Chapter 34: The Mysterious Assigned Task

Total Combat Value: 297
Strength: 99
Speed: 99
Mental Strength: 99
Ye Feng glanced at his combat stats and frowned slightly. “It’s been over ten days, and I haven’t made any progress at all. It seems I’ve hit a bottleneck…”
“Xiao Feng, what’s wrong? You’ve completed your tasks well these past few days. Why do you look so unhappy?” Captain William looked at Ye Feng curiously. “Although you’re not yet at the silver level, you only need to complete five more C-level tasks on your own. With your current task completion rate, it will take at most three months before you can become a silver-level hunter like Yi Fan and the others. Then we can start taking on more challenging B-level tasks as a team… There’s no need to rush.”
“Captain, I’m not unhappy because of that. It’s because I feel like I’ve reached a bottleneck recently. My strength hasn’t improved at all for almost two weeks…” Ye Feng shook his head and sat down on the sofa next to William.
“It’s normal to hit a bottleneck, right? Maybe your strength has improved slightly, but you haven’t noticed it yet.” William smiled nonchalantly. “I think your strength is much stronger than when you first joined us four months ago.”
Hearing William say that, Ye Feng didn’t say anything more. After all, he didn’t plan to tell William and the others that he had a device capable of detecting energy values. Regarding the secrets of the Virtual Realm, he completely agreed with Boy’s view—trying not to let anyone know. But the energy detector came from the Virtual Realm, which might bring unnecessary trouble in the future.
“What are you talking about?” After Ye Feng, his fellow Chinese, joined their team, Yi Fan didn’t spend every day in front of the computer as usual. He would occasionally join in the group chats. At this moment, he was sliding across from the computer using his wheelchair.
“Oh, right, Brother Yi. You must know some Chinese martial artists, right?” Ye Feng suddenly asked.
“I know a few. Why?” Yi Fan looked at him curiously.
“A few days ago, I saw online something about innate martial artists and acquired martial artists. It said that acquired martial artists face a bottleneck when trying to reach the innate level. I think my situation might be similar to this bottleneck. I want to know where the boundary between innate and acquired is.” Ye Feng had a vague idea of what was happening to his body.

“That’s right. In fact, even when a human’s body is pushed to its limit, it can only withstand ten times the strength of an ordinary person. Anything beyond that is considered beyond human limits, as ten times is a critical threshold. There are also those with special innate constitutions or who, through certain opportunities, manage to break through this limit—like us, as well as martial artists and those with special abilities. Of course, their physical endurance also reaches a limit, which is twenty times that of an ordinary person. Martial artists call this threshold the ‘innate limit,’ because once this limit is surpassed, there’s no such bottleneck for a long time.” Yi Fan shared everything he knew without reservation with Ye Feng.

“There actually is such a thing,” William interrupted Yi Fan’s explanation. “After I broke through the innate bottleneck mentioned by Eastern martial artists, my strength improved rapidly for a long time. Until I approached a strength level a hundred times that of an ordinary person, I encountered a new bottleneck. Because my strength had improved so quickly before, I clearly realized I had hit a new barrier. It took me nearly a year to break through that bottleneck, and only then did my strength rise again, though much more slowly than before.”

“That’s exactly the bottleneck I’m facing now…” Kristin placed the Bible in her lap and joined the discussion.

“It’s okay. Just adjust your mindset, don’t force anything, let things take their course, and you’ll break through soon!” William winked at Kristin.

Kelly remained as silent as an ice mountain, sitting far away from the others with an expressionless face. In the four months since Ye Feng arrived, she had spoken no more than three sentences in total, usually responding to questions with nods or shakes of her head.

“In other words, what I’m facing now seems to be similar to the bottleneck martial artists talk about—going from an acquired level to an innate level,” Ye Feng concluded based on their discussions.

“That’s likely correct. Your speed and strength are already not much worse than mine. And although I’m a novice, I’m still a novice who’s broken through the innate realm,” Yi Fan said self-mockingly.

“However, I feel like Brother Yi’s mental strength has grown rapidly in recent months.” Ye Feng had secretly used a detector to check everyone’s growth rates. Over those four months, Yi Fan’s growth was the fastest. His mental strength, which was originally 221, had increased to 389 just a few days ago—almost doubling.

“And Kelly-sis has also become much stronger!” Ye Feng turned to look at Kelly, who smiled at him and nodded.
“My mental strength has improved, but it probably hasn’t reached a hundred times that of a normal person’s. As the boss said, a hundred times seems to be a bottleneck. After breaking through that limit, the growth rate will slow down.” Yi Fan didn’t dare to boast in front of someone as strong as William.
While everyone was discussing enthusiastically, Yi Fan’s computer, which he hadn’t been paying attention to, suddenly emitted a “beep… beep…” sound.
Surprised, Yi Fan turned to look at the computer.
“What’s wrong?” Ye Feng asked curiously. He had never heard Yi Fan’s computer make such a sound before.
“This is an assigned task. It only appears when an employer specifically assigns a task to a squad. Usually, it’s from regular clients. Let’s see who it is…”
Yi Fan pushed his chair back and went back to the keyboard, opening HUNTER’s homepage. After entering his account details, a dialog box appeared on the screen:
Dear Judgment Squad,
Client “Dragon” has assigned a task to your squad. Would you like to view it?
“Dragon?” Yi Fan turned to William in confusion. “Boss, this guy doesn’t seem to be one of our regular clients, does he?”
“We rarely receive tasks from China, as there are many skilled hunters there too…” William nodded. “Open it and take a look. Since they’ve assigned it to us, it’s probably not a mistake…”