A Twenty-Kilogram Turtle Shell, My Life Weighs Three Ounces

4:58 a.m.

Chen Mo was awakened by the sound of the waves.

Or rather, by the swipe of a turtle's tail.

"It's five o'clock." The turtle's voice came slowly from beside the sofa. "Master wants you up."

Chen Mo opened his eyes.

The living room ceiling was low, and the ceiling fan was still.

Outside the window was still a deep blue expanse. Dawn had not fully broken.

He sat up from the sofa, every muscle in his body cursing him.

Master Roshi's voice came from outside the door.

"Come out."

Chen Mo put on his shoes and pushed the door open.

Master Roshi stood on the beach.

He was no longer wearing a floral shirt, having changed into a dark blue martial arts uniform.

The cuffs were tied tight, and a sash was fastened around his waist.

He was carrying something in his hand.

A turtle shell.

A purple shell with the character "Turtle" written on it.

It was a size smaller than Chen Mo had imagined, but judging from the way Master Roshi held it, it was not light.

"Put it on."

Chen Mo took it.

The instant it landed in his hands, his arms sank halfway down.

Twenty kilograms.

A twenty-kilogram turtle shell.

In his previous life, the heaviest bench press he had done at the gym was thirty kilograms, and he had run out of strength after just three reps.

Chen Mo turned the shell over. It had two straps, like a backpack.

He slipped his arms through them, fastening the shell onto his back.

His legs immediately went weak.

"Run." Master Roshi pointed at the beach. "Run around the island. Its circumference is about four hundred meters. Start with ten laps."

Four kilometers.

With twenty kilograms on his back.

On sand.

Chen Mo said nothing and started running.

The first lap was manageable.

Sand rustled beneath his feet, the turtle shell bounced against his back, and the straps dug into his shoulders.

The sea breeze was salty, but it felt quite pleasant on his face.

The second lap was where things started to go wrong.

His thighs ached, and his knees protested.

The beach offered far more resistance than pavement; every step felt like he was stomping through mud.

Third lap. His breathing began to fall apart.

Fourth lap. His throat started to burn.

By the fifth lap, Chen Mo had slowed to a brisk walk.

Sweat had soaked through his clothes and dripped from his chin onto the sand.

Master Roshi sat in a folding chair with one leg crossed over the other, holding a cup of tea.

"Goku wore forty kilograms back then." He took a sip of tea. "And he was still just a child."

Chen Mo did not have the strength to talk back.

"Krillin started with forty kilograms too," Master Roshi added.

Chen Mo gritted his teeth and kept running.

Sixth lap. He fell.

He pitched face-first into the sand, the turtle shell's weight pressing down on his back and slamming him into it.

He got a mouthful of sand.

Chen Mo lay sprawled for three seconds before getting into a push-up position and trying to push himself up.

He couldn't do it. His arms trembled.

He changed positions, rolling over onto his back first, then onto his side. He propped up his upper body with an elbow, got to one knee, and finally stood.

The whole sequence took twelve seconds.

Master Roshi watched from afar without saying a word.

Seventh lap. Eighth lap. Ninth lap.

Chen Mo was no longer running.

He was walking, shuffling forward with a stiff, mechanical rhythm.

By the time he finished the tenth lap, Chen Mo had both hands braced on his knees, bent over and panting like a leaking bellows.

Master Roshi walked over.

"Rest for two minutes. Then do push-ups. One hundred."

"One hundred?"

"Goku did five hundred back then. I've already given you a twenty percent discount, then another twenty percent discount."

"That's sixty-four."

"You want to do sixty-four?"

"I'll do one hundred."

Master Roshi gave a grunt and returned to sit in his folding chair.

With the turtle shell on his back, Chen Mo lowered himself to the ground.

The first push-up. His arms shook, but he pushed himself up.

The second.

The third.

By the fifteenth, Chen Mo had slowed to one every three seconds. The weight of the turtle shell bent his spine into a bow.

The twentieth. His arms had already stopped obeying him.

He gritted his teeth and pushed upward. Halfway up, his arms gave out, and he slapped back down onto the beach.

He got a second mouthful of sand.

"Do you know what your problem is right now?" Master Roshi's voice came from above his head.

With his face buried in the sand, Chen Mo answered dully.

"I'm too weak."

"No." Master Roshi crouched down. "Your muscles are exerting force, but your qi isn't working with them. You don't know how to use qi to assist muscle movement."

Chen Mo turned his head to look at him.

"The King Kai Fist is an explosive qi technique. You've mastered the most advanced method of output, but you don't understand the most basic applications at all. It's like someone who knows how to fly a rocket but can't walk."

"Then how do I train it?"

"I'll teach you tonight. Train your body during the day, train your qi at night." Master Roshi stood up. "Now keep going. Thirty-five."

