Since the last attack, Charles Cooper seemed to have decided to settle down here for good. During the day, he actually supervised their practice of the Red Pine Sword Technique, giving them pointers from time to time. At night, he would go alone into the room where Master lived, doing who knows what, never coming out.

Although both of them were practicing swordsmanship at the same time, Henry Clark could clearly feel that Charles Cooper's gaze was mostly fixed on Yvonne Harris beside him. That look of appreciation and satisfaction was so obvious that even a fool could see it.

But whenever his gaze landed on Henry Clark, it immediately turned impatient. The few footprints on Henry Clark's body were earned this way.

Sigh...

Letting out a silent sigh, Henry Clark didn't know how to explain it. With the foundation of this body, this shouldn't have happened, but ever since he fainted that day, his vision seemed to have developed double images, becoming somewhat blurry.

As time went on, it had gotten worse over the past few days, causing his basic skills to regress instead of improve.

"Our Red Pine Sect has stood for hundreds of years; it must not fall at your hands." Charles Cooper stroked his long beard and said calmly. "Back then, my senior brother and I parted ways due to differing beliefs, and I left to make my own way. Now that I'm back and see Red Pine in such decline, it only proves that my methods were right."

He paused, then continued.

"Our sect has two major external skills and one internal skill. One is the Red Pine Sword Technique you both know, and the other is the Poison Sand Palm, which I excel at."

Chapter 4: Initiation (Part 2)

Charles Cooper glanced at Henry Clark, who was making a complete mess of his practice.

"Looks like you really have no talent for swordsmanship. You'd better follow me and learn the Poison Sand Palm. The Poison Sand Palm originated in the Northern Yuan era, passed down from a palace eunuch..."

He rambled on about a bunch of things, but Henry Clark felt his vision growing more and more blurry. He had to focus with all his might just to keep his sword technique from going completely awry.

The blurriness in front of his eyes felt like something was overlapping his field of vision, making him very uncomfortable.

As time passed, that overlapping layer gradually became clearer.

"This... what is this?!" Henry Clark slowly saw what was affecting his vision, and his mouth opened slightly in shock, unable to close.

What appeared before his eyes was, astonishingly, the martial arts game attribute panel he had been discussing with online friends before he transmigrated!

The attribute panel was a faint red, lined up at the bottom of his field of vision.

Attack, Defense, Evasion, Constitution.

The four most basic attributes were all there, each followed by a small number.

Attack—2, Defense—1, Evasion—1, Constitution—1.

Henry Clark blinked and noticed that after each attribute there was a small red symbol, shaped like a little sword. The symbol was so tiny that you could barely see it unless you looked closely.

He focused his attention on it, and the moment he saw the symbol, a line of text naturally appeared in his mind.

"Red Pine Sword Technique: Initiate."

"Focus!"

Thud!

Another kick—Charles Cooper's movement was lightning fast, and he darted onto the field to give Henry Clark a hard kick.

Pain shot through his body, and Henry Clark immediately saw a downward arrow appear after his Constitution stat.

"Does this mean my Constitution is slowly decreasing?"

Full of confusion, Henry Clark barely managed to finish today's practice—one thousand thrusts—before returning to his room, where he finally had time to carefully ponder this thing that had suddenly appeared.

Since the attribute panel appeared, it had remained stable, with no changes.

After sleeping, Henry Clark found that the downward arrow after his Constitution stat had disappeared, clearly indicating he had recovered.

Excited, he started running around the dojo after waking up.

"If the attributes are useful, could other systems work too? Like the herb gathering system?"

With this thought, he wandered around the grass nearby, but the attribute panel didn't change at all, nor did any new symbols appear.

After a round of experiments, aside from the attribute panel and skill display, this thing was like an illusion, with no other changes.

Rather than a game system, Henry Clark felt it was more like a piece of software, a hallucination-like program that could track his physical state and let him see his progress directly.

Other than that, it had no other functions.

Having just been so excited, Henry Clark felt a bit discouraged after figuring out the reality and returned to his room.

He plopped down on the bed and rubbed his face helplessly.

"It's really just a brain hallucination. None of the other game functions work at all. Looks like it's not some superpower—there really are no shortcuts in this world..."

He glanced at the wooden sword beside him, which was for practice. Picking it up, he began repeating the extra training from the day, to get used to the body's original foundation.

The dark gray wooden sword shot out rapidly—no sound.

Another thrust. No sound.

Another thrust. Still no sound.

Again—swish.

A very faint sound suddenly appeared.

Henry Clark suddenly noticed that after this thrust, which made a sound, an upward arrow appeared after the Red Pine Sword Technique symbol.