Chapter 146 - 137: Great Wisdom (3 more releases! Vote for monthly pass!)

For a player character like him, the best way to allocate points on his panel is to focus entirely on one Martial Art, rather than using a placeholder Martial Art as padding.

After all, placeholder Martial Arts have such poor foundations. Once learned, they’re useless, even feeling like they take up space on the panel.

Every aspect of a placeholder Martial Art, even its very existence, is merely for the purpose of amassing sacrifices to advance to higher-level Martial Arts.

There are few placeholder Martial Arts that seem even remotely useful, ones that can actually help raise your limit alongside them, but there’s an issue.

The issue is, the quality of placeholder Martial Arts, given their inherent conditions, is simply inferior to that of ordinary Martial Arts.

Truly a bit of a chicken rib.

As he flips through a few more, Fang Yu realizes that this path, for the indigenous NPCs, appears to be a standard route for improvement.

Yet for players, it’s not exactly a shortcut.

After some thought, Fang Yu decides to search for a high-tier advanced Martial Art.

If there’s a high-tier advanced Martial Art available, he’d be willing to learn a few more placeholder Martial Arts.

It would be like saving attribute points.

As Fang Yu walked past the bookshelves of popular Martial Arts categories, delving deeper to search through the Martial Arts Secret Manuals within.

Suddenly.

He finds a secret manual in a neglected shelf for miscellaneous subjects.

"Equal Foot-Hand".

The description of the Cultivation Technique is simple.

After mastery, the proportions and lengths of hands and feet become completely identical.

As for the uses of having hands and feet of exactly the same proportions and lengths,

this Cultivation Technique doesn’t say—and neither does Fang Yu know.

However, the reason this Cultivation Technique caught Fang Yu’s attention is two-fold.

First.

It is a high-tier intermediate-level Martial Art.

Second.

It doesn’t require any prerequisite Martial Arts!

That’s right, this Martial Art astonishingly requires no prerequisites at all, only that the method of training is particularly twisted.

Occasionally, one must amputate their own limbs, use specific concoctions, reattach and regenerate them. Repeat the process several times, with years spent growing and healing, before it can be mastered.

This training process is unorthodox to an extreme.

Translated to any other martial arts game, this would be a Demon Cult technique.

However, in this game, there doesn’t seem to be a distinction between good and evil.

Everyone is fighting demons together, and there’s no notion of righteous or evil techniques; as long as they are effective and suited to the user, and they don’t hurt others, nobody cares.

Although "Equal Foot-Hand" is completely unsuitable for him,

it undoubtedly opens a new perspective for Fang Yu.

Popular Martial Arts, such as Swords, Spears, Sabers, Staves, Fists, Feet, Palms, and Fingers, are all about gradual progression.

But obscure Martial Arts seem to be more on the wicked side.

They don’t care about what you’ve learned before or what you will learn in the future.

Like a fault line, they suddenly present you with an entire high-tier intermediate-level Cultivation Technique.

Without any cause and effect, without any nascent prototype of basic-level Cultivation Technique.

They stand out on their own—learn it if you can, and if not, move along; no coddling.

While other popular Martial Arts are still nurturing you like a baby, with elementary swordsmanship, middle school swordsmanship, and high school swordsmanship, gradually building your foundation and growth.

Slap!

Obscure Martial Art techniques directly offer you university-level swordsmanship, the kind that’s especially esoteric and philosophical.

Will you learn them?

If you do, you’ll possess university-level strength, no matter how obscure.

If not? Can’t learn? It doesn’t matter, the technique is there, and it will always be needed by someone.

Yes, always needed by someone!

And Fang Yu is exactly the one who needs it!

All this talk of gradual progression, of building a solid foundation.

Do I, a point allocator, need that?

I’m all about Shen Lan allocation, you know!

Not even considering whether the foundation is solid or not.

Give me attribute points, and I’ll make any god-level Cultivation Technique bloom.

With a clear strategy, Fang Yu loses interest in any popular category techniques.

He dives headlong into those obscure, miscellaneous, corner shelves with no labels.

Picking up books, he begins scanning them.

"Moist Eye Pupil," "Yan Baiyu," "Great Kun’s Belly," "Two-Heart Lock"...

Weird names, each with various effects.

Moist Eye Pupil keeps your eyes perpetually moist.

Strange, but you can’t say it’s useless.

And indeed, there is a cultivation method—it’s a Martial Art, no mistake.

But it’s just strange.

Yan Baiyu is better, it can make the skin of your face become whiter.

However, Fang Yu seriously doubts that the various complementary alchemical recipes that come with the technique are the key to whitening your face, not the bit of technique’s cultivation methods.

Great Kun’s Belly is a technique that allows you to eat significantly more, allowing your stomach to accommodate more food and digest it faster.

Two-Heart Lock involves finding a partner for Dual Cultivation, using demon materials, cultivating day and night until a dual-heart resonance is achieved, and only then is the technique complete. After the technique is perfected, both people can share their two hearts; even if one person’s heart is damaged, as long as the other’s heart is still beating, that person won’t die from the heart damage.

Essentially an organ sharing tactic, Fang Yu finds it somewhat useful.

Especially for someone like him who can regenerate organs, there’s still room to maneuver.

Looking at these techniques thus far.

They give off a feeling of... being peculiar, unorthodox, and strange.

They’re obscure, they’re wicked, they’re bizarre.

But Fang Yu finds them incredibly appealing.

Because these techniques are so idiosyncratic, completely devoid of any prerequisite techniques, whether one can master them depends solely on one’s personal aptitude, talent, and understanding of Martial Arts.

For indigenous NPCs who don’t have player panels, it’s probably very rare to be able to learn and master these obscure Martial Arts through their own talents alone.

And those who have the ability to learn such obscure Martial Arts here, and are willing to endure years of arduous cultivation...

Please tell me, why not take the main road?

If you have the talent, the perseverance, and the time, you could graduate from middle school to university with those popular Martial Arts.