Improving His Innate Constitution

When Zhou Ye left, he was already wearing a windproof scarf.

By then, he noticed quite a few people like himself on the streets. They too carried luggage, supporting the elderly and leading the young as they left the prefectural city, intending to seek refuge with relatives and friends elsewhere.

Zhou Ye could not help turning back to look toward the city gate. He found it tightly shut; apparently, the rebellion within the city still had not been resolved. At this rate, the chaos would probably continue for quite a few more days.

Discarded belongings lay everywhere along the road, and every so often he could see a few corpses. Fortunately, several kindhearted people were helping out. They carried away the bodies, covered a naked female corpse with cloth, and one middle-aged woman even picked up a wailing infant...

When he passed that woman, Zhou Ye stopped. He handed over the thirty jin of rice and a strip of salted meat. While the woman thanked him profusely, he swiftly slipped several bits of broken silver into the baby's swaddling clothes.

It would not really help much, but at least it gave him some peace of mind. Sigh—!

That evening, Zhou Ye brought his things to Little Homestead. On the way, he buried the bag of ashes and the soil stained with blood deep in the mountain forest, thoroughly erasing every trace.

He casually shoved the steel crossbow, chainmail, and Black Flood Dragon Spear beneath the bed. He kept the thick-backed saber for himself, which counted as an upgrade to his equipment.

It was not that he did not want to store them elsewhere. Every room was already stuffed full. Even beside his bed were piles of salted meat and salted fish. Did he really want to fall asleep every day with the smell of salted meat and fish in his nose?

Still, this salty fragrance was the best. It made him feel secure. He had finally reached a safe place.

Yet as he lay in bed, Zhou Ye recalled the process of entering Force.

Five days to sense qi? Fifty-five days to break through and enter Force? His innate constitution was far too terrible, wasn't it? It was only a little better than those born disabled.

And during his previous cultivation, Zhou Ye had long sensed that the quality of one's innate constitution was exceedingly, exceedingly difficult to improve through later development. It was a talent bestowed at birth.

In other words, the original owner's mother had suffered from malnutrition for a long time while pregnant, ultimately affecting the fetus's development. It simply could not be remedied after birth.

Holy crap! Others lost at the starting line, but I lost while I was still in the womb?

In that case, he would use 5 natural attribute points to add 1 point to his innate constitution! Innate Constitution: -3→-2

But to his surprise, the moment he added that single point of innate constitution, his entire body suddenly began convulsing. It felt as though every pore had been pricked with needles, waves of agonizing pain crashing over him—the sensation of ten thousand arrows piercing his heart.

Before long, Zhou Ye had been tortured into a half-conscious state by that indescribable agony...

When Zhou Ye awoke again, daylight had already broken. It was the morning of the next day.

When he got out of bed, he felt a fresh sensation throughout his body, as if his whole person had completely changed. But the moment he moved, he felt sticky all over. He discovered that his clothes and bed were filthy beyond recognition. Quite a bit of black, viscous fluid had been expelled from his body the night before, leaving the place in a complete mess.

Zhou Ye did not know whether to laugh or cry. So this was what improving his innate constitution meant!

He boiled some hot water, washed himself clean from head to toe, changed into clean clothes, and replaced the bedding with a fresh set. He packed up the dirty things to take home and let Xinghua wash them clean!

When he arrived at the farmland, he found that after being away for so long, quite a few weeds had grown in the wheat field. And affected by the drought, even the wheat had turned wilted and limp.

He hurriedly weeded the field, fertilized it once more, and gave the wheat a thorough watering. He also made several scarecrows and placed them around the wheat field.

In this way, he worked busily for the entire morning before finally finishing all the farmwork. There probably were not many days left; it was about time for the harvest.

In the afternoon, he first went to the bamboo grove, set down quite a few traps, and resumed his great rat-catching campaign.

Then he took the fishing net and the four finished cage traps. Zhou Ye quickly arrived at the riverbank.

After putting in bait, he threw all four cage traps into the river. Then he began using the fishing net to catch birds, picking up another basketful of bird eggs while he was at it...

By evening, both the bamboo rat den and the chicken and duck coops had more or less regained their liveliness. Little Homestead was once again filled with the company of so many little animals...

Drinking grape wine and eating wild chicken stewed with mushrooms, Zhou Ye felt rather pleased with himself. This was the life of an immortal, wasn't it?

After dinner came two hours of the Small Wind-Thunder Stance. There was no time for martial skill training today, so he should rest early instead!

Yet during his morning practice the next day, Zhou Ye discovered that with his entry into Force, martial skill training had also become completely different.

For ordinary people, the process of exerting force relied on their own muscles, tendons, and bones. Therefore, there was a limit to how much strength they could produce.

But martial artists possessed an additional force: the qi and blood within their bodies. In other words, they had another method of exerting strength.

To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy: an ordinary person's muscles, tendons, and bones were like having only one engine. A martial artist, meanwhile, became a twin-engine machine, combining two methods to exert force.

Although in the beginning, the force generated by qi and blood was extremely weak. It was practically negligible. Just like Force-entry martial artists, whose base stats were about the same as ordinary people's.

But qi and blood possessed tremendous potential. As the qi and blood within the body grew more vigorous, that engine's output became greater and greater, far surpassing an ordinary person's muscles, tendons, and bones. Thus qi and blood became the main source of power, while muscles, tendons, and bones became negligible instead.

That was why high-level martial artists, compared with ordinary people, seemed almost like superheroes.

For that very reason, no matter how weak a Force-entry martial artist's qi and blood might be, it was still qi and blood! Therefore, it brought enormous changes to cultivation.

First was the extension of martial skill training time. He could add one more hour each day, reaching three hours. Cultivation technique training, however, had not changed and remained at two hours.

That meant that if he trained martial arts at full capacity, he would need five hours every day!

No wonder people said that scholars were raised by poverty, while martial artists were raised by wealth. This required training in martial arts full-time; it was impossible to work and train at the same time. Unless one's family had money, ordinary commoners simply could not manage it.

However, unranked martial skills could gain 6 experience points per hour. In other words, one day of training could add 18 experience points. It had more than doubled.

The same applied to third-rate martial skills. They could gain 2 points per hour, for a total of 6 experience points per day.

So from this perspective, martial skill cultivation had become faster. No wonder there was a saying in the martial world—practice martial arts without cultivating the technique, and in the end it is all for nothing!

So the cultivation technique was the most important foundation throughout the process of practicing martial arts!

After figuring this out, Zhou Ye began retrieving the cage traps he had set yesterday. But the moment he started pulling one up, he felt its astonishing weight.

Zhou Ye could not help smiling. He had not expected the haul to be this good!