[In the 273rd year of the Daqing era, the "Heavenly River Circulation" technique reached its peak. Advancement in martial arts is not significantly related to foundational talent. You reached peak performance around this time in the last simulation, and you haven't improved any faster this time either.]
[In the 274th year of the Daqing era, you and Zhu Baowen got along quite well. At first, you approached him with ulterior motives, but as time went on, your pretense turned into genuine affection, and you truly regarded him as an elder.]
[And Zhu Baowen's guidance on some aspects of martial arts subtly exceeded the scope of what a self-proclaimed "martial arts master" could possess.]
[In the 275th year of the Great Autumn Period, your progress in internal energy penetration has reached 25%, and the quality of your internal energy has more than doubled. Coupled with the deeper stage of "Heavenly River Circulation," you feel you can defeat the original body... that simulated version of yourself at the very beginning, within ten rounds.]
"Going against oneself."
Enraged by his other self's "killing the original body comparison method," Yun Shou was also pondering.
The foundational boost is terrifying. Even though he received a lot of martial arts resources in the simulation due to his top ten ranking in the competition, these nutritional and medicinal resources are not considered heaven-defying.
Unlike the spiritual stones and elemental stones used in cultivating immortality, martial arts training mainly depends on one's own foundation and aptitude. At most, various resources can only increase the speed of one's martial arts progress by about half or a whole time.
Without resources, it would just take two more years.
After thinking it over, Yun Shou decided to advance his foundation and martial arts cultivation in tandem from now on.
If you simply choose martial arts cultivation, you might not have room for improvement for the first few decades of the next simulation.
Simply choosing a foundation will result in a less noticeable effect after piling up too much.
For example, the standard for a first-class martial artist is about 130 points of foundation, so someone with 140 points of aptitude will have a slower training speed, which is estimated to be 10 points.
And what about 200 points of aptitude? It's unlikely to get 70 points of martial arts training speed, since martial arts training speed isn't purely about adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing resources. But getting 50 points isn't difficult. The difference of 60 points of aptitude isn't significant; you can add that up by living for 60 years.
However, if Yun Shou focuses solely on building a foundation, with points that are separated by years, it would probably require dozens of simulations to accumulate them, but the speed of martial arts training would be about twice as fast.
Those dozens of opportunities to choose a higher level of martial arts cultivation will increase your lifespan. After that, you only need ten more times to build up your foundation!
That's what you call maximizing profits!
[In the 276th year of Daqing's founding, you once again participate in the Young Talents Competition. And this time, you are vastly different from those of five years ago!]
[The grand competition will be held in the Qing Kingdom, and you arrived at the location—the Hundred Stone Forest—in just over ten days. This is a valley where countless naturally formed stone pillars stand in orderly rows; though called a hundred stones, there are actually tens of thousands.]
[About ten miles west of Baishi Forest lies the headquarters of the Yangyao Sect, and this stone forest is also an excellent place for Yangyao Sect disciples to practice their lightness skills.]
In this grand competition organized by the Yangyao Sect, the participating martial artists will need to fight by maneuvering and shifting their stances on stone pillars; those with heavy or clumsy bodies will be at a significant disadvantage.
[In this competition, although some of the participants were from the previous one, your impression of them is superficial—because five years ago, these young heroes could only manage to break into the top 100 at best. There were very few top-tier players under the age of 20; at least none from that generation five years ago.]
[Whether this year's class has one or not, you don't care. You've only seen one exceptionally gifted genius in your past life (the last simulation). A normal "Grandmaster-level" genius can become a first-rate expert around their early 20s, a martial arts master around their 30s, and has a chance to reach the Grandmaster level by their 60s.]
[With the conclusion of this competition, you successfully secured second place, earning the title of "Second Young Hero" at the age of 21.]
You think to yourself, thank goodness the title they got was "Young Hero" instead of "Senior Brother," you don't want to be known as "Second Senior Brother."
[The competition has ended, and Yangyao Sect has given you a choice of two rewards: one is to obtain an authorized Grandmaster-level martial art, the Sunlit Technique; the other is to receive a large amount of martial arts resources, enough for at least five years.]
The winner of the competition receives both awards; you have to choose one.
Just as you were about to make a decision, you heard Zhu Baowen's voice: "Choose that martial art."
[Your heart skips a beat. You are standing on a high platform, with the grandmasters and martial artists of the Yangyao Sect in front of you, and the other top ten ranked individuals around you. Therefore, Zhu Baowen should be among the crowd below.]
[But after he made a sound, none of the people around him showed any unusual reaction; this is a method of "sound transmission."]
"Sound transmission" is a relatively rudimentary application in many novels. Protagonists often use this method for covert communication during their first or second cultivation stage. In cultivation novels, "spiritual communication" is possible during the Foundation Establishment or Qi Refining stages.
However, even though you are only a first-rate martial artist in this world, you know that even a grandmaster cannot perform such a precise operation as "compressing and transmitting a sentence through a certain method, and then having it spoken to someone else in its original order."
[Actually, besides "packaged transmission," there is another way to transmit sound: using energy such as internal force to construct a "telephone line," with both ends of the telephone line pointing towards the mouth and ears, to achieve the effect of private communication.]
[But this method is even more difficult! Even if you're at least a hundred meters away from those people, how do you construct a hundred-meter "telephone line" and transmit sound? This far surpasses the capabilities of a grandmaster!]
Zhu Baowen is no longer acting!
[You chose that Grandmaster-level martial arts technique. The Grandmaster of Yangyao Sect was surprised by this, because one cannot cultivate multiple martial arts styles simultaneously. With your aptitude, dispersing your cultivation is equivalent to downgrading from a high probability of becoming a Grandmaster to an almost impossible one.]
Even if your foundational martial arts are only at an advanced level, it's not worth switching to another style!
[Your expression is strange. The people of Yangyao Sect think you might be regretting it, but you're thinking about something else entirely.]
[Is Master Zhu going to pass on the "Hun Yuan Jue" to me again, and then fly off somewhere to play?]
[(Seriously? Don't you even value Ikkunbe's foundation?)]
After receiving your award, feeling uneasy, you bump into Zhu Baowen on your way back on horseback. This seemingly old man, in his fifties or sixties, smiles and asks you if you believe in him.
[You naturally replied: You are my master, and you have guided me so many times. How could you harm your own disciple? Of course, I trust you completely!]
[Zhu Baowen: Alright, let's dispel your current martial arts skills first.]
Yun Shou: "..."
Boss, please stop messing around.
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