'System, status, now!' I yelled in my head. The Statius menu usually took a second to open but this time it instantly snapped out, as if in fear of taking too long.
[name: Feng Hao
Titles:
Spirit power: 0
spirit energy: 0/0
Aether: 23/1000 shards gathered
Stamina: 3/3
External spirit bone:
Spirit bone:
Spirit essence:
Skills:
illusion resistance (1/99) mental pain resistance (1/99) Tang sect techniques (1/99)
Status: worthless]
I quickly checked over my stats, I wanted to know more about my skills that had suddenly appeared.
'Notifications' I thought and a new tab in the system opened up.
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [mysterious heaven technique] has been given
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [controlling crane catching dragon] has been given
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [purple demon eye] has been given
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [mysterious jade hand] has been given
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [ghost shadow perplexing track] has been given
[for completing the aptitude test, rewards [hidden weapon hundred separation] has been given
Skills [mysterious heaven technique, controlling crane catching dragon, purple demon eye, mysterious jade hand, ghost shadow perplexing track, hidden weapon hundred separation] have combined forming skill [tang sect techniques]
...
Mental skill [illusion] has been automatically cast on candidate by system.
Illusion used: influence removal, this illusion slowly removes candidate's memories of previous life until the illusion deactivates. This illusion slowly gets stronger until candidates body is one year old and will slowly get weaker when candidates's body reaches three years of age.
...
Illusion, [influence removal] has been forcibly broken by external influences. Great mental strain has occurred because of the forceful breaking of [influence removal]
Skill gained [illusion resistance]
Skill gained [mental pain resistance]
[illusion resistance: lowers the effects that illusions have on the candidate]
[mental pain resistance: lowers the effect that mental pain has on the candidate, will not lower pain felt, only the pains negative effects]
I was wondering if I should practice the forbidden heaven technique or see if my father was alright. I decided on the former, a man like that would not die easily.
I deeply breathed, feeling the spirit energy in the surroundings gather into me. The spirit energy converged into my heart, creating a small bead. I ran the bead through my meridians following them exactly like the silhouette had in my dreams.
I completed the cycle and felt refreshed, as well as a little bit stronger, but there was something off. I felt a slight nagging feeling, like something was not right. I waited and the feeling slowly faded. I completed another cycle, the feeling came back, even stronger than before.
I decided to complete a third cycle while I still had the nagging feeling. A little more than halfway through the cycle, the feeling intensified.
I finished that cycle and did one more cycle. Right around the area where the nagging feeling intensified, I sent the bead of spiritual energy down a different pathway. As soon as I did, I felt amazing. I felt like I had just woken up from a long nap, my body felt strong and full of life.
The euphoric feeling soon faded and I checked my system. It seemed that my [tang sect techniques] skill had reached level 8. I was expecting some new knowledge to appear in my head or something similar to that, but it never happened.
A thought occurred to me, 'what if raising the skill level doesn't make me better at something? What if getting better at something raises the skill level?'
Another though appeared in my mind, 'Is getting resistances just my body evolving to better take on harmful things?'
Going off of my theories, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't just do the same thing over and over again and eventually learn how to make a fireball. It took me a few moments, but I soon realized the value of being able to see my progress.
Some people think they have reached the peak of a skill or technique, even when there is far more to learn. The system would remove that problem by showing me how much further I could go.
I also wasn't completely without help when it came to self learning, when I did something wrong, the system would give me a nagging feeling. That feeling wouldn't tell me the right way to do something, but it would tell me when I did it the wrong way.
The higher the level of a skill, the more the feeling started to fade. I guessed that I probably wouldn't have the feeling anymore when I reached the high nineties in skill level.
'Compared to my last life, I feel like I can do everything ten times faster now that I have the system.'
...
'Testing time' I thought.
I bashed my head against the wall before recoiling. 'Oww' I winced in my head, 'why didn't I get pain resistance, or something similar at least?' I thought.
[title gained: idiot]
'Don't make me angry system, I do not what to see the descriptions of that title, do you hear me!' I thought, completely forgetting my previous thoughts about how I shouldn't get angry at something like a system.
Of course, against all of my wishes, the system opened up the description for the title.
[idiot: slows thinking speed down by 20%, candidate will often make bad decisions]
'Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!' I yelled in my head
[must have at least two titles in order to deactivate a title]
'Noooo'
...
After sulking at my stupidity for a few minutes, I crawled off of my crib and found that crawling was much easier. Before, I would have to crawl slowly and could easily fall, but now I felt stable, my body was full of strength.
I thought about standing up before realizing that my idiot title was probably affecting my decisions. There was no way that my body was strong enough to stand up.
I crawled out of my room, the door was open. I quickly crawled down a corridor to the stairs. I wiggled my way down the stairs and soon made it to the living room, which was right next to the kitchen.
My mother was making some sort of herbal tea in the kitchen but quickly stopped when she saw me. "Feng Hao!" She yelled as she ran over to me and picked me up, hugging me. "You have no I dead how worried I've been, you week asleep for a week and" I tuned out the rest of what she had to say.
