Chapter 564: Switching to the Martial Scripture, a Proficiency Disaster!

【You could only shake your head.】

【“Right, right, right. You really are the only one at the Core Formation realm.”】

【Lord Orochi charged at you at a dizzying speed, his eight serpent heads like eight cruise missiles.】

【“Smack!!”】

【You neither dodged nor evaded, simply slapping him.】

【Plasmolysis Palm!】

【One slap knocked off one of Lord Orochi’s serpent legs.】

【“Nani?!”】

【Watching a part of himself fall off so cleanly, Lord Orochi was utterly stunned.】

【But that wasn’t all.】

【A force from who knew where pinned him down, leaving him unable to move.】

【All he could do was watch helplessly as you stood before him and kept slapping his big mouth.】

【One slap, one leg gone. One slap, one leg gone.】

【“Smack! Smack! Smack!!”】

【“Stop hitting me! Stop! I worked so hard to cultivate these snake bodies!”】

【“Smack! Smack! Smack!!”】

【“Please spare me! I was wrong! I’ll bow to you!”】

【“SMACK!!!!!!!”】

【Lord Orochi looked utterly wretched now. You had slapped all eight of his snake bodies away, leaving only his upper body floating alone on the sea.】

【You wore Venom’s smile.】

【“Oh, poor Lord Orochi. You can’t bow to anyone in your current state.”】

【Rage overwhelmed Lord Orochi.】

【“You…”】

【His head tilted to one side, and he was angered to death.】

【Killing Lord Orochi and sinking Sakura Country left you completely unmoved.】

【It was merely something you had done along the way during your trip to Earth.】

【Once it was over, you returned to Huaxia and sought out Jin Ding Zhenren again.】

【Jin Ding Zhenren said that people from the Huaxia authorities wanted to meet with you. Although they couldn’t openly sing your praises, they had to show their appreciation somehow.】

【“No need. It’s best if I don’t meet with government officials. That’ll save everyone from gossiping.”】

【“But you’ve done something so momentous. If we don’t show our appreciation, I’m afraid…”】

【“If you want to show your appreciation, that’s fine. I came to see you because I have a favor to ask.”】

【“Just say the word. I’ll see it done!”】

【“It’s a small thing. Let me borrow this cave. I want to meditate in seclusion here for a while.”】

【That really was a small favor.】

【Everything that could be taken from the cave had already been removed, and the government didn’t care much about it.】

【Although the Immortal Qi inside Origin Cave was denser, it still wasn’t enough to support cultivation at your level.】

【However, after the spiritual vein had been strengthened by Ominous in Old Age, it could just barely support you in rebuilding your cultivation technique.】

【You intended to replace your third-grade Qi Refining Art, «Triple-Origin Body Tempering Mystic Art», with the Martial Scripture, a Dao Scripture whose quality surpassed First Grade!】

【Year 125, age 151.】

【Drawing trait tags...】

【Draw successful!】

【“Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix” (White, Common): Once you equip this trait tag, you will gain the intelligence of a Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix. However, pay attention to this trait tag’s quality.】

【Adjust trait tag?】

【Yes/No】

“White trait tags? Drawing one of those is harder than drawing a Golden one right now. What bad luck.”

Watching his simulated self prepare to study the Martial Scripture, Chen Yi felt he should equip Unrestricted Communication.

Although he had a decoded digital copy of the text,

he figured reading the original inscription on the stone stele would still be more helpful for cultivation.

It was like how researchers were better off reading foreign academic papers in the original language rather than in translation.

【You chose Yes.】

【You replaced Wallfacer with Unrestricted Communication.】

【There were no Channels, and you had no idea where the nearest one was.】

【You could only stay on Earth for the time being.】

【To be honest, if the only meaning your life had left for the rest of your days was drawing one trait tag a year, you really would rather stay on Earth than go somewhere else.】

【Because here, you had...】

【Internet cafes! Karaoke bars! Billiard halls! Movie theaters! Inflatable castles!】

【It seemed the entertainment you pursued wasn’t all that highbrow.】

【That was because the author hadn’t been to any highbrow places either. People couldn’t imagine things they’d never seen, could they?】

【Sometimes you studied the Martial Scripture in Origin Cave; at other times, you went into the city to have some fun. Life was pretty leisurely.】

【You ran into a bit of trouble comprehending the Martial Scripture.】

【With the Proficiency trait tag, as long as something was a cultivation technique, learning it posed no difficulty for you.】

【The problem was that the Proficiency trait tag worked like this: the higher the quality of a cultivation technique, the more times you had to practice it to raise its proficiency by one level.】

【Seeing that the number of repetitions needed to advance the Martial Scripture from “Proficient” to “Mastery” had already reached an astronomical figure, you couldn’t help but consider a question.】

【“Why does it feel like I’d make faster progress comprehending it myself than using Proficiency to level it up?”】

【Cultivators from Huaxia, such as Jin Ding Zhenren and Chen Dyson, all practiced the Martial Scripture.】

【They didn’t have the Proficiency trait tag, yet not all of them had only reached the introductory level in the Martial Scripture. Some had reached Proficient or even Mastery. Clearly, this cultivation technique, whose quality had broken through the limits, wasn’t as difficult to learn as you had imagined.】

【So, after using Proficiency to raise it to the Proficient level, you gave up on that approach and started comprehending it yourself.】

【The Martial Scripture was currently only at the “Proficient” level, and its cultivation speed still couldn’t match the “Return to Simplicity” level of the «Triple-Origin Body Tempering Mystic Art».】

【You couldn’t cultivate on Earth anyway, so switching to the Martial Scripture wouldn’t cost you anything.】

【Once you had even begun to learn the Martial Scripture, you could use divine marks, no matter how low your cultivation level was.】

【You should know that using divine marks in the Real Realm had a requirement: you needed to have at least some True Qi in your body. Otherwise, you couldn’t activate them.】

【The reason cultivators in Huaxia could basically all use divine marks was that they practiced the Martial Scripture.】

【But you couldn’t use them, because you had equipped What Is a Divine Mark?】

【Year 126, age 152.】

【That year, your younger brother, Chen Siyi, passed away.】

【Thanks to the advances of modern medicine and the wealth of his descendants, they managed to extend his life to 142 years.】

【You had tried using immortal methods to prolong his life, but when you saw him lying in a hospital bed, unable to speak or move, covered in tubes connected to all sorts of machines, you still let go.】

【You quietly attended the funeral and left a bouquet of flowers in a corner where no one would notice you.】

【This younger brother, whom you had never met, was the last relative you had left on Earth.】

【Your younger brother’s family could only be considered relatives. They all had their own lives, and you didn’t want to intrude.】

【You returned to Origin Cave and continued comprehending the Martial Scripture and Divine Abilities. Looking around at the murals, you watched the imposing figure of the “King,” full of youthful vigor as he led his people into the vastness of space, and felt a surge of emotion.】

【“Am I really going to spend the rest of my life on Earth? I’ve still got more than two thousand years…”】

【The future was still unknown.】