Gu Jianbo was stunned for a very long time, then he suddenly jumped up.
His hair had been combed neatly to the point that it shone, but because of the experimental cultivation, it became messy and fell over his face. Now, it stood up, making him look like the mad scientists from films.
His gaze and expression made it clear that he was losing his composure. He suddenly grinned, then at the next moment, he sat down in front of the research table and started writing fiercely. Sometimes, he clenched his fists and smacked his head. It made Meng Chao and Ma Hong’s skin crawl.
He suddenly stopped moving and mumbled to himself, “It’s impossible. If the answer was so simple, why did Zong Ye didn’t think of it ten years ago?”
“Ten years ago, Dragon City’s medical technology wasn’t that advanced. The medical cabins were still very crude or didn’t even exist!” Meng Chao said loudly. “There’s no cultivation method that can pop out of nothing. You need pre-existing technology to help you and accumulate experience for you!
“Perhaps in his era, Senior Zong Ye was really a genius, but medical technology was not developed enough, so stimulative mediums and the medicinal medicines did not exist. No matter how much of a genius he was, it was impossible for him to create an entire skill tree on his own.
“No matter what, his fate was predestined, but is still a great regret and distress.
“But today, more than ten years later, everything is right. We have the most advanced medical cabins. A few days ago, after I fought against a Bloody Moon Wolf King, I was unconscious for more than a week and received treatment in a medical cabin. I know just how modern and strong they are. If we could modify one such medical cabin into a cultivation cabin, we would definitely manage to make the seed that was planted more than ten years ago blossom!”
“Meng Chao is right.” Ma Hong had a contemplative look on his face. “In the past ten years, the Red Dragon Army’s medical technology has become much more advanced. The medical cabins that I know of have been changed three times. Many of the comrades I know love cultivating in them as well. They said that the effect is really good, and they can recover really quickly.”
Gu Jianbo looked as if he had been enlightened, and he could now see the path ahead of him.
He looked at Meng Chao as if he was seeing Zong Ye from the past. Hope shone in his eyes once more.
A golden notification lit up before Meng Chao’s eyes.
[Under your guidance, heroic citizen Gu Jianbo has discovered a brand new research direction for the Ultimate Style. Increased contribution points by 666.]
‘I knew it, he’s a heroic citizen!’
Meng Chao’s cheeks burned red. He was embarrassed by the undeserved praise.
The correct research direction for the Ultimate Style in his previous life should have been something that Gu Jianbo figured out on his own a few years later.
So, could Meng Chao be considered to have guided a hero, or did the hero guide him?
“What you said makes sense. We can try experimenting in this direction. But forget about the problem of using mediums first. The point is that the pain of clearing 1,024 branch meridians in one go would be something a human cannot withstand.”
Gu Jianbo thought about it for a long time before he extended a finger. “Branch meridians are really thin. Every time you clear them, you feel pain as if you’re pushing your finger into a needle hole. Your mental strength index will fluctuate greatly. If you’re the slightest bit careless, you’ll destroy the branch meridians.
“It was extremely painful to clear just five branch meridians, so if anyone tried to clear 1024 branch meridians in one go, they would die from pain or their mental strength index will fall to zero and they’ll go insane.
Gu Jianbo did not even notice it, but he was already treating Meng Chao as a research partner to whom he could talk on equal grounds.
“You won’t.” When it came to this, Meng Chao was absolutely confident. “There’s an upper limit to a person’s pain threshold. Once you reach that limit, you can’t go any further. In other words, the pain you feel when you clear five branch meridians is about the same as when you clear hundreds or more than one thousand in one go.”
When he saw that Gu Jianbo was still hesitating, he suddenly raised his right leg and showed his leg hair.
“What are you doing?” Gu Jianbo was stunned.
Meng Chao grabbed his leg hair and yanked them out. He was in so much pain that he hissed.
“Big Brother Bo, do you have the experience of putting on ointment patches after you’re injured?” Meng Chao asked while enduring the pain. “Many of the topical ointments have amazing effects. They can promote blood circulation, strengthen the bone marrow, and increase cellular activity to promote muscle growth.
“Everything about them is great, but there’s one problem. When you keep an ointment patch for an entire night, it goes cold and freezes up. When you tear it off, you often yank off your hair as well, and it hurts.
“This is especially so for the men with a lot of body hair. Whenever they tear off those ointment patches, it feels the same as going through torture. If you hesitate even in the slightest and act too slowly, your hair are yanked off one by one, and you hurt much more than if you had peeled off the path in one go. Yet the more pain you’re in, the slower you go, and the slower you go, the more pain you’re in. It turns into a vicious cycle.
“You must be vicious and yank the patch off instantly. No matter how much it hurts, it will only hurt for a moment.”
Meng Chao’s comparison was simple and crude. In fact, it was a grotesque description.
But Gu Jianbo understood what he meant, and he started thinking deeply.
“Pain is indeed a major problem that will throw our mental strength index into chaos, and it’s not something that you one endure with just willpower,” Meng Chao said seriously. “The way you solve it is by reducing the number of branch meridians you clear each time and reducing the power of the electricity, but I think that it’s the same as slowly tearing off an ointment patch. You’re just prolonging the pain.
“Besides, you can only clear up to five branch meridians each time, so in a few days, the branch meridians shrink back, which makes your suffering pointless. Like this, when will you ever cultivate all 1,024 branch meridians?
“You can clear main meridians one by one because there’s only a few of them. There are only 108 of them in total, and they’re very strong. When you clear them once, they stay clear for a long time too.
“But we can’t imitate that blindly. We have to open a new road for ourselves. It’s only when you stimulate more than one thousand branch meridians and cultivate them repeatedly every day that you’ll be able to ensure that they’ll stay cleared for a long period of time. In the end, the body will remember it, and you will finally succeed.
