Proficiency System

Crimson Glow City, Martial Arts No. 3 High School.

"Ring..." The bell rang for the third time...

In the back kitchen of Third High School's cafeteria, Lin Bao, a Level 2 martial meal head chef, twitched his ears. The force in his hand shifted as he wielded the kitchen cleaver and chopped down viciously.

A flash of steel— the beef bone snapped at the sound.

At the same time, the third bell stopped. There would be no fourth.

"Into the pot, simmer!" Lin Bao shouted.

"None of you slack off. Same rules tonight—we must serve within two hours. Whoever delays the brats' cultivation, I won't spare him."

"Yes!"

In an instant, dozens of people in the entire back kitchen sprang into action.

The back kitchen sizzled, stir-fried, stewed, and boiled, the vapors of the wok filling the air. Yet the martial meals being cooked did not leak even a wisp of vital essence.

The martial arts field!

Upon the thick grounds paved with steel rock, heat waves churned and fierce winds howled. Nearly a thousand students of Third High School held their breaths and focused their minds, quietly tempering their own qi and blood.

The path of martial arts began with qi and blood!

Martial apprentices took the tempering of qi and blood as their foundation. They had to fuse a hundred strands of qi and blood into one, then guide it into the three passes of the body: skin and flesh, sinews and bones, organs and marrow, to break through.

Only after completing the first refinement of skin and flesh could one enter the first realm of martial arts—the Body Realm.

However, tempering qi and blood was a long and grueling process. Ordinary people could train bitterly for a year or half and only temper a dozen or so strands of qi and blood.

To fuse a single current of qi and blood and break through the three passes took no less than three to five years.

But that was the situation for martial apprentices in society.

Because most martial apprentices outside school had no money to buy all sorts of supplements to replenish the vital essence their bodies consumed while tempering qi and blood.

They could only wait for their bodies to recover on their own, so their cultivation speed was naturally horrifyingly slow.

Martial Arts No. 3 High School had hired Lin Bao, a Level 2 martial meal head chef, who could simmer martial meals and greatly replenish the vital essence students expended while tempering their qi and blood.

This allowed them to temper their qi and blood without worries and rapidly advance in martial arts.

Third High School's martial arts records...

Even the student with the worst martial arts talent had tempered twenty-three strands of qi and blood in a year.

Boom!!!

A dull explosion of fist force rang out, drawing many students' attention.

A thick, fierce gust of fist wind swept outward with violent force at its center, Su Bo, blowing several nearby students stumbling backward.

Su Bo stood where he was, steady as a mountain. The force of his fists roared, tearing through the air around him.

Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists!

A foundational martial art created by Yue Shan, the founder and first principal of Martial Arts No. 3 High School, a powerhouse of the third martial arts realm.

This fist art was used to temper one's foundation and qi and blood. Every teacher and student in the school knew it.

It was also the foundation upon which Martial Arts No. 3 High School stood. Every student of the school had used this fist art and stance training to enter the Martial Apprentice Realm.

"Damn it... are Su Bo's Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists even the same set we practice?"

"Did our homeroom teacher give him special tutoring or something?"

"I'd rather he got special tutoring than that he cultivated it to this level himself..."

"Plus one..."

"Make that another plus one..."

The students forced back by the fist wind quietly grumbled.

This fist art, which everyone in the school knew, could only be used by them to temper qi and blood and hone their foundation. It had nothing remarkable about it otherwise.

But in Su Bo's hands?

The Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists displayed an overwhelming momentum capable of shaking mountains and quaking the earth.

As his fists opened and closed, their force was hard and vast. Every punch precisely stimulated the meridians throughout his body, drawing his qi and blood into a mad circulation.

The qi and blood within him churned and surged like a rushing tide, like boiling waves rolling over one another. A faint blood-colored mist lingered around him, and his powerful aura was visible to the naked eye as it rushed toward them.

They could barely endure even the fist wind, much less face Su Bo's qi and blood directly.

If Su Bo had received special tutoring from their homeroom teacher—or even the principal—and been taught more exquisite fist techniques and stance training from the Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists...

Then they might be jealous, but they would not think themselves inferior to Su Bo.

But if Su Bo had grasped the essence of the fist art himself and produced that mountain-shaking, earth-quaking momentum...

That was what truly drove them to despair!

"Ninety-nine strands of qi and blood..." Su Bo immersed himself in the flow of his fists.

At this moment, Su Bo had already tempered ninety-nine strands of pure qi and blood within his body. His vigorous qi and blood surged and roared through his flesh.

The hundred strands of qi and blood marking the completion of the Martial Apprentice Realm gradually gathered within Su Bo...

As this strand of qi and blood condensed, waves of blood light rose around Su Bo as he practiced his fist art, crashing against his skin and flesh with the surging force of a rising tide.

"Holy shit, did I see that wrong?"

"You didn't. Qi and blood rise like tidal waves—Su Bo has completed a hundred strands of qi and blood in the Martial Apprentice Realm!"

"As expected of the undisputed martial arts genius of our Third High School! This cultivation progress leaves all of us in the dust by an entire level!"

"In our Martial Arts No. 3 High School class, Su Bo will definitely be the first to break through qi and blood tempering and enter the Skin Refinement Realm! No one can match him!"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"This is insane! We're still struggling with twenty or thirty strands of qi and blood, while he's already almost complete!"

