Power, Speed, Reaction

After the family meeting ended, Chen Mu and the others left the meeting room one after another.

William needed to return to the underground palace and bring out the Family Hidden Guards.

The Golden Lion Family had naturally not trained the Hidden Guards just to keep them in the underground palace forever.

Aim, meanwhile, needed to manage the Dark Web. It concerned intelligence and was also extremely important.

Earl Arthur did not arrange any tasks for Chen Mu.

As a result, Chen Mu was actually the idlest of them all.

With nothing to do, Chen Mu decided to head to the Training Ground to test his physical capabilities.

After all, although Chen Mu knew he was strong after breaking through to Grand Knight, he had no concrete understanding of exactly how strong he was.

Far East Territory, Empty Mountain, deep within the forest.

Empty Mountain was a small mountain in the Far East Territory, less than a hundred li away from Golden Lion Manor.

Although the Far East Territory lay within the prosperous East River Province, it was not entirely devoid of treacherous mountains and dangerous terrain.

Empty Mountain was an unmanaged small mountain range in the Far East Territory, much like an uninhabited zone.

The forests here were exceptionally dense.

Even sunlight shining straight down could not penetrate the thick canopy.

In the forests of Empty Mountain, two men dressed in tunics walked side by side, their feet treading through dirt and branches.

Yet they moved across this nearly impassable terrain as though walking on level ground.

"We're almost there. I hope the Hope Project can proceed just as Lai Wan said."

One of the men suddenly spoke, his voice somewhat low.

The other heard him and said, "Heh, Arthur isn't an idiot. This isn't our first time dealing with the Golden Lion Family."

"So what if he isn't? This time, we've dispatched seven Level 1 Wizard Apprentices and even brought the organization's Magic Artifact. Is there any chance of failure?"

The man replied with a somewhat disdainful tone.

"The Golden Lion Family isn't as fragile as you imagine. Just the three Grand Knights they have in the open won't be easy to deal with."

Hearing the disdain in his tone, the other man shook his head.

"I'm not an idiot. Why would I confront Grand Knights head-on? Besides, we came this time to kill that kid. If we were here to wipe out the Golden Lion Family, the price Lai Wan offered wouldn't be nearly enough!"

"That still won't be simple."

Noticing his companion's carefree attitude, the man frowned as he spoke.

"What's so difficult about it? He's just a Formal Knight brat."

"Nairun, you're just too cautious. We're noble Wizards!"

Nairun fell silent and ignored his companion's self-indulgent boasting.

Wizards?

Since when could Level 1 Wizard Apprentices call themselves Wizards? If Chen Mu had heard their conversation, he might have been somewhat surprised.

These people had somehow learned that he had become a Formal Knight.

However, their information was still far too outdated. Chen Mu was no longer merely a Formal Knight.

Noticing that Nairun had no intention of replying, the man found it rather boring.

He too fell silent, and the surroundings sank back into stillness, broken only by the crisp sounds of feet stepping on branches.

Golden Lion Training Ground. Chen Mu raised an Iron Wood trunk with both hands.

This type of Iron Wood trunk was extremely heavy.

The Iron Wood trunk Chen Mu held weighed well over a thousand jin.

He raised it, lowered it to his chest, then lifted it high again.

Chen Mu regulated his breathing. With every inhale and exhale, white mist seemed to rise from his nostrils.

His chest seemed to have become a bellows, pumping forcefully.

His heart thumped loudly, each beat clearly audible.

Yet if one looked only at Chen Mu's face, he appeared completely expressionless, as though it were effortless.

In truth, that was not the case. Even for Chen Mu, lifting an Iron Wood trunk weighing over a thousand jin was not particularly easy.

Of course, that was because Chen Mu was not using qi and was relying solely on the strength of his body.

If he used qi, lifting this Iron Wood trunk would be no different from lifting an ordinary log.

Before testing the strength of his arms, Chen Mu had tested the power of his fists.

Without using qi, he could punch a large crater into an Iron Wood trunk with nothing but physical strength.

To smash a crater into Iron Wood required at least five thousand jin of force.

Yet without using qi, Chen Mu could not possibly lift something weighing five thousand jin.

Of course, if he used qi, he could even snap an Iron Wood trunk in two with a single blow.

This was the greatest difference between a Grand Knight and a Formal Knight.

A casual qi-enhanced strike from a Grand Knight was more powerful than a Formal Knight using a Knight Skill.

This was precisely why Grand Knights were so rare in the kingdom.

Throughout the entire Winter Kingdom, there might be more than a thousand Formal Knights in both the open and the shadows.

But there were at most a little over a hundred Grand Knights.

As for the even higher-ranked Epic Knights, the kingdom had fewer than could be counted on one hand.

Afterward, Chen Mu tested his speed as well.

He covered one hundred meters in only three seconds.

What did that mean? In Chen Mu's past life on Blue Star, the fastest man on the planet still needed over nine seconds to run one hundred meters.

Three seconds and nine seconds might seem like only a threefold difference, but Chen Mu knew it could not be calculated that way.

For example, at Chen Mu's current level, if he relied solely on his physical attributes, improving his time by even one-tenth of a second would be extraordinarily difficult.

And that was only his speed over one hundred meters.

One had to know that a knight's strength was not in running one hundred meters. Their true strength lay in explosive power and endurance.

If the distance were shortened from one hundred meters to ten, Chen Mu could burst forward in less than the time it took to blink.

And if the distance were extended from one hundred meters to a thousand, Chen Mu could maintain a pace of three seconds per hundred meters the entire way.

If qi were added to the equation, his speed could become even faster.

As for neural reaction speed, although Chen Mu had no way to test it precisely, he felt that he could easily dodge bullets from his past life.

Chen Mu was no stranger to how fast bullets traveled. In his past life, he had been to a Shooting Range and handled real guns.

Bullets fired from ordinary handguns traveled at roughly 200 to 400 meters per second.

Rifle bullets traveled even faster, at 600 to 900 meters per second. As for high-speed automatic rifles, their bullet velocity could even reach one thousand meters per second.

Without using qi, Chen Mu was confident he could evade bullets from ordinary rifles. If he used qi, he was even confident he could dodge bullets from high-speed automatic rifles.

This feeling was not unfounded. It was the answer his body's instincts gave him.

This was a Grand Knight—possessing strength, speed, and reaction speed far beyond that of ordinary people.

There was a reason Wizard Apprentices did not dare confront Grand Knights head-on.

One careless mistake, and even a Wizard Apprentice might die in a single strike from a Grand Knight.

Although Wizard Apprentices possessed all manner of bizarre methods, their physical capabilities were far inferior to those of Grand Knights.

After briefly testing his physical abilities, Chen Mu gently wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Black Robe Pathseekers Society?"

Chen Mu murmured inwardly. At that moment, he was even looking forward to the Black Robe Pathseekers Society arriving soon.

PS: Everyone, the trial recommendation has started, so Follow-up Reading will be even more important from here on.

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