Chapter 217: Ways to Get Stronger

Half an hour later, they left Xiran’s place. The memento Can picked in the end was a pair of glasses, while Gao Yang picked one of the novels on the bookshelf, titled,

Travel to Twenty Years Later to Take Revenge along with My Daughter.

Xiran was a big fan of the story and recommended it to anyone who would listen. The protagonist went ahead twenty years in time after getting into a car accident. Befriending his now adult daughter, he found the culprit who murdered his wife with his daughter’s help and saved everyone. Then he went back in time to change his fate.

Xiran recommended it because in addition to the engaging plot, the father and daughter relationship was touching. As someone who grew up with a single mother, family was of the utmost importance to him.

Gao Yang valued his family too. He decided to give the book a read at some point.

...

At midnight, Gao Yang returned home and unlocked the door gingerly. His family had all gone to bed.

Gao Yang returned to his room and hid the diary.

He spent the next thirty minutes on strength training until he was drenched in sweat. Then he went to the bathroom for a warm shower.

Before he could put on his pajamas, someone opened the door.

“Ah!”

Gao Yang jumped.

Gao Xinxin had gone out of bed for a toilet break, still bleary-eyed. And she was shocked to find someone in the bathroom. “Holy! What...what are you doing?!”

“Taking a shower.” Gao Yang calmed down quickly when he realized it was his sister.

“At this hour? What’s wrong with you?” Gao Xinxin said in disbelief.

“I came back home late, so I took a shower late.” Gao Yang quickly put on his pajamas.

Gao Xinxin gave him a disapproving look. “You’ve been wasting your time with Wang Zikai. Why don’t you just stop coming home altogether?”

“Enough already. I’m done.” Gao Yang walked past her. “Take care of your business and go to bed. You need to wake up early tomorrow.”

Gao Yang dried his hair with a towel as he went back to his bedroom. He closed and locked the door behind him. Listening to the noises outside through the door, he made sure Gao Xinxin had returned to her room before relaxing.

Now he only needed four hours of sleep to be fully rested, and it was one o’clock in the morning. He thus had another two hours.

He sat down cross-legged on the bed and checked his system.

[Access granted.]

—Status screen.

[Constitution: 394 Endurance: 394]

[Strength: 500 Agility: 500]

[Willpower: 500 Charisma: 97]

[Luck: 454]

[You have a total of 26 Luck points.]

—That’s about it. My fight with Yellow Butterfly lasted no longer than 3 minutes, which would give me about 100 points, but all that had been allocated to my Constitution and Endurance automatically.

—It’s been a whole day since the end of the fight. Without a bonus, I accumulated 26 points.

[Access ends.]

Gao Yang let out a long breath and considered how he was going to get stronger going forward.

His Lucky was level 3 at the moment, which meant his maximum stat was 500. He would soon hit the ceiling with all his stats.

Disregarding Talents and considering only how stats translated to combat power, what would it mean for all his stats to reach 500?

As a reference point, he would be at the level of Nine Frost with the stat bonuses granted by level 5 Weak Point.

Nine Frost was a formidable awakener in his own right.

However, there was a large gap between him and the real big fish in the world, those who would trigger a 5000 times bonus to Luck points acquisition.

Gao Yang had two ways to go about getting stronger.

First, push Lucky to level 4 to raise his maximum stats and allocate more points in them.

There was a problem, though. In theory, he would need the Miracle Rune Circuit to get Lucky to level 4.

At the moment, it was difficult enough for Gao Yang to get a glimpse of the Miracle Rune Circuit as a reward from Qilin. The man would never agree to let him carry the Rune Circuit around until his Talent leveled up.

Otherwise, Qilin would’ve traded it for other Rune Circuits already.

Second, comprehend more Talents.

Talents themselves were great assets and often determined the victor of a fight. And the higher-ranking the Talent, the greater the stat bonuses it granted.

Take War Tiger’s Killing Expert as an example; at level 5, it granted a 1000 bonus to several stats, and what the Talent itself enabled him to do was even more ridiculous.

If Gao Yang could comprehend another higher-ranking Talent, it would be worthwhile as long as he pushed it to level 3, and a great bargain if he reached level 4.

Moreover, as a spectator of the Talent Pantheon, he could now pick the type of Talent he would like to comprehend, which was a great advantage.

There was a caveat, though. If Gao Yang’s speculation was right, the total number of Talents were limited.

And currently, while not all awakeners with high-ranking Talents were alive, most should be, and their Talents hadn’t returned to the Pantheon.

Even if there was a high-ranking Talent waiting to be claimed, who knew if and when it would go to someone newly awakened?

Therefore, the chance was slim for Gao Yang to comprehend another Talent among the top 20. Even a Talent among the top 35 would be hard to come by.

Gao Yang sighed. He was getting a headache.

It would still take some time for him to push all his stats to 500 though, so he didn’t have to make a decision now.

He opened his eyes and looked at his desk. Three Air’s diary was locked in the drawer.

Gao Yang was going to bring it to his dorm room at the White Tiger branch tomorrow, which would be a safer place to keep it. Since he had the time now, though, he might as well read the diary. Perhaps he would find something.

He rose from his bed and made sure his door was locked before closing the window and the curtains. Then he took out the key and unlocked the drawer.

He picked up the diary and turned on the desk lamp, reading page by page.

Three Air’s handwriting was messy, and he corrected things as he wrote, which made the reading process a little tiring.

At first, Gao Yang read thoroughly, thinking every word through. After an hour and a half, though, he was getting lightheaded and dizzy.

It seemed like a simple diary, nothing less, nothing more.

Three Air didn’t write every day. On average, there were two to three entries every week, and each entry was roughly a couple hundred words long.

Most of them were about his mundane everyday life. On the off chance that he mentioned the world of awakeners, he kept it vague and brief, leaving no substantial clues. He had been careful in this regard.

Gao Yang flipped through the diary. The man had poured his complaints onto the pages.

He wrote about being single and wanting the company of a woman, about resolving to quit drinking but promptly giving up after a few days and drinking til he threw up, about his hairline receding and his skepticism of the hair transplant ads, and about his grievances on the rising fees for the fishing place in Li City.

Gao Yang stretched his rigid body and rubbed at his brows. The diary painted the vivid picture of a boorish, carefree single middle-aged man.

Gao Yang tried to look for codes to identify a pattern, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

He quickly flipped to the end before slowing down. The last few entries before the man’s death must be the key. If there were clues, the clues would be found there.

Gao Yang focused his mind and started with the fourth most recent entry.

“February 6th, sunny.”

“Flirting might as well be black magic. The more I try, the less I understand women. Forget it. Why chase after women? Isn’t fishing much more fun?”

“I’m gonna get paid on the tenth. Then I’ll get a new fishing rod and a high-power lamp for late night fishing! Ha, a fishing aficionado has no downtime!”