Three Weeks Later
Three weeks passed in quiet, decisive.
Not for the Li Group.
For the Li Group, the days blurred into a constant storm —
meetings that ran until dawn,
regulatory calls stacked in tight clusters,
PR damage-control cycles that spun endlessly,
and compliance reviews digging through years of neglected paperwork.
The crises Li Feng dug up didn't destroy them.
They buried them in work.
Each branch handled their own fire:
• First Branch: Sorting through supply-chain discrepancies that kept doubling back on themselves, producing more questions than answers.
• Third Branch: Locked in a stalemate with the Ministry of Health, frozen out of several filing pipelines, bleeding time and manpower.
• Fourth Branch: Fighting a daily battle against waves of media misinterpretation, influencer backlash, and partner hesitations.
For three weeks, all hands were full.
The patriarch issued orders, received updates, coordinated endless correction plans —
and never once made time to revisit the Second Branch.
Not because he forgot.
But because he couldn't afford to look away from the mess in front of him.
And beneath that necessity…
something quieter lingered:
A watchfulness.
A subtle, unspoken caution directed toward a seventeen-year-old who had walked out of the hall with too much calm in his eyes.
He didn't confront Feng.
He didn't call for him.
He didn't accuse.
He simply kept the Second Branch under observation — never interfering, never approaching,
but always watching.
Like a predator watching the brush,
not sure what moved inside it.
And while the Li Group scrambled to piece itself back into order…
the Second Branch existed in a bubble of unprecedented peace.
No summons.
No pressure.
No interference.
No "family duties."
No probing questions.
Li Feng had three uninterrupted weeks to himself, and he damn well made good use of every single day.
---
Morning — Second Branch Courtyard
The courtyard was quiet, washed in the pale gold of early morning.
Li Feng's exhale drifted out in a slow, controlled ribbon of breath.
His palms pressed outward, spine straight, movements grounded and precise—each shift of weight turning fluid strength into stillness.
[Zhan Zhuang — Lv. 1 (38%)]
[Yi Jin Jing — Lv. 1 (32%)]
[Meditation — Lv. 1 (27%)]
Three weeks.
Three skills.
All of them sharpened past the 25% mark.
And with them—
[New Passive Unlocked — Vital Force Convergence]
Muscle density enhanced ×2
Fatigue accumulation halved
Base strength, speed, and endurance effectively doubled
The difference was… tangible.
Not visual magic.
Not flashy superhuman spectacle.
Just an eerie, effortless power woven through every tendon and breath—
strength that bent reality in quiet ways.
He shifted stance.
The flagstones under his feet gave a faint crack.
Nothing dramatic.
Just the kind of quiet reminder that his body now played by rules other people didn't have access to.
With these stats, he wasn't throwing cars or punching holes in walls—
Nah, that was Level 2 territory.
But at Level 1 (30–40%), boosted by Vital Force Convergence?
• A 180-pound man was light enough to lift with one arm
• A sprint felt like flying
• Jumping the courtyard wall would take one step of momentum
• And any normal martial artist… would be completely outclassed
He finished the final posture of Yi Jin Jing, lowering his arms.
Calm. Breath steady. Body pulsing with quiet power.
A soft breeze passed through the courtyard as he opened his eyes—clearer, sharper than they had been three weeks prior.
This was only the physical side.
As for everything else...
[Skill Dashboard — Current Sync]
Cyber Security — Lv. 2 (40%)
Programming — Lv. 2 (55%)
Software Engineering — Lv. 2 (10%)
Machine Learning & AI — Lv. 1 (80%)
Yi Jin Jing — Lv. 1 (32%)
Zhan Zhuang — Lv. 1 (28%)
Meditation — Lv. 1 (35%)
[Passives:]
Accelerated Comprehension
Cognitive Resonance
System Integration
Accelerated Parallel Cognition (APC)
Recursive Synthesis
Neural Harmony
Bio-Structural Fortification (BSF) (New)
Recursive Systems Thinking (RST) (New)
[Recursive Systems Thinking (RCT)]
[A Tier 2 Cognitive evolution, granting the mind the ability to model any complex system as a layered, interconnected structure.
You instinctively identify:
• hidden dependencies
• feedback loops
• structural weaknesses
• optimization paths]
These three weeks he really explored the amazing ability of being level 2. At first, with his skills at level 2 (0%), he hadn't really observed the strength that came with the breakthrough of the skills, as he was more captivated and reliant on the passives.
However, after 3 weeks operating at level 2? He found that —
Level 2 wasn't "talent."
It was supernatural logic.
If before he had been fast—
now he felt unstoppable.
With:
• Cyber Security Lv.2 (40%),
He could dismantle modern encryption the way pianists dismantle old melodies—by instinct.
Firewalls didn't feel like obstacles anymore; they felt like textures.
A full intrusion into a corporate network took him minutes, not hours.
• Programming Lv.2 (55%),
He no longer "wrote" code.
He constructed systems the way artists painted—layered, intuitive, perfect.
Debugging happened automatically as he typed.
A language that would take a research institute years to draft?
