First update, please subscribe~~~ Sorry for the delay; I was treating friends to dinner tonight!

...

Qin Fang didn't dwell too much on this question because the information he had was too limited thus far, and baseless speculation was meaningless.

What's more...

After he killed Lei Peng and Shangguan Tianling, he finally received the substantial amount of experience points from both of them, and a series of notifications continuously rang in his mind, causing his head to buzz.

Of course, Qin Fang would hope for such notifications to never stop, day or night, as the experience points given by these two were quite substantial.

"Congratulations on killing the humanoid NPC Lei Peng (LV5), you have gained 1600 experience points."

Lei Peng was a Level 5 Peak Expert, and Qin Fang had fought him unarmed; thus, the experience gained was essentially maxed out at 1600 points, double that of Chen Liang who was Level 4 and previously killed by Qin Fang.

Such a figure, compared with the experience Qin Fang normally obtained, was indeed a very significant gain, but compared with the experience he now required to level up, it wasn't that much—it didn't even reach ten percent.

However, Qin Fang wasn't concerned about this; after all, experience points accumulated slowly. It wasn't easy to reach the sky in one step, not to mention that as the levels increased, the speed of leveling up was bound to slow down. If he needed the same amount of experience points as required to go from Level 1 to Level 2, Qin Fang could have leveled up hundreds of times by now...

What truly excited Qin Fang and thrilled him was the rich reward he received from killing Shangguan Tianling...

"Congratulations on killing the humanoid NPC Shangguan Tianling (LV6), you have gained 16000 experience points."

"Since you killed Shangguan Tianling (LV6), two levels above you, you gain 2x experience points."

Each of these two prompts was nearly enough to make Qin Fang's heart race with excitement—those numbers for experience were staggeringly high.

Killing a Grandmaster-level Expert like Shangguan Tianling indeed yielded a considerable reward, providing a total of 32000 experience points just for this one kill.

This sum of experience points, furthermore, was earned while Qin Fang himself was at Level 4. Overcoming a two-level gap and killing someone with much greater strength than himself, Shangguan Tianling, the experience gained was enough to propel him straight past Level 4.

As the saying goes, no pain, no gain.

Tonight, indeed, Qin Fang had paid a significant price. Originally, he could have hidden in the shadows and taken out Lei Peng and his nephew with a sniper rifle.

But if he did so, the loss in experience points would have been too great. Even if the experience gain was halved, killing Lei Peng would only yield 800 points, and killing the Grandmaster-level Shangguan Tianling, without the bonus for a higher level kill and halving the experience would leave only 8000 points.

So, the final gain of experience points would have been 8800, whereas now, by fighting in close combat, Qin Fang had acquired 33600 points—a nearly fourfold difference in experience points gained afterward.

An additional 25000 points, roughly the amount needed to level up from Level 4 to Level 5.

Moreover, calculating the experience as quadrupling with each level, the extra points earned could help Qin Fang jump from one fourth of Level 5 directly past half, accelerating his push towards Level 6 Grandmaster. This was the real reason Qin Fang took such a big risk to engage directly.

Without reaching Level 6 Grandmaster, there wasn't much significance in Qin Fang flaunting his strength among Level 5 experts—it really wasn't meaningful to bully these young experts.

Moreover, by killing Shangguan Tianling, Qin Fang had offended the Heavenly Pool Sect. He didn't know how many experts there were in the Heavenly Pool Sect, but he was certain there was no shortage of experts above Grandmaster level. The weaker Qin Fang's strength, the greater the danger would be in the future...

To live as safely as possible, Qin Fang needed to go all out for experience points, even if doing so was extremely dangerous.

"Your experience points have reached the maximum value; your level will automatically increase..."

"Character level increased to Level 5, all your attributes +5..."

"System Reward: One Skill Book."

"Props Box automatically upgraded; the number of usable slots increased to 48."

After the experience points notification was complete, Qin Fang's experience bar was instantly filled to the brim, and the system automatically upgraded. Qin Fang finally entered the long-awaited Level 5 after several months of anticipation.

"Finally, Level 5..."

When this notification appeared, Qin Fang immediately felt an extreme sense of refreshment and relief wash over his body.

There was only a one-level difference between Level 4 and Level 5, but for any martial artist, it represented a significant threshold. Even for Qin Fang, it was an important threshold to cross.