'I've been asleep for a week!' I exclaimed to myself, 'That means I'm almost 5 months old.' I listened to the last bit of what my mother had to say "This is wonderful, I have to tell Lan."
I was swept upstairs into my fathers room, he was laying on the bed covered in bandages. "Just let me die" he croaked before letting out a few coughs. "Nope, your not dying until you get me that necklace you promised!" It slightly unnerved me how my mother said that, it was reminiscent of a perverted old man who just saw a group of beautiful girls walk by.
Although the conversation was somewhat humorous, I could see that my father was terribly sick. My mother had just been making a herbal tea for him, so I knew it could be bad.
After visiting with my father for a bit, me and mother eventually left him be. I hadn't seen Feng Long for awhile, he was usually around, it often felt like he was everywhere.
After being set down to roam free, I quickly found Feng Long, he still seemed to be affected by the illusion. I soon ignored him and found a quiet corner to contemplate.
'I need to piece together the information from the aptitude test, I knew there is more than meets the eye.' I began to contemplate the aptitude test, 'it was called an aptitude test, but that aptitude was it testing.
Based on the challenges, it was probably testing combat ability. The first stage of the test, wait, what was the first stage? There was the small pit filled with blood, but in the same area there were the wolves.
I'm just going to think of them as two different stages. The first stage was about will to survive, if I wasn't fighting to live, then I would have died before drinking the blood. The blood had one strange regenerative property so I was full of energy for the sending stage. The second stage was probably about running away.
It was impossible to complete the second stage using the given body, so I had to push past my limits to escape. The second stage weeds out those who don't have the ability to surpass their limits.
The third stage tested my abilities against a single opponent, the monkey. the fourth stage tested my footing in the sand, my quick thinking when it came to dealing with underground worm enemies and my endurance against those scorpions. The fifth stage tested my ability to handle massive amounts of power. I don't think the dark area, which I will call the secret stage, was actually part of the trial.
The positioning was probably based on how far through the stages a candidate got. The whole trial seemed to take place over the course of one persons life, from a dangerous battlefield when they were little, to a massive horde of monsters where they were an adult.
Maybe the person who made that test was the same person whose life I experienced! Maybe that person became a go-!'
My mind blanked, the idiot title had kicked into overdrive, quickly stopping my thinking. I knew I had just forgotten whatever I had just thought of. I was about to retrace my steps and try to come up with a theory on the aptitude test again, but I decided not to. idiot would probably just make me forget everything again.
[congratulations for figuring out some of the truth of the aptitude test. System function opened: body condition]
[body condition: the strength, toughness, dexterity and agility of candidates body]
[current body condition: 1]
I was quickly bombarded by system windows, which I quickly read over before closing.
I sat up, I felt a little bored so I decided to look for a mirror. It was somewhat impressive how I had not found a single mirror in my house in all my time here. I decided that today was the day I found one.
I started upstairs, my house had two floors, the top floor had me and my brothers room. A little way down the carpeted hallway was my parents room, across the hall way and a bit to the left of my parents room was a small study. Right at the end of the hall was a spare guest room, although nobody every visited so it was mostly used for storage.
There were no mirrors upstairs.
On the ground floor, right out from the staircase was a living room with a wooden floor. The dining room was next to the living room. In a side room from the dining room was a kitchen with tiled floors and walls.
I would have checked the bathroom because they usually have mirrors, but this house didn't have one, there was no plumbing system.
That was to be expected, this was in somewhat ancient times. I thought I had run out of places to check, but then I found a small crack in the wall. The crack was perfectly strait, it was like a door was right there.
I gently pushed on the wall and it slid back, revealing a secret room. There was a large mirror on one wall and the rest were covered with bookshelves filled with books.
I glanced at the mirror and was slightly surprised. While my parent had colourful hair, my hair was a pure black, it wasn't even shiny.
My eyes were a rather boring dull grey colour and didn't shine with much light. I was a bit disappointed, I had hoped to have some colourful appearance, but I didn't.
I spent almost an hour exploring that room, the book covered a lot of information about spirit beasts, but that was about it. I soon left, for some reason I didn't really want to be found in here.
I headed back up to the second floor, but soon I 'sensed' my brother. Over the past few hours, a feeling emanating from my brother had intensified.
It put me on edge, constantly forcing me to feel wary around my brother, I also found that it made me feel strangely aggressive towards him.
He didn't seem to notice anything was wrong though, so I just tried to suppress the feeling.
...
A few days passed, I was currently sitting on my bed. 'Skills may start to pile up' I thought. I liked neatness so I felt that having a messy skill menu would be annoying.
'System create skill folder' I thought, and slightly to my surprise, it worked.
[skill folder created, please name the skill folder]
'Combat skills' I thought, the folder [attack skills] was then made.
I swiftly created the [defence skills], [support skills] and [production skills] folder.
I put [mental pain resistance] and [illusion resistance] in [support skills] folder. I was about to place [tang sect techniques] in [attack skills] but then decided to create a [favourite skills] folder. I placed [tang sect techniques] in [favourite skills].
With my organization done, I climbed out of my crib and gently snuck down to the secret room. I wanted to figure out what was in the books at the top.
It was time to search for knowledge.