Chapter 7: Dragon-Serpent Breathing Technique! Son, You Seem a Little Different!

“The Celestial Being Crystal!”

Caressing the crystal sphere in his hand, Fang Qingchen closed his eyes in satisfaction, spread his arms, and let himself fall backward freely.

He landed heavily on the soft bed.

Wonderful!

The opportunity he had thrown away in his previous life had finally been firmly grasped in this one!

The Celestial Being Crystal was exceedingly rare. Only S-rank mutant beasts and above could produce one within their bodies.

And its effect was equally heaven-defying!

If a martial artist with an A-rank or lower martial talent absorbed the essence within it, there was a certain probability that their martial talent would rise by one rank!

What did that mean?

It meant that a single Celestial Being Crystal could allow an A-rank martial genius to ascend to the heavens in a single step!

It could change their fate and turn them into one of heaven’s favored, blessed with an S-rank martial talent!

Even if there was a chance of failure, it was still enough to drive any martial artist with an A-rank talent mad with desire!

Everyone wanted to be that lucky one!

The problem was that Celestial Being Crystals were extraordinarily difficult to obtain.

Killing an S-rank mutant beast was no easy task.

Such creatures were equivalent in strength to human Martial Saints.

And not every S-rank mutant beast would produce a Celestial Being Crystal within its body.

Because of that, the price of a Celestial Being Crystal had been driven straight through the roof.

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of them were kept by the martial powerhouses who slew those beasts, to nurture their own descendants.

The Celestial Being Crystal in Fang Qingchen’s hand had been obtained by his father, Fang Zhenhai, during the Defense of the Western Sea.

After repelling the SS-rank mutant beast, the Raging Sea Berserk Shark, he had then slain two S-rank deep-sea mutant beasts before finally obtaining it.

It could be said that he had risked his life and survived nine deaths to bring this chance back for his son!

Unfortunately, the Fang Qingchen of his previous life had been too disappointing.

He had taken this Celestial Being Crystal, stained with his father’s blood and sweat, and offered it away as a gift born of humiliating devotion.

He had fulfilled Lin Wanxing’s dreams, only to betray his father’s painstaking efforts.

Because of that incident, Fang Zhenhai had been so furious he had nearly coughed up blood, and for a full three years he had not spoken a single word to Fang Qingchen.

Fortunately, he had been given a second life.

Now, all the mistakes he had made in his previous life, all the sins he had committed, and all the pits he had fallen into had finally been given a chance to be set right.

“For other people, using the Celestial Being Crystal is a gamble on luck.”

“But for me, the success rate is one hundred percent!”

Fang Qingchen’s eyes shone with the light of absolute confidence.

In his previous life, Great Xia had sought a solution to the low success rate of using Celestial Being Crystals to raise talent ranks.

To that end, they had assembled numerous Martial Saints, Martial Gods, and large numbers of martial experts with A-rank talents for continual research.

It had taken a full five years and consumed nearly eighty percent of Great Xia’s reserve of Celestial Being Crystals.

Only then had they finally developed the correct method of using them.

As Great Xia’s only ten-star Martial Saint, Fang Qingchen had naturally been one of those involved.

And the solution had been developed under his leadership!

He let out a long breath.

Then, with the utmost care, he placed the Celestial Being Crystal back into its box and pushed it beneath the bed once more.

All that remained was to wait until after tomorrow’s talent awakening, when it could finally serve its true purpose.

He lay back on the bed once again in perfect comfort.

His star-like eyes gazed through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window at the vast river of stars above and the sea of neon lights below.

He raised a hand toward that band of stars in the sky, opening and closing his fingers.

It seemed as though the whole heavens lay within that single grasp.

……

Morning came.

When the first ray of sunlight spilled into the room, the sweet-faced young maids arrived as usual to wake Young Master Fang.

But when they saw the completely empty bed, they looked at one another in bewilderment.

