96: Exquisite finger snap!

The content of the post was simple, even a bit muddled.

"...I know no one believes me, but red isn't the end. After a hundred million proficiency is maxed out, you can still continue... I've tried it, it's really possible..."

"The panel can't be screenshotted or photographed, otherwise, I'd post pictures."

"One billion times, yes, it's one billion times! The proficiency will turn into a color I've never seen before, not gold, not red, but a... primordial color, and the proficiency cap will become ten billion times!"

"Skills will completely change, that's not leveling up, it's... it's evolution!"

"What about ten billion times? I don't know, I haven't reached it yet, but I feel like after ten billion times, it can change again!"

The post's content abruptly stopped there.

Lin Yu's heart skipped a beat.

Beyond red!

One billion proficiency!

Ten billion times!

These numbers, to any professional, were nothing short of a fantasy.

But to Lin Yu, they were like a thunderclap exploding in his mind!

One billion times, for him, was just a thousand multiplication cycles.

Ten billion times, was just ten thousand!

He suppressed his excitement and continued to scroll down the page, looking at the replies below.

As expected, the comment section was filled with overwhelming mockery and insults.

"Has the original poster woken up yet? You can have anything in your dreams, huh?"

"One billion times? Do you know what one billion times means? Your dad, me, has been using skills since birth, and I still can't accumulate that much! Are you just bragging?"

"Even if it's one skill per second, without eating, drinking, or sleeping, you couldn't do it in ten years! How old are you, a few hundred years old?"

"Another clown who's gone crazy wanting to be famous."

"A divine person, everyone just ignore him."

"Do you believe him or do you believe I'm Qin Shi Huang?"

"Anyone who believes this is set for life."

"V me 50, and I'll teach you how to break the limit."

Facing the skepticism, the original poster began to clumsily defend himself.

"I'm not lying! I used to be with one of the three major guilds in the Abyssal Domain. I was severely injured during a mission, became paralyzed from the waist down, and was forced to retire."

"I can't do anything else, I only have one skill I can use, called Exquisite Finger Snap, which is just snapping my fingers to make a small object move."

"I rely on it to eat, drink, and turn pages. It's been decades, and I use it tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of times every day, which is why... why I discovered this secret!"

This explanation, far from calming the public's anger, instead drew even more intense ridicule.

"Hahahahaha! I'm going to die laughing! The three major guilds of the Abyssal Domain? Do you know what kind of place that is? It's the supreme organization that transcends all nations! Their veterans would be half-paralyzed at home with no one caring for them? Try to make your story a bit more believable, okay?"

"Exactly! Someone from the three major guilds, even if they were just a janitor, would be a superior person back in their local area! Your treatment isn't even as good as the street sweepers in my hometown!"

"And Exquisite Finger Snap? What's that useless skill good for besides teasing cats? And hundreds of thousands of times? Don't your hands cramp up?"

"Pure clown, confirmed."

"Delusional, nothing you do at home will help."

The subsequent replies completely devolved into one-sided humiliation of the original poster.

The original poster continued to try and prove himself, mentioning his old unit number and some jargon and secrets that only Abyssal Domain veterans would know.

But no matter what he said, it was only treated as a more ridiculous lie.

Ultimately, after hundreds of replies filled with mockery and attacks, the "Medal of Honor" never appeared again.

The post's page was old, full of garbled text and broken image links, but the text itself remained clear.

Lin Yu stared at it, his brain rapidly processing the information it contained.

Beyond red.

One billion proficiency.

Ten billion times.

These were not mere numbers; they pointed to an unknown path, a path to the heavens that no one had ever conceived.

The comment section was filled with overwhelming mockery. Every reply dripped with scorn and derision, and the poster named "Medal of Honor" was nailed to the pillar of shame as a madman and a clown by everyone.

To be honest, such claims were even less credible than UFO secrets and monster stories in tabloid newspapers. At least they'd post a few blurry pictures. But this, it was just text, the incoherent ramblings of a down-and-out old soldier.

Any rational person would close the page and dismiss it as a pathetic joke.

But Lin Yu was not just any rational, ordinary person.

He had once, in search of a Ghost Card, day after day, converted small stones into cards and then innovated them. For five whole years, without interruption. If there was anyone in the world most adept at such tedious, maddeningly repetitive work, he was undoubtedly it.

The insults in the comment section had no effect on him. On the contrary, his mind, sharpened to an extreme calm by five years of monotonous life, had already begun to automatically deduce and calculate.

One billion proficiency.

For an ordinary professional, this was an astronomical number, unattainable in a lifetime, or even several lifetimes.

But for him?

His thoughts raced.

One Ghost Card cycle, with all prerequisites met, could achieve a multiplier of 1,048,576 times. For ease of calculation, let's call it a million times.

One billion proficiency would only require a thousand such million-fold cycles.

A thousand times, and he could verify its truth.

This number was still not small.

But what about the skill mentioned in the post? Exquisite Finger Snap.

Snapping a finger.

How long would that take? Half a second.

And the entire multiplication process, from Card Transformation to the final release, if his hand speed was fast enough, he could complete one in ten seconds.

A thousand cycles... that would be ten thousand seconds.

Converted, that's one hundred sixty-six minutes.

Less than three hours.

Lin Yu's breathing hitched slightly.

Less than three hours to verify an ultimate secret that could potentially overturn the entire world's power system.

The risk was wasting three hours.

He could afford to waste it!

He had gambled five years of his youth for a vague, ethereal Ghost Card. What were a mere three hours?

He was perfectly experienced in doing such things.

Those five years of dormant were not wasted.

Do it!

He turned off the virtual screen. The suite was silent, save for the faint current hum of the backup system.

The skill, Exquisite Finger Snap.

A non-combat, non-elemental, purely basic skill.

Who first discovered this was a skill, he wondered.

Many so-called skill gift packages online would include it as a freebie. Its only purpose was to make a crisp snapping sound. No damage, no effect, no use.

So useless that... Insect Dwelling's skill service didn't even have it... Perfect.

This thing surely wouldn't blow up the hotel again, would it?

Lin Yu ordered a complete set of basic skill books from the black market, a pile of items priced at ten yuan each.

The bundle cost him three thousand five hundred yuan.

These black marketeers made money just as fast as he did!

But the service was quite prompt.

In less than ten minutes, the goods were delivered to him.