Chapter 31: Perfection in Advancement, The Mutated Martial Art

Swish, swish, swish.

The uniquely shaped finger bones, hooked and sharp, snatched iron beads one by one with rapid precision. The repetitive sound echoed through the cramped bedroom.

Perhaps it was because stepping out had cleared his head and allowed him to adjust his mindset, Feng Mu felt more composed. With the emotional fluctuations caused by failure reduced, his movements grew increasingly steady; each subsequent repetition felt like a carbon copy of the last.

He continued to repeat these failures tirelessly until, at a certain moment, his waving fingers froze in mid-air.

Ding—

The rhythmic swishing was drowned out by a crisp notification sound within his cranium.

[Detection: 100 consecutive successes. Entry requirements for this technique met.]

[Crane Claw Technique]·Primary (1/300)

On his retina, a new skill icon quietly emerged and took form.

Feng Mu was delighted, sighing to himself, "Finally done. Cheating through unorthodox means isn't as simple as it looks."

[Crane Claw Technique]: "..." You win, you're always right.

His ten fingers felt slightly feverish. Feng Mu retracted the jagged bone hooks back into his flesh, noticing that the color of his fingertips had deepened significantly. As he rubbed his fingers together, he could feel the thick calluses and the nails that had grown significantly harder.

Feng Mu flicked his hand, his fingertips tensing instantly. He swept across the surface of the basin, precisely hooking an iron bead without causing a single ripple in the water.

"I can do it effortlessly even with just my fingertips now," Feng Mu flicked the iron bead away.

After a moment's thought, he let the bone hook protrude from his single index finger and repeated the motion.

*Crack!*

The movement was identical to the previous one, but the difference was that the iron bead caught by the bone hook was now covered in fine, radiating cracks.

Feng Mu had a grasp on it now: "I can perform two versions of the [Crane Claw Technique]. One is the standard flesh-and-blood version, and the other is the bone-mutation version. The lethality of the latter is roughly three times that of the former."

"I will use the flesh-and-blood version as my default, and hide the bone-mutation version within it for sudden shifts. It is insidious and vicious—it suits me perfectly."

Of course, this was still far from enough; he needed to continue working hard to improve and strengthen himself.

Feng Mu: "Destiny, add points!"

Having gained a clearer understanding of his own innate aptitude, Feng Mu couldn't be bothered to waste effort on experiments. Rather than trusting his own talent, he preferred to rely on his ability to cheat.

From now on, if he could cheat, he would—no hesitation. For skills he couldn't cheat on, he would simply replace them with ones he could. This was the skill growth philosophy Feng Mu had set for himself.

Raising the [Crane Claw Technique] from Primary to Intermediate required 300 points, three times the cost of Basic Fist Techniques. Feng Mu felt a slight twinge of heartache, but it was overshadowed by double the anticipation.

***

It was more expensive, which meant it was stronger—no issues there.

This was, after all, the first second-grade martial art he had mastered through his own wit and hard work.

[Crane Claw Technique]·Intermediate (1/1500)

A surge of heat flooded his ten fingers, and a long sequence of training visions was stuffed into his mind, the knowledge arriving in perfect audio-visual synchronization.

Feng Mu bared his teeth: "Not enough, still not enough. Destiny, keep adding points for me."

The Intermediate [Crane Claw Technique], which had barely been warm for a few seconds, instantly blurred and twisted.

[Crane Claw Technique]·Advanced (1/3000)

Add more points.

[Crane Claw Technique]·Consummate.

There were no more symbols to add points.

Three consecutive upgrades flooded in at once. Feng Mu felt a sense of impending disaster—it felt like he had eaten too much too quickly and was choking.

His ten fingers were burning hot and turning red, as if they were melting. Had it not been for the cooling effect of his bones, his flesh might have truly turned into paste.

His cerebral CPU was smoking. A memory of nearly ten years of sleepless, relentless practice of the [Crane Claw Technique] was being violently poured into his mind.

