Muscle Crusher-Big Black

"How do you want to do this?"

Standing in the plaza, Fu Junlin helplessly kept his hands in his pockets and looked around the empty fitness area.

It was mealtime. Who would be here?

Still, handing control of his body over to someone else always gave Fu Junlin the uneasy feeling that he was about to be raped.

"Why do you care? I've taken over the body, so I can do whatever I want with it!"

Big Black said smugly.

"Fine, but wait half an hour."

Fu Junlin nodded helplessly, then found a seat and sat down.

"Huh? Why? Did your mom tell you not to exercise? Hahahaha..."

Big Black burst into mocking laughter.

To his surprise, Fu Junlin nodded seriously.

"Yes."

Big Black: ...

Fu Junlin sat there steadily for half an hour, getting up to stroll around from time to time. Only after he felt that he had digested enough did he say to Big Black,

"Come on."

The moment those words left his mouth, they felt even stranger—more like rape, except the kind where he had resigned himself to it.

"Alright!"

In an instant, Fu Junlin felt his body being controlled. His movements were somewhat stiff, mainly because he had yet to adjust to it.

"Hey, don't resist so much. Relax a little. You're making this no fun for me!"

Big Black howled.

The more Fu Junlin listened, the more wrong it sounded.

Still, he gradually relaxed.

Then he felt as though he had become a spectator. It was like autopilot—he was no longer in control, yet his body remained full of vigor.

Or rather, even more vigorous than before.

This feeling of losing control was indeed deeply uncomfortable.

Of course, what made him even more uncomfortable was this.

Big Black was running around like crazy.

Controlling Fu Junlin's body, Big Black jumped and ran circles around the plaza, occasionally leaping high into the air.

The passersby all had the strange feeling that, despite there clearly being no one around, some monkey was entertaining itself.

A few people who had originally wanted to sit in the plaza even left with strange looks on their faces, keeping far away from him.

"Please tell me you don't have some kind of mental illness."

Fu Junlin said speechlessly.

"I'm warming up!"

Big Black spat.

"Do you know how hard this is for me? I take over your body and still have to exercise for you, yet you can't even work out on your own. Serves you right."

Big Black complained while launching into a frenzy of shadowboxing on the spot.

"That's called supporting yourself, thank you. I'm a War Banner Master. I don't need to work out. I only train sprinting. When monsters come after us, I just need to run faster than my teammates..."

Fu Junlin said as though it were perfectly reasonable.

"You're really going places!"

As he spoke, Big Black flipped over and dropped to the ground, beginning to do push-ups.

One hundred wide-grip push-ups, one hundred narrow-grip push-ups, one hundred diamond push-ups, one hundred tiger push-ups, fifty one-arm push-ups on each side...

At first, Fu Junlin did not think much of it. He bickered and chatted with Big Black while keeping track of the time.

But gradually, he realized that Big Black seemed not to have left the ground for more than ten minutes.

"Brother, are you trying to work me to death? Aren't you training any other parts of the body?"

Although Fu Junlin had not counted, thinking back on it now, there had probably been at least seven or eight hundred push-ups.

Whenever he got tired, he would hold a plank or jump in place. Once he recovered, it was back to push-ups.

While Big Black controlled the body, Fu Junlin did not feel anything—neither pain nor any other sensation.

However, Fu Junlin could take control of his body back by force, because Big Black seemed to become extremely fatigued while occupying his body. There was a fatigue limit.

Once that fatigue reached its critical point, Big Black would be unable to control him even if he wanted to.

Normally, unless Fu Junlin granted permission, Big Black could control at most a few muscles. Even then, once his fatigue built up, Big Black had to sleep for a while.

"There are only forty minutes today. What's the point of training other places? You train only one body part a day."

Big Black said irritably.

"Oh... Right, that Gene Lock you mentioned last time—how exactly do you open it?"

After thinking for a moment, Fu Junlin finally asked the question.

Ever since experiencing Biological Vision, he had been intensely curious about it.

"Aren't I opening it for you right now?!"

Big Black snapped angrily.

"Huh? Through working out?"

Fu Junlin was instantly a little dumbfounded.

"What did you think?"

Big Black said speechlessly.

Fu Junlin immediately became doubtful. Fitness training was a required course for Subspecies. Among Subspecies, there was no shortage of people who trained their bodies, because that was the only thing they could train.

Yet he had never seen anyone open a Gene Lock like Big Black had.

Sensing Fu Junlin's doubts, Big Black explained,

"Fitness training is not ordinary fitness training. The reason the Gene Locks within living organisms are called locks is because they impose all kinds of limitations on the organism.

Break through those limitations, and you can break through the Gene Locks and advance toward the deeper secrets of genes.

The lowest-level lock of the Gene Lock is muscle cells. Ordinary exercise does damage muscle cells, which are then resynthesized to grow stronger.

But that intensity is far from enough. What we want is not damage, but pulverization! Let them undergo annihilation again and again, then painfully reassemble!

By repeating this cycle, you can break the first layer of the Gene Lock and gain superhuman abilities related to your muscles.

The second layer of the Gene Lock will have a second set of limitations that needs to be broken. You'll understand when the time comes."

Big Black's patient explanation quickly helped Fu Junlin understand quite a bit.

Come to think of it, that made sense.

Damage meant soreness. Pulverization meant disability...

People always said they could not move after a workout, but that was just talk. He had never seen anyone work out and become completely unable to move afterward.

But Fu Junlin was different.

Forty minutes passed quickly. Fu Junlin could not remember how many push-ups, or how many variations, he had done.

He only knew that Big Black had just returned control of the body to him.

Fu Junlin immediately collapsed facedown onto the ground, unable to get up.

Because both his arms were wrecked...

His chest muscles and triceps had swollen enormously.

Two piercing pains occupied all of Fu Junlin's senses, as though someone were scorching the insides of his muscles with blazing fire.

Fu Junlin trembled from head to toe in agony.

But this time, he did not complain about Big Black tormenting him.

If it had to be pulverized, then let it be pulverized!

Only...

"Big Black... Can we discuss something? Next time, before you return control of my body, help me take out a Battle Banner first."

Fu Junlin's arms hung limply at his sides. As he spoke, he laboriously pressed his head against the ground, bent his legs forward, and pushed himself up into a kneeling position.

If a child eating a lollipop came along now, they could beat him senseless, and he would have no ability to fight back.

"Got it. I'm so sleepy. I'm going to sleep first."

Big Black seemed extremely exhausted, his voice thick with drowsiness. After speaking, he went completely silent.

"I really wish I had telekinesis that could move things from a distance."

Fu Junlin murmured. His arms hurt as though they were on fire even when he did not move them, and forcing his muscles to move was an agony beyond imagining.

But he had no choice.

Fu Junlin gritted his steel-hard teeth and swung his swollen, blood-engorged arms, trembling as he reached for the Battle Banner.

Beneath the dim sky, in the deserted plaza, Fu Junlin's suppressed screams echoed from deep in his throat...