There were only three on his intermediate and advanced skill list. ‘Seems I’m rather poor.’
The three intermediate skills were all decent choices. He might as well upgrade all of them using this opportunity!
Ye Lingchen’s eyes brightened. Arhat’s Fist Force, Formation, and Wood Spirit Constitution were all solid choices. With over 20 million popularity points, he planned to upgrade two of them!
After swallowing a mouthful of saliva…’Let’s begin!’
10 million popularity points were spent on the advanced skill upgrade!
The dark golden glow made clicking sounds as it hovered over the three skills. This round, Ye Lingchen had absolute confidence. He had no fear of getting a useless skill. In fact, he was already imagining how awesome the skill he would be getting.
Finally, the ball of light slowed down and Ye Lingchen’s gaze similarly became more focused.
Ding!
Along with a crisp sound, the ball of light stopped on Arhat’s Fist Force (Intermediate)!
The corner of Ye Lingchen’s mouth curled upwards.
‘Arhat’s Fist Force (Advanced): With one punch, many might die!’
“Gasp!”
Ye Lingchen took in a deep breath. He loved such simple and domineering descriptions.
The next moment, he felt a numbing sensation in his hands. It was as if some electrical currents were stimulating them. Meanwhile, Arhat’s Fist Force started roiling, just like the calm surface of the sea that broke into a sudden storm.
‘This is…’
Ye Lingchen’s eyes widened in shock.
He felt a mysterious transformation of the Inner Force in his fists. It was as though a certain bottleneck was broken through. Meanwhile, the spiritual energy around him began to circulate around his Inner Force in his fist as it started transforming.
‘Is this the so-called Reversion to Innate?’
He had gone through the martial arts records the Su family sent over. The Innate Stage was only able to direct spiritual energy in the vicinity. If one wanted to go on, one would have to completely transform the Inner Force within oneself, which is to transform the acquired Qi force into innate spiritual energy. That a metamorphosis they had to undergo.
At the same time, the continuation practicing methods of the advanced Arhat’s Fist Force began to appear in his mind. The contents were details on how to temper one’s Inner Force to achieve the metamorphosis.
‘I still need to practice!’
Ye Lingchen sighed. The practice for the advanced Arhat’s Fist Force’s was even more difficult compared to Eight Extremities Brute Training. Some parts involved painful suffering. It required him to temper the meridians and muscles in his hands. Only then would his arms be able to withstand the great destructive power of Arhat’s Fist Force.
‘Oh my, even my hands can’t withstand it. Just how strong is one punch?’ Ye Lingchen could not help recall a specific phrase, ‘Don’t force me. Once I use my technique, I’ll hurt even myself.’
Truly terrifying.
Fortunately, he was a prodigy. If anyone else were to train with this technique, it might cost them their lives.
All that remained was Wood Spirit Constitution (Intermediate) and Formation (Intermediate). Continue!
Ye Lingchen looked longingly at the Wood Spirit Constitution skill. He desired such a unique constitution greatly. These unique constitutions were not the same as martial arts as he could upgrade them directly. Moreover, having a strong constitution would make his practice a lot easier. It was just too tempting.
He threw in another 10 million popularity points. Begin!
The dark golden ball of light once more clicked as it went between those two skills. Finally, with a crisp “Ding”, it landed on Formation.
‘Sigh, nothing is perfect.’
Ye Lingchen sighed, but quickly adjusted his mindset. Formation was not a bad skill. It allowed him to ensure the abundance of spiritual energy around him. That was a type of wide-ranging benefit.
‘Formation (Advanced): You’re now a Formation Master, with all the knowledge of formations within you.’
Immediately after, a large amount of information welled up from the depths of his mind, just like a great revelation. It gave Ye Lingchen one epiphany after another as the formations and their transformations played out in his mind.
After a full 30 minutes, the information transfer was finally complete.
Ye Lingchen opened his eyes with a surprised look. At this stage, he was no longer limited to the simple spirit gathering formation or entrapment formation. He could even use formations to change the environment, create illusions, and even kill someone!
