That evening, when he opened the Status Panel, Chen Shouyi discovered that this experience had not been without benefits. His Will had risen by 0.2 points again and had now reached 11.2.
Compared to Will, however, he wanted more than anything to become strong.
He absolutely did not want to still flee like a headless fly the next time he encountered a barbarian, entrusting his life to vague luck and his enemy's mood.
That night, he trained harder and more desperately than ever.
He practiced swordsmanship, Thirty-Six Body Tempering Forms, and Entering Tranquility to Refine the Self in succession, nearly wringing every last drop of physical strength and mental energy from his body.
Yet as soon as his mind had recovered slightly, he lay back down and entered the Gray Mist Space.
Over the past month, his body here had grown increasingly solid.
Although it still felt illusory, it had already gained a trace of substance. The little tree had changed as well. It had grown several inches taller, and the space seemed to have become considerably more stable.
But these were merely minor details. None of these changes had brought any real benefit to his strength.
He looked at today's Memory Leaf, and his mind soon sank into it.
He chose the segment of memory where he encountered the barbarian. When his mind entered the barbarian's body, an indescribable feeling welled up within him.
Powerful! Incomparably powerful!
His body was filled with explosive strength. With his feet planted on the ground, he felt as if he might even float up.
That was not all.
Like the sweltering heat after a thunderstorm, everything before his eyes seemed to come alive. His ears filled with all kinds of sounds, both loud and faint. His nose seemed able to detect subtler scents, his vision grew brighter, and his skin became incomparably sensitive to touch.
After only a few seconds, the massive flood of information left Chen Shouyi dizzy and light-headed. His mind had no choice but to withdraw from the body.
The sensation was novel and shocking. So this is what a barbarian is like?
Of course, a barbarian who could kill Zhou Shaofeng while being surrounded by the firepower of armed police was no ordinary barbarian.
Time flowed slowly within the Memory Space. Soon, it reached the moment when the middle-aged man stepped forward to face the barbarian.
Feeling the dizziness leave him, Chen Shouyi hesitated over whether he should enter the barbarian's body again.
He wanted to feel how the barbarian's muscles exerted force during battle.
But this was, after all, murder—a cruel and bloody murder.
The middle-aged man's head would be shattered, his brains spraying in all directions.
If this had been a movie, he could have watched without blinking while eating popcorn, his mind utterly untroubled.
But this was a memory. Just that afternoon, the middle-aged man had died miserably right before his eyes.
And now he had to enter the barbarian's body and personally feel how "he" killed the man—how he crushed the man's head with his fist.
He struggled inwardly for a while, but the memory of the battle was about to pass.
At last, he made his decision.
The next moment, his mind entered... the middle-aged man's body.
The man's body was stronger than Chen Shouyi's, at least reaching the standard of a Martial Apprentice. But after experiencing the barbarian's body, this body made him feel exceptionally "weak."
Before the tragedy unfolded, he gripped the broom tightly. The muscles throughout his body tensed in sequence, as if he wanted to draw a "sword."
But the barbarian was far too fast—so fast that he exceeded the man's ability to react. In an instant, a violent wind rushed into his face. Then the fist came from far to near, smashing heavily into his head in the blink of an eye.
Chen Shouyi heard a booming explosion. His vision went black, and his mind was thrown out.
If he had been able to feel his heart, it would probably have been pounding violently by now.
The experience of death was unpleasant. Though this was only a weakened version, less than one ten-thousandth of true death, it still brought a chill from the depths of his heart.
He rewound the memory and returned to that earlier moment.
This time, he chose to enter the barbarian. Since he had already died in the man's place once, little of his guilt remained, and he no longer faced much psychological resistance.
Looking at the corpse on the ground, Chen Shouyi emerged from the barbarian's body. He composed his complicated emotions and felt somewhat disappointed.
The barbarian's method of exerting force was quite crude and still at an initial stage. Compared to ordinary people, he might already have refined it through countless trials, with precise control over his strength, but he still could not compare to humanity's martial arts.
It made sense when he thought about it. One side possessed techniques and experience gradually accumulated through generations during the hunting of a primitive tribal era, while the other possessed the collective wisdom of the Information Age.
