I became a martial arts saint while playing games.

Professor Zhong Ding was attending a meeting that day, and it was already quite late when he returned home.

After having dinner with his family, he returned to his room, meditated and practiced his cultivation as usual, and only then did he take out his phone and see the email sent by Gu Yan.

Zhong Ding valued this new student quite a bit. When he opened the email, he found it was actually a draft of a paper.

Zhong Ding chuckled silently.

On the very first day of learning, you're already thinking about publishing papers?

He smiled and shook his head.

Gu Yan's martial arts comprehension is astonishing, and his cultivation progresses at an astonishing speed; he already knows this.

There are geniuses like that in the world, who can grasp things instantly and learn them quickly and easily. He knew this.

But innovation in martial arts techniques is different. It's possible to cultivate quickly and rapidly if you have good talent and high comprehension. But to innovate out of thin air, you must have sufficient martial arts knowledge and a deep understanding.

In the past, people often believed that only grandmasters and powerful individuals could create their own martial arts, a feat worthy of establishing a school. In today's new martial arts era, although academia encourages students to innovate independently, it must be based on reading a large amount of literature and having sufficient knowledge.

Gu Yan has only been a student for one day, how could he possibly have enough experience to create his own martial arts techniques?

Zhong Ding found it amusing. He thought that Gu Yan must have been envious and tempted after hearing that his senior sister's thesis had earned 1.7 million during the day, which was why he couldn't wait to innovate his own thesis.

However, undergraduate studies are the golden period for martial arts students to improve their skills, and they should seize every second to enhance their cultivation. After all, geniuses like the senior sister are few and far between. Ordinary students should focus on improving themselves. It's not too late to think about scientific research and innovation when they encounter a bottleneck in the future and their cultivation becomes difficult to advance.

Thinking this through, Zhong Ding felt he still needed to advise the new disciple tomorrow to prevent a promising talent from going astray. However, he valued Gu Yan highly, and since the other party had sent him the draft, he got up, turned on his computer, and prepared to take a look.

Zhong Ding turned on his computer and checked his emails. Upon seeing them, he discovered that the comparative cultivation method Gu Yan had chosen to optimize was actually the "Zheng Yuan Foundation Technique," which made him even more amused.

This Zheng Yuan Foundation-Building Technique is already a top-tier first-order cultivation method. If you were to find some obscure, low-tier cultivation method and optimize it, that would be one thing, but how could a newborn calf like you dare to mess with such a technique?

Zhong Ding smiled and shook his head, becoming even more certain that Gu Yan only had a superficial understanding of academic matters. Many of his supposed innovations in cultivation techniques were mostly wishful thinking; how could a first-rate cultivation technique be so easily optimized?

Gu Yan's draft was concise and to the point, and not very long.

Zhong Ding watched with a smile. At first, the mouse wheel scrolled backward rapidly, but as it scrolled, his finger movements involuntarily slowed down, and his smile gradually disappeared.

Zhong Ding was, after all, a professor, with considerable knowledge and cultivation. Therefore, he only quickly browsed through the information and saw the method proposed by Gu Yan. He unconsciously simulated and deduced it in his mind, and the more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. It was not the kind of unrealistic and far-fetched assumption that he had thought it was.

The more he read, the more alarmed he became, and he began to vaguely feel that many of the contents proposed by Gu Yan were indeed much better than the "Zhengyuan Foundation Formula".

Upon seeing its exquisite details, I couldn't help but exclaim "Great!" Then, filled with astonishment, I scrolled the mouse wheel up and down, repeatedly looking at the short draft. The shock in my heart was truly indescribable.

This...this...is really from a freshman?

For a moment, he even wondered if a master had written it for him.

But then I thought about it again, and the writing style of this paper was so immature and naive, it was clear that the author had never written a martial arts paper before and had no writing experience whatsoever.

The writing style and technique reveal that the writer has absolutely no experience in academic papers; however, his methods, creativity, and ideas are truly ingenious.

However, none of these ideas were entirely innovative; they were all optimizations based on existing techniques. It is evident from the text that Gu Yan first identified the various problems in the original techniques, and then proposed solutions for each deficiency one by one, all of which followed a logical approach.

The unpolished writing style and the traceable thought process suggest that this manuscript was probably indeed written by Gu Yan himself.

Genius... no, even the word "genius" is insufficient to describe it. This talent simply transcends the boundaries of what ordinary people like them can comprehend.

