Inch of Radiance Vol 1 Chapter 4

Book 1 Chapter 4 – Gene Medicine

Every since everyone heard the news that there was a month left before the a.s.sessment, they all began to train like crazy.

Training, training like a madman!

Tian Lin did not waste time by going out at night and the Tan family’s five brothers did not have as much time to argue. Every individual’s practice time exceeded twelve hours.

However Li Yang was the same as before, without a single change. If there was any change at all, then it would simply be that he was bit more focused on his current task; his training time did not actually change. In the past, he cultivated for fifteen hours a day and he was currently simply continuing that pace.

Li Yang woke up at four in the morning everyday, absorbing the heavenly spiritual essence internally until six. Afterwards, he would run, eat, etc.

He starts his exercises at seven in the morning, focusing primarily on wrist and leg strength, challenging his limits non-stop. There were many different methods, such as horizontally gripping a 100 jin steel bar. The wrists must completely bear that heavy force, afterwards jumping up and down vertically. He practiced this all the way until 9 in the morning. By this time, Li Yang’s hands became sore and his legs numb, and he would practically have no energy left.

However, precisely at this time is when Li Yang practices his Flying Dagger Technique, casting it non stop. In addition, he had to instill internal energy each time into the blade and make every dagger pa.s.s through a steel plate. Not only did he place these strict restrictions on himself, he place a small bullseye, and only by pa.s.sing through that did he deem his practice successful. Only after sending out 3000 successful attempts does Li Yang allow himself to eat lunch.

Every blade had to be infused with internal energy, as well as pa.s.s through the red target on a steel plate; the conditions were indeed harsh. Li Yang only had his pathetic bit of energy from his recently acquired first layer level of internal cultivation, only enough to fire ten blades. Three thousand blades were only attained by continually breaking through his own limits!

Sending out the 3000 blades, spending time to recover lost internal energy, as well as the times that were actually successful, consisted of a really long period of time. By the time he was finished, it was already evening. After practicing this way for a whole year, Li Yang’s 3000 blades practice currently ended around noon.

This trained Li Yang, since even though his internal energy was low, but his recovery time was fast! In order to supply the internal energy needed to fire off three thousand blades within three hours, you can imagine how quickly the recovery rate needed to be.

During the afternoon, he sat cross-legged and meditated, cultivating internally from 1 in the afternoon until 3.

After cultivating internally, Li Yang begins his combat training from 3 pm until 9 pm, a total of six hours!

He rested and ate dinner until 9:30 pm, which is around the time he conversed with Jiang Xue on the phone. This half hour was Li Yang’s happiest period of time every day.

After 10 pm is when Li Yang takes a stroll around the neighborhood. He then goes to the base and cultivates a bit or talks a bit with the other members, afterwards sleeping at precisely midnight.

His daily cultivation time was no less than 15 hours! This was what allowed Li Yang’s capabilities to rapidly increase. When he first entered the Security Bureau’s 9th Division, his energy tested no more than 12 crystals, barely making double digits. He could barely be called a second-level expert. In just two years, he already reached 80 crystals, increasing his strength by five or six times!

In this manner, Li Yang cultivated non-stop.

…

All of the world’s major powers had similar methods of cla.s.sifying experts.

Your crystal energy level was precisely your level as an expert! Take Li Yang’s current 80 crystals for example, 80 was double digits meaning he was a second-level expert.

But with this said, the same level expert could differ quite a bit in strength. For example, although a 1000 crystals individual and a 9000 crystals individual were both similarly fourth level experts, the difference in energy between the two was way too much.

The ‘Six Pure Yang’ was a cultivation practice widely used within the Security Bureau, and all of them cultivating this ‘Six Pure Yang’. This was also another reason for why the female ratio was so low within the Security Bureau, the amount of females able to cultivate in the Six Pure Yang was too few.

This ‘Six Pure Yang’ has a total of six layers. If an individual only cultivated internally and did not vigorously exercise then when he reaches the first layer, then he would be a first-level expert. Reaching the second layer would make the individual a second-level expert, and upon attaining the sixth layer one would become a sixth-level expert.

In the beginning or early days of training, exercising can actually increase one’s energy level by quite a bit. One’s power after going through vigorous cultivation could attain a crystal energy level in the double digits.

Because of this, although Li Yang’s cultivation has only barely breached the first layer, because he exercised vigorously, he could attain roughly 80 crystals of energy.

But as your skill level become higher, training begins to drop dramatically in effectiveness. For example, a third-level expert with a couple hundred crystals of power really does not get that much stronger even if their crystal energy improves by a couple dozen.

There is even less of a need to talk about fourth-level experts and above. To a top notch expert who had over 10,000 or even 100,000 crystals, was there any purpose in gaining only a couple dozen crystals?

Li Yang was approximately 180 centimeters tall with a standard figure. He appeared to weigh around 170 jin, but if he stepped on a weight it would reveal that he was already 200 jin. If he took off his clothes, it would be revealed that Li Yang’s body was built almost entirely of muscles. The muscles however were streamlined, not at all like those shown off by bodybuilders.

Security Bureau 9th Division Shanghai Base — Within Heavenly Net’s training room.

Under two times gravity, Li Yang was currently sparring with Tan Jin. Of course, Tan Jin didn’t use his internal energy and only used his combat skills to spar with Li Yang.