“Where is Young Master?”

“How is he not sleeping in?”

In one of the gardens within the estate, Fang Qingchen stood beneath a grape trellis with his feet loosely set apart and his hands hanging naturally at his sides.

His entire body was in a state of extreme relaxation.

To an ordinary person, he would have looked merely as though he were standing there carelessly, without a proper posture at all.

But if a martial expert had been present, they would have discovered that the skin hidden beneath Fang Qingchen’s clothes was subtly writhing like serpent scales.

And beneath that skin, every muscle, tendon, and bone throughout his body was stretching and twisting rhythmically in time with his breathing.

Even the five internal organs hidden deep in his abdomen had not been left out.

They too were constantly squirming, constantly being tempered.

With every breath, his fleshly body was refined once over.

With every inhalation and exhalation, every part of his body was tempered!

His entire being seemed at once dragon and serpent, winding and extending, as though ready to ride the wind and soar upward.

He was cultivating a breathing technique!

Breathing techniques were one of the very foundations of martial cultivation.

By using special breathing rhythms in coordination with various movements, they could strengthen the body, fortify the spirit, draw out one’s latent potential, and produce many other effects.

They were a required course in every school.

But a breathing method like this, in this era, was simply unheard of!

Even Fang Zhenhai himself would have been too stunned to speak if he had seen it!

Not far away, Tang Bingyun stood staring at Fang Qingchen beneath the grape trellis as though she were looking at an alien.

“Our son is up this early, and he’s practicing a breathing technique?”

“Has the sun risen in the west?”

She could scarcely believe it.

An odd thought rose within her heart.

“My son… seems a little different.”

Half an hour later, Fang Qingchen exhaled a foul breath and drew his stance back in.

In an instant, sweat poured from him like rain!

His entire body was drenched.

Yet there was not the slightest trace of fatigue on his handsome face.

His eyes were bright and spirited, as though even his essence, energy, and vitality had all increased.

“Haa… with my current level of physical ability, I can barely manage to cultivate the Dragon-Serpent Breathing Technique I created in my previous life.”

“In just that half hour of training, my physical rating has already risen to 1.32.”

Sensing the increase in his physical rating, he gave a slight nod. He was fairly satisfied with the speed of this cultivation.

That rate of improvement was already terrifying beyond measure.

For a martial artist, increasing one’s physical rating was extraordinarily difficult.

A normal adult man had a physical rating of roughly 0.8.

And if he wanted to raise it any further, he would need to coordinate all kinds of diet plans, martial training, and breathing techniques, along with various potions produced by biotech companies that enhanced physical ability or even improved one’s genes!

It could be said that every single point of improvement in physical rating carried the scent of money!

Even so, the speed of improvement was never particularly fast.

His homeroom teacher, Old Huang, was already in his thirties this year.

As a teacher at a martial arts school, his pay and benefits far surpassed those of an ordinary office worker.

Even after more than ten years, he had only managed to raise his physical rating to 2.

That alone was enough to show just how difficult it was.

Yet Fang Qingchen had increased his physical rating by this much in the span of a single morning.

It was nothing short of heaven-defying.

“Young Master, that was amazing. Please wipe your sweat.”

“Young Master, it’s time to brush your teeth.”

Seeing that Fang Qingchen had finished practicing, the girls in their various maid outfits all crowded around him.

With flushed faces, they wiped away his sweat from every angle, thoroughly and without missing a single spot.

“I still prefer washing my face and brushing my teeth in the bath.”

Fang Qingchen shook his head. As he spoke, he had already arrived in front of a wide swimming pool within the estate.

With a single leap, he plunged in with a beautiful 720-degree spiraling dive, sending water spraying everywhere.

The little maids did not hesitate either. Like a school of mermaids, they followed him into the water one after another.

An hour later, Fang Qingchen appeared at the gates of Linjiang No. 7 High School, wearing a fresh blue-and-white school uniform.