A Cat Who Spoke Human Language

Li Ge rode his bicycle to school, while Xue Jing took the bus. After the two parted ways, Xue Jing got on a bus, got off after three stops, then walked a few hundred meters before returning home.

After greeting the security guard, he entered the residential complex, arrived at his building, took the elevator to the ninth floor, and unlocked his door.

After entering, he tossed his backpack onto the sofa, stretched his body a little, and walked into the "fitness room."

Though it was called a fitness room, it had originally been a storage room. After the Skill Panel awakened, Xue Jing cleared out all the clutter and bought quite a bit of Fitness equipment, turning it into a small gym. To do so, he had nearly spent all the living expenses he managed to save each month.

Fortunately, he had not become a member of the All-Heavens Orphanage in this life. Both his parents were alive, and he even had an older sister who had started university last year. His family was not wealthy, but it was still a happy one.

The only problem was that his parents were extremely busy with work and spent most of the year away on business trips. His sister, Xue Wan, had also been attending university in another city since last year, leaving Xue Jing essentially living alone.

Xue Jing first went through a set of stretches, then stepped onto the treadmill and started it. He set the pace to 12 km/h, intending to run at that speed for ten minutes as a warm-up.

As he ran, he fell into thought.

"When I ran one thousand meters during the physical fitness test at noon, I gained 10 more experience points than I usually did for running one thousand meters..."

"Does that mean participating in specific events is the key to farming experience quickly?"

The reason Xue Jing had agreed to his homeroom teacher Du Shiwei's request to participate in the School Sports Meet after school was to confirm this.

If this was indeed the way to gain more experience, then even an ordinary daily fitness test could greatly increase his experience gains. Participating in an official competition should increase them even more.

An hour later, Xue Jing was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. He twisted open a 500 ml bottle of mineral water and drained it in one gulp.

He opened the panel.

You completed a strenuous workout. Fitness experience +98

Fitness Lv2 (256/500)

He rested for a while and felt out the changes in his body.

Well, he could not really tell anything just by feeling.

But he knew that his physical condition had improved a little more.

Changes in skill experience were reflected in his body in real time. It was not as though changes only occurred when he leveled up.

"Fitness is actually a little inefficient if I deliberately spend time training it," Xue Jing mused.

Based on what he had learned over this period, the skill "Fitness" could comprehensively enhance every aspect of his physical abilities. It was an extremely useful skill and one of his main targets for grinding experience.

However, he did not actually need to deliberately work out in the gym to raise this skill.

According to his observations, the way this skill gained experience should be through "all actions that exercised the physical body."

For example, when he went Running, he could gain both "Running" experience and some "Fitness" experience at the same time.

In that case, doing other things that exercised his body could likewise increase his "Fitness" experience. There was no need to specifically spend time working out with Fitness equipment.

For example... martial arts.

Martial arts in this world were far more developed than they had been in his previous life.

He had personally seen martial arts competition videos online where Martial Artists could kick their opponents more than ten meters away, slamming them into a wall hard enough to leave a human-shaped imprint.

Their movements were unbelievably fast.

He wanted to get into martial arts too, but... he did not know where to begin.

Not long after the panel awakened, he had seriously followed online videos and manuals to practice. Yet even now, there had still been no reaction from the panel.

Skills could not be activated by blindly practicing whatever. There had to be something genuine to it, or he would already have a whole pile of skills by now.

There were several martial arts dojos in Sunny City, but their fees were outrageously expensive. He could not afford them, and he was too embarrassed to ask his parents for money because they really were that expensive.

"As long as I can get started, with my invincible talent and world-shaking wisdom, cultivating peerless divine arts that are both powerful and domineering would be easy."

But no matter how great his talent or intelligence was, without a master to guide him through the door, even the cleverest housewife could not cook without rice.

The Skill Panel could take him from 1 to 100, but it could not take him from 0 to 1 out of thin air.

After resting for a while, Xue Jing got up and headed to the bathroom.

After washing his hair, rinsing off his body, and soaking in the tub for fifteen minutes, all the exhaustion drained from him, though his muscles were still a little sore.

In the bathroom, Xue Jing looked at himself in the mirror.

He had an elegant face, intellectual and abstinent. When expressionless, he looked rather cold and distant, but the moment the corners of his lips curved up, he was like a winter sun rising in the sky. Not blazing, merely a thread of warmth, yet enough to soothe the heart.

His frame was lean without looking bony. After these days of skill training, defined muscles had begun to emerge. Since the skill enhanced his physical condition in every aspect, those muscles were perfectly proportioned, all growing in the most ideal direction.

His gaze moved lower... hmm, a bit petty.

Twirling his medium-length black hair, which did not even reach his eyes, Xue Jing got dressed and left the bathroom, preparing to go out and replenish his household supplies.

After changing his shoes, he left home, exited the residential complex, and headed toward the nearest supermarket.

It was now seven thirty in the evening, and the sky had already darkened. Most people had finished dinner, and there were quite a few pedestrians on the streets.

While waiting at a traffic light, Xue Jing suddenly heard several screams from beside him.

Curious, he turned toward the sound.

Across the street, an old balding man in a wheelchair, wearing a classic sleeveless white undershirt, was rapidly turning the wheels with both hands and steering his wheelchair swiftly through the pedestrians.

Was he... drifting? Strangely enough, the old man was clearly drifting in a manual wheelchair, yet his skill was exceptional. He spun and maneuvered with ease, taking several turns around the drainage channels and somehow making the wheelchair move with the smoothness of a professional figure skater.

The wheelchair whipped up gusts of wind as it passed, blowing up the skirts of female students in short skirts along its path and prompting a series of shrieks. The old man even found time to whistle at the girls, drawing angry curses and bashful scolding.

Watching the old man's carefree figure drift away, Xue Jing fell into thought.

If using a wheelchair counted as a skill, that old man had to be at least Lv10.

That had certainly been interesting.

Shaking his head, Xue Jing crossed the street when the light turned green and entered the supermarket.

He bought some beef and pork, vegetables, eggs, sausages, plain noodles, scallions, ginger, garlic, spices, some seasonings that had run out or were nearly gone, as well as snacks and fruit. After paying at the checkout, he carried a large bag out of the supermarket.

Xue Jing headed back the way he had come, but stopped as he passed a dark alley.

"Hm?"

A small black cat with four white paws jumped down from somewhere and blocked his path.

Maomao wore no collar, but there was a platinum-colored metal ring around the upper part of its tail. Xue Jing had no idea whether it was a house cat decorated by its owner or a stray cat that had been cruelly fitted with it as a prank by some passerby.

It was filthy and disheveled, with fur missing in several places, seemingly from fighting and biting with other cats. Specks of dried blood still clung to its coat. One look was enough to tell that it had suffered greatly.

After jumping down, Maomao staggered over to Xue Jing, looked at him with emerald-green slit pupils, then toppled sideways onto the ground.

"Are you trying to scam me here?"

Xue Jing chuckled.

Still, Maomao looked rather pitiful, and perhaps it was fate that had brought them together. He crouched down, preparing to take out a few sausages to feed her.

At that moment, the collapsed Maomao groggily opened her mouth and actually spoke in a human voice, muttering, "Who would have thought... the world of stray cats... would be so cruel, meow."

After saying that, she shut her eyes and fainted.

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