"Don't lump us in with you. You have twenty or thirty strands of qi and blood; I have seventy-one. At most, next semester I'll be able to challenge the Body Realm."

"Hehe, I've got sixty strands of qi and blood..."

"Seventy-three..."

No matter what, Su Bo's completion of the Martial Apprentice Realm's qi and blood was already an indisputable fact.

Countless gazes filled with envy, awe, and shock gathered upon Su Bo.

In the field, Su Bo's expression remained calm, utterly undisturbed by the surrounding clamor.

The fierce wind howled across the field, and the blood-colored mist around Su Bo grew denser and denser. It was no longer the faint, thin layer from before, but became a tangible crimson current that coiled around his limbs and coursed through the meridians of his body.

He unleashed the Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists again and again, and the momentum of his fists had long since broken free of the shackles of a foundational martial art.

The ninety-nine strands of pure qi and blood within him surged, intertwined, and compressed madly.

The rich vital essence accumulated from the martial meal supplements at noon was completely squeezed dry at this moment, transformed into the purest source of qi and blood to fill the final sliver of emptiness.

Hummm—!

A faint yet weighty tremor of qi and blood exploded from within Su Bo.

The hundredth strand of qi and blood! It was complete!

The hundred strands of qi and blood merged into one. The scattered pure qi and blood instantly twisted into an endless torrent, rushing through the meridians throughout his body and circulating through the heavenly cycle at high speed.

His formerly restless and scattered aura of qi and blood abruptly contracted, then erupted fiercely!

The blood qi of the Body Realm blasted outward from Su Bo in every direction, sweeping across half the martial arts field and setting off bursts of air-splitting booms.

Dozens of students standing too close, unable to react in time, all changed expression.

"Run!"

"We're dead..."

The explosive qi and blood of the first martial arts realm, the Body Realm, was simply not an attack that students still tempering qi and blood could withstand.

If the scattered qi and blood in the students' bodies were wood shavings, then Su Bo's blood qi was a long rod of refined steel.

A pile of wood shavings trying to block a rod of refined steel?

Whoosh...

Suddenly, a figure stepped into the field and stood before Su Bo's erupting blood qi, lightly clenching one hand forward.

Wu Bin, the martial arts teacher in charge of Su Bo's class.

Su Bo's spreading blood qi was stopped by an invisible wall.

His qi and blood crackled and exploded without cease, yet it could not break through the wall of qi constructed by the newcomer's light grasp and invisible force.

"Gulp~" The student closest to it looked at the blood qi less than a fist away from him and swallowed hard.

Then he collapsed limply to the ground, drenched in cold sweat.

"Complete! He really completed the Martial Apprentice Realm!"

"Su Bo has completed the Martial Apprentice Realm!"

Aside from the few students close to completing the Martial Apprentice Realm, every student in Third High School erupted into an uproar at once.

At seventeen, Su Bo had condensed a current of blood qi and completed the Martial Apprentice Realm.

Only one step remained. As long as Su Bo guided his qi and blood into his skin and flesh and completed the first refinement of the body, he would become a true first-realm martial artist.

The martial arts teacher who had blocked Su Bo's explosion of blood qi wore a complicated yet gratified expression.

Before the martial academy entrance exam, Su Bo had condensed a hundred strands of qi and blood, formed a martial artist's blood qi, and possessed the strength to challenge the first martial arts realm. This talent was simply monstrous.

Come to think of it, since Third High School was founded, students who had broken through to become martial artists before the entrance exam... hmm, there seemed to have only been a few senior students?

Wu Bin thought silently.

Not long after, Third High School's principal and dean appeared together on the martial arts field.

Su Bo's talent was worth making the trip for.

But Su Bo had no mind to care about any of that right now. After completing his breakthrough, his consciousness sank into his own mind.

Because something truly unbelievable had happened.

[Proficiency Attribute Panel]

Name: Su Bo

Realm: Quasi-Martial Artist [Skin and Flesh Pass]

Talent: Clumsy Martial Arts Limit-Breaking, Heaven Rewards Diligence: practice a fist art ten thousand times, and its meaning shall reveal itself; effort is never in vain, and endurance makes one steadfast

Qi and Blood: 1 current

Martial Arts: Eight Mountain-Shaking Fists [Complete]

Wind-Treading Step [Minor Accomplishment (472/2000), practice ten times daily, and it can reach Major Accomplishment in one year]

Luminous Sword Art [Proficient (875/1000), practice thirty times daily, and it can reach Minor Accomplishment in three years]

(Martial arts tiers: Beginner, Proficient, Minor Accomplishment, Major Accomplishment, Complete)

Trait: Mountain Might—fist momentum like a mountain; when a fist is thrown, it carries the force of a mountain toppling, doubling strength!

[Complete-level martial arts can generate traits]

"Is this the cheat all reincarnators are supposed to have?" Su Bo stared at the panel carefully for a long time.

He scrutinized [Clumsy Martial Arts Limit-Breaking, Heaven Rewards Diligence] in particular, muttering inwardly, "Judging by the effects of this cheat..."

"It seems like it's meant for martial arts trash, doesn't it?"

"I, Su Bo, began martial arts at sixteen, established my martial foundation at seventeen, and am about to break through to become a martial artist..."

"That should make me a genius, right?"