He could sketch the foundations before breakfast.
• Software Engineering Lv.2 (10%)
Complex architecture no longer felt complex.
He could see bottlenecks before they existed.
He could design structures that scaled like living organisms—self-correcting, self-optimizing.
Give him a day, and he could rebuild Li Group's entire backbone from scratch.
And though he hadn't broken through Machine Learning & AI level 2 yet, at Lv.1 (80%),
He could build models that top research teams would call "next-generation prototypes."
And with Neural Harmony, Accelerated Parallel Cognition, Recursive Systems Thinking and Recursive Synthesis firing together…
Li Feng could think on six tracks at once, with clarity greater than a focused human min.
A thought would break into branches.
Branches into trees.
Trees into blueprints.
And all of it — effortless.
---
Li Feng closed the interface with a small breath.
Three weeks.
Three weeks of quiet.
Three weeks of pressure—channeled into growth no normal human could understand.
He flexed his fingers once.
A faint stiffness—then warmth.
Perfect control.
Perfect response.
The Li Family had spent the last twenty-one days drowning in the mess he left them.
He had spent it sharpening himself into something far, far more dangerous.
He rolled his shoulders lightly, feeling the smooth strength ripple through them.
"Not bad," he murmured.
Understated.
Honest.
Because truly—
this was only the beginning.
---
Li Feng's room
Steam still clung faintly to Li Feng's skin as he stepped out of the bathroom, the towel around his shoulders absorbing the last traces of heat. He moved with the quiet relaxation of someone who had already finished the hardest part of his day.
His room was dim, lit only by the soft glow of his workstation—still in sleep mode.
He crossed the room, fingers brushing the edge of the desk—
PING.
A single notification blinked into existence on the dark screen.
A symbol formed—thin, geometric, spider-like—white lines weaving into a minimalist sigil.
The mark of Li Web.
The workstation woke fully, screen washing the room in cool light.
Li Web was not a program anymore.
With phase 2 completed, it had become an ecosystem.
A living, breathing, evolving network built across every device Li Feng touched.
Every module, every line of code, every subsystem had been reforged under Level-2 skills—Cyber Security, Programming and Software Engineering, all boosted by Recursive Synthesis, Accelerated Parallel Cognition, and Neural Harmony.
The difference was no longer incremental.
It was quantum.
---
Upgrade 1 — Arachne's Evolution (AI-Assisted Intelligence)
Arachne was no longer a basic assistant.
It now operated like the brainstem of the Li Web: It handled all data correlation automatically; It generated predictions and behavior models without being asked; It monitored the web in real time, adapting like a living organism; and It compressed reports into fragments that Li Feng could read in seconds.
It wasn't a full AI yet.
But it was something frighteningly close.
---
Upgrade 2 — Iris Shield (Adaptive Cyber Defense)
Li Web Phase 2 did not merely block intrusions.
It punished them.
Any attempt to access his devices triggered: Instant sandboxing; Layered mirror environments; Junk-data mazes; Trace-back traps; and Temporary blackouts of the attacker's system.
Not destructive.
Not illegal.
Just enough to make the attacker feel like they were drowning.
And because it was built under Level-2 programming…
It adapts.
Every attack would make it stronger.
---
Upgrade 3 — Omni-Link Mesh (Cross-Device Synchronization)
Every device he owned—phone, tablet, laptop, watch—had stopped being independent machines.
They were now a mesh.
Data flowed instantly between them; Tasks migrated fluidly; One processor reinforced another; Power consumption balanced itself.
Each device acted as a node in a unified lattice
Even if one was stolen or destroyed—The web lived on.
It would reconstruct itself through the remaining nodes like a biological network.
---
Upgrade 4 — Resonance Engine (Supernatural Efficiency)
This was where Li Feng's Level-2 passives shone the most.
Through Recursive Synthesis and APC (Accelerated Parallel Cognition), combined with his new Software Engineering passive—RST (Recursive Systems Thinking), the entire system for Li Web operated at a clearly unnatural level:
Tasks that should take hours were reduced to seconds; Heavy workloads distributed themselves seamlessly; Code rewrote itself to optimize structures; Data pipelines self-cleaned, removing inefficiencies.
The system now performs at 220% of the stated hardware limits.
---
This was Phase 2 of the Li Web.
A system built by someone no longer confined by human limits.
A quiet, understated empire of code—woven in the dark, beneath the notice of giants.
And Li Feng stood before it, hair still damp, skin cooling from the shower, expression calm.
His face didn't change.
But the room seemed to exhale around him, as if the network itself acknowledged his presence.
A faint line of text scrolled across the screen:
"Welcome back, Li Feng."
Arachne's signature.
He rested a hand briefly on the desk surface—an absent gesture, almost affectionate.
The system pulsed once in acknowledgment.
Phase 2 was finished.
And for the first time, the Li Web was no longer a tool.
It was a weapon.
A silent one.
A perfect one.
---
Hello, Author here,
Thanks for reading — Leave a comment to tell me what you think about this chapter, and drop a Power Stone if you're enjoying Li Feng's story so far! Let's grow this story together.