After settling Quan Taibin down, Qin Siyang returned to South Glory.
Along the way, he kept thinking back over everything that had happened recently.
The Richard family, the Tranquil Night Chamber of Commerce, the Vine Cores Exchange, the Samsara Church, Quan Taibin, the Xiu Legion...
So many matters were tangled together, and each one demanded his full attention to be safe.
It looked complicated and exhausting, but Qin Siyang was no longer the man he used to be.
He was gradually learning to handle it all.
His past experiences had given him the composure to face everything before him.
Still, he had to admit that a storm was brewing.
What Zhao Longfei had said about chaos coming to the safe zone wasn't baseless.
Since he couldn't influence the overall situation, the only thing he could do was make himself stronger.
Qin Siyang first went to Hao Liang and got some odor-removing solution so he could eat the Doom Octopus remains inside his room without leaving a scent.
But it was still early, and going back to his room now would be a waste of time.
He headed to the God-Hunting Tower, found his exclusive Divine Arena, and entered to train.
Custom divine simulation.
"Sacrificial Giant Vine, come on. Let's have a real fight!"
Bang!
"Again!"
Bang!
"Again!"
Bang!
Qin Siyang had already become the brightest star at South Glory University. His exclusive Arena No. 88 made every student who entered the God-Hunting Tower envious.
As soon as he entered the Divine Arena, many students gathered outside. Even though they couldn't see what was happening inside, they still couldn't help coming over to take a look.
To avoid drawing too much attention to how quickly he was consuming the arena's sequence potion, he had asked Xie Hongbo to cover the glass tank containing the potion with an opaque, anti-peeping enclosure.
As a result, the students outside could only hear the arena making a constant humming sound as the sequence potion was rapidly consumed, without understanding why.
"W-What's he doing in there? How is he making the Divine Arena make noise?"
"No idea. Maybe the battle inside is just that intense?"
"What kind of god did he even simulate?"
Inside the Divine Arena, Qin Siyang still had no way to fight back against the overwhelming attacks of the Sacrificial Giant Vine.
When he performed especially poorly, he could "die" and restart five times in a single minute.
Failure after failure left him very frustrated.
He knew he had to change both his combat instincts and his fighting techniques.
That was an extremely difficult thing to do, because he had already gone through too many battles, many of them life-or-death fights.
Every time he defeated an opponent in a battle where his life was on the line, it gave him tremendous confidence and convinced him that the way he fought was correct. The techniques he had developed in those battles became engraved in his mind like inscriptions cast into bronze, turning into the principles that guided all of his future combat.
He kept winning.
He kept receiving positive reinforcement.
The more victories he accumulated, the more convinced he became that he was walking the right path.
He believed he could keep charging forward and defeat one enemy after another.
But it wasn't until he simulated a battle against the Sacrificial Giant Vine in the Divine Arena that he realized it wasn't that simple.
After "dying" dozens of times, Qin Siyang gradually realized that some of those deaths weren't caused by a gap in strength. They happened because he had failed to bring all of his strength and awareness into the fight.
He could predict the attacks of every vine within his field of vision, but that wasn't enough. Even if he used Banquet Domain to blink somewhere those vines couldn't reach, he would still die. The truly deadly vines were the ones whose attack positions and directions couldn't be seen.
And after using Banquet Domain once, he had to pause briefly to locate the next safe position. During that interval, he had to rely on his dual Origin Violence to dodge and leap away.
But his success rate was extremely low.
Whether it was mentally or physically, Qin Siyang was dissatisfied with himself.
His combat awareness and fighting techniques had already become almost fixed. Changing them would be incredibly difficult.
He was like a captain who had spent years sailing through raging seas, long accustomed to steering by instinct. But after entering waters filled with sea monsters, he had no choice but to relearn even the basics of handling the helm. His old sailing experience had become an obstacle, slowing his progress to the point where he couldn't even match a rookie sailor setting out for sea for the first time.
Qin Siyang also tried simulating "cheaper" enemies, like the Corrosive Black Centipede and the Lava Crocodile, to see if he could train himself to make better use of his remaining strength.
It didn't work.
Those enemies were already so weak that he could crush them easily.
Forget using his full potential, he barely had to exert himself at all.
Only when facing an enemy powerful enough to completely overwhelm him could Qin Siyang truly feel that he still had room to improve.
For more than two hours inside the Divine Arena, Qin Siyang tried to forget everything he had learned before and instead focus on how to mobilize every ounce of strength and awareness throughout his body.
Unfortunately, he made almost no progress. In fact, because he kept forcing himself not to act on instinct, his movements became even clumsier and his reactions even slower.
But he had to do it.
The reason he had survived one life-or-death battle after another wasn't just because he was strong.
He had also been lucky.
The enemies he had faced before simply hadn't been strong enough, so he won.
But he couldn't count on always meeting opponents who weren't strong enough.
Several hours later, after refilling the Divine Arena's sequence potion tank, Qin Siyang left the God-Hunting Tower, exhausted.
This wasn't something that could be accomplished in a single day. It would take long-term effort.
Besides, Wen Shu had unexpectedly invited him to dinner tonight.
Qin Siyang returned to his room, took a shower, sprayed himself with the odor eliminator he had gotten from Hao Liang, and calmly went to meet her.
When he saw Wen Shu again, Qin Siyang couldn't help smiling.
Her smile was still just as beautiful.
Wen Shu stirred the drink in her cup with a straw and spoke first, "You look really busy. Are you tired?"
"I'm used to it. You've been busy too, haven't you? You're always studying in the library."
Wen Shu pursed her lips, "There are just too many books I want to read. Before I know it, it's already late at night."
"What did you want to see me about?"
Wen Shu shook her head, "Nothing. It's just been a long time since we last met."
Qin Siyang understood.
'She missed me?'
Wen Shu looked at Qin Siyang with a gentle gaze. After a moment, she frowned slightly in confusion, "You seem weaker than before."
"Huh? You can tell that? Just what kind of sequence ability do you have?"
Wen Shu corrected him, "It's not an ability. It's intuition!"
Qin Siyang smiled, "Close enough. I really did become weaker today."
"You actually became weaker... That's really unexpected..."
Qin Siyang explained, "It looks like I've gotten weaker, but actually, I'm getting stronger."
"I know."
"Huh?"