Chapter 267 - 165: Royal Knight Academy, Advancement Requirements
Two more days passed. August 28th was the day of Yale University’s opening ceremony.
The sun beat down relentlessly on New Heaven City, and the streets of the old campus were teeming with people.
Dressed in a casual suit, Li Wei walked with Anya, Elizabeth, and the boisterous Sebastian—who insisted on being their guide—following the bustling stream of new students and their parents toward the opening ceremony venue.
Like Li Wei, Elizabeth was also enrolled in the School of Management. However, unlike Li Wei, who had to commute between two places, or Anya, who lived in a penthouse outside New Heaven City, Elizabeth had moved into one of the residential colleges.
"Your family trust should be more than enough for you to live off-campus," Anya asked curiously. "Renting an apartment out here shouldn’t be too much trouble, right?"
"That’s true," Elizabeth said, rubbing her temples. "But it’s a family tradition. Besides, living on campus gives them some peace of mind. And don’t you think the great hall we just saw looks a lot like the dining hall in the Harry Potter movies?"
"I guess it does, a little," Anya said vaguely. "I haven’t really seen Harry Potter."
As they followed the crowd into the ceremony venue and took their seats in folding chairs on the lawn, Sebastian bid farewell to Li Wei and went off in search of his next conquest.
The Yale President walked up to the podium and began his passionate welcome speech.
Just as the president was saying, "Yale will give you the power to change the world," a flash of light flickered before Li Wei’s eyes.
[Detecting time, location, and required items...]
[Royal Knight Academy Ticket x1 has been deducted from your inventory.]
[Welcome, Heroic Knight. You have successfully joined the Royal Knight Academy.]
Li Wei narrowed his eyes slightly. The sound of the new students’ applause, their cheers, and the president’s speech all seemed to recede into the distance. It was as if his consciousness had been pulled into an ancient, hallowed hall.
While the president continued his speech on stage, lines of text appeared before Li Wei’s eyes, making him feel like he was watching a movie with the wrong subtitles.
If Li Wei’s Spirit hadn’t far surpassed human limits, he wouldn’t have been able to process both things at once so easily.
The text before him was a lengthy introduction to the background of this Royal Knight Academy, like the lore drop for a newly unlocked map.
To save time, Li Wei just skimmed it. The gist was that this place wasn’t a physical fortress but existed within the hearts of all Knights.
[Those who enter this academy must blaze a trail on the path of excavating their own potential and pursuing the ultimate state of their inner self.]
Immediately after, a series of notifications popped up.
[Knight’s Path: Stage 3 has officially begun.]
[Core Mechanic Unlocked: The Eight Knightly Virtues (Humility, Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, and Spirit).]
[From this day forward, conventional physical training and mundane eating will no longer easily grant direct increases to your base attributes.]
[Only when you encounter events in the mortal world that align with these Eight Virtues, and genuinely embody them in your choices, will your soul and body be tempered, allowing your power to continue growing.]
[Knight’s Path Stage 3 Advancement: When your four attributes—Strength, Spirit, Agility, and Constitution—all reach the critical value of 10.0, the advancement trial for the Golden Knight will unlock.]
Li Wei took a deep breath. The system panel on his retina gradually faded, and the Yale President’s speech once again filled his ears with clarity.
’Getting all four attributes to 10.0 sounds even harder than getting them all to 3.0. But judging from the quest I got involving Chen Haisheng, completing tasks in this stage isn’t just limited to 0.1 attribute point rewards. Maybe the accumulation speed won’t slow down too much after all.’
’Still, the Eight Knightly Virtues...’
Li Wei suddenly recalled something. Other sports stars always seem to do charity work and good deeds, don’t they? He wondered if doing so could help him accumulate attributes. It might be worth a try.
"What are you spacing out about?" Anya whispered, leaning in and gently squeezing his palm.
"Nothing," Li Wei said, looking at the beaming president on stage. "I just remembered that guy I told you about, the one who wants to get his professional boxing license."
According to Yale University’s rules, classes wouldn’t officially start for another two weeks after the opening ceremony. During that time, students could sample various classes and audit lectures before finalizing their course selections at the end of the two-week period.
But for Li Wei, whose Spirit was at a staggering 4.0, none of this mattered. He had already self-studied the entire undergraduate curriculum for the School of Management. He could pick his courses with his eyes closed.
In the end, thanks to Anya’s intervention and Elizabeth’s suggestions, Li Wei chose many courses that overlapped with Anya’s at the School of Art and Elizabeth’s in the management department.
For some classes, like "Western Art History," all three of them would even be attending together. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
There were still over ten days until classes and the NFL regular season officially began, which meant Li Wei was idle once again.
「Three days later.」
He returned to Brooklyn Presbyterian Hospital. Along with Lin Daohang, he picked up Chen Haisheng upon his discharge and took him to an old-school boxing gym in Flushing. It was slightly dated but fully equipped.
Morning sunlight streamed through the high windows, casting slanted rays on the canvas ring. The acrid smell of medicinal balm and sweat hung in the air.
Wearing boxing gloves, Chen Haisheng shadowboxed continuously in the ring. Medically, he was past the danger period for his concussion and was about seventy or eighty percent recovered. However, the occasional hesitation in his punches and his less-than-fluid weight shifts still betrayed his self-taught, unorthodox roots.
Li Wei, now in a simple dark gray sweatsuit, placed one hand on the ropes and vaulted effortlessly into the ring.