“Of course, in consideration to the limits of what a body can bear, we can lower the power of the electricity by fifty percent. That should be safe enough.”
Gu Jianbo frowned and said, “What you said before makes certain sense, but if you continue lowering the power of the electricity, the runoff volume of the branch meridians won’t be high enough, and you won’t be able to create spirit energy magnetic fields to execute killing moves.”
“You don’t need killing moves at all,” Meng Chao said. “Big Brother Bo, if we think about killing moves, we’ll continue walking down the paths of the Overkill Style and Beast Soul Style. We’re cultivating our branch meridians, so why are we competing against them in terms of killing moves? We’ll just be using our disadvantages to fight against other people’s advantages.”
Gu Jianbo thought about it for a long time and shook his head. “If we don’t have killing moves, we won’t have enough power. Even if you punch others one hundred times, others can still bring you down with one killing move.”
“I won’t use major moves, and I won’t let my enemies have the chance to use major moves either,” Meng Chao quickly said. “Regardless of whether it’s humans or superbeasts, when they use their skills, they need to create a spirit energy magnetic field. They accumulate energy, then stiffen up and need to cool down, which uses up a lot of time. During that time, they reveal all sorts of openings.
“The brand new martial artist who cultivates 1,024 branch meridians will be much stronger than a normal martial artist in terms of speed, strength, stamina, and five senses. They can use the openings and destroy the opponent’s spirit energy magnetic field before it’s formed.
“Once the opponent is stopped a few times, they will lose their confidence and will no longer be able to execute major moves in a relaxed manner.
“At that time, neither side will have killing moves, but we’ll have the advantage of our branch meridians being cleared and having enough spirit energy to attack nonstop. Is there a need to mention who will win at that time?
“Besides, it’s not as if I’m not going to use any killing moves. When it comes to cultivating my main meridians and branch meridians, I can choose both, not just one. Only children would choose one. Adults would definitely choose both!
“Even a broken-star superhuman can cultivate all 1,024 branch meridians, and at the same time, have a few of their main meridians cleared. It’ll be enough for them to have only one or two killing moves.
“In truth, right now, it’s not that the Overkill Style and Beast Soul Style have too few moves. They have too many of them. You can create millions of combinations out of 108 main meridians, but even if you have millions of killing moves, there’s only one move you’ll use to kill your opponent, right?”
Meng Chao spoke eloquently, and Gu Jianbo sank into deep thought. He was incredibly shocked.
Ma Hong also seemed to have come to a realization. “He makes sense. It’s just like how we fought in the canteen against the undergraduate students. They’ve clearly cleared more main meridians and can use more than ten major moves, but we used our rich fighting experience, the terrain, the various items available, and the chaos of the situation to stop them from creating a spirit energy magnetic field. That’s how we won that fight!
“If we can cultivate our branch meridians, we won’t even need to do so to the point of the main meridians. As long as we can strengthen them by twenty or thirty percent, our advantage will become even more obvious. I can assure you that they won’t be able to unleash even a single move!”
“That’s right,” Meng Chao said with a smile. “I can imagine that the future martial arts will be just as Ma Hong said. We’ll be focusing on weakening our opponent, limiting their movements, and whittling them down. We won’t be standing in our stances dumbly and making fireballs so that we can execute major moves.”
“Meng Chao, did you… figure this out all by yourself?” Gu Jianbo asked in disbelief.
Meng Chao’s face turned red.
When he just returned and gave pointers to Feixiong, Ning Shewo, and Yan Organization, he tried to fish for fame, and he quite enjoyed the feeling of leaving other people dumbfounded.
But after experiencing new things and learning how many pioneers had sacrificed their lives and futures to pave the way for the birth of the Ultimate Style, how could he shamelessly claim the credit?
At that moment, he was regretting providing guidance to Yan Organization. He had been too frivolous.
‘Mr. Yan Hengbo and the martial arts researchers in Yan Organization had put in a lot of effort to research Ripple Force.
‘In my previous life, Yan Feirou had also gone through all sorts of hardships to upgrade Ripple Force.
‘What right do I have to be full of hot air and enjoy all the credit before the real pioneers and creators?’
Meng Chao shook his head and said, “Impossible. Even if I’m a genius with great talent, am willing to help people, and am a rare jewel, I’m still just a freshman. I don’t have enough experience, knowledge, and professionalism. It’s impossible for me to have thought of all this.
“Honestly, all that I said just now was told to me by a senior who goes by the name of Old Fire Relayer in the deep web.”
Gu Jianbo was slightly stunned. “It’s him?”
This time, it was Meng Chao’s turn to be shocked. “You know the Old Fire Relayer?”
“This senior has caused quite a ruckus in the deep web recently. He seems to have a few words for every topic. What he says seem to be wild dreams, but when you think about it, they’re things that surpass our current era and can actually provide us with enlightenment.
“I also heard that Yan Organization is about to promote Ripple Force V2, for which they received guidance from him,” Gu Jianbo said. “There are many people who guess that the Old Fire Relayer isn’t just one person. Instead, they’re a research group from a mega corporation or a brain trust of a secret organization. They have obtained a lot of the newest information from the depths of the fog and came up with a series of theories that are ahead of their time in order to gather more data.
“We have a guest lecturer by the name of Ning Shewo in Agricultural University’s resource course. Recently, he suddenly offered up half of his wealth to form the Fire Relayer Foundation. He also wants to teach all that he knows in a research refresher course. Judging by the name, his foundation is definitely connected to the Old Fire Relayer.
“Professor Ning has great influence in the field, but even he is impressed by the Old Fire Relayer, so I’ve naturally heard about him as well.”