Most importantly, supernatural abilities were manifest in the other world, while the extraordinary remained hidden on Earth. The different environments of the two worlds meant that the other world placed far less importance on the pursuit of technique than Earth did.
However, the barbarian's terrifying physical attributes made up for everything. Absolute strength could overcome any technique. Chen Shouyi had heard that saying before but had never truly understood it. Only now did he personally experience the terror of power.
It could truly crush everything.
The next day, Dongning City remained calm and peaceful, and his family's restaurant reopened.
He also faced his first monthly examination since entering his third year of high school.
His state of mind was calm now. When the Chinese exam paper was handed out, he answered the questions one after another. The tip of his pen rasped across the paper, and apart from leaving a few blanks for poems and verses he could not complete, he filled the paper from top to bottom.
He did not know whether he had done well, but Chen Shouyi was at least quite satisfied.
The second subject was mathematics, which was much harder for Chen Shouyi. He first finished the questions he knew how to solve, then tackled the difficult ones. Even when the exam ended, he still had no clue how to solve two of the major problems.
The English and comprehensive science exams the next day left him just as stumped.
By the time the exams were over, Chen Shouyi felt completely drained.
"Chen Shouyi, how did you do?" Zhang Xiaoyue suddenly quickened her pace and caught up with him after he walked out of the classroom.
Looking at Zhang Xiaoyue's charming smile beside him, Chen Shouyi could not help recalling the soft little hand he had held two days earlier. His heart pounded several times.
His face, however, revealed nothing. A month of "training" had at least allowed him to remain outwardly calm when facing women.
"I'm afraid my grades are hopeless."
He had missed far too many classes. A month of effort was not enough to make up for it.
"But you'll probably take the Martial Arts Academy entrance exam, right?" Zhang Xiaoyue looked up at Chen Shouyi with a charming smile, her limpid gaze seeming to carry some inexplicable meaning.
"Yeah. If nothing unexpected happens."
"What about you?"
"I haven't decided yet. But I'll attend a university in Zhonghai."
Their tacit exchange left Sun Xin standing nearby dumbfounded, but neither of them paid him any attention.
Up ahead, people had gathered in the small woods. It seemed that a fight was taking place.
Chen Shouyi paid it no mind. An ordinary high school like Dongning Fifth Middle School was laxly managed, and fights were far too common to be surprising.
A group of teenagers with excess hormones only needed the slightest friction before sparks flew.
"The one being beaten looks like Zhao Yifeng," Sun Xin said softly.
Chen Shouyi stopped in his tracks.
When Zhang Xiaoyue heard it was a classmate, she hurriedly shouted, "Stop! Don't hit him! Which class are you from? I'm telling the teacher!"
"Oh, really? Go tell the teacher, beauty. I'm so scared!" The three stopped. One of them, a tall fellow who seemed to be their leader, shook his flowing hair and spoke with a cocky expression.
Looking at the shame and anger on Zhang Xiaoyue's face, Chen Shouyi shook his head inwardly. Reasoning was useless with people like this. The weaker you acted, the more they bullied you. Only a harder fist could convince them.
He had known this principle before, but he had not possessed a harder fist. Now he did.
He immediately charged forward.
His speed was astonishing. With a single stride, he rushed into the crowd.
The tall youth was still standing there without reacting when Chen Shouyi casually swung his hand and sent him staggering several steps before he landed hard on his butt.
Only then did the other two youths react. They immediately rushed forward, preparing to subdue Chen Shouyi together.
Unfortunately, against someone who was practically a Martial Apprentice, their resistance was as meaningless as a child resisting an adult.
He reached out and seized both their arms. Borrowing their momentum, he yanked them forward, and the two fell cleanly to the ground, eating dirt.
"Just you wait."
"Don't run if you've got the guts!"
"Thank you!" Zhao Yifeng stood up with a swollen, bruised face. He looked at Chen Shouyi, then at the pretty Zhang Xiaoyue, and spoke timidly.
"Aren't we friends?" Chen Shouyi said.
"Zhao Yifeng, why did they beat you?" Zhang Xiaoyue asked.
"It's... it's nothing!" His mouth moved, and he spoke with a flushed face.
In the end, Zhao Yifeng still did not say why. Soon, he limped away.
Chen Shouyi watched his departing back in silence, as if he had seen his former self.
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