The two men were naked from the waist up, wearing long black pants for the lower half. Although the two individual’s upper bodies did not have extremely bulky muscles, they made people feel that these muscles were extremely powerful.

Peng! Peng! Peng! Peng! Peng! Peng! Their legs clashed, creating noise non-stop. Their upper bodies were sweating profusely.

Hong! The two individuals fiercely kicked out with the same technique, hitting their legs together, the two men were both forced back a bit after the exchange.

“Li Yang, not bad, you can even fight with me to a draw. Even though I was the one that introduced you to the underground foot techniques, I never would have thought that you would catch up with me so quickly. Ai, your cultivation does not make your muscles bulky like body builders. I, Tan Jin, still cannot defeat you, the Security Bureau 9th Division’s hottest guy!” Tan Jin shook his head and sighed, appearing depressed on the outside.

“Oh, back then your purpose for telling me to gain muscle was for me to be fat like a gorilla, I hope your heart gets punished!” Li Yang laughed and scolded. “However, those strong and handsome individuals are really just impressive looking but useless! Take Hei Yan for example, although his cultivation energy is the highest within our group, his muscles are developed but not too prominent.”

Tan Jin nodded his head in agreement and said, “A real expert would never allow his muscles to bulge that much! If your muscles are too bulky, it limits your movements and slows down your reflexes. Speed is extremely important in combat, and even within the top underground boxers, while they are muscular, none of them have muscles like bodybuilders. Those underground fighters not only have fast speed, but amazing attack power as well! The weirdest part of it all is that their body sizes are all rather big!”

Li Yang however began to smile. “I don’t find this strange at all. Don’t tell me you don’t know how miserable the underground training regimen is? Going through this type of training is like asking for death, many of these combatant can reach 100 crystals simply through physical training! The highest was known to have reached even 500 crystals! If the fighters did not develop well, how could they handle that kind of cruel training? Because of this, of course they all need to be bigger in body size!

Li Yang abruptly began to ridicule himself. “500 hundred crystals huh, I really cannot comprehend their training methods. We cannot be considered to be people who lack good work ethics, but we only have a couple dozens crystals of energy. Just thinking about their training process scares me.”

Tan Jin nodded his head as well. “Yeah, those fighters climb out from a pile of the dead, however to reach the underground fighting arena, there is still one more barrier! Almost half the fighters end up dying at this barrier. This barrier is precisely the ‘A1’ gene medicine, forcing the fighter to undergo a body transformation.

Li Yang replied, “I heard about this, roughly four years ago there was a genetics breakthrough and several major powers have started developing this A1 gene medicine. A1 was a gene that underwent transformations to improve its strength. However this A1 was not perfect, and so using it led to a death rate of roughly fifty percent! It is rumored that one package of A1 gene medicine is worth five hundred thousand dollars!”

Tan Jin laughed and said, “Indeed, and soon after A2 will come out as well, being more complete than A1 with a mortality rate of only 10 percent! It has a staggering price of five million dollars! Last year there was some news that America has successfully completed a perfect A3 that did not cause any death. As long as you used it, it had 100 percent success rate. However, the cost of making the A3 was high, resulting in a mind blowing price of five hundred million dollars! This made the A3 actually a hundred times more expensive than the A2. However, many unfathomably rich individuals still could afford it, it is rumored that it could provide health and vigor after taking it, at the very least allowing you to live for several more decades.

A1, A2, A3 three types of genetic medicine, the higher the number the better it’s effects but more expensive as well. ‘A3’ gene medicine has already reached a price of 500 million dollars, if you were not ridiculously rich there was no way you could afford it.

“Hmm, currently the strongest experts of the underground fighting are all fourth-level experts. Originally they had a couple hundred crystals of energy, after using A1 and undergoing the transformation they will have at least a thousand crystals of energy. There were also many people who started off with roughly a hundred to two hundred crystals of power, after taking the A1 medicine spiked to just short of 800 crystals. However these people were still considered extremely fortunate, after all, many died from taking this incomplete A1 drug!” Li Yang sighed, feeling regret for the strong cultivators who fell victim to the imperfect medicine.

Tan Jin nodded his head and said, “This topic is easy to understand, after all, the head of the underground arenas are not going to spend that much on its fighters. The ‘A2’ is simply too expensive, five million dollars, sigh… If a fighter failed to do well in its fight, them there’s a high chance that this price would not be earned back. This ‘A1’ gene medicine is actually pushing the underground arena heads to the extreme. It still is best to practice internally after all, breaking through by your own is much better than using the medicine by a large margin as it doesn’t carry any risk.

Li Yang nodded his head in agreement.

However within Li Yang’s heart was still a shred of sadness, “Alas, it’s so unfortunate that it’s too late already for me to cultivate internally as my meridians have already finalized. No matter how beneficial cultivating internally is, it has no effect on me.”

Li Yang’s heart abruptly hardened. “Those underground arena experts even without the help of the medicine still reached 500 crystals of energy, I don’t believe that there’s no way for me to attain this too! As long as I reach 500 crystals of energy, at that time I will have a much stronger wrist as well as internal energy! My Flying Dagger’s strength will improve by at least two stages. When that time arrives, even a Xiantian Paragon expert would not be able to handle my Flying Dagger!”

Li Yang suddenly came to a decision. He would continue to work hard cultivating and practicing his physical strength so that his Flying Dagger could reach an astonishing level.