"Perception training method"
The title struck Chen Mu like a bolt of lightning, leaving him frozen like a wooden chicken. Perception! Heaven above! A method for training perception! He felt as though wild joy had swallowed him whole, boundless happiness closing around him.
His hands trembled involuntarily, and his mind was in chaos, buzzing as though something had suddenly exploded inside his head.
Only after an unknown length of time did Chen Mu feel himself gradually emerging from a dream. Yet his feet still felt soft and unsteady, as though he were walking on clouds. He could not help mocking himself inwardly. I really am a greenhorn who's never seen the world.
His wild delight was hardly surprising. Ever since he had learned to make One-Star Illusion Cards, perception had become his greatest bottleneck. Unfortunately, not only were all the methods circulating on the market low-grade, but even the slightly better ones among those inferior offerings were beyond his means.
The most advanced training methods in the entire Tianyou Federation were all in the hands of the Six Great Academies. Chen Mu did not think he had the talent to gain admission to any of them. As for the smaller schools, although some possessed decent training methods, which of them did not treasure those methods like priceless jewels? Either they taught them only to their closest disciples, or they demanded exorbitant tuition before passing them on.
Even East Guard Academy's signature "Two-Stage Breathing Method" was not available to every student.
Doing his utmost to straighten out his muddled thoughts, Chen Mu began reading the information before him, word by word and sentence by sentence.
After reading only the first two sentences, Chen Mu knew that the method recorded here was countless times more advanced than the commonplace one he had bought before.
He devoured every word with a ravenous hunger-greed, even. Everything else slipped from his mind. He was oblivious even to the pressure that came through the water from time to time.
Even after reading the entire text, Chen Mu had found no name for this perception training method. A nameless method lost in the dust of history. That's quite a selling point, he thought.
The perception training method recorded on the light screen was extraordinarily peculiar. Of course, Chen Mu had never seen any other methods. He considered this one peculiar because it required him to train his perception underwater. After reading through it once, even his meager knowledge was enough to tell him that the method before him had absolutely nothing to do with gentleness.
Underwater was a highly unusual environment. There, the human body had to withstand pressure from every direction, and that pressure increased sharply with depth. Water also made a person's movements extremely sluggish. This method used precisely those harsh underwater conditions to draw out a person's potential.
Generally speaking, training perception required a quiet environment. But in the Simple Water World, turbulent currents swirled everywhere, making it exceedingly difficult to remain still.
Training perception always required a medium. The medium Chen Mu had used before, for instance, was a One-Star Energy Card he had made himself. In this perception training method, however, the medium was water-the very water enclosing him on every side!
Pressure as the stimulus, water as the medium, supplemented by a unique breathing technique: these formed the core of the training method.
Someone else might have hesitated over such a violent method, but Chen Mu did not hesitate in the slightest. Compared with the reward he stood to gain, this degree of danger seemed utterly insignificant to him. Even being a petty street thug carried a far greater chance of getting killed.
Chen Mu was not reckless, however. He carefully read every precaution before beginning.
Yet his training was not all smooth sailing. His very first attempt ended in failure. Fortunately, in his experience, that was nothing out of the ordinary. He had never imagined himself exceptionally gifted. Every skill and scrap of knowledge he now possessed had been won through countless failures.
He had grown accustomed to failure, accustomed to finding patterns within it.
Three days. It took him three whole days to get a feel for it. The underwater world was simply too unfamiliar, and maintaining inner stillness in such an environment was no easy task. Beneath the crystal-clear surface of the simulated environment called the "Simple Water World," all manner of undercurrents surged without pause. Even holding his body steady was difficult, let alone communicating with energy.
In everyone's understanding, perception was something full of mystery and wonder. Only those who possessed perception could communicate with energy, and those with powerful perception could even control energy's form and structure.
Raw energy had no fixed form. This was the most fundamental principle of the entire card system.
An Energy Card, for example, drew its energy from the energy-bearing substances in its card ink. Perception and the card's structure were used to release the energy contained within those substances. The energy an Energy Card produced was energy in its most primitive form, without a fixed structure and stable in its state. One-Star Energy Cards had the simplest structure, so they required no involvement from perception. Energy Cards of two stars and above, however, all required perception to bring everything into alignment.
The higher a card's grade, the greater its demands on perception. Those demands concerned not only strength, but also the precision with which perception was controlled. This was one of the fundamental reasons why mid- and high-grade cards still could not be mass-produced industrially.
Once cards reached the hands of Card Adepts, they could arrange and combine that formless raw energy into all manner of different energy forms. Some were gentle, some violent, some sharp, some searing...
From these emerged the various schools of Card Adepts that existed today.
Three things ran throughout the entire card system: energy, perception, and structure.
This alone made the importance of perception clear. Neither Card Masters nor Card Adepts could do without it.
With long, slow breaths, Chen Mu's mind settled into perfect tranquility. He released what little perception he possessed bit by bit, feeling as though a faint white glow enveloped him.
Suddenly, an undercurrent swept toward him. His perception wavered, nearly tearing apart the tenuous connection between it and Chen Mu. He had to muster every ounce of strength and exercise the utmost care to keep the undercurrents from disrupting his perception. Those currents were strange, too. As though they knew Chen Mu's limit, their strength each time landed precisely where it hurt him most.
Truthfully, it was torture. Chen Mu had always considered his will tenacious, yet this torment nearly made him cough up blood. As a direct result, before entering the water world each time, he had to take deep breaths, grit his teeth, and steel himself. He looked as though he were about to march into battle.
Enduring was painful. Then he would enjoy it!
(End of chapter)