Chen Mo lifted his face out of the sand and continued pushing.

The morning training lasted from five in the morning until noon.

Running, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, single-leg jumps, and sprints across the sand. He did all of it with the turtle shell on his back.

The final exercise was weighted walking in the sea.

Master Roshi had him walk out until the water reached his chest, then move sideways back and forth.

With the resistance of the seawater added to the weight of the turtle shell, Chen Mo felt like a piece of iron being ground down.

At noon, they ate. Master Roshi cooked a pot of fish soup using the two little fish he had caught, along with some compressed biscuits Chen Mo had brought, broken up and tossed in.

It tasted average. But Chen Mo drank three bowls.

"Rest for two hours this afternoon." Master Roshi picked fish bones with his chopsticks. "The second round starts at three."

"There's a second round?"

"You think martial arts training is some nine-to-five clock-in job?"

Chen Mo shut up.

He had survived the 996 grind in his previous life.

At least this didn't require writing weekly reports.

The afternoon training was even harsher.

Master Roshi began teaching him basic combat.

The Turtle School's foundational techniques: stance training, punches, kicks, and blocks.

Master Roshi demonstrated each movement once, then had Chen Mo repeat it a hundred times.

Nothing seemed remarkable when Master Roshi demonstrated them.

He was a short old man, moving at an unhurried pace.

But when Chen Mo imitated him, he discovered that every seemingly simple movement contained an extremely precise mechanical structure.

The shifting of the center of gravity, the transmission of force through the waist and hips, the coordination of the shoulders and arms.

After Chen Mo threw thirty punches, Master Roshi called a stop.

"Your punches aren't transmitting force. Your hand is moving, but your waist isn't. Force comes up from the ground, through the legs, waist, shoulder, elbow, and fist. Right now, you're relying entirely on your arm muscles to swing."

"A punch swung like that wouldn't even count as a tickle against an android. You couldn't even scratch it."

Chen Mo started over.

He corrected himself punch by punch.

Master Roshi occasionally reached out and gave him a light nudge.

Every time he did, Chen Mo lost his balance completely.

The old man's hand looked as if it had merely brushed against him, but the force was terrifyingly precise.

Every time, it landed exactly on the weakest point of Chen Mo's balance.

"Your center of gravity is too high. Lower it another inch."

"Your waist is loose. Tighten it."

"Don't hold your breath when you punch. Exhale."

The sun moved from directly overhead to the west, then toward the sea.

Six in the afternoon. Training ended.

Chen Mo sprawled on the beach, limbs spread wide like a starfish dried out by the sun.

The turtle shell pressed beneath him, digging into his spine until it went numb.

He did not even have the strength to roll over.

Master Roshi sat nearby in a folding chair, drinking tea.

"Rest up. Dinner's at seven. At eight, I'll start teaching you how to control your qi."

"Master." Chen Mo stared up at the sky as though it were a ceiling.

"Hmm?"

"Was it this intense when you taught Goku?"

"Three times more intense. And Goku wouldn't lie on the beach crying about being tired. He'd ask whether there was an even heavier shell."

"He's a Saiyan."

"Krillin wouldn't complain about being tired either. He'd cry in secret."

"...Krillin sounds more like a normal person."

"Krillin is an Earthling." Master Roshi took a sip of tea. "A pure Earthling. No Saiyan bloodline, no Namekian regenerative abilities, nothing at all. Yet he followed Goku all the way to Namek."

Chen Mo said nothing.

"Yamcha too. Tien Shinhan too. Chiaotzu too. They're all Earthlings." Master Roshi's voice became even. "Their talent can't compare to a Saiyan's, but they never stopped training just because they couldn't measure up."

"What kind of Earthling has no nose? And no Earthling has three eyes. He's definitely one of the Three-Eyed People."

"Wrong. Why can't an Earthling have three eyes? Werewolves exist on Earth, and a panda is king. So what's strange about that?"

Chen Mo sat up from the beach.

"I never said I wouldn't train. I was just asking."

Master Roshi glanced at him.

"Tomorrow, the turtle shell goes up to twenty-two kilograms."

"Fine."

Eight that evening.

After dinner, Master Roshi brought Chen Mo to the beach.

The moon had risen, laying a sheet of broken silver across the sea.

"Sit down. Cross your legs."

Chen Mo sat cross-legged on the sand.

Master Roshi stood before him.

"Close your eyes. Feel the qi inside your body."

"I don't know what qi is supposed to feel like."

"That red aura around you when you used the King Kai Fist was qi. The fact that you can use the King Kai Fist means you have qi inside you. You just don't know how to consciously draw it out."

Chen Mo closed his eyes.

He felt nothing. Darkness. Silence. The sound of waves. The sound of a sea turtle turning over in the distance.

