Inventory of Gains and Harvests

The little girl stood on a stool, eyes shining as she gazed at the enormous tuna laid out on the dining table. Even with her mother holding her back, she nearly flung herself onto it, drooling with longing.

That day, Du Ruo returned to the village again, and it was already Tuesday. He had been gone for exactly nine days. Once he finished his mission, he did not linger; that very night he flew back to Malaysia, and the next morning he boarded a plane home to Guangdong. The journey was smooth all the way.

Reini’s head had already been left on the speedboat that had brought him before Du Ruo ever stepped onto the yacht, to be collected by the guide himself. What happened to it afterward had nothing to do with him. In any case, he had only gone out fishing. The one who had done the killing was a man called Sun Qian, and it had little to do with Du Ruo.

Back in Guangdong, Du Ruo did not go to see Yang Guangzhou, nor did he return to that villa. However, while waiting at the airport for the flight to Mount Huang, a man named A Xiang delivered a five-million check.

Du Ruo had actually been worrying about where to buy some fresh sea fish, and meeting A Xiang could not have come at a better time. He asked him to help purchase more, and the other man agreed without hesitation, taking not a cent for his trouble.

Then, when Du Ruo got off the plane at Mount Huang, the fish had already arrived too: nearly a whole truckload of all kinds of seafood. And that was how the scene at the beginning came to be.

Yaya was supposed to be in school today, but Du Ruo knew how much she loved fish, so he immediately called the whole family over for dinner.

“Come on, Yaya, move aside a little and let your uncle cut the fish. Tonight we’re having a whole-fish feast.”

Wearing an apron, Du Ruo nudged Yaya and her stool a little aside. With a knife in hand, and after just watching a video, he felt stronger than ever and decided to personally butcher the tuna that must have weighed more than a hundred catties.

“Uncle, go for it! Uncle, go for it!”

Standing on the stool, Yaya stretched her neck as long as it could go, cheering Du Ruo on without pause. At that moment, Du Ruo was her idol, her favorite person, ranking only beneath her mother, her father, and Mao Mao.

Du Ruo had no trouble at all handling a knife. Even with an ordinary kitchen knife, he could make it dance like magic; moreover, he had watched a video beforehand to learn how to process tuna.

In no time at all, Du Ruo had already cut up and packed away the tuna. Then he even cooked some himself: he pan-fried a few pieces, asked his mother to make braised fish chunks, and prepared a fish head soup and roasted fish head.

Yaya was still too young to eat raw fish, and his elder sister Du Na and her husband were not used to it either.

So before long, the whole table was piled high with dishes, and even Mao Mao’s rice bowl held a large piece of fish.

Both his parents could accept raw fish and praised it endlessly, while the family ate fish and listened to Du Ruo’s nonsense as he recounted a few “interesting” things he had learned from watching videos. Each of them ate until they were full.

In the end, of course, Du Ruo cleaned everything up. Not a single scrap of fish was left, every last bit ending up in his stomach.

There was no way they could finish so much seafood, and the refrigerator at home could not hold it all. Du Ruo packed some for his sister Du Na to take away, left plenty in the family fridge for his parents, and drove the rest overnight to Yangjia Village.

He sent a good portion to Yang Chengguang’s family and to Yang Ling’s home as well. Each household received a large slab of tuna along with some other seafood. Xiang Yuanyuan was not at the tavern; it was said that after returning to her hometown she had never come back.

What remained, Du Ruo stuffed into the refrigerator at the rented house. Only his place had an empty fridge, so he could fit it all in.

After tidying everything up, Du Ruo finally relaxed completely. Exhaustion that he had been unable to shake wrapped around him, leaving him too weary to care about anything else. He turned and climbed into bed, and soon the room rang with the first snore he had ever made there.

He was truly exhausted. From the moment the plane landed in Malaysia, Du Ruo’s nerves had been taut. That inner force had circulated through his whole body, keeping him constantly on guard against the outside world. He did not even remove his clothes when he slept at night. After killing Paka, he no longer even slept in bed; he would sit in a corner of the room with his eyes closed, resting there instead.

For more than a week, he had not truly slept well. Even eating and drinking had been done with care, and apart from ordinary meals he dared not eat much. After returning home, whether on the plane or in the car, he had seized every spare moment to watch videos about fishing at sea, fearing he might slip up when his family questioned him.

Only after everything was settled and he returned to familiar surroundings did Du Ruo finally loosen the bowstring that had been drawn so tight.

He slept until noon the next day before finally getting up, refreshed and clear-headed.

After washing up, the first thing he did was take several fish from the refrigerator and eat until satisfied. Only then did he brew a pot of tea, sit on the sofa, and begin sorting through the gains from this trip.

A hundred thousand in cash, a tiger’s bones, and a five-million check—these were enough to let Du Ruo practice martial arts in peace for a long time.

Of course, his harvest was not limited to these. This outing had been a tempering of the heart, and in real combat Du Ruo had excavated even more of his own potential.

His use of the coiling dragon silk had previously been based only on the knowledge that infusing it with inner force would make it formidable and its cutting power immense, but he had only ever tested it against wooden posts. This time, tested in actual combat, its true results had been revealed. One could only say that it truly deserved its reputation as a deadly instrument for assassination.

