The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

She stopped practicing the seventh set.

"Sister Yaoyao, come here."

Chen Siyao walked over.

"Look," Yang Wanqing said, assuming the starting stance of the seventh set of movements, "isn't this movement the Hunyuan Zhuang (a type of stance)?"

Chen Siyao looked at it and nodded.

"But it's not exactly the same," Yang Wanqing slightly adjusted his center of gravity. "His center of gravity is about three centimeters lower than that of traditional stance training, and the angle of his knees turning inward is also different. With just this slight difference, I can feel that his body's sensitivity to the energy of the Flame Spirit Stone has indeed become stronger."

"How much stronger?"

"It's hard to give specific numbers, but compared to when I was just practicing on my own, the difference is obvious." Yang Wanqing straightened up, patted his knees, and added, "However—"

She lowered her voice, looked around, and confirmed that Chen Hao was not in the living room.

"However, compared to the Azure Dragon Nine Transformations taught by my master, this ultimate arcane technique is... how should I put it..."

She thought for a long time and finally found a word.

"Shabby."

Chen Siyao burst out laughing.

"Don't laugh! I'm serious!" Yang Wanqing said anxiously, "I've only practiced the first transformation of the Azure Dragon Nine Transformations for three days, and my sensitivity to the Flame Spirit Stone is already stronger than if I had practiced the entire Ultimate Arcane Technique."

"They're not even in the same league. That SSS genius's 8% absorption rate? I think Azure Dragon Nine Transformations could easily surpass that."

"Don't say things like that in public," Chen Siyao said, her smile fading.

"I'm not stupid."

Yang Wanqing muttered something as she sat back down on the sofa and continued scrolling through her phone.

Online discussions have expanded from the academic level to the social level. Governments around the world are beginning to incorporate extreme arcane arts into their national physical training systems—this is not a suggestion, but a mandatory promotion.

The reason is simple: the threat of alien beasts is getting bigger and bigger, and the frequency of Flame Spirit Stones is getting higher and higher. The sooner ordinary people complete their physical evolution, the sooner they will have the ability to protect themselves.

Yang Wanqing came across a video showing a middle school physical education teacher leading his students in practicing the first set of exercises.

Hundreds of students were stumbling and falling on the playground. One chubby boy fell on his butt while doing the third move, and the students around him burst into laughter.

"Hahahaha—this is so true—"

She forwarded the video to the class group chat, and it instantly sparked a flood of messages.

"Did you practice during the late Qing Dynasty?"

"I practiced! I almost threw out my back on the fourth set!"

"Have you guys ever tested your level? I feel like I'm destined to be a C-level..."

"So what if you're C-rank! C-rank is still better than not training at all! Look at that SSS-rank genius from the experiment with 10,000 participants; he's one in ten thousand. What makes you think you can compare?"

"The most important thing in life is to know yourself."

"Well said, I've come to realize it now, I'm a D-rank."

"If you don't even have a D-rank, then don't create your own ranking system, okay? Hahahaha."

After laughing, Yang Wanqing turned to a serious post.

Someone extracted and analyzed the data of the SSS genius in Chase's paper.

With an absorption rate of 8%, combined with ultimate arcane magic, a standard Flame Spirit Stone can be completely absorbed in about twelve days.

For an ordinary C-level person, it would take at least two months to obtain the same Flame Spirit Stone.

Twelve days and two months.

What does this mean? It means that on the same starting line, a year later, an SSS genius will have evolved to an unknown level, while an ordinary person may have just barely touched the threshold.

"The inherent differences are just that cruel," the poster wrote at the end.

There were tens of thousands of replies below, most of which were silent "read".

Yang Wanqing remained silent for a few seconds after reading the post.

She recalled a sentence Chen Hao had said when he taught her the Nine Transformations of the Azure Dragon: "The technique is the bridge, the body is the shore. How fast you can go depends not on the bridge, but on yourself."

She didn't quite understand at the time.

I understand a little now.

She placed her phone face down on the coffee table, got up and went to the balcony, where she resumed the starting stance of the Nine Transformations of the Azure Dragon.

In the study, Chen Siyao was organizing the core data of Chase's paper on her computer.

She extracted all the mechanical parameters of the twelve sets of movements, made a comparison table, and compared them one by one with the movements of the Nine Transformations of the Azure Dragon.

The comparison made her increasingly silent.

Each of the Nine Transformations of the Azure Dragon precisely covers all the meridian nodes of the Ultimate Arcane Arts, and also involves at least six deep meridians that the Ultimate Arcane Arts have not touched at all.

The difference is significant.

She closed the lookup table, opened her browser, and searched for Vernon Chase's personal information.

27 years old. PhD from MIT. Published 23 high-impact factor papers.

Within three months of the appearance of the Flame Spirit Stone, he independently completed the complete theoretical framework of meridian and energy interaction and designed an operable training system.

This person is indeed a genius.

My phone vibrated.

Push notifications.

She glanced down—Professor Li from Beijing University had just published a new paper.

Title: On the Energy Transformation of Ancient Spiritual Energy - The Essence of Flame Spirit Stone and the Future Path of Human Evolution.

Professor Li's name carries considerable weight in academic circles.

A tenured professor at Beijing University, chief consultant for national energy science, and three-time recipient of the National Natural Science Award. After the discovery of the Flame Spirit Stone, he was among the first scholars in China to be selected for the core research group.

As soon as his paper was published, half of the academic community's attention was instantly diverted from Chase.

The paper takes a very tricky approach.

Li Wenyuan didn't research how to absorb the Flame Spirit Stones faster—that was Cai Si's job. He was researching a more fundamental question: where did the energy of the Flame Spirit Stones actually come from?

The answer is written on the third page of the paper.

"Based on cross-referencing of the Thirty-Six Islands' documents and a systematic analysis of global Flame Spirit Stone energy tide monitoring data over the past four months, this paper proposes the following hypothesis—"

"In ancient times, there existed a diffuse, high-density energy medium between heaven and earth, which ancient texts called 'spiritual energy.' This spiritual energy was the foundation of ancient cultivation civilization and the energy source for all cultivation techniques."

"However, at some point around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, spiritual energy began to decline rapidly, eventually approaching zero. This process coincides closely with the timeline of the collective decline of ancient cultivation civilizations. The cessation of spiritual energy was the direct cause of the decline of ancient civilizations."

The paper is fairly standard up to this point—many people have made similar speculations before.

But Professor Li's subsequent deduction was the bombshell.

"According to the law of conservation of energy, spiritual energy cannot disappear into thin air. It simply transforms from a diffuse state into a condensed state—which is what we now see as the Flame Spirit Stone."

"Comparative experiments have proven that the energy density inside the Flame Spirit Stone is more than four hundred times that of the diffuse spiritual energy recorded in ancient texts. This means that the energy of the Flame Spirit Stone is purer and more concentrated than the ancient spiritual energy."

"The ancient cultivators used energy by absorbing diffuse spiritual energy, storing it in their bodies, and releasing it when needed. This is an indirect model of 'storing first and then using'."

"The energy of the Flame Spirit Stone can directly act on human tissues and meridian systems without the need for storage. This is a more efficient 'ready-to-use' mode."

"Therefore, it can be inferred that the future evolutionary path of humanity will no longer be limited by the framework of the ancient cultivation system. The Flame Spirit Stone provides a completely new and more direct path to physical enhancement. The evolutionary era that humanity is about to usher in may have an upper limit far exceeding that of ancient civilizations."

This conclusion caused a sensation in academic forums around the world.