Cultivation Progress Bar!

County Town No. 0877.

Beneath the curtain of night, clear moonlight pierced the gloomy sky and shone upon the land of ruins.

In the faint moonlight, hulking monsters with hideous faces could be seen silently hunting through the darkness along the devastated streets.

In an abandoned alley, more than a dozen Shadow Cat monsters snarled as they relentlessly surrounded and attacked a young human man. The surrounding houses, already reduced to ruins, were smashed apart once again.

Surrounded by these Shadow Cats, the young man held a Hexagonal Shield in one hand and an Alloy Battle Blade in the other, darting swiftly through the cramped, dim space.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

The young man under attack, Yang Zheng, barely moved each time he dodged, yet deftly avoided every Shadow Cat's attack. Each stroke of his blade sliced across a Shadow Cat's neck with unerring precision.

Within mere seconds, every Shadow Cat attacking him had been killed.

"Hm?"

"Junior Beast General level!"

Yang Zheng stared gravely toward the end of the alley. A Tiger Cat monster slowly emerged from the shadows, its spotted body as powerfully built as a calf.

Whoosh!

Flicking the blood off his Alloy Battle Blade, Yang Zheng charged forward with his shield.

The instant the Tiger Cat lunged at him and they collided, Yang Zheng turned slightly sideways. The shield in his left hand struck the Tiger Cat at an angle, throwing it off balance and sending it tilting to one side.

Slash!

An arc of cold light skimmed past the shield and sliced across the abdomen exposed by the Tiger Cat's loss of balance. Its charging body continued forward under its own momentum for another dozen meters before collapsing.

Yang Zheng swiftly followed, watching coldly as the Tiger Cat roared in agony. Its body twitched on the ground for a while, gradually weakening until it died.

"I've finally mastered the Micro-Level Movement Technique completely!"

Making the most precise evasions with the smallest possible movements-the Micro-Level Movement Technique represented an exceptionally fine degree of control over one's strength and body. Every movement and dodge seemed as though it had been calculated by a computer.

After cutting off the Tiger Cat's tail, Yang Zheng extracted a nearly transparent tendon and placed it in his backpack, then sprinted toward his temporary quarters in the county town.

As for the Shadow Cats that had attacked him earlier, even the strongest had only been an Advanced Beast Soldier. Out here in the wilderness, they were worth practically nothing.

They would only waste space in his backpack.

Inside an abandoned twenty-story building.

Slice!

Cold light flashed.

A rodent monster roughly thirty centimeters long flew helplessly through the air and fell onto the dust-covered floor, leaving a trail of blood.

"There's just no end to these rodent monsters!"

Yang Zheng flicked the blood off his Alloy Battle Blade. Rodent monster corpses already littered the floor. They were only slightly larger than a human palm, but what they lacked in size, they made up for in sheer numbers.

Among the monster populations of the present day, rats, pigs, dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, and snakes were the most common in these abandoned cities.

Before the Great Nirvana Period, pigs, dogs, cats, cattle, and sheep had been the most numerous animals in human society, so naturally, monsters of those types were now the most abundant as well.

Monsters mutated from foxes, monkeys, scorpions, wolves, tigers, and leopards were extremely rare. Flying monsters were even less common in these ruined cities.

Fifteenth floor, room 1507.

It was a fully furnished apartment that looked newly renovated. But the monsters had arrived so quickly that its owner had left the city before even having a chance to move in.

After he gave it a quick dusting, it became Yang Zheng's temporary quarters.

"Today's haul: one Intermediate Beast General and four Junior Beast Generals. Estimated earnings, around eighty million."

Yang Zheng took out the valuable monster materials he had collected that day and gathered them into one large backpack. Once it was full, he would leave this abandoned city and return to the Base City.

Generally speaking, valuable materials from a Junior Beast General could sell for five to fifteen million, while materials from an Intermediate Beast General could fetch anywhere from ten million to over a hundred million.

However, the Intermediate Beast Generals Yang Zheng hunted were all relatively common monster types, so their materials were not particularly valuable.

"The monster materials are secondary. What really matters is that I've completely mastered the Micro-Level Movement Technique!"

Yang Zheng sat cross-legged on the bed. As a transmigrator who had "awakened" less than a week ago, he had naturally awakened his own Golden Finger.

He focused his awareness deep within his mind, where two illuminated percentage progress bars appeared.

Micro-Level Movement Technique (100%)

Nine-Layered Thunder Blade Second Layer (24%)

Over the past week, Yang Zheng had more or less figured out this Golden Finger, gaining a rough understanding of its uses and limitations.

[Cultivation Progress Bar]!

That was the name he had given his Golden Finger. The hardest part was not advancing his progress, but reaching that crucial initial 1% needed to light up a progress bar.

Once an established progress bar reached 100%, it meant that he had successfully learned or completely mastered the corresponding "manual." Aside from that, it had little in the way of flashy abilities.

Still, Yang Zheng was already quite satisfied. After all, transmigration was not necessarily a good thing-but having a cheat made all the difference.

The Cultivation Progress Bar was like a positive-feedback device, helping Yang Zheng find the best direction for his cultivation.

Yang Zheng had spent two days experimenting. By cultivating in the direction that made the progress bar rise, he had quickly advanced the Nine-Layered Thunder Blade Second Layer from 15% to 23%. Reaching 100% would mean he had fully mastered it.

But when he cultivated in other directions, practicing his blade according to the manual for over half a day produced only a sluggish 1% increase.

"The more correct the direction, the faster my cultivation progresses. If I'd had this kind of immediate positive feedback back when I was a student, how could I have ended up..."

Yang Zheng shook his head. His cheat merely lit up progress bars and pointed him toward the direction best suited to him. In the end, he still had to cultivate through his own efforts.

With the soles of his feet, his palms, and the crown of his head facing the sky, Yang Zheng closed his eyes and began cultivating.

"Hissss..."

The nearly omnipresent cosmic energy flowed into his body through the soles of his feet, his palms, and the Baihui point at the crown of his head. Every cell throughout Yang Zheng's body ravenously devoured this miraculous cosmic energy.

Through conversion by the "mitochondria" within his cells, cosmic energy became gene origin energy.

Under the cleansing influence of gene origin energy, everything from his skin, muscles, and bones to every single

cell deep within his body, and even his genes themselves, underwent slight changes.

The essence of a martial artist's cultivation was the evolution of life.

At the same time, deep within Yang Zheng's mind, surges of powerful energy continuously welled up and instantly spread throughout every part of his body.

His body, freshly cleansed by gene origin energy, transformed once again under this powerful force. Every cell changed at nearly a hundred times the rate achieved through cultivating gene origin energy.

...This was

Psychic force!