I Can See Your Combat Power

5 Chapter 4: A Father’s Sacrifice for His Son
Translator: 549690339
The servants had all been sent away, leaving just Tang Luo and Tang Sen in the room. The younger one sat in the middle of the bed, while the older one sat on the side, their gazes fixing on each other.

Neither spoke first, the atmosphere was silent, but not awkward. Both were quite natural.

Tang Luo fell silent for a simple reason. The number on his father’s head had changed.

He clearly remembered, the day before yesterday, the number above his father, Tang Sen was 30045.5, and today it was already 30055.9, an increase of 10.4.

During these days of recuperation, Tang Luo had his own guesses about these numbers and he was eager to verify them.

Firstly:

Everyone had the numbers, but their values were different. For example, Aji who just performed in front of him, his number was 74.6, while the other servants’ numbers were mostly between 50 and 70.

His mother had come to visit him for the past two days, but her number hadn’t changed at all. The first time he saw it was 6130.7, and it was still the same today.

Because his body was weak and he was arranged to rest in the room, Tang Luo temporarily could not see the numbers of the mansion guards and sect warriors.

But he had some bold guesses about these numbers. These values might be related to cultivation or life force.

These servants with numbers less than a hundred shared one common feature. They all had no martial talent, missed the martial practice due to laziness in their childhood, or just were ordinary people who had not reached the Mortal Realm, thus having a low value.

And as the Sect Head of the clan’s Martial Hall, Tang Sen could be said to be the strongest among the older generation, it’s no surprise that his number is so high.

His mother Shuhui casually mentioned that she was once a famous swordswoman which meant she must be a warrior who has transcended the Mortal Realm. Her number was nearly five times less than Tang Sen’s. Tang Luo couldn’t think of anything else that could cause such a huge difference between them except for their cultivation level.

This time, seeing Tang Sen’s increase further corroborated his guess. Apart from the cultivation level, which would increase over time, he couldn’t figure out what else these increasing numbers could represent. Could it be their lengths?

Another guess was that these numbers represented life force. According to the strength of one’s cultivation, a person’s physique would undergo various forms of evolution, the most obvious of which was the growth in lifespan and physical strength. It seemed quite reasonable to say that these numbers represented a person’s life force.

With countless speculations but difficult to experiment, since Tang Luo couldn’t see his own numbers.

He was certain that he must have these numbers too, but he couldn’t find them no matter how much he craned his neck, and they didn’t appear in the mirror. This deprived Tang Luo of the best experimental sample.

He planned to keep the matter of him being able to see numbers on people’s heads to himself for now because his Dantian (a term in Chinese martial arts referring to the “sea of energy”) was already strange enough. He didn’t want to be sliced up for study. He had heard that many martial artists who were stuck in a bottleneck liked to study the bodies of young people, which was very perverse. He must take good care of himself.

Despite his silence, Tang Luo could daydream all day if you didn’t interrupt his thoughts.

“Luo Er.” As the First Head of the Martial Hall, Tang Sen took the initiative to speak up. His voice was still low, but no longer full of authority like when he first entered.

His voice interrupted Tang Luo’s thoughts, and the kid realized that Tang Sen had been sitting by the bed for quite some time now.

“I’m sorry, father. I was thinking about something.” Tang Luo felt a bit guilty, but like most fathers and sons, there always seemed to be a barrier between their communications, always formal.

As a man of few words, Tang Sen was not very good at initiating conversations with his children either. Most of the time, it was Shuhui who carried out these communication tasks.

Very few conversations between the two had happened at such close range.

Every such conversation signaled that Tang Sen had something important to discuss with him. The last time was probably when he was four years old.

He had requested for martial arts Foundation Building and his father’s repeated confirmations and instructions.

What will be this time?

“This was found on your bed when you fainted the other day. Keep it safe.” Tang Sen took out a black metallic ball from his bosom. Its surface was marked with inscriptions in a language he couldn’t identify.

“Holy shit, isn’t this the Star Core from my Dantian? How come it’s in my old man’s hands? Could it be possible that I can actually take out the Star Core from my Dantian? That’s too surreal.” When Tang Luo saw this item, he was so surprised that his eyes almost popped out. This expression, which he hadn’t had in decades, was truly shocking. He couldn’t even control the muscles on his face, his face was utterly rigid.

Tang Sen looked at his son’s shocked face, sighed inwardly, and felt like he knew everything.

His son was not what they called a genius. Tang Sen knew this from the beginning. Thirteen-year-old Mortal Realm might sound impressive, but to Tang Sen, it meant nothing. At the age of four, Tang Luo requested the martial arts Foundation Building and it took him full five years to complete the Foundation Building and start practicing martial arts. His progress in martial skills was mediocre at best.

Looked at his aptitude and speed of cultivation, how could he be seen as a genius? At a stretch, he was an ordinary person, barely. But the situation drastically turned around when he entered the Mortal Realm. In one year he reached the peak of the Mortal Realm, in two years he accumulated enough to break into the Transcendence stage, that’s already an extraordinary achievement.

With such a huge contrast, how could one not be suspicious? His son must have had some kind of fortuitous encounters. As his father, he was truly happy for him. After all, who wouldn’t wish their children to excel?

So as one of the Stewards of the Martial Hall then, Tang Sen had sealed all of Tang Luo’s cultivation information. Even if one went to the sect to check, they would find that Tang Luo’s cultivation time data was missing. This is a father’s protection for his child.