"Don't think about anything else. Focus your attention on your dantian. Three finger-widths below your navel."

Chen Mo focused on that spot.

There was still nothing.

"Normal," Master Roshi said. "It'd be a miracle if you could feel it on the first day. Sensing ki takes time. Just sit here every night for an hour, until you can feel a warm mass in your dantian."

"How long will that take?"

"Krillin took a month. Goku took three days."

"...I'll probably fall into the one-month category."

"That's not quite right." Master Roshi crouched down until they were eye level. "You might take even longer than a month."

Chen Mo decided not to ask any more questions.

Master Roshi sat down beside him, also cross-legged.

But he did not close his eyes. He watched the sea.

"This island is very safe," Master Roshi suddenly said.

Chen Mo opened one eye to look at him.

"The androids came by once. About three years ago." Master Roshi's voice was calm. "Android 17 and Android 18 flew over these waters. I was sitting right here at the time."

"They noticed you?"

"I suppressed my ki to zero," Master Roshi said. "To the androids, this island was just an uninhabited reef. An old man on it, with a power level so low that even their Scouter couldn't be bothered to mark it. They took one look and left."

Chen Mo sat up straighter.

"They won't come a second time," Master Roshi said. "Androids don't return to places they've already checked, places with no value. They find it boring."

Chen Mo thought about it. That did fit Android 17 and Android 18's behavior patterns.

They destroyed cities for fun. A deserted island with nothing but fish and sea turtles really would be boring to them.

"So you can train without worry," Master Roshi said. "At least on this island, you won't have to worry about a blonde beauty suddenly dropping out of the sky to kill you."

Chen Mo thought, It's not just a blonde beauty who wants to kill me. There's also a black-haired handsome man.

He did not say it aloud.

"Keep sensing. Don't get distracted."

Chen Mo closed his eyes again.

An hour later.

He still felt nothing.

Master Roshi told him to go back inside and sleep.

Chen Mo returned to the living room and collapsed onto the sofa.

He took out the Scouter.

The green radar swept the area.

Within fifty kilometers, it was clear.

He expanded the range to two hundred kilometers.

To the north.

Three dots of light.

No.

Chen Mo stared at the screen.

Two dots were together, moving southwest.

The third dot was alone, heading east.

The two traveling together had matching signal signatures—Android 17 and Android 18.

The one traveling alone was Android 16.

Chen Mo sat upright.

Android 16 had separated from Android 17 and Android 18.

He recalled the original setting.

Android 16 had a gentle personality. He disliked destruction and loved nature and animals.

In the main timeline, he was the only android who had actively stepped forward to oppose Cell.

And his reason was not to fight.

It was to protect.

What he protected was not humanity.

What he protected was every living thing on this planet: birds, insects, trees, flowers.

An existence deemed "defective" by his creator.

Now, he had awakened. He watched the birds, then parted ways with Android 17 and Android 18.

Chen Mo's mind began to turn.

Android 16 did not like destruction. Android 17 and Android 18 spent their days blowing up cities.

With the three of them together, trouble was bound to happen sooner or later.

And sure enough, it did.

Android 16 left on his own.

To Chen Mo, that was a good thing.

A very good thing.

In the original story, Android 16's combat power surpassed both Android 17 and Android 18.

But this was the main timeline, and every timeline was different. Android 18 in this timeline might even be stronger.

If he could win over such a superpowered being who disliked fighting and loved peace...

No. Don't think that far ahead yet.

Chen Mo looked once more at Android 16's direction of travel.

East. He was moving slowly—so slowly it could even be called crawling.

He did not seem to be flying. It was more like he was... walking.

A burly man over two meters tall with an orange-red mohawk, taking a stroll through the ruins of the apocalypse.

He was probably watching birds.

Chen Mo put away the Scouter.

He needed to train himself up first.

Going to find Android 16 with a combat power of 5 would be no different from delivering takeout.

But he needed to remember this information.

Android 16 was acting alone. He was heading east.

He noted down the coordinates and movement path.

Chen Mo lay back down on the sofa, using his canvas bag as a pillow.

Tomorrow at five. Continue.

Before closing his eyes, an image flashed through his mind.

Three points of light moved across the radar. Two were together, while one was alone.

The lone one was moving toward him.

It was not coming for him. Android 16 did not know he existed.

But if he maintained his current trajectory, Android 16 would pass near the southern coastline in another three to five days.

Chen Mo turned over.

Outside the window, waves crashed against the shore again and again.

He was thinking about something.

If he could find a chance to make contact when Android 16 passed by...

Chen Mo closed his eyes and fell asleep three seconds later.

There were no androids in his dream.

In his dream, he was back in the rented apartment from his previous life. The alarm was ringing. It was time for work.

He felt that the turtle shell was better after all.

At least he did not have to write weekly reports.