"How’s the recovery going?" Li Wei asked casually, pulling on a pair of thin, half-finger training gloves.
"I could kill a bull."
Chen Haisheng bumped his fists together. Although his eyes showed gratitude for Li Wei having saved his life, his pride as a professional boxer made him subconsciously stubborn when facing him. In his view, Li Wei might be a once-in-a-century monster on the football field, but inside the squared circle, boxing had its own unforgiving physical laws.
’Different fields are worlds apart,’ he thought. ’This isn’t a gap you can cross just by being physically gifted.’
"Good," Li Wei nodded. "I told you I’d spar with you once you recovered. Come on. Attack me at your usual pace."
Chen Haisheng glanced at Lin Daohang in the corner, then back at Li Wei. After a moment’s hesitation, he slid forward, a probing left jab striking out like a viper’s tongue, aimed straight for Li Wei’s face.
He only put seventy percent of his power into the punch. He had already decided that if Li Wei couldn’t react or didn’t know how to defend, he would pull the punch back at the last second.
After all, it was no exaggeration to say Li Wei was a benefactor the entire Chinatown wanted to please. He couldn’t risk injuring the man in the ring and incurring his displeasure.
If Li Wei was unhappy, hundreds, if not thousands, of families in Chinatown would be unhappy too.
But to Li Wei, the punch was in slow motion. He didn’t even move his feet, simply tilting his head slightly as the force of the blow whistled past his ear.
At the same time, his right heel lifted slightly. The muscles in his calf contracted sharply, and power shot up through his thigh and hips, coiling like a great dragon at his lumbar spine before being transmitted precisely along his spinal column to his right shoulder.
BAM!
A seemingly casual short punch precisely found the blind spot created as Chen Haisheng retracted his jab, striking his left ribs.
Li Wei had controlled the force with extreme precision, not enough to damage the bone, but the penetrating shockwave instantly knocked the wind out of Chen Haisheng. He felt half his body go numb, lost his balance, and fell heavily onto the canvas mat with a THUD.
"Too slow. Are you taking pity on me?" Li Wei shook his head. "You’re self-taught, and your power generation is all wrong. The way you throw a punch, it looks like there’s nothing behind it, and in reality, there isn’t."
"With soft, powerless punches like that, you want to fight for the Golden Gloves?" He shook his head. "Looks like that black guy didn’t beat any sense into you."
Hearing the commotion, the few Chinese boxers and foreign sparring partners who had been hitting heavy bags and doing strength training all stopped what they were doing and gathered around the ring to watch.
Having his sore spot prodded in public by Li Wei, combined with the stares of his peers, ignited Chen Haisheng’s youthful pride and hot-headedness.
His face flushed. He cast aside any thought of holding back and gritted his teeth. "Mr. Li, you’d better watch out!"
Before the words had even left his mouth, Chen Haisheng quickened his pace, sliding, bobbing and weaving, then unleashed a powerful right hand that shot toward Li Wei like a cannonball.
THUD!
With a muffled thud, it was Chen Haisheng who fell again.
"You dropped your guard again," Li Wei sighed. "When you throw a punch, keep your other hand up to protect your head and body, tight against your ribs. Got it?"
His fighting spirit truly ignited, Chen Haisheng leaped to his feet and charged forward again.
Once, twice, ten times...
As the number of knockdowns mounted, Chen Haisheng should have long since collapsed from exhaustion and lactic acid buildup.
But he was amazed to find that whenever his lungs felt like they were about to burst and his legs felt heavy as lead, a strange, warm current would surge through his body.
This warm current rapidly metabolized the accumulated lactic acid, greatly alleviating his muscle fatigue.
Li Wei’s [Knight’s Aura · First Sequence (Silver)] was constantly active, enhancing and restoring Chen Haisheng’s stamina.
Even so, Chen Haisheng’s own perseverance was not to be underestimated. He practically grit his teeth to dust, never once crying out in exhaustion, and endured for a full three hours.
When the digital clock on the wall showed it was noon, Li Wei finally stopped and undid the Velcro on his gloves.
Chen Haisheng lay sprawled on the ring canvas, his sweat having soaked a human-shaped silhouette beneath him.
He gasped for air, his chest heaving violently, but his eyes were surprisingly bright. He had learned more in these three hours of special training than in the past several months at the gym.
For lunch, Li Wei ate at a Cantonese restaurant in Flushing.
Lin Daohang was the host, ordering a table of top-tier nourishing medicinal dishes and seafood.
"Mr. Li," Lin Daohang began, raising his teacup and cutting straight to the point with a sincere tone. "Hai Sheng can be a bit stubborn, but he’s fundamentally loyal and reliable. Your social circle and business ventures are growing. Why not let Hai Sheng stay by your side? He could be your driver, run errands, work as an assistant. He’s tight-lipped and quick on his feet. What do you think?"
Li Wei didn’t stop picking up food with his chopsticks, not even lifting his gaze. "I appreciate the thought, Boss Lin," he said. "But my daily schedule is complicated, and it’s often inconvenient to have outsiders present. I don’t need an assistant, and I don’t need a driver."
He had too many secrets that absolutely no one could know. Even if Chen Haisheng was as tight-lipped as Lin Daohang claimed, he would never let the man trail him.
Hearing the blunt refusal, Chen Haisheng, who was sitting at the table, looked crestfallen but kept his mouth tightly shut and said nothing.
Lin Daohang, however, didn’t give up. He took a deep breath and shot Chen Haisheng a meaningful look.