The thirteen forms of the [Crane Claw Technique].

Practicing by day, practicing by night; practicing with eyes open, and still practicing with eyes closed. Day after day, month after month, year after year—it reached the point of nausea.

Feng Mu felt like his brain was going to vomit, and his memory seemed unable to bear the "traffic jam."

The memory data from the three-stage upgrade was squeezed into a single transmission path, with no one yielding—it was a total gridlock.

Then, Feng Mu felt as if his skull was about to split. It was as if the data that had been transmitting via a thin cable had suddenly lost its temper, ripped open his skull, and physically shoved an entire hard drive directly into his brain.

Black smoke was visibly rising from the top of Feng Mu's head. If not for the chill radiating from his skull keeping him cool, his brain might have already been cooked into tofu pudding.

Three minutes later.

Feng Mu sat on the edge of the bed, exhausted, his eyes still dazed and unfocused.

A lingering, scalding heat remained on his fingers. Their color had settled from deep red to dark crimson, and the slightest exertion caused a faint, bruised purple to emerge.

His nails were as hard as iron plating. Feng Mu tried to clip them with a nail clipper, but it couldn't make a dent; with a sudden burst of force, the clipper cracked and broke.

He used just one finger to press lightly against the tabletop, and it pierced through like it was stabbing tofu, leaving a finger-sized hole.

Feng Mu made a comparison in his heart: "The power of the flesh-and-blood version has already caught up to the previous bone-mutation version. Then, the current power of the bone-mutation version must be..."

Feng Mu instinctively flicked out his bone finger, executed the opening move of the [Crane Claw Technique], and hooked toward the surface of the basin.

The basin surface caved in with cracks, as if a still lake had been severed in the middle, the water on either side cascading down.

***

But it wasn't water cascading down; it was iron ash, reduced to powder, falling in a soft rustle.

Even Feng Mu was shocked: "Is this five times stronger? Or ten?"

The lethality shocked even him, to the point where he couldn't accurately evaluate it. But the bone-mutation version of the [Crane Claw Technique], in terms of raw power, surely exceeded the upper limits of a second-grade martial art.

Perhaps it was even in the upper echelon of third-grade arts, or perhaps it possessed power approaching a fourth-grade martial art?

Feng Mu let his imagination run wild, itching to go out right now to find someone to test his moves on, to satisfy his urge to gouge out a head or two.

"No wonder they say that once you hold a sharp blade, the urge to kill arises on its own."

"Martial arts are the courage of the wicked!"

Feng Mu suppressed the impulse in his heart and wiped the lubricant off his hands with a cloth.

He thought: "Next time, I must upgrade in stages. I dare not try to force a lane change like this again."

As he thought this, Feng Mu grabbed a handful of iron beads. With a clench of his five fingers, the beads were crushed into powder, which he poured into his mouth and swallowed with a gulp of saliva.

The three-stage upgrade had left his stomach empty.

After swallowing a few more handfuls of iron powder and washing it down with water, Feng Mu stopped to think: "In the future, I can just crush them into powder first; it should be easier to digest and absorb. The rate of nutritional intake should be able to reach a new level."

After reflecting on everything, Feng Mu looked at his status panel with a pained expression.

[Crane Claw Technique]·Consummate
Basic Fist Technique (Intermediate) [1/500]
Basic Leg Technique (Intermediate) [1/500]
Calisthenics (Not Mastered)
[Remaining General Skill Proficiency: 5080]

Feng Mu closed the panel, muttering to himself: "The remaining skill proficiency should be enough to push one more second-grade martial art to perfection."

It was just past 12:00, still early.

Since the [Crane Claw Technique] had been conquered by his unorthodox method, the night could now be spent on Calisthenics.

No more talk—time to start training.

Before beginning, he took out a syringe and drew two tubes of blood.

Feeling the blood drain from his body, Feng Mu's face turned slightly paler, and a morbid, pleasurable smile appeared on his lips: "That's the stuff."