After leaving the equipment room, Qin Chen hurried straight to the Gravity Training Hall.
He was pressed for time and needed to use up all his time in the Gravity Room today.
Tomorrow, he'd have to start making money!
Having no cash in his pocket always made him feel uneasy!
Before long, Qin Chen arrived in front of a strangely shaped building.
The building was shaped like a stack of triangles, and its exterior was a futuristic silver-white that flickered with faint light from time to time.
This was the hall that housed the Gravity Rooms at Muyang Third Middle School.
After taking another few glances at its futuristic exterior, Qin Chen walked inside.
The first thing he saw was a vast lobby.
Small rooms lined the perimeter of the lobby, each with a number above its door.
These were the Gravity Rooms.
There was also a square indicator light above each Gravity Room.
Some were green, others red.
Green meant the room was unoccupied; red meant someone was using it.
These were all basic facts.
Qin Chen found an unoccupied Gravity Room and went inside.
He then brought up the panel and logged into his student account, allowing him to use the room right away.
A pale blue panel appeared before Qin Chen.
A large number one sat in the middle of the panel, indicating that the room's current Gravity Index was one.
On either side of the number was an arrow icon, one pointing down and the other up.
These icons adjusted the gravity!
There were two ways to adjust the Gravity Index in a Gravity Room. One was to use these two icons; the other was to use voice commands.
The Gravity Room also had a safety mechanism.
It monitored the user's physical condition in real time and immediately shut off the gravity if it detected anything unusual.
Qin Chen tapped the upward-pointing icon on the right.
The next second, pressure suddenly descended upon him, making his body sink slightly.
At the same time, the number at the top of the screen changed from one to two.
That meant the Gravity Index had reached twice normal gravity.
Qin Chen moved around a few times where he stood. Even as he threw punches, he barely felt any pressure.
"Looks like twice the gravity is nowhere near my limit!"
That made sense. His physical fitness was already many times greater than that of an ordinary person, so a mere twice normal gravity naturally had no effect on him.
Back in his previous life, ordinary people could withstand gravity ranging from three to five times normal.
With centrifuge training, specially trained personnel could even reach eight to ten times normal gravity, though there was a risk of oxygen deprivation to the brain.
But they really could reach that level!
So... what was his limit?
Qin Chen kept tapping the upward arrow, and the gravity pressing down on him grew stronger and stronger.
Three times, four times, five times... eleven times!
"Huff..."
Qin Chen's upper body was now bent halfway over, and he gasped for breath.
Sweat kept beading on his forehead and dripping down.
Qin Chen hadn't expected that eleven times normal gravity would already be so hard to bear. He'd thought he could hold out past fifteen times.
Once the Gravity Index exceeded eight, every additional increment made the pressure on his body noticeably heavier.
At eleven times, he really was starting to struggle.
This was the level of gravity he could withstand under normal conditions. It was far harder than reaching the same number through centrifuge training.
Eleven times normal gravity was the highest level at which he could still move freely, even if only barely.
He could probably endure more if he raised it further, but then he might not be able to move at all.
Now that he knew his normal-condition limit, Qin Chen had no desire to keep testing it. Instead, he struggled to sit cross-legged on the spot.
He immediately began circulating the Burning Meridian Merging Spirit Art!
In an instant, his Star Energy Aptitude was "ignited" and began to vanish at an astonishing rate.
At the same time, Qin Chen's body seemed to turn into a vortex, forcibly drawing immense waves of Star Energy into him like a whale swallowing water.
The tempering began!
The higher the Gravity Index, the tighter his muscles became, and the more effective the Star Energy's tempering.
But the damage to his body would also be greater.
Everything had its pros and cons!
If he wanted to cultivate faster, he naturally had to make up for it somewhere else.
But that wasn't a problem for Qin Chen at all.
So what if his body took more damage?
What did that even matter?
All he cared about was cultivating faster!
If cultivation progress could be shown as a bar, Qin Chen's progress from the Body Tempering Third Layer to the Body Tempering Fourth Layer would now be racing forward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Just two hours later, a muffled boom rang out. A powerful aura burst from Qin Chen and spread in every direction.
Body Tempering Fourth Layer!
Qin Chen's fist, which had been swinging, suddenly stopped, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
That hadn't been easy!
It had taken more than two days to finally reach the Body Tempering Fourth Layer. Truly... what a struggle!
He had to admit, the Gravity Room was very useful.
Without its help, Qin Chen would have needed at least another night of cultivation to break through at his current pace.
But from here on, his progress would slow considerably.
His Star Energy Aptitude was recovering, and the Burning Meridian Merging Spirit Art had entered its cooldown period.
Without the art's ability to forcibly absorb Star Energy on a massive scale, he could only absorb it on his own, and the process was much slower.
Even so, he felt he could still make some progress during the eight hours he had left.
With that thought, Qin Chen immediately felt fired up.
The feeling of sensing himself grow stronger by the moment was so wonderful that he couldn't get enough of it.
Without another word, Qin Chen plunged back into cultivation.
Yet while Qin Chen cultivated in peace, things were anything but peaceful elsewhere.
Building No. 38, Boyang Street, Mufeng District, Muyang City.
It was a residential building, but at that moment, barricades had been set up all around it.
People in black uniforms stood guard around the barricades, sweeping their cold gazes over the area.
Everyone who had lived in the building had been kept outside the barricades.
But not one of them dared complain.
The people before them were all from the Law Enforcement Bureau. Ordinary people and low-level martial artists like them didn't dare show any displeasure with the bureau's decisions.
Still, they were curious, and one by one they craned their necks to look in a certain direction.
At that moment, inside one of the apartments in Building No. 38...
Before you continue