Book 3, Chapter 27: Start Of The Semester

Chen Chuan checked his Realm Pass and found that financial conglomerates and banks both provided safe deposit services.

However, the financial conglomerates’ safe deposit services were expensive. Users also had to commit to using them for at least a year. The safes themselves had a starting price of five digits, and the users had to pay an insanely high deposit, leading to many turning away from them.

The smaller depository companies were not reliable. Forget thieves breaking in, even the employees themselves might steal from them.

Hence, Chen Chuan asked Wu Bei about it. “Wu Bei, do you know any place where I could store these things for a time?”

Wu Bei thought about it before answering. “If you trust me, why don’t you store them at my place? I have a storeroom, where I keep all my random stuff. I also have a 24/7 security service. It’ll be safe here.”

Chen Chuan thought about it and liked the idea. “Alright. I’ll leave them at your place for now. Once I find a suitable place, I’ll take them away.”

With the discussion over, he began sorting through the items. Since there were quite a lot of them, he couldn’t take it all, so he contacted Qi Gao. The agent brought his SUV, and they loaded everything onto it, then transported it to Wu Bei’s storeroom.

As for the Second Limit medicines, Chen Chuan put them all into a bag that he could carry around. With the medicine and the supernatural being he had bound, he should be covered for quite a while.

He also took the papers with him so that he could read through them slowly back in his room.

Wu Ruo had kept training records from when he was a Second Limit martial artist up to the time he reached the Third Limit. This was a treasure, in some ways, even more valuable than the medicine.

After all, one could buy medicine, but the papers were Wu Ruo’s learning portfolio as a martial artist. Chen Chuan wouldn’t have been able to buy them, even if he had money. If Wu Ruo hadn’t kept records to aid him with teaching students, the notes wouldn’t have even existed. After all, if they were ever leaked, he would no longer have any secrets or privacy left.

Once he was back on campus, Chen Chuan stayed in his room to train and read through the papers.

He was always lacking in combat theory and only knew some crucial information about it.

That was unavoidable, because the central government intentionally concealed this information. The students of Martial Valor University didn’t even know about mutated tissue at the start of their studies, so how could they possibly know about combat theory?

Also, the time students spent in the university was actually very short. At the start of their studies, they only focused on training. Most of them failed to reach the Second Limit, which made learning combat theory useless and a waste of time. Yet in their sophomore year, they had to have an internship, which led to them learning outside.

After they graduated, unless they became lecturers or wanted to learn more martial arts, it was still unnecessary for them to learn combat theory.

Now, with the papers, Chen Chuan could make up for this shortcoming.

He Xiaoxing had once told him that the First to Third Limits were actually one unified whole. Wu Ruo’s notes confirmed that. There were no obvious bottlenecks between the three of them, and whether or not a person could reach the Third Limit depended on whether their mutated tissue could grow to that degree.

The importance of being naturally gifted was greater than Chen Chuan had thought. Everyone’s peak was determined from the moment they were born.

Hence, Chen Chuan shouldn’t think about how to reach or overcome that peak but how to better structure and use his mutated tissue.

But this was quite complicated as well. The way of logically guiding the growth of mutated tissue was a field of study in itself.

Wu Ruo was a professional lecturer. He delved deep into both technique and theory, and after some time, he even inserted additional notes to the things he had written down earlier. It was likely because he had gained new insights.

When Chen Chuan studied under He Xiaoxing, the man usually asked him to do something first before making him think about why he did that. His lessons were all tailored for Chen Chuan, and he had a feeling that many of the things He Xiaoxing taught couldn’t be learned by the average person.

Wu Ruo was different. His training notes were based entirely on teaching average people. If one person could learn through what he wrote, then most other people could as well. The two men had completely different teaching styles.

Chen Chuan compared what he read with what he had learned, and he felt that he had gained a lot. There were certain things he knew but would never have been able to explain as thoroughly as Wu Ruo did. Hence, whenever he saw Wu Ruo accurately depicting what Chen Chuan thought about a certain concept, his mind eased.

After reading through the notes about the First to Second Limit, he paid special attention to the changes and key points about the transition from the Second Limit to the Third Limit.

Chen Chuan compared the descriptions to himself and found that he was probably past the midpoint of the Second Limit.

After he fused with his second self, his physical attributes had increased by leaps and bounds. The strength and growth of his mutated tissue had also doubled. Of course, all these things were not reflected right now. On the surface, his body and mutated tissue remained the same as before he fused with his second self. Nothing about him seemed to have changed.

Wu Ruo had written down detailed lesson plans at each stage. Through this, Chen Chuan learned what he should focus on and which areas of training deserved more time.

