69novels Chapter 63 Apprenticeship
Chapter 63 Apprenticeship
Two more weeks passed, and Lu Ren had been cultivating at the Shen residence for more than half a month.
There is only one week left until the assessment.
The training of body cultivators can be summarized as physical fitness and swordsmanship training, which is sufficient to cultivate three aspects of physique: physical strength, vitality, and weapon handling attributes.
The training of Dharma practitioners mainly focuses on elemental affinity, while the other two aspects are only briefly explored.
Affinity with living beings is the path of a beast tamer, and raising a beast tamer is no less than raising a gold-devouring beast. However, Lu Ren never has a headache about this, because the young lady just sweeps up the whole bunch with a wave of her hand.
In addition to the Beast Taming course, he also has an Alchemy course, which corresponds to the "Rule Affinity" attribute of magic cultivators.
This profession is unique because it basically lacks spirit skills corresponding to "rule affinity," but when this attribute is high, it grants an innate skill—Alchemy.
Rather than a skill, it's more like how a higher 'physique' grants greater strength, or a higher 'elemental' affinity grants the ability to manipulate magic. Alchemy is simply an accompanying ability that comes with a higher affinity for rules; it's an ability to manipulate matter.
The progress of human civilization is the process of human beings understanding nature, comprehending its laws, summarizing its laws, and applying its laws.
If ordinary people with low "rule affinity" can create this brilliant human civilization with just their own hands, then professionals with high "rule affinity" are even more powerful and can directly change the world into the way they envision it.
Alchemists can directly alter the properties and characteristics of matter, endowing ordinary things with extraordinary features, and alchemy is the foundation of this ability.
Alchemy weapons, for example, are all created using alchemy techniques.
A powerful alchemist can transform ants into dragons, inanimate objects into living beings, and large dogs into little girls.
Alchemists' catchphrase is: "Refine! You can refine anything! Just refine and you're done!"
The world's opinion of alchemists is complex; most of them are great, but they have also brought a lot of trouble to the world.
This is a type of professional who engages in scientific research and development, and has virtually no combat capabilities.
Lu Ren can now barely use alchemy to change the shape of inanimate objects, but alchemy is not subject to assessment.
His assessment consists of three parts: physical cultivation, magical cultivation, and spiritual cultivation, each corresponding to one of the three examiners.
First, there was Chen Zui's physical cultivation assessment, and second, there was Old Master Wang's magic cultivation assessment. As for the examiners for the divine cultivation assessment, Lu Ren went back and asked the young lady that night, and she told her that it was indeed true.
However, the examiner was none other than the young lady herself.
The young lady secretly told him that he should just do a quick and easy job on the assessment and she would give him full marks, so he should focus on the other two assessment items.
So for more than a week, Lu Ren was constantly repeating the same pattern: slashing people, setting fires, slashing people, setting fires, slashing people...
It's fake; actually, he was burned and hacked to death.
"boom--"
On Saturday evening, in the sword training ground, Lu Ren was once again swept away by a sword and landed on the ground.
During this period, he would come over every evening to practice his swordsmanship, and then that supporting actor would appear every day and beat him up until his face was bruised and swollen.
But as a result, his combat skills improved at a terrifying rate every day during this period.
Moreover, after the supporting actor beat him up and left him bruised and swollen, he could easily heal him.
After he recovered, he was beaten again.
While an average person might only get one beating during a day of combat training, he could get beaten up dozens of times a day, turning his head into a pig's head.
However, with such conditions, he also made rapid progress. One day of training was equivalent to ten or fifteen days for others. So he just had to accept the beatings.
"Get up and continue!"
"Senior, let's call it a day for training. I'd like to get some rest tonight. Tomorrow's the weekend, so I'll take a day off. I'd like to go with my sister to sweep our mother's grave tomorrow morning."
"It's to sweep my mother's grave..."
"Yes, that's right. By the way, what are your favorite things, senior?"
Lu Ren scratched his head, a little shyly, and said, "Thank you for your guidance this past week, senior. It's thanks to your guidance that my strength has improved so quickly. And with your strength being so great, there's probably nothing I can do to help. Tomorrow, my sister and I will go to the city to pick out some gifts for you to express our gratitude, but it seems we don't know your preferences at all."
Upon hearing this, the white-haired girl smiled quietly, "I've been guiding you for half a month, and you still call me 'senior' so formally?"
Lu Ren immediately understood and said with a fawning expression, "To be honest, senior, my grandparents passed away a long time ago, and my parents also passed away one after another. I haven't felt the care from my elders for a long time. During this time, I have felt that you are very kind to me. If you don't mind, I would like to call you Grandma..."
This is the Frost Moon Realm, an absolute national-level expert, with only a few hundred in the Yu Kingdom.
And since this is a medical school, they must have a wide network of connections; their thighs are really thick!
Just as he got up from the ground, a delicate and lovely foot stepped directly on his face, slamming his head onto the wooden board.
The white-haired girl snapped, "Grandma? Why don't you call me Mother?"
"mother?"
Lu Ren reacted quickly: "Mother, Mother, after my birth mother passed away, it was you who made me..."
"I told you to call me Master!"
Although she always greeted us with a smile and a calm demeanor, this time her voice carried a hint of girlish anger.
Why is this septuagenarian woman putting on such a pretentious act?
Perhaps no matter how old a woman is, she doesn't like being called old.