However, that was followed by a frown from Ye Lingchen. The power of formations were powerful, but at the same time, the materials it required were terrifying as well. White jade, Hetian jade, blood chalcedony, and so on. They were all rare materials. Most importantly, some jade even had maturity and quality requirements.
It would not be much of an issue if it could be purchased with money, even if the price were high. Some of them were priceless treasures that one could not even buy.
‘Damn, this is just too much.’
Ye Lingchen finally realized something. Having high-end knowledge was great, but the required materials were going up in quality as well. Besides medicinal herbs or jade, he would eventually be picky about clothing, weapons, and other materials.
In fact, he even felt that his progress was insufficient with only practice. He needed to take supplements.
All in all, it was a money sink!
‘Should I continue?’
Ye Lingchen looked at the remaining six million popularity points and fell into a dilemma. However, his hands were itching and he found it difficult to curb his desire.
‘Continue?’
Ye Lingchen lost control and once again threw in another one million popularity points.
The golden glow raced across the 15 basic skills, driving up Ye Lingchen’s heart rate.
That was different from his advanced skill upgrade as there were good and bad skills on the list of 15. Ye Lingchen naturally hoped for it to pick something useful.
There were too many skills, causing Ye Lingchen to feel slightly dizzy looking at it.
Eventually, as the speed slowed down, his heart pumped even faster and he held his breath.
Ding!
Along with a notification, the ball of light finally stopped!
‘Dog Language (Basic)?’
‘F*ck, why did I get this dumb thing?!’
The edge of his mouth twitched, his expression bitter. At the same time, along with a bright flash, Dog Language (Basic) transformed into Dog Language (Intermediate).
‘Dog Language (Intermediate): Congratulations, you’re now able to have rudimentary communication with dogs.’
‘F*ck me!’ Ye Lingchen was in tears.
Apart from the initial hype of these languages, they were of limited use to Ye Lingchen. He was not a caretaker in the zoo and had no intention to communicate with animals.
‘Nevermind. It’s better than nothing. This skill is just slightly less useful than the other skills. It still has its uses.’ Ye Lingchen felt a little better after thinking about Little Green and Little Grey.
His lucky draw ended with the Dog Language. Ye Lingchen lost his interest in the lucky draw and saved the 5 million-plus popularity points for another time.’
It was quiet for the entire Journey. Ye Lingchen was wide awake and ended up checking on gossip online.
‘Hm?’
‘Those guys are at it again?’
It was a screenshot, most likely taken directly from the Stick Nation’s entertainment site. In other words, news from foreign networks.
The content was Hyun-Min Kim’s manager making a public announcement on some media platform in the Stick Nation. Its general idea was to analyze how Hyun-Min Kim suffered unfair treatment back in China. He was beaten up after the Spring Festival Gala and the perpetrator, Ye Lingchen, was let go without further investigations that day itself. After that, even Hyun-Min Kim was banned for no reason.
The speech was of course framed to paint Hyun-Min Kim in a good light. As for who shoved the female fan and the other details, his manager made no mention at all.
They were begging for sympathy.
‘So f*cking shameless. Trying to paint yourself the victim and slander others?’
Ye Lingchen’s expression turned dark as he continued reading.
It was followed by the Stick Nation citizens’ comments.
[That’s too shameless.]
[F*ck, that’s unfair. Why are you treating our nation’s people like that!?]
[Hyun-Min Kim, you have our sympathy. We support you!]
[We demand an explanation! This is just too evil!]
Those from the Stick Nation were angered. Although Hyun-Min Kim’s reputation in his own country was not that great, people still stood up for him when their dignity was at stake. Hyun-Min Kim’s popularity immediately rose by a few levels.
With the emotions running wild, Hyun-Min Kim received almost unanimous support from his countrymen.
The Chinese were naturally dissatisfied, quickly jumping into the comments below the screenshot.
[So shameless! How can they be this shameless?]
[Motherf*cker! They’re taking things out of context and slandering us. F*ck!]
[What to do. They’re just barking around in their own country. Leave them be.]
[That’s just swaying their own countrymen, a bunch of pathetic people ignorant to the truth.]
The network between both nations was not connected. Just leave them to their own devices. Ye Lingchen did not care much about it, ignoring it after a few more glances…