The "Foundation-Building Technique" was written by Xiao Zhiyuan, the strongest martial artist of our time, during his undergraduate studies. The fully optimized mental cultivation method before us was also created by an undergraduate youth.

In comparison, wouldn't Xiao Zhiyuan seem like a younger brother in front of his own students?

This was almost absurd to Zhong Ding, yet it was so sharp that it shook one's mind.

He had been teaching for decades and had seen many outstanding students. There were prodigies who became famous at a young age and strong individuals who had accumulated knowledge and experience before making a breakthrough, but he had never seen a student like Gu Yan.

Having only known each other for two short days, every time Zhong Ding thought he had realized how talented Gu Yan was, the other party would always tear apart his old perceptions in an instant and throw out an even more astonishing move, subverting his predictions.

He can't see through this student!

But Professor Zhong Ding didn't actually know that.

The short draft that seemed horrifying to him was actually completed in just ten minutes by Gu Yan, from flipping through the documents to finishing the draft.

He finished his paper in ten minutes at lightning speed, sent it to his email, and then returned to the Juyuan Room of the villa.

Gu Yan first drank a bottle of Qi and Blood Restoration Liquid he had just bought, then sat cross-legged to regulate his breathing and recover his condition.

Then he carefully took out the Huiyuan capsule he had just bought.

This tiny thing costs 68...

Gu Yan gritted his teeth and swallowed it in one gulp, then closed his eyes to try and comprehend it.

There was no sudden enlightenment or any special feeling of sudden inspiration. Instead, it felt... a little itchy?

Is this what it feels like to start getting a brain?

Gu Yan logged into the game.

I entered the game and checked my character's aptitude panel. Sure enough, the effects of the drug I took in real life were still there in the game; my character's aptitude, which was originally 5 points, had now risen to 6. But there was a note in parentheses that said "Temporary."

The commoner version of the capsule seems to only add a little bit of comprehension. But it's not bad. In terms of potential, it can save about 10% of the potential consumption when learning a skill.

Taking this opportunity, Gu Yan no longer hesitated and poured all the remaining 6,700 potential points on the panel into "Shifting the Universe".

Shifting the Universe is the skill that consumes the most potential points for him, but it is also the trump card that increases his strength the most with each level up.

[Shifting Heaven and Earth (Second Level) Realm Advancement: Minor Success]

[Shifting Heaven and Earth (Second Level) Realm Advancement: Entering the Inner Chamber]

[Shifting Heaven and Earth (Second Level) Realm Advancement: Integration and Mastery]

Gu Yan checked the consumption. Although the Awakening Capsule boosted his comprehension, it still cost him more than 5,000 potential points in total.

In the martial arts world, reaching this level of skill is generally considered a state of perfection. Further advancement depends entirely on individual fortune... for the average person.

Gu Yan's first level of Shifting Universe has only been upgraded to perfection for now. He knows that according to the game's settings, one can learn the second level after the first level is perfected, but if he doesn't break through to the next level of perfection first, he can only cultivate the second level to perfection at most.

However, if he wanted to fully master the first and second levels of the Shifting Heaven and Earth technique to the highest level, he was a bit short on funds, as he didn't have enough remaining potential points.

"As expected, the commoner's version of the Enlightenment Capsule is useful, but not enough," Gu Yan thought to himself.

Of course, he also knew that compared to others, he had already gotten a good deal.

People usually take one enlightenment pill and if they can deepen their understanding of martial arts a little during the effect of the medicine, they are considered to have gained a lot. Sometimes, it is common to take a pill worth 68 and gain nothing at all.

How could anyone be like Gu Yan, who, while the effects of the medicine were still wearing off, broke through several realms of the Shifting Universe technique in a short span of time, instantly pulling the second level from the beginner stage to the perfect stage, directly mastering more than ten years of hard work for ordinary people.

But he still felt it wasn't enough.

Sure enough, when I have money in the future, I'll still choose the best medicine.

Gu Yan didn't have enough potential points to fully upgrade his current skills, but that didn't matter. He knew he'd have enough after the final battle.

Having just added points, Qingxi's confidence in the final battle has increased even more.

"Where are we going now?" Li Shun asked, carrying the rhinoceros calf as he followed behind.

"Back to the county office," Gu Yan said. "We're about to face a tough battle."

Li Shun: "?"

Back to the county government? There's a tough battle to fight?

Is Lord Gu finally planning to directly target our county government?