Chapter 10: Skill Card Fragments

He was a tall man clad in black armor, standing well over two meters in height, bald as the innkeeper, with a rugged face covered in stubble. A long, straight scar ran from the left side of his forehead, cutting through the center of his eye and down to his chin. His left eye was a pupil-less white, and together, the scar and the blinded eye lent an even more menacing cast to his already fierce features.

A stature like his, combined with such a face, naturally exerted an oppressive presence.

When the towering man entered the restaurant, his gaze swept over everyone present, and all immediately lowered their heads. Even Lin Huang avoided meeting his eyes, patting Lin Xin on the shoulder to urge her to eat quickly.

Unexpectedly, after getting his food, the tall man walked straight toward Lin Huang and Lin Xin and sat alone at the table directly behind Lin Xin, from which he could look directly at Lin Huang.

By chance, Lin Huang glanced up and found that the man's gaze, over Lin Xin's shoulder, was fixed upon him. Their eyes met, but the man showed no intention of looking away. Instead, after scrutinizing Lin Huang up and down, he finally withdrew his gaze.

Lin Huang found the man's behavior odd. Among the dozen or so people in the restaurant, not counting Lin Xin, he was surely the weakest and poorest. There was no reason for the man to pay him any special attention.

"Perhaps it's just because I'm a newcomer and he's sizing me up," Lin Huang consoled himself.

After finishing dinner with Lin Xin, the two prepared to return to their room. No sooner had they stood up and taken a few steps than the scar-faced man at the next table also put down his utensils and started walking toward them.

Pretending not to notice, Lin Huang quickly led Lin Xin out of the restaurant and toward the third floor. But to his surprise, the tall man also ascended to the third floor. When they turned right, the scar-faced man turned right as well.

"Why are you following us?" Lin Huang turned abruptly, his brow furrowed in suspicion, shielding Lin Xin behind him.

"Just heading the same way," the scar-faced man replied, glancing down at Lin Huang before striding past them to the end of the corridor. He stopped at room 301, swiped his key card, and went inside.

Lin Huang felt a bit embarrassed and hurried back to his room with Lin Xin.

"Brother, that uncle just now looked so scary," Lin Xin said, patting her chest as soon as the door closed. "When I saw him following us, I thought he was a bad guy."

"Don't worry. Even if he is, it's broad daylight and there are other hunters in the hotel. What's there to fear?" Lin Huang recalled the innkeeper’s earlier words about the guest in room 301 being a strange one, fond of practicing swordplay in the garden in the middle of the night, and couldn’t help but think, "He really is a strange one!"

After dinner, Lin Huang spent the evening watching archived footage of previous Reserve Hunter examinations on the Mindnet. The full assessment videos were never released by the Hunter Association; only clips showcasing exceptional talents were made available, mainly to promote the association and attract more applicants.

Lin Huang, however, was not interested in the prodigies. He merely hoped to glean some insight into the examination process, perhaps discern the examiners’ patterns of thought, hoping it might aid him in his own assessment.

He watched more than twenty videos in succession and consulted additional materials. Before he knew it, midnight had arrived. Lin Xin had long since washed up and gone to bed. Lin Huang stretched, turned off Mindnet, took a shower in the bathroom, and went to sleep.

He had only just dozed off when he heard a door close in the corridor. The projection from his ring showed the time: midnight.

After a moment's hesitation, Lin Huang sat up, opened the window, and stepped onto the balcony in his pajamas, gazing down at the garden below.

Two street lamps near the garden gate and the light by the hotel entrance bathed the entire garden in brightness, with the summer grass alive with the chirping of insects.

Before long, the scar-faced man emerged from the hotel and strode onto the lawn on the garden’s left side. Without any visible movement, a black war blade appeared in his hand.

Lin Huang couldn’t judge the grade of the blade; his attention was fixed on the lawn beneath the man’s feet. "Does this guy ruin the grass every night, and then the innkeeper has to fix it every day?"

On the lawn, the scar-faced man stood with his eyes closed for a moment, then suddenly stepped forward, raising the blade in his right hand and slashing diagonally ahead.

That single movement caught Lin Huang’s eye. What he lacked most now was a powerful offensive technique, and so he watched the man's every motion unblinkingly.

The scar-faced man's style consisted of eighteen forms, each radiating a murderous intent. Whether or not he noticed Lin Huang observing him, he seemed unconcerned, repeating the entire sequence three times before sheathing his blade and returning to the hotel.

Lin Huang memorized all eighteen forms, mimicked them with empty hands a few times, and, finding himself unsatisfied, drew his own war blade from his storage space and began practicing in earnest.

He was blessed with keen insight: after only three repetitions by the other man, he had already learned the eighteen moves with reasonable accuracy, though it was still just superficial.

Absorbed in practice, Lin Huang failed to notice that the patch of lawn where the tall man had trained showed not the slightest sign of damage, not even a trace of being trodden upon.

As Lin Huang practiced the set for the fifth time, a chime sounded in his ear, and a semi-transparent prompt appeared before his eyes.

[Congratulations, Host! You have gained a Skill Card Fragment: "Blade Scripture of the Great Wilderness" x1!]

Delighted by the notification, Lin Huang devoted himself even more fervently to his practice.

"I wonder how many fragments I need to assemble a complete skill card," he mused. "No matter—if I practice this swordplay a few hundred times overnight, surely I’ll get a full card!"

But after three more repetitions, he failed to obtain any additional fragments. "Could it be that a fragment only appears every five practices?"

He quickly completed two more rounds, but still no new fragment appeared.

"What’s going on?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "So it’s not related to the number of repetitions—how, then, can I get more fragments?"

With this question in mind, he performed the moves again and again. Not until his eighth repetition did the second chime sound, and the prompt appeared once more.

[Congratulations, Host! You have gained a Skill Card Fragment: "Blade Scripture of the Great Wilderness" x1!]

"I got another fragment—is it random?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, are the skill fragments I got from practicing swordplay random drops?"

[No. Only when the Host’s execution of the skill exceeds 80% of the skill’s standard will it be considered valid practice. On valid practice, only the first attempt grants a skill fragment. Repeated practice will not yield additional fragments unless the execution reaches 100% of the skill standard, in which case repeated practice can yield more fragments.]

Xiao Hei’s answer made everything clear.

"So that’s it! Which means, the times I didn’t get a fragment, it was because my execution didn’t reach the 80% threshold. On the fifth attempt, I met the standard and got a fragment, but subsequent repetitions didn’t yield more because I was just repeating the same moves as before."

Realizing this, Lin Huang began practicing in earnest. Again and again, he recalled the tall man's movements in the garden, striving to replicate them perfectly. As long as he could achieve 100% execution, he could keep gaining fragments.

With this in mind, Lin Huang tirelessly practiced the sword forms over and over.

By dawn’s pale light, he had trained more than a hundred times, finally collapsing in exhaustion and returning to his room for rest. Yet the rate at which he obtained fragments remained low—barely 20%—and he ended up with only twenty-one fragments in all.