The force coming from his face grew stronger and stronger, as if it was going to crush his head.
These aren't some soft, sweet little feet; this kick could send a tank flying dozens of meters like a soccer ball.
"I was wrong, Master. From now on, you are my master."
No wonder the other party cared so much about him, coming to teach him combat skills every day and even healing him after the fights. It turned out that the other party had taken a liking to his talent and wanted to take him as a disciple.
"But Master, I still don't know your name..."
The girl smiled at his words, bent her foot to press it closer to his head, and gave it a good squeeze, then asked with a laugh, "You've been asking about me a lot these past few days, haven't you?"
"No, no, I wouldn't dare ask... I just asked casually."
The white-haired woman loosened her legs, crossed her arms, and stood to the side, saying:
"I won't tell you my name right now. Just call me Master or 'Supporting Actor Master.' I'll tell you when you can defeat me in physical combat."
"How could that be? Master should be a Frost Moon Realm professional, right? If I stop at the Flame of Life or Star Cocoon Realm, wouldn't I never know Master's name for the rest of my life?"
"I am a divine cultivator. Even a divine cultivator at the Frost Moon Realm can only achieve a little over a thousand in physical attributes. If you were to enter the Flame Realm, and considering the boost from your talent, your physical attributes would surpass mine, right?"
"That seems to be true..."
"Get up and play a few more rounds with me."
"Huh? Shall we continue?"
"You can beat me with just your physical strength... I haven't had more than two years to train you. Since you call me master, I will definitely teach you properly."
"..." Was this person just about to say he wanted to beat him up?
"What are you standing there for? Take this!"
"..."
路仁再次被揍得鼻青脸肿，然后又再次被医好，他心中再次坚定了以后娶老婆绝对不能娶巫术师。
Seeing his slight dissatisfaction, the white-haired girl curled her lips, patted his head and ruffled it, saying, "Since you call me Master, I naturally can't be stingy..."
Lu Ren's ears perked up; he sensed it was about to happen—the kind of thing that happens in novels: the apprenticeship ceremony and the gift-giving ritual!
"Master, do you have something good that you want to give to your disciple?"
"..." Why does this guy's way of speaking always make me angry?
She sighed and looked out of the training field; Lu Ren also looked in her direction.
"Do you see that tree?"
No matter where you are in the Shen clan's territory, you can see that towering tree.
"Um, Master, are you going to give me a tree? Those trees all look withered."
Lu Ren knows that there are about 108 of these trees in the world, and 9 of them are located in Dayu.
These nine giant trees were occupied by seven superior clans of the Yu Kingdom, including the Ji clan of Yaodu, as well as the Shen clan of Linjiang and the royal Jiang family, but Lu Ren did not know what use these trees were.
The white-haired girl chuckled and said, "You still want to dig up the tree? This is the Shen family's sacred tree. If you dig it up, Shen Yanqing will fight you to the death."
"So, what does Master mean?"
"Your weapon level is too low; it will soon fall behind your training speed."
"There's nothing I can do. I can't use silver-grade weapons right now. I'll just have to get a new one later."
"Clothes are better when they are new, but people are better when they are old. Rather than changing them frequently, it is better to stay with one person forever."
Alchemy weapons require a combination of treasures and spirit remains to be crafted. Compared to spirit remains, special treasures are actually much rarer.
That 'Star Tree' is a very rare treasure. Go to that tree and take a branch, then use it with a bronze-level spirit bone to forge a bronze-level artifact. When you're able to forge a silver-level artifact, simply replace the spirit bone to transform it into a silver-level artifact.
"Star Tree?"
"Yes, the name of that tree."
Lu Ren then said, "So that tree is so precious. If I go and break off a branch, won't the Shen family arrest me?"
"Since you are my disciple, I must have spoken to Shen Yanqing. I can still give you a branch as a token of my respect."
"I see... Thank you, Master!"
"However, there are two conditions."
"Master, please speak."
"First, you must forge the weapon yourself using alchemy; you are not allowed to let other alchemists do it for you. Second, you are not allowed to let anyone else use the weapon you forge."
Why is that?
"It's so unpredictable, why all the questions? It's so annoying."
"Oh, okay, thank you so much for the treasure, Master!"
Where are they?
"Master? Is he still there?"
He turned around and saw that the white-haired girl had disappeared, leaving only the bamboo sword lying alone on the ground.
They come and go without a trace... Of course, they might still be nearby, but they've used their high level of mental resonance to prevent him from sensing them.
Just like when they practiced swordsmanship, the other Shen disciples seemed to be invisible to them.
He tidied himself up and headed towards the giant tree. Just as his master had said, no one stopped him along the way.
But the closer Lu Ren got to the giant tree, the more he felt something was wrong.
He has been staying in the Shen clan's territory for a month now, and he has never been to this area before.
The lights were dwindling, the environment was getting darker, and without realizing it, I found myself climbing higher and higher.
It turns out that the tree was on a small hillside.
There were no houses within a radius of several hundred meters. Only now did he realize that the place where the giant tree was located was the cemetery of the Shen clan.
It's a huge cemetery. The sun has already set, and walking this way feels rather eerie.
It took several miles to get close to the base of the big tree. Although we could tell from a distance that the tree was ridiculously big, we had a more direct feeling when we got closer.
The trunk of the tree is nearly 100 meters in diameter and probably 700 or 800 meters tall; it is an absolutely extraordinary creature.