The training required no extra medicine or equipment. Through the practice of technique alone, the students could correct and strengthen their mutated tissue, making it as civilian-friendly as it could get.

Years of reviewing his teachings and research had to have given Wu Ruo enough experience to create Void Training. It was a pity that he never got to complete it.

After reading through the techniques, Chen Chuan felt enlightened.

Unlike him, other students usually developed the mutated tissue in one part of their bodies, so many of the training methods were developed to target those areas. Wu Ruo didn’t approve of this method and believed that this would lead to a drain of the student’s potential. Developing mutated tissue in just one part of the body to increase their combat power would just make it harder for them to improve later on. Hence, Wu Ruo believed that coordination of the whole body was the most important thing.

Based on the data he listed, while students who went through the traditional training method would be stronger and able to utilize their mutated tissue in fights within a shorter amount of time, those who weren’t naturally gifted would stop improving after reaching a certain point. After that, they would have to rely on implants to make up for their shortcomings.

In comparison, the students Wu Ruo taught had greater room for growth. The data he recorded supported this theory.

Chen Chuan agreed with Wu Ruo’s thoughts. Harmonization and all the mutated tissue acting as one unified whole was something he cared about as well, so he could adopt Wu Ruo’s training method.

Wu Ruo’s notes also contained the reactions and characteristics of the mutated tissue at different stages of training. From them, Chen Chuan could know whether he was improving or something was going wrong. The notes were truly useful.

Over the next ten days, Chen Chuan did his best to get familiar with and master the techniques.

𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Time passed in a flash.

After the last day off of January, the first of February arrived, and the main campus’ new semester officially started. On this day, at around 8 a.m., Chen Chuan noticed a lot of courses that had never shown up on his Realm Pass.

All of them were public lectures. Their lecturers weren’t from the main campus, but from the highest central institute.

After checking through the descriptions, Chen Chuan learned that the capital’s highest central institute sent a batch of outstanding lecturers every year to the main campuses across the world. The students could attend their lectures free of charge, though the lectures wouldn’t be as detailed as one-to-one classes.

Since these were public lectures, the portal didn’t display them before the semester started. Wu Ruo had kept this a secret to make Chen Chuan anxious and come to learn from him.

Just then, he received a notification on his Realm Pass.

[Chen Chuan, congratulations on starting the new semester. Since you have a mandatory test subject this semester, please choose a lecturer for the subject within three days. If you’d like to give up on choosing a lecturer, please state a reason. If you don’t pick one, a certain amount of your assessment points will be deducted.]

Chen Chuan took a look. Each student in the campus received assessment points based on their test scores, evaluation at the end of each semester, and missions from the university.

Those who scored high got to enjoy more education resources, while if their points dropped beneath a certain threshold, they would be expelled. It was no wonder why Tan Zhi had been willing to serve as his guide for just one point.

While he was browsing through the portal, he heard someone contact him on his Realm Pass. “Hello, Chen Chuan?”

Chen Chuan couldn’t see who was contacting him, just that they were from the university management. So, he said, “That’s me.”

“If you have a minute to spare, please come to the special officer’s office on the seventy-second floor.”

“Okay,” Chen Chuan said. After some thinking, he cleaned himself up a little and got into the elevator. When the doors opened to the seventy-second floor, someone walked over.

He was a man in his forties with graying temples and a mature, elegant air. At that moment, he was about to take the elevator. When he passed Chen Chuan by, he gave him a second glance and asked with a smile, “Are you Chen Chuan?”

“That’s me, and you are?” Chen Chuan asked.

“I’m Ling Jianxing, the vice chancellor’s assistant. You can call me Mr. Ling. The main campus always welcomes outstanding students like you to study with us,” Ling Jianxing said with a smile.

Upon hearing his name, Chen Chuan’s heart stirred, but he just said, “Thank you, Mr. Ling.”

Ling Jianxing stared into his eyes. “Have you seen me before?”

Chen Chuan nodded. “While I was browsing through the portal, I think I saw your picture and one of your lectures, though I wasn’t sure it was you until just now.”

“Is that so? If you have any comments about my lectures, do tell. Well then, I wish you success in your studies.” Ling Jianxing smiled.

He then entered the elevator. Just then, someone spoke to him on his Realm Pass.

“Wu Ruo hasn’t contacted us in more than ten days. The last person who saw him was Chen Chuan. He went missing after deciding to use Chen Chuan as his next target. Could that student be related to his disappearance?”

“Perhaps,” Ling Jianxing said meaningfully.

“Perhaps?”

Ling Jianxing turned around. The doors were closing slowly as he watched Chen Chuan continue forward.

“I’ll pay close attention to him.”