chen Yan's leg, and announced happily, "I found you, Brother Xiao Yan!"
This little girl...
Chen Yan was a little surprised.
He'd hidden behind the door and unconsciously used the rudimentary effect of Shadow Concealment to suppress all his presence...
In theory, a child just over a year old would be easily distracted and couldn't possibly have found him so quickly.
It seemed he'd made it too obvious that he was going easy on her.
Or perhaps...
Chen Yan's gaze settled on Yu Qingmeng's bright, sparkling eyes, which seemed to hold stars within them.
This little girl really was a bit unusual.
Three or four hours had passed since they'd first met...
She'd been bouncing around the whole time, energetic as a little leopard, without showing the slightest sign of fatigue.
Even Chen Yan would have been worn out after such intense "play," if not for his several hundred vitality points.
Could she... have a special constitution too?
A suspicion rose in Chen Yan's mind, but he quickly pushed it aside.
Whatever the case, it was a good thing for him.
An equally energetic "playmate" was practically a gift from heaven—a skill-grinding tool sent straight to his door!
The afternoon flew by as they chased one another, taking turns hiding and seeking in their "childish" games.
By the time Liu Xin finished making dinner and called the two little ones out, Chen Yan took a look at his system panel.
[Painting: 100/1000]
[Hide and Seek: 100/1000]
[Dual-Mindedness: 100/1000]
Thanks to Yu Qingmeng, the "perpetual-motion machine," the proficiency of all three new skills had increased by a solid hundred points over the course of the afternoon.
This was more than ten times as efficient as him fumbling around on his own at home!
"Looks like I'll have to find a way to spend more time with this little bandit..."
"Wait, I mean, with little Qingmeng—my little sister (or big sister?)—from now on."
Chen Yan made up his mind.
For the sake of reaching the pinnacle of martial arts sooner, he had to find a way to bind this free training partner to him!
So, what was the simplest and most effective divine skill a baby could use to achieve a goal?
Naturally—crying and making a fuss!
After dinner, it was time to go home.
As soon as Du Qionghua picked Chen Yan up, the little one immediately caught on. His lower lip trembled, his eyes reddened in an instant, and he looked so aggrieved that he was about to burst into tears.
He reached out his little hand and grabbed Yu Qingmeng's clothes, making "ah-ah" sounds to beg them to stay.
The sight of him could melt anyone's heart.
Liu Xin was surprised. "Oh my, Xiao Yan's having so much fun that he doesn't want to leave our little Meng!"
She looked at her own daughter, who was still happily gnawing on a chicken drumstick, completely carefree, and said with a laugh to Du Qionghua, "Your boy's such a little prodigy—smart and well-behaved. Nothing like ours, a little menace through and through."
Du Qionghua was delighted by the praise. She hugged her son and kissed him again and again, her face full of pride.
[Fortune +1]
Chen Yan smiled to himself. The plan had worked.
"Since the children get along so well," Liu Xin suggested, "let's have them play together every day whenever we're free. I'll look after yours one day, and you can look after mine the next. That'll make things easier for both of us."
Du Qionghua had been thinking the same thing and immediately agreed.
Just like that, the two families happily entered into a strategic partnership to "share childcare."
On the way home, Chen Yan rested in Du Qionghua's arms as the evening breeze brushed over him. He couldn't have been more comfortable.
"Xiao Yan, do you like playing with Big Sister Qingmeng?" his mother asked gently.
"I do!" Chen Yan replied clearly without the slightest hesitation.
Like her? He was practically in love!
She was a walking experience pack!
Night fell, and all was quiet.
After confirming that his mother had fallen into a deep sleep, Chen Yan once again slid silently out of bed.
A mature baby could grind skills by himself at night!
He sat cross-legged on the carpet and began the long-awaited experiment.
First, he let his mind settle into a state of emptiness, passively circulating the [Meditation Method].
Then, he split off the other half of his attention and began activating the [Godly Movement] skill he had just learned.
A strange power flowed through his body. He felt as if he'd split in two!
One half was as still as water, silently increasing his mental power...
The other half was eager to move, filled with a longing for speed.
It worked!
It really worked!
Suppressing his excitement, Chen Yan began his nighttime training.
He maintained the [Meditation Method] while practicing control over [Godly Movement] in the room. He went from stumbling at first to eventually controlling it as easily as his own arm.
And as he practiced, he was delighted to discover that the proficiency of [Dual-Mindedness] on his system panel was also slowly increasing!
[Meditation Method (Beginner) Proficiency +1]
[Godly Movement (Beginner) Proficiency +1]
[Dual-Mindedness (Beginner) Proficiency +1]
My goodness!
This wasn't just Dual-Mindedness!
It was doing three things at once!
He could train two skills and increase his proficiency in Dual-Mindedness itself at the same time!
Chen Yan felt as if he'd discovered a world-shaking bug!
The age of efficient cultivation had officially dawned—tonight!
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