Although Qin Fang's cultivation at Level 4 was already invincible below Grandmaster Level, because of his lower level, Level 5 experts still held a considerable level suppression over him. Thus, whenever Qin Fang sparred with these Level 5 experts, there was always a certain amount of restriction and impact on him, even though he had minimized it as much as possible.

Now, Qin Fang was finally free from such level suppression and could fully unleash his abilities in combat. Moreover, just stepping into Level 5 meant he was almost directly at the Peak of Level 5. The strength he could truly explode with was comparable to a Level 6 Grandmaster-level fighter...

Even if he still wasn't a match for Grandmaster-level experts, it definitely wouldn't be as difficult as before, where he was nearly helpless...

Of course, this was just how Qin Fang felt. Whether he could truly unleash that kind of strength still depended on the actual opponent and performance in the moment.

All Attributes +5, this was the standard attribute increase necessary for an upgrade. Qin Fang's life points, defense, strength, agility, and so on all received a significant boost once again.

Especially the increase in life points and defense, it was like adding another layer of protection to Qin Fang, making his life even more secure.

In the recent battle with Shangguan Tianling, Qin Fang had indeed been beaten quite miserably, but the rewards were equally substantial. The effect of taking those palm strikes turned out to be even more beneficial than being mobbed by hundreds of people, allowing his proficiency in the Strong Body Technique to rush past Beginner Level and enter the Intermediate tier, and even surpass it by a small margin—raising his life points by as much as 14.

Qin Fang currently had an All Attributes +25 bonus, which meant he could add 25 points to his life points, and with his basic life points being 10, his total life points reached 49.

Although this number still wasn't very high, attacks like Lei Laohu's Explosive Bear Strike no longer posed any threat to Qin Fang, and even Lei Peng would be unlikely to deplete all his life points.

Not only did his proficiency in Strong Body Technique see a significant increase, but the proficiency in Tough Skin Technique—a derivative skill of Strong Body Technique—also just breached 80%, and wasn't far from reaching Intermediate level.

This skill required taking hits to level up; the more Qin Fang got hit, the more his proficiency increased. However, Qin Fang was typically the one doing the hitting, so genuine opportunities to be hit weren't that abundant.

He wasn't so shameless as to gather a group to hit him without fighting back—that wouldn't be increasing proficiency, that would be masochism. He wasn't that twisted.

Moreover, ordinary fists couldn't pose much threat to him, yielding pitiful proficiency gains. It took the attacking power of Level 4 and 5 experts to significantly hasten Qin Fang's proficiency improvement.

Naturally, being punched by Grandmaster-level fighters like Shangguan Tianling was another excellent way to boost proficiency, though the process was far too dangerous and painful; a slight mishap could cost Qin Fang his life.

Upon reaching Level 5, the number of slots in Qin Fang's Props Box increased once again, reaching an impressive 48 slots. With this, Qin Fang could carry many things with him and didn't need to hide them away, which was both troublesome and risky...

Qin Fang was soon to embark on his assassin journey, and carrying various weapons was naturally essential. The efficacy of the Props Box would reveal itself, as not even the most advanced security devices would be able to detect the weapons Qin Fang carried, making murder and sneak attacks much easier.

"Skill Book..."

While Qin Fang was happy about all of the above, they were mostly within expectations. However, what he looked forward to and cared about the most were the skill books granted with each level up.

The gifted skill books could be good or bad, and sometimes they duplicated existing skills, ending up only serving to add some proficiency.

Qin Fang had reached a bottleneck with skills he had learned through comprehension and hadn't been able to develop new skills on his own for a long time. This frustrated and left him feeling helpless, as the system's patterns were difficult to fully grasp.

Sometimes you desperately hope to develop a new skill, but after much effort, you end up empty-handed. Other times, when you least expect it, you suddenly receive a notification of a new skill comprehension...

That said, such occurrences happened more frequently when Qin Fang was at a lower level, as everything was just starting, and he had nothing—making skill learning convenient. Now that Qin Fang already possessed a significant number of skills, and many of the common skills were covered, hoping to learn more on his own was even harder.

This was, of course, only one of the reasons why Qin Fang valued level-up skill gifts; however, it was far from the primary reason... What truly made Qin Fang care was that the skills granted upon level-up could be exceedingly rare special skills, or even unique ones!

In other words, each level-up skill gift was almost the sole source of special skills Qin Fang knew of... (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you're welcome to come to Qidian (qidian.com) to cast your recommendation votes and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.