Chapter 22: Increasing Combat Power, Laying the Groundwork for the Main Story
Franklin hadn't expected his current situation to be this bad. He had originally thought that as long as he improved his cultivation, he would be invincible among those of the same realm and even able to fight above his level.
But the more he experienced, the more he realized that cultivation was only the foundation. Without techniques or various supporting abilities, he was nothing more than a savage primitive who didn't know how to use tools.
"Old man, can you tell me specifically where I'm lacking?"
As soon as he asked the question, Franklin saw Grandpa Son Gohan, who seemed to have been holding back for a long time, laughing so hard that he nearly bent double. After a long while, he finally calmed down a little.
"Brother Lin, I'm an old man who speaks bluntly, so don't take it the wrong way. In my view, your current combat technique is at the level of an elementary school kid getting into a fight.
"Your punches have no form or structure at all — they're soft, weak, and completely transparent, with no offensive power whatsoever. If it weren't for your speed, I could have pinned you to the ground in a single exchange."
Being told that made Franklin's face flush with embarrassment. Fortunately, Grandpa Son Gohan didn't go too far with the mockery. After just two sentences, he stopped and moved straight to the main point.
"Brother Lin, every strike you throw relies purely on the corresponding muscle group for power — that won't do. You need your entire body to work together. Only when all of your strength flows into a single point can you achieve the effect of breaking through with focused force.
"At the same time, you must think about what to do next if an attack misses. For example, just now, you wasted a huge amount of energy and didn't land a single hit. That's nothing but self-exhaustion.
"From today on, you need to correct all these bad habits. If you can't even do that, your strength will be very hard to improve. Maybe my words sound vague, so let me put it more concretely:
"Right now, your total strength is about ten points, but when you throw a punch, you're only able to use one point of it — the rest of your body's power is completely unused.
"Relying on brute strength and childish brawling techniques like this will guarantee defeat against a slightly stronger opponent. You won't stand a chance. You might even get toyed with by a weaker opponent with better technique.
"And another thing — your development and coordination of your joints are extremely poor. As the saying goes, 'externally train your muscles, bones, and skin; internally cultivate your breath.' You've found that internal breath, but as for the external training of muscles, bones, and skin — you haven't touched any of it. Basic martial arts rely on the power generated by the joints and tendons. Relying purely on raw muscular strength is a narrow-minded approach."
With Son Gohan's detailed analysis, Franklin's daily training was planned out step by step.
After returning, Franklin and Goku began the most fundamental martial arts training. This not only helped him make up for his lack of basic technique but also deepened his bond with Goku, making future plans easier to execute.
As he practiced these fundamental techniques, Franklin came to realize that the strength of the physical body alone could only crush weaker opponents. Only by fully utilizing every cell of spiritual energy in his body — by delivering all his strength in a single blow at the exact moment of impact — could he defeat stronger enemies with a weaker base and truly become invincible among those of the same realm.
From that day on, Franklin spent his days practicing various techniques and studying the Kame School's mental cultivation methods, while at night he sat cross-legged with his eyes closed, cultivating spiritual energy.
In the cultivation world, time passes without notice — a hundred years vanish like a bubble. Two years flew by in a flash. By now, Franklin had fully mastered the Kame School's mental methods, and with each strike, he could synchronize every part of his body to deliver force as one.
To accelerate his mastery of fundamental techniques, Franklin used his divine sense during training to continuously correct his posture and address subtle flaws in how he generated power from within.
By observing and adjusting every detail of his body through a full-body holographic projection in his mind, Franklin could now move his body as easily as if it were an extension of his will, fully under his conscious control.
Through this approach, his neural response speed and motion capture ability had been trained to their current limits, and his mastery of fundamental techniques had finally caught up to his physical potential.
After two years of spiritual cultivation, the range of Franklin's divine sense had expanded from a 100-meter radius during the early Foundation Establishment stage — in which he could form a fully transparent, full-color holographic projection in his mind — to a 500-meter radius with the same capability.
Moreover, Franklin had also mastered the use of Phantom, the first tool he had ever obtained. The Dimensional Heavenly Tome's introduction to its finer details was incomplete, but after two years of occasional experimentation and exploration, Franklin discovered that Phantom possessed both shadow and physical properties. It could attach itself to any entity that cast a shadow, becoming a shadow-like existence and even subtly influencing the host's movements while attached.
It could also absorb a large amount of spiritual energy from Franklin's main body and release extremely weak spells. It moved as fast as the wind and could ignore most obstacles.
Beyond all that, its most important and powerful ability was that it could travel between two locations in an instant, and everything observed by the shadow was simultaneously seen by the main body.
After two years of adaptation, Franklin had become fully accustomed to the split between his vision and consciousness, and he could now control both his body and the Phantom simultaneously without any mishaps.
With a single thought, the basic information from the Dimensional Heavenly Tome appeared before his eyes:
Name: Franklin
Age: 19/455 → 21/436
Race: Human (Saiyan)
Bloodline: Saiyan Bloodline
Body Cultivation: Early First Origin Realm (Average Cell Diameter: 1000 nm)
Spiritual Qi Cultivation: Peak Foundation Establishment (Spiritual Sea Liquid Fill: 3% → 99%)
Mental Cultivation: Mortal Heart Stage
Sword Dao Cultivation: Human Realm, Sword Qi Realm
Life-Bound Artifact (Pseudo): Guardian Sword
Techniques: Space Overlord Art (Incomplete)
Spells: [Eye of True Sight (Beginner)] [Basic Five Element Spells] [Close Combat D-]
Talent: [Dimensional Heavenly Tome]
Dimensional Heavenly Tome: [Dimensional Summoning] [Dimensional Space] [Dimensional Travel] [Mission Tab] [Phantom]
Overall Combat Power: 353–650 → 425–650
[Combat power is for reference only. It is a quantified visible value. Actual combat power may fluctuate above or below this range depending on techniques, talents, spells, and skills. Please judge specific circumstances based on awakened talent.]
After reviewing the changes in his strength, Franklin let out a deep breath. The fact that his overall combat power existed within a range had already puzzled him. But now, even though the lower end of his power had risen, the upper limit remained unchanged — this left him even more confused. Could it be that he still hadn't pushed his strength to the current extreme?
After a brief moment of thought, Franklin knew that wasn't possible. Lala's combat power was far more ridiculous — he remembered that her maximum combat power could reach five thousand.
Since he couldn't figure it out, Franklin decided not to dwell on it. Improvement was improvement, and that was all that mattered.
Franklin knew that his most important task now was to advance the main storyline. Over the past two years, he had laid plenty of groundwork. In the first year, Son Goku had transformed into a great ape several times, and under Franklin's guidance, Son Gohan had discovered the cause: the full moon was the true culprit.
After warning Goku never to look at the moon during a full moon, the number of times he transformed into a giant ape decreased significantly in the second year. Each time he did transform, Franklin would promptly wake Son Gohan and lead Goku away to a distant location.
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