That evening, Lin Tianyang didn't feel comfortable letting Fang Ling stay alone in his own room.
Instead, he brought Fang Ling to the two-story building he shared with his wife, and arranged for him to stay in the guest room.
This way, if Fang Ling felt unwell during the night, they would hear him calling for help.
This thoughtful arrangement moved Fang Ling deeply, he was almost brought to tears.
They truly were the best teacher and teacher's wife anyone could ask for.
Lying in bed under a warm blanket, Fang Ling felt incredibly lucky to have met them.
Enrolling in Battle King Academy was the best decision he had ever made, without question.
He wiped away the tears at the corners of his eyes, feeling emotional.
Today had been truly dangerous. If he hadn't endured the intense pain of his lungs being cut and seized the opportunity to land that critical kick, he would've been dead.
That fight came at a great cost. Besides gaining a few points and sensing a breakthrough in his scythe technique, he also gained an even more astonishing reward.
Warrior's Will Lv1
(Innate Talent – A tenacious fighting will born from fierce life-or-death battles. Allows short-term resistance to the effects of pain on the body. Willpower has strength. Increases the passive flow speed of your soul power by 5%.)
This was a new talent, and from the description, it had two effects.
The first was the ability to resist the influence of pain on the body.
For someone like him, whose only way of fighting was close combat, this was an incredibly important skill.
Resisting pain doesn't mean being immune to it.
Pain is a vital self-protection mechanism for the human body; it's necessary.
But in battle, if pain causes hesitation or missed attack opportunities, or worse, makes you lose composure and fall into a disadvantage, that could be disastrous.
Even Fang Ling, who prided himself on his strong will, couldn't entirely ignore pain before this talent appeared.
He could handle minor injuries.
But something like having a sword pierce through his chest and needing to cut open his own lung, that relied purely on adrenaline.
He survived this time, thanks to his efforts and a bit of luck. Self-help leads to divine help. His hard work finally paid off.
But doing this too many times, betting his life every fight, that would be foolish.
The second effect of the talent was that his resilient will increased the flow speed of his soul power.
Though it was only a 5% increase, it was a very welcome boost.
Faster flow speed meant two things:
Faster progress during meditation, and more importantly, faster movement of soul power through his meridians.
The former didn't matter much, he didn't rely on meditation to cultivate anyway.
But the latter was crucial, it had a huge impact on combat.
Quick reflexes only meant his body reacted faster. True combat prowess came not just from physical responses, but also from his unorthodox combat thinking.
And that was just one part of close-quarters combat.
He was a Soul Master. While he focused on melee, soul skills still made up a large part of his strength.
Using soul skills required mental focus, and the speed at which soul power moved through his body.
Faster flow speed meant faster skill activation, possibly even instant casting.
With top-tier reflexes, innate combat instincts, and now nearly instantaneous soul skill activation…
If he could gain a teleportation soul skill next, he would become the ultimate agility-type warrior, unstoppable in battle.
That was the development path he had mapped out for himself.
He had been missing a piece.
Slow soul power flow had been the weak link in his otherwise quick reactions, like the short plank in a barrel.
Others might not notice the gap, but Fang Ling could. Activating soul skills and summoning his martial soul might have seemed fast to outsiders, but to him, it wasn't smooth enough.
He had no way to fix it aside from meditating over and over again.
Now, thanks to an unexpected turn of events, the flaw was fixed. He felt truly fortunate.
Though the skill was called an "Innate Talent," its focus on willpower made it feel more like a mental talent.
If this guess was correct, then "Innate Talent" might not only refer to physical traits, it could be divided into two finer categories: body and mind.
Obviously, Reflex Lv2 and Digestion Lv2 were physical talents, while Warrior's Will Lv1 was mental.
In terms of spiritual cultivation, apart from Tang San's Purple Demon Eye, there were almost no methods on the Douluo Continent.
From Tang San's own cultivation path, mental strength was clearly important.
And in the future, there would even be soul masters like Huo Yuhao, who specialized in mental power.
This made Fang Ling think, when looking for soul beasts in the future, maybe he should also consider those strong in mental power, once he had enough combat strength.
That was a matter for later.
His body was too weak to support deeper thinking right now.
Sleepiness surged over him, and as soon as he closed his eyes, he drifted into a deep sleep.
Seven days later.
Fang Ling forced himself to finish a pot of medicinal soup, made from who-knows-what herbs and soul beast parts.
It was a nourishing tonic carefully prepared by his teacher's wife.
She was gentle, kind, and highly capable, making such things was no trouble for her.
But the soup wasn't free. It cost money.
There was no labor charge, just the cost of materials, but even that came to 50 gold soul coins per pot.
Seven days, seven pots. That was 350 gold.
Luckily, after more than ten life-or-death fights, especially the one against Xu Chi that netted him 1,000 coins, he could afford it.
Expensive medicine really worked wonders.
Thanks to Digestion Lv2 boosting his absorption efficiency, the medicinal effects were absorbed extremely fast.
He also recovered quickly.
From such severe injuries, after treatment by healing soul masters, it took barely seven days for him to recover most of his strength.
His complexion was no longer so pale, the bluish tint on his lips faded, and his muscles were regaining power.
Fang Ling wanted to try training, but wasn't allowed. He could only do light exercises.
So he relaxed and, with his teacher's help, reviewed the previous battle.
He learned a lot.
His teacher had also helped him get a leave of absence from classes, during which he studied more about combat theory and techniques.
His sense of an upcoming breakthrough in his scythe technique grew stronger, but the breakthrough hadn't happened yet.
Based on past experience, it probably required hands-on combat to trigger.
You had to physically execute the move, it couldn't happen just by thinking about it.
Otherwise, breakthroughs would be too easy, and the system wouldn't accept them.
As expected, his soul power level hit 15, just as he had previously predicted.
Without spending much time meditating, he quietly leveled up, using stat points, while his teacher looked on in amazement.
His soul power now read: 15 (38%)
And all his points were once again used up.
In two and a half months at Battle King Academy, he had spent the first month training in scythe and movement techniques, and then jumped three levels in the next month and a half, from Level 12 to Level 15. His speed was astonishing.
His Martial Soul also reached Lv2, evolving from a regular farming scythe to an enhanced version.
Its hardness and sharpness both saw slight improvements.
Because it had evolved once, the system now revealed the number of points required for the next evolution: 20 points.
Not too many, that's just the reward for defeating 20 one-ring soul masters.
To raise his level from 15 to 20, he'd need at least 10 points.
At his current stage, 1v1 fights were getting harder to schedule and win.
He would need to start trying 1v2 matches.
Winning those would give him 2 points per fight, making it more efficient.
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