The reason was that Dante had been dealt a slap to the face by the universe. In the end, the universe was fair and balanced, as Dante did not possess a cheat like those other transmigrators who could ignore its laws and rules.
He was subject to the rules of the universe, and even his Quantum Entanglement could not escape this, granted by a higher-dimensional being or not. There was no truly perfect method in the universe, and Dante was shown this through his current practice.
The reason? Take a look yourself!
[Player Name: Dante
Player Race: Human
Faction: Supreme Martial Hall (Kingdom-level)
Internal Arts: Inferno Ascension Technique (Level 1: Ante-Inferno Ember Stage, 95%)
External Arts: Raging Blood Halberd Technique (Body Tempering, Entry Level, 4%)
Strength: 500
Agility: 500
Dexterity: 500
Intelligence: 500
Constitution: 500
Vitality: 500
Money: 0 copper coins, 0 silver taels, 0 gold bars.]
The heck!
After a whole 30 minutes of full-power practice, he had only gone up 3% of the Entry level? One should know that there was the Entry level, the Minor Accomplishment level, the Great Accomplishment, the Mastery, and Perfection stages, all of which went from 1% to 100%.
And it should be obvious, but breaking through a minor stage would not stabilize nor limit break his genes, but just raise his stats. However, the current External Arts stage he was at was too weak to yield any stat increases to him.
He didn't cultivate External Arts for the stats anyway, so that didn't matter. He needed to break through his genes, and the only way to do so was to enter the Martial Warrior Entry level. Every major stage breakthrough would allow him to stabilize his genes and accumulate more stats in the Apocalypse World.
So finding out that his breakthrough speed was slow was a big blow for him. At the rate he was going, did it mean that he would need 10 minutes for every 1% of progress, even when supplied with level 4 Blood Energy Soup?
Assuming that the difficulty of cultivation never increased and the resources were constantly and stably provided, that meant he would need 34 days and 20 hours to reach the peak of Body Tempering and breakthrough.
This was not conducive to his plans as the above estimate was very conservative and did not account for the fact that he obviously could not practice 24/7. That 34 days and 20 hours meant cultivating External Arts non-stop that entire time while having someone by the side pouring Blood Energy Soup into his mouth.
Not to mention that the difficulty increased with each sub-stage. What could get him 3% in 10 minutes at the entry level might only get 2.5% every 10 minutes at the minor accomplishment stage.
If it was so easy to climb, then the other Core Disciples who had been here years before him would already be Martial Gods looking down on the world.
However, these were all miscellaneous reasons, to be honest. Even with all this, with Dante's talent, it should not take so long, especially with the 'infinite' resources that the hall was willing to provide him.
The real reason was actually quite funny when you thought about it.
What was the point of External Arts? Why did the people of this world mostly practice it? Why did those who had Internal Arts not dedicate themselves to its cultivation 24/7 but split their attention to cultivate External Arts even though Internal Arts were superior by far?
It wasn't as Dante previously thought, just to complement Internal Arts.
External Arts were cultivated purely to raise the body's stats!
Yes, this was obvious. However, the obviousness of it completely missed Dante when he was making plans. He thought that by having a higher body SDI, it would make his cultivation faster because he didn't need to add stats but just breakthrough.
This was an easy assumption to make if one didn't understand eastern fantasy worlds such as this, as well as the rules of cultivation, whether wuxia or xianxia style.
People in this world started from between 1-10 points in all stats and raised those stats while in the Body Tempering stage through the infusion of blood energy, refining their body and strengthening it.
Then, they broke their gene limit (called 'bottleneck' by them) and then ascended to the Martial Warrior realm where they would start condensing their blood energy into the fabled blood Qi bit by bit.
Then there were the other realms with their various rules, but the long and short of it was that it was designed for people climbing from the bottom going upwards, not for someone already at the top.
This was the essence of the problem. Just thinking about it, how hard is it to 'refine' the body of a person with 10 points compared to a person with 250 points?
It was like you, a normal person, trying to use a hammer to smash an ice cube into smaller pieces versus using that same hammer to smash a segment of iron into pieces. It was obviously easier and quicker to do the former.
Basically, the standard for Body Tempering for Dante had not become easier due to high stats, but rather increased. The higher his stats, the more it would increase because he needed to infuse his entire body with blood energy to a satisfactory level before he could begin to refine blood Qi at the Martial Warrior level.
It was not a realm he could skip, so Dante could only pinch his nose and bear with it. He wondered if Hao Donglei knew about this when recruiting him and knew that so many resources would be wasted on his growth.
Could the Supreme Martial Hall bear it? Just to reach Martial Warrior realm, Dante did not know how many bowls of level 4 Blood Energy Soup he would drink. This was usually reserved for the elders and vice hall master, but it was the basic requirement for him.
That was equivalent to Martial Master Demon Beasts, and someone needed to go out and hunt them. They didn't just drop from the sky out of nowhere. That was the job of Acquisition Elder Wu Jian and was why he was so full of killing intent and severity because he was constantly out of the hall killing high-level demon beasts for resources.
Dante realized he would have to change his mindset. He would need to invest time in this world to go out and hunt demon beasts to acquire his resources and also make money. He initially did not care about the 0 coins, 0 taels, and 0 bars on his money column, but it was now very jarring.
Dante could alternatively opt to sit here 24/7 and drink all the bowls he could get while increasing his cultivation, and no one would dare to question him, but could old man Wu Jian even keep up with his consumption?
Why did he feel like the level 4 Demon Beasts would gather into an army of evil spirits and rush at him to fight to the death.
Eh, even if they did, his hellfire was even more effective on spirits than living bodies and would torment them into nothingness.
With this in mind, Dante did not stop his practice. Since there were 27 days until the next visit to the Black Land, he decided to spend all of them practicing so he entered a very
stable routine in the Supreme Martial Hall.
In the morning, he would enter the practice area and have Jia Susu bring him 50 bowls of Level 4 Blood Energy Soup then practice the technique for up to 6 hours non-stop. At noon, he would go for etiquette classes for 1 hour, and then from 1 pm in the afternoon till 7 pm, he would practice the Inferno Ascension technique.
After 7 pm, he would log out and spend some time with Beatrice and replenish his energy with Energy Bars. Beatrice stated that there was a higher-level resource called the Energy Core, but his stats were too low to use it.
When Dante asked why it was not known, she replied that it was made specifically for her since her stats were the assumed highest in the universe. Mere energy bars could not maintain someone with 20,000 points in all fields, even for a second.
Dante was speechless.
Like this, the remaining time until the class of 10998's first-year Unique Batch could enter the Black Land had come around. When the various students stepped out of their residences to head to class, many did not look much different.
After all, they had spent their time in virtual worlds farming Supercoins, so if anything, their demeanors became slightly different, either crueler, kinder, or more cunning depending on where they spent their time and how.
However, no matter how any of them observed the other, nothing was more shocking and horror-inducing than Dante's change when they glanced at him.
In terms of aura, power, and mentality, he seemed to be a different person altogether!
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