Addictive Proficiency

Lu Ren threw himself into training, tirelessly grinding proficiency again and again. At his current pace, it would take less than a week to raise Falcon Fist to Beginner's Insight, and one or two months to reach Slight Accomplishment.

This kind of instant feedback gave him the addictive feeling of playing a game. Back then, he had once farmed for an entire day and night just for a piece of equipment material. When he finally got it, the sense of satisfaction had been incomparable.

Even watching films of It Takes Two and using the great divine ability Five Dragons Supporting the Heavens had not been this enjoyable.

The only pity was that the prerequisite for all this was forming a skill. Only then could the system recognize and assess it, allowing proficiency to increase.

It would be great if simply looking at something could form a skill.

More importantly, he had been cooking for so many years, so why had that not formed a skill either? As for studying, he had been out of school for two or three years already and had long forgotten what was in the textbooks. It was understandable that he had no skill for that.

Having cooked for himself for years, Lu Ren harbored considerable resentment over this.

Did fried rice with egg not count?!

The news remained silent. Clearly, the authorities had suppressed the matter, and there was not even a trace of similar information anywhere online. However, official survival drills and extreme-environment survival programs had become more frequent recently, and many traditional martial arts classes had also been established.

Lu Ren had gone to listen to a few. Most merely taught the basics and trained fist stances. Even those that advertised free instruction to promote traditional culture had very few sign-ups.

Tch...

Without mandatory promotion, ordinary people would find it hard to endure drilling themselves to death every day. Being corporate drones was exhausting enough.

His former friends had also been unusually quiet, as though they had forgotten Lu Ren existed. The university group chat had begun livening up from time to time, but Lu Ren still lurked as an invisible man.

The authorities were not simply covering things up; they were taking action.

Apparently, the time was not yet right to make this news public.

Lu Ren put down his phone and pushed the matter to the back of his mind. For him, improving his strength was the most fundamental priority right now.

Meng Xian had also been quiet for a long time. Yet the quieter she was, the less secure Lu Ren felt. As someone from the upper capitalist class, it would be quite easy for her to pull something on him. But Lu Ren had no good way to deal with it for the time being. All he could do was stay on guard. Right now, hastening to improve himself was the foundation for dealing with everything.

Time flowed like water and vanished in the blink of an eye.

A month later, Lu Ren looked at his Status Panel.

Name: Lu Ren

Spirit: 10 (Proficiency 32/2620)

Constitution: 9 (Proficiency 1887/2200)

Strength: 9 (Proficiency 1930/2200)

Agility: 10 (Proficiency 162/2620)

Skills: Basic Swordsmanship (Slight Accomplishment 2592/8520), Basic Combat (Beginner's Insight 3672/3932), Basic Dagger Technique (Beginner's Insight 1/3932), Falcon Fist (Beginner's Insight 1332/8520)

Setting attribute points and skill points aside for now, after Falcon Fist entered Beginner's Insight, its bonus to agility was quite substantial. It had even pushed him past a threshold, allowing it to break through to 10. His other attributes were also nearing breakthroughs.

Just as Lu Ren had guessed, each subsequent increase in an attribute brought greater benefits to the body. Moreover, due to the points he had added before, his Falcon Fist training had become increasingly effortless. Over the past month, his proficiency had risen remarkably quickly, directly advancing by an entire rank.

Only Spirit proficiency had increased with considerable difficulty. Those dozen or so points had been gained entirely because Lu Ren trained his fist technique until he was utterly exhausted, then persisted through his fatigue and continued practicing, causing it to rise passively.

That made him regret being such an idiot back then. Why had he not put all his attribute points into Spirit?

But if he had truly done that, excessively high Spirit combined with a weak body would instead have made his body sluggish due to the imbalance. Didn't those academic geniuses, like God Wei, spend all day looking blank and dazed because their brains were constantly storming away...

So what exactly was martial arts spirit?

Even now, Lu Ren was somewhat at a loss.

Yet this month of mad training had greatly improved his strength. It could even be said that after mastering Falcon Fist, his strength far surpassed what it had been a month ago.

If he entered the Otherworld Wasteland now, even without using that dagger, he could duel Chen Guohua with nothing but his Fists and Feet and kill him barehanded.

As he pondered, Lu Ren gathered strength and threw a punch.

Whoosh!

It sounded like a falcon's cry, high and piercing, striking straight into the soul!

Lu Ren slowly drew back his fist. At that moment, thick white vapor rose from his fist and arm. It was caused by sweat seeping from his body, heating rapidly through high-speed friction with the air, and evaporating.

Li Ziqing's martial arts realm was at least two levels above his, and his physique was also far stronger. Only then could he easily unleash Falcon Cry at such a high frequency in such a short time.

In other words, the foundational cultivation that tempered his body had to be extraordinarily powerful to support such attacks.

"Are you practicing martial arts?"

A woman was leaning over the garden fence, watching Lu Ren with great interest. When she saw the white vapor rising from his arm, she looked utterly shocked and astonished.

Ever since Lu Ren had moved in, she had noticed that over the past month, he had repeatedly practiced martial arts forms in the villa courtyard every day. He never seemed tired and showed not the slightest impatience. He was more ascetic than an ascetic monk.

If Lu Ren knew what she was thinking, he would definitely scoff. How could someone like her understand the thrill of leveling up? Especially when he watched the proficiency on his Character Panel rise bit by bit—such joy was something outsiders could never understand.

Lu Ren glanced at the woman. Her makeup was exquisite, her clothes were of decent quality and well chosen, and she looked around twenty-five or twenty-six, not much different in age from him. She had a sharp, decisive air about her, though her complexion was not particularly good. Still, she was quite pretty. Hmm, she looked a little familiar...

She was in a subhealthy state.

Most people in modern society were subhealthy, so Lu Ren was not overly surprised. He himself had been subhealthy before. Having seen it often enough, he had grown used to it.

"If this were ancient times, someone like you, spying on another person practicing martial arts, would have their eyes gouged out."

Lu Ren slowly withdrew his fist and lowered his raised arms. The lat muscles on his back had already taken shape, making him look broad and powerful.

There was not an ounce of excess fat on his bare upper body. His lean—or rather, muscular—body rippled with every movement, carrying a powerful visual impact.

It was a body filled with explosive power.

"This is a society governed by law. Besides, even if someone learned something through this kind of ascetic training of yours, who would actually practice it?"

Hearing this, Lu Ren felt that she had a point. Honestly, over the past month, he had truly shut out everything beyond his window and focused solely on practicing Falcon Fist.

Day and night, aside from eating, drinking, relieving himself, and sleeping, he did nothing but practice his fist technique. If system proficiency had not existed, all ten out of ten people would have been unable to endure such a life.