"You don’t need to waste any more resources on me. Use all your Contribution Points for your own training! Your path is ten thousand times more important than mine!"
Listening to his father, Qin Feng fell silent.
He knew his father was telling the truth.
The Mental Power threshold was the greatest chasm on the path for any Fifth-level Martial Artist trying to reach the sixth level.
It wasn’t like life force, which could be built up with resources and time.
It was a greater test of a person’s talent, Will, and serendipity.
And his father no longer possessed the Martial Dao Will of his youth.
"I understand, Dad."
Qin Feng nodded, not pressing the issue.
"Oh, right, Dad. I’m competing in the Starry Sky Cup next month. Do you two want to watch?"
"Yes, we’ll watch! Of course we’ll watch!"
"..."
The two chatted for a while longer. Qin Feng noticed that although his father’s words were still bold, the exhaustion etched into his features was impossible to hide.
The mental toll of years of arduous training with no progress was far more terrifying than any physical fatigue.
After he ended the call, the quiet room returned to silence.
Qin Feng sat quietly for a long time before finally letting out a slow, turbid breath.
His gaze grew calm as he tapped a golden, colosseum-shaped icon on his personal terminal.
[Imperial Arena]
The next instant, his consciousness was pulled by an invisible force, detaching from his physical body and entering a virtual world woven from data and streams of light.
What he had to do was use the Imperial Arena, through a massive number of high-intensity battles, to perfectly integrate the first, second, and third-level killing moves he had already mastered with the "Mental Power-Spiritual Energy aggregation module" of a Fourth-level Killing Technique!
...
「A month passed in the blink of an eye.」
To Qin Feng, immersed in the Imperial Arena, this month had felt like a single, long, unending day of battle.
Every day, he fought in over five hundred high-intensity duels.
His opponents included Imperial Knights wielding lightsabers, Warriors from the Barbaric Star Realm brandishing Chain-Saw Giant Axes, and scions of powerful families skilled in strange Spirit Secret Skills.
He won some, and he lost some.
His win rate stubbornly held steady at around 55%.
Whenever he grew tired, he would fall into a deep sleep in the Virtual Space’s rest area. The moment his Mental Power recovered, he would throw himself into the next fight.
WHIR—
As Qin Feng’s consciousness detached once more from that virtual world filled with slaughter and screams and returned to his body in his dorm room, the sky outside was already faintly lit.
He slowly opened his eyes, and phantoms of countless battles seemed to flicker in and out of existence within their depths.
This month of arduous training had brought about an extraordinary improvement in his killing techniques.
He pulled up his personal stats panel.
[Killing Technique: "Heavy Spear" (Fourth-level)]
[Realm: Perfection]
[Proficiency: 1,512/100,000]
Advancing from "Perfection" to the "Control Realm" required a full one hundred thousand proficiency points.
This was a monumental gap. Even with his insane training regimen, he had only managed to accumulate just over 1,500 points.
But his greatest gain this month wasn’t the proficiency in "Heavy Spear."
It was that he had successfully—if somewhat crudely, yet effectively—grafted the "Mental Power-Spiritual Energy aggregation module" from the Fourth-level Killing Technique onto all the "Control Realm" killing moves he had previously mastered: [Flowing Light Chasing Shadow], [Wind and Thunder Chasing Shadow], [Dragon’s Hoard], [Fierce Owl Chasing Shadow], and so on!
At that moment, these low-level killing moves, which he had been on the verge of abandoning, were completely transformed and reborn!
Their power had skyrocketed exponentially!
This was especially true for his strongest killing move, one he had achieved through an epiphany—[Qian Yuan]!
This fist technique, a killing move that fused his lifelong Martial Dao Will, was already far more profound than the others to begin with.
After this month of refinement, Qin Feng could now simultaneously construct three different "Mental Power-Spiritual Energy aggregation modules" the instant he executed the move!
One Heart, Three Uses!
Although he was still a long way from the "One Heart, Ten Uses" required for a Fifth Level Killing Technique, this had undoubtedly allowed him to reach the threshold of an even higher tier of killing techniques!
The power of the current [Qian Yuan] had increased dozens of times over!
’And my life force index...’
Qin Feng felt the immense life force surging within him and couldn’t help but sigh with emotion.
’My physical aptitude and "Top-grade Primordial Acupoints" are simply terrifying.’
’The so-called "first great limit" is completely irrelevant to me.’
He could clearly sense that the invisible shackle that held ordinary Martial Artists at the 18,000-point bottleneck was as flimsy as a cicada’s wing to him.
If he so desired, he wouldn’t even need to enter seclusion to force a breakthrough. He could just casually strike his Primordial Acupoints with his Mental Power during his daily training, trigger a flush of Spiritual Energy, and shatter it with ease.
No wonder they all said that Martial Artists who forged "Top-grade Primordial Acupoints" had a direct path to becoming a Planet-level Life Form.
It turned out that for someone with "Top-grade Primordial Acupoints," the so-called "four great limits" were truly meaningless.
’These hundreds of years of arduous training... were worth it.’
A genuine smile touched Qin Feng’s lips.
"Hammer, what’s the time?"
"Reporting, Master. There are twenty-three hours until the assembly time for the Starry Sky Cup teams."
’So we’re leaving tomorrow?’
Qin Feng nodded and rose from his chair.
He didn’t engage in any further training. Instead, he drew the blackout curtains of his dorm and lay down on his bed.
Qin Feng planned to use this final block of time to get a good, long sleep and completely erase all the mental fatigue he had accumulated in the Imperial Arena over the past month.
He fell into an incredibly deep sleep.
There were no chaotic dreams, no phantoms of slaughter. His Sea of Spirit was like an ancient, tranquil abyss, slowly recovering the energy he had frantically expended over the past month in absolute silence.