As for those concealed steel needles, they were useful enough, but their power was somewhat lacking. Unless they struck an acupoint or the head, they were hard-pressed to inflict serious damage. That was only in fighting ordinary people; against martial artists, whose reactions were quicker, hitting an acupoint or a fatal spot became much more difficult. Still, their sharpness and the feel of using them were beyond criticism.

Thinking of this, Du Ruo once again searched online and chose a larger, better-made kind of sewing-machine needle, then placed the order.

This time he ordered more than before—an entire thousand needles. With so many, there would be no need to have someone else wind the thread around them. He also bought the best threading machine he could find, so that when the time came, he could simply wind them up and use them immediately.

Of course, besides these things, there had also been a great increase in attributes, skill experience, and many other areas.

One must know that during this trip, even when he was highly tense or busy, Du Ruo had never set aside his cultivation.

He could not spar with fists, but that did not matter; his basic training had never stopped.

When walking, he used the mud-stepping footwork of the Eight Trigrams Palm. While staying in the room, he would stand in the Three-Body Stance. Even when sitting, he would grip hard objects with his hands to train finger strength.

With training like that, skill experience rose more slowly, but attribute points increased day by day. Moreover, real combat was the best training for skills; after each fight, he gained quite a bit of experience.

Along with that, the experience of his other skills also grew considerably. So in summary, his harvest was by no means less than it would have been at home.

Only, considering that he was in a dangerous environment, Du Ruo had merely allocated the attribute points he earned each day. He had not touched the lottery chances gained from leveling up his skills.

It was precisely because of the feedback from these daily attribute allocations that his body received, that Du Ruo was able to maintain such intense mental focus for so long without collapsing.

Name: Du Ruo

Age: 31

Essence: 9.69

Energy: 9.69

Spirit: 9.69

Attribute points: 0.02

Skills: Xingyi Fist Level 3 (max)

Natural Sect Method: Level 2 (81/500)

Eight Trigrams Palm: Level 2 (83/500)

Armed-Arm Fist: Level 1 (113/200)

Eight Extremities Fist: Level 1 (59/200)

Bronze Man Technique: Level 2 (14/500)

Special skill:

Hidden Weapons Chapter: Level 2 (219/500)

One skill draw available, one special draw available

This outing caused the Xingyi Fist he had first obtained to rise by another level, but he had never expected level three to be the peak of the skill. That left Du Ruo somewhat disappointed. He had once imagined raising Xingyi Fist to level one hundred in the future and then punching the stars down from the sky. Yet after reaching full level, this time it was no longer a skill draw but a special draw. He did not know what he might obtain.

Then there were the other skills. The Hidden Weapons Chapter and the Bronze Man Technique had gained the most experience.

The Hidden Weapons Chapter had grown through his actual use in combat. Especially when Du Ruo, in a single instant, sent out more than thirty concealed weapons with one Yang hand technique, the experience value leaped upward in a dramatic surge.

On top of that, Du Ruo had hardly stopped training his fingers.

So aside from the hidden weapons, the Bronze Man Technique, which he had acquired latest, had also been steadily growing. It seemed that as long as the inner force within Du Ruo and the strength of his fingers continued to improve, the Bronze Man Technique would continue to gain experience. Though he had learned it last, it was now nearly catching up to the Natural Sect Method. Moreover, this ordinary draw chance had also been provided by the Bronze Man Technique leveling up.

Of course, aside from granting draw opportunities, the Bronze Man Technique itself had brought Du Ruo a pleasant surprise.

At level zero, it had almost no combat power at all; it was merely a method for identifying acupoints and training finger strength.

At level one, it had begun to possess real combat capability, especially in dealing with soft and hard qi arts, where it could break through them outright. One could say it was a yang hand technique for striking acupoints.

And after reaching level two, it could actually cooperate with inner force, allowing one to use a special method to drive inner force into a person’s body.

That force would then slowly damage the human meridians, acupoints, and even internal organs. It was a slow and lasting process that could inflict severe bodily harm, and it was extremely painful. The onset could be delayed by as long as fifteen days.

What was more, the method was very concealed and not easy to detect. Often, a casual physical contact was enough to unleash it. It might as well be called a yin hand technique for striking acupoints. Naturally, there was also a method for drawing out the inner force from within the body.

“The last time I hit that blond man, I used penetrating force to damage his internal organs. That still required the force of the fist to push through the body. But this Bronze Man Technique is even more vicious. Next time I want to sabotage someone, it’ll be even easier.”

That was exactly the result Du Ruo wanted, and it was no waste of all the finger training he had done without pause.

In truth, he had discovered this while looking through materials online, because in reality such acupoint-striking techniques really did have inheritances, and the legends surrounding them were even more wondrous, claiming one could injure someone just by patting a shoulder or draping an arm over a back.

“Draw, draw.”

Du Ruo murmured silently to himself, using up the remaining two draw chances.

“Obtained skill: Kicking Techniques Level 0 (0/100)

Obtained internal art: Primordial One Qi Skill (max)”

“An internal art? Primordial One Qi Skill? Did I hit the jackpot? A special draw really is special. Xingyi Fist really comes through too—it always gives such good rewards.”

Seeing the skills he had drawn, Du Ruo was filled with excitement, and he immediately began to inspect the two skills he had just obtained.

From now on, updates will be three thousand words per chapter. In the future I will try to maintain two to three chapters a day, that is, six to ten thousand words of updates. Thank you all for your support! There will be another update this afternoon.