Chapter 10: Acting Method

Early morning, the sky just beginning to lighten, sunlight filtered through the misty fog and shone into the room.

As the dull bell sound echoed throughout the Tiger Fierce Gate, Fang Can rolled over and got up from the bed.

Gently yawning, he suddenly discovered that his fist, which had been bloody last night, had now stopped bleeding and formed a scab.

'Is this the effect of Talent 2? The lower the health, the faster the recovery. I just don't know where the limit of this talent lies?' Fang Can guessed.

After washing up with the daily necessities purchased yesterday, Fang Can went straight to the canteen, ate a few simple bites, and then returned to the Martial Arts Hall.

Unlike the noise of yesterday, the Martial Arts Hall in the early morning was exceptionally quiet.

This did not mean there was no one in the entire hall; rather, all the disciples were sitting cross-legged on the ground in an orderly manner, just like students waiting to listen to a lecture.

'What's going on?' Fang Can was stunned, then blended into the crowd and casually found a spot to sit cross-legged.

"Hey, buddy, what's the situation?" Fang Can casually tugged the sleeve of a fellow disciple beside him who looked gentle and seemed easy to talk to, asking.

"You just joined the sect? You don't even know this?" The person beside him looked at Fang Can's appearance with surprise; although he looked young, he was clearly past the proper age for serious martial arts training.

"Yes, my name is Fang Can, and I joined just yesterday." Fang Can did not deny it.

Although surprised by the age, that person still replied: "A few days ago, Yang Jiaotou Yang notified us that a manager who had already graduated from the Martial Arts Hall would return to give us a speech."

"That is a manager who has almost broken through the Shedding Tui Fan Qu realm! If he truly sheds his mortal flesh and enters the second realm of the martial path, he could directly assume the position of Hall Master."

The speaker's eyes held fanaticism; obviously, for a Wu Zhiren, the higher realms of the martial path held immense attraction.

Hearing this answer, Fang Can could only suppress his urge to practice martial arts and quietly wait with this group of people inside the martial arena.

As the disciples on the scene arrived one after another, the green stone slabs of the entire martial arena were already filled with over a thousand people, all quietly waiting for that so-called manager to appear.

Without waiting long, merely over ten minutes passed, when suddenly a heart-fluttering sensation rose in the hearts of everyone present.

Fang Can felt as if a huge hand had tightly gripped his heart; his breathing became somewhat heavy, as if he had been targeted by an existence at the top of the food chain.

"It's out. This is absolutely the external manifestation of the mind-heart of one about to break through the Shedding Tui Fan Qu realm." Fang Can heard the gentle-looking fellow disciple beside him mutter to himself.

Noticing Fang Can's confused gaze beside him, that fellow disciple explained with a hint of show-off: "The so-called mind-heart is that as the mortal flesh is gradually shed, your thoughts will gradually merge into the newly grown flesh and blood."

"At that time, without even moving a hand, a single glance can freeze a person of a lower realm in terror, or even scare them to death directly."

Accompanying the explanation, a middle-aged man in his mid-thirties wearing tight-fitting clothes slowly strode over from the distance.

"Click! Click!"

The moment the man appeared, he became the focal point of the entire scene; everyone unconsciously directed their gaze toward that middle-aged man.

It was the subconscious fear of an apex predator that could not be ignored, just like the terror of seeing a Tyrannosaurus Rex walking straight toward you.

Trembling, fear, shivering...

Almost everyone present felt their bodies begin to shake uncontrollably, sitting on pins and needles.

The subconscious of the brain wanted them to flee far from this place, even producing the hallucination that they would die on the spot in the next second.

"Ahhh!!!!"

Someone let out a scream first; just like a signal flare being fired, hundreds of people turned their heads and ran backward as if seeing ghosts.

Under extreme fear, even these experts who could walk on the plum blossom stakes several meters high as if on flat ground could not control their bodies.

At least dozens of them helplessly fell to the ground, then crawled backward on hands and feet, hoping only to get a little further away.

On the scene, Fang Can's teeth were clenched tight, his hands gripping his ankles tightly, forcibly suppressing the desire to run away.

This was not because he was not afraid; rather, he knew he was not in danger at this moment, his 'Misfortune Turns to Fortune' had not triggered, and the so-called death was merely a hallucination brought to the body by the brain.

The entire Martial Arts Hall was in chaos at this moment, but suddenly that terrifying momentum scattered violently, and the originally noisy screams suddenly stopped.

Everyone stared blankly at the panicked companions around them; the shadow of death that had covered their hearts just now seemed like their own illusion and was gone.

'So this is the mind-heart?' Fang Can slowly exhaled a turbid breath, his back already soaked with cold sweat.

The middle-aged man scanned the scene, looking at the few dozen people who had not moved.

These people had initially merged their thoughts into their flesh and blood, which could significantly offset the fear brought by the body's subconscious.

While scanning, his gaze looked with surprise at one eighteen-year-old boy sitting cross-legged among them.

With his eyesight, he could naturally see that the traces of martial arts training on this person were almost non-existent, yet he remained unmoving and unshaken, truly relying solely on willpower to hold on.

The middle-aged man nodded slightly: 'Although the age is a bit high, his willpower is promising; with three to five years of cultivation, he can catch up to the progress of his peers, and within twenty years he might have a chance to shed his mortal flesh.'

Seeing the disciples in the hall gradually recover and step back to their original positions one by one, he spoke loudly:

"I am the manager Yang Jiaotou Yang invited to give you a speech. My name is Gu Shuqi; you may call me Manager Gu."

"My time is limited, so let's get straight to the point. The content I will discuss today is how to nourish the spirit and keep oneself in an invincible position."

Manager Gu looked at the entire hall: "For us Wu Zhiren, sparring and dueling are common matters, but in every duel, there are winners and losers; no one can guarantee they will definitely win."

"And the firmness of the mind concerns the speed of cultivation; once a duel is lost, for a considerable period of time, your mind will be clouded, and cultivation will be hindered."

"Meanwhile, the opponent who defeated you will only have a perfect mind, and their cultivation speed will double."

"Under this waxing and waning, the strong become stronger, the weak remain weak, and the winner takes all."

Gu Shuqi's words were neither hurried nor slow, giving everyone time to think; the crowd in the martial arena recalled the scenes of previous sparring sessions and felt deeply resonant.

All along, to maintain a sense of superiority in the mind, the strong humiliated the weak, and the weak humiliated the weaker, almost forming a vicious cycle.

Seeing everyone nod in agreement, Gu Shuqi smiled: "Therefore, today I will teach you how to avoid entering this hell of becoming weaker, and instead achieve a win-win situation."

"I call this method 【Acting Method】."

While speaking, Gu Shuqi pointed to a disciple in the front row: "You, I now order you to severely humiliate the disciple on your left."

'Huh?' The pointed-at disciple looked at the fellow disciple beside him, hesitating for a moment.

(End of this chapter)