The bell rang.
Lin Ye reluctantly stuffed down the last meat bun and sprinted toward the virtual combat classroom.
He still had to get the key and open the door.
With a daily intake of twenty thousand calories, Lin Ye naturally planned to eat as much as he could at breakfast.
Otherwise, once he got home, all that expense would fall on his family.
Unfortunately, even though he had eaten fast enough, he had ultimately only managed to take in close to ten thousand calories’ worth of food.
But his stomach seemed to have truly turned into a bottomless maw. After so much food went down, he felt not the slightest sense of fullness.
Fortunately, that hunger had been temporarily suppressed.
Lin Ye took out the magnetic card and swiped it against the access panel of the virtual combat classroom.
The doors opened.
A huge, pure-white classroom brimming with a futuristic feel came into view.
Inside, over a hundred virtual devices resembling single-person hibernation pods were arranged in neat rows.
Since the descent of the Tianyuan a hundred years ago, while human martial arts had undergone explosive development, technology had not stagnated either.
Among them, the application of virtual reality technology had long since permeated every aspect of life.
Led by the Earth Human Federation, and jointly launched by top forces such as the martial artist alliances of various nations and the Four Great Martial Halls, the virtual combat platform—“Pinnacle of Martial Dao”—came into being!
It could simulate real senses and bodily data with one hundred percent accuracy, allowing martial artists across the globe to engage in injury-free real combat sparring and skill refinement anytime, anywhere.
They could even enter simulated Tianyuan battlefields and fight against digitized foreign races.
Once everyone had assembled, Chen Meng gave the order, and the entire Class Seven of the third year lay down in the virtual pods one after another.
Lin Ye only felt his vision go dark.
The next moment, he felt himself reappear in the classroom, except all those countless virtual pods had vanished.
Chen Meng stood before the crowd and said, “Perk up, all of you!”
With both hands clasped behind his back, his gaze swept over every student like lightning.
“Today, we won’t be practicing anything else. We’ll talk about one thing only—weapon specialization.”
He paused, his tone becoming especially grave.
“I know that over the past two and a half years, the school’s requirement for you has been to focus mainly on fist techniques and movement techniques, with weapon training as a supplement. You were expected to learn a little of everything, and the purpose was to help you find the weapon best suited to you.”
“But now, there are only six months left before the college entrance exam, and less than two weeks until the next diagnostic exam. You no longer have time to be half-hearted.”
“Starting today, each of you must choose one weapon as your main focus for the next half year. Whether it’s regular training or resource allocation, everything will revolve around your choice.”
As soon as these words were spoken, everyone’s expressions differed.
The top students in the class, especially those whose families had official martial artists, had naturally been told about this long ago.
Some of them had even been specializing in one type of weapon routine since childhood.
“Now, state your choices!”
“Wang Zetao!”
“Saber!”
“Li Jun!”
“Teacher… I haven’t decided yet…”
“Ah! Sword! Teacher, I choose the sword!”
Li Jun had suddenly been called on.
As a poor student who, like Lin Ye, merely muddled along in this class, he was naturally extremely nervous. Only when he saw Chen Meng’s man-eating gaze did he randomly pick a weapon.
One student after another stated their choices, most of them mainstream weapons like sabers and swords.
When it was almost Lin Ye’s turn, Li Jun beside him nudged him. “Ah Ye, have you decided? I regret it…”
“Sword techniques are the damn hardest to train…”
“Sigh!”
Lin Ye was indeed somewhat hesitant. Over the past two and a half years, he had touched on everything, but as for being proficient, he was proficient in none.
Just then, the system in his mind spoke again.
[Ding! Detected that the host is facing an important decision. Calculating optimal evolutionary route…]
[Calculation complete!]
[Based on the host’s goblin racial characteristics, the most compatible weapon is: long-handled blunt weapon (staff/club/hammer)!]
[System recommendation: For a goblin, the most reliable companion will always be that big stick picked up from who knows where! It is simple, brutal, and effective! There is nothing that cannot be solved with a blow to the back of the head. If there is, then hit them again!]
Lin Ye felt his temples twitching.
He had already foreseen this outcome in advance.
This system really couldn’t get past the whole goblin thing.
“Lin Ye!”
Chen Meng’s gaze swept over.
“Reporting, Teacher. I choose the staff!”
His voice was not loud, but the students present, including Chen Meng, were all stunned for a moment.
Because this was the first person today to choose the staff.
The staff was the ancestor of all weapons, the foundation of foundations.
But precisely because it was too foundational, very few people would take it as their main weapon.
In most people’s eyes, staff techniques were broad and forceful, seemingly mighty, but in truth, their variations in technique were far less agile than sabers and swords, and they were not as sharp and lethal as spears.
On the battlefield, when facing foreign races clad in scales and armor with heaven-defying defensive power, a staff strike might amount to nothing more than scraping.
Only those students from poor families, who could not afford fine weapons forged by the Weapon-Forging Workshops, would settle for the staff as a second-best option.
Chen Meng looked deeply at Lin Ye and said nothing more, merely nodding. “Good!”
Once the choices were complete, the weapons each person had selected instantly appeared before their eyes.
This was the good thing about virtual space. Many troublesome processes were directly omitted.
Lin Ye gripped the weapon that had appeared out of thin air before him. It felt slightly heavy in his hand, the wood tough and durable, carrying a unique, warm texture.
The instant his palm closed around the staff, an unprecedented sense of familiarity and closeness welled up in him, as if this utterly ordinary wooden staff had originally been a part of his body.
[Your Normal Attack has been automatically adjusted according to weapon form!]
[New form obtained: Normal Attack—Sweep!]
[New form obtained: Normal Attack—Thrust!]
[New form obtained: Normal Attack—Cleave!]
[New mission issued!]
[Ancestor of All Weapons: Complete 2,000 standard staff technique movements.]
[Mission reward: Unlock exclusive passive skill “Staff Momentum,” Skill Point +1.]
Lin Ye ignored the strange looks around him and walked straight to an empty area with fewer people, then assumed his stance.
Lin Ye closed his eyes.
He recalled the staff technique knowledge he had learned before.
The weapon routines distributed by the Alliance were the foundation of foundations.
There were thirty-six forms in the staff technique in total. As for the first form, Lin Ye opened his eyes and immediately executed it.
A simple horse stance, both hands gripping the staff, power generated from the waist and hips to drive the arms—a standard horizontal sweep lashed out!
Whoosh—!
The tip of the staff carried a clear sound of tearing through the air, drawing a perfect arc.
Next was the thrust.
The staff moved with his body, waist and stance united. The long staff in his hands shot out like a venomous snake leaving its hole, precisely stabbing into the air before him and stirring up ripples of airflow.
Cleave, smash, tap, lift…
Once, twice, ten times, a hundred times…
Lin Ye became completely immersed in his own world.
Even in virtual space, stamina was still consumed.
The essence of this stamina consumption was the “mental strength” of the actual body lying in the virtual pod.
When mental strength ran low, the feedback reflected in the virtual avatar’s performance as weakness and fatigue.
But Lin Ye was not troubled by this limitation.
The infinite stamina brought by the “out-of-combat health regeneration” mechanism allowed him to tirelessly repeat these dull, basic movements.
And the [Normal Attack] trait granted by the system made every strike he delivered infinitely close to textbook perfection.