After dinner, he brewed a pot of Ginseng Tea.
Chen Jue did not go back to the reservoir dam to train. Having only just recovered from a serious illness, he figured it was best not to expose himself to the chilly mountain winds at night.
The ancients had a saying: "When pathogenic wind enters the body, a hundred illnesses arise." Chen Jue understood only the basics, but the three-pronged approach of donkey-hide gelatin, ginseng, and old duck soup had cured his physical depletion.
That made him believe all the more firmly in this traditional Chinese medical theory. In effect, he had tested it on himself.
Since both dietary nourishment and medicinal supplements had worked, Chen Jue naturally believed there was something to this so-called pathogenic wind.
Instead of going to the reservoir to train, Chen Jue shut the front door and did some recovery exercises at home.
The newly arrived dumbbells came in five pairs, with five different weights ranging from 2.5 kg to 20 kg. They all had a stainless-steel finish, and the seller had thrown in a pair of workout gloves to prevent chafing.
After changing into workout clothes and setting up the dumbbells, pull-up bar, and Sit-Up Bench, Chen Jue began exercising.
His strength stat was still below the normal adult male benchmark of 1 point. Combined with his obesity, that left him panting after just a few sets.
"Lifting weights takes even more energy than martial arts training!"
After a few sets, Chen Jue had more or less figured out how it worked.
If the stat panel accelerated his progress in martial arts and compressed the time needed to train, then lifting weights relied entirely on rapidly draining his stamina in exchange for muscle growth, stronger bones, and better cardiovascular function, while also giving his willpower a workout.
Although Boat Boxing was an ancient martial art with a long history, it had ultimately been devised by people of the past and had its limitations. Naturally, its muscle-building effects could not compare with modern fitness training that targeted specific areas.
Sure enough, after half an hour of lifting weights, Chen Jue's strength and agility had each increased by 0.01. At that rate, a few days of consistent training would probably bring both stats back above the adult male benchmark of 1 point.
What did not surprise Chen Jue, however, was that while his strength and agility had risen slightly, a downward arrow had appeared beside his constitution stat, which had dropped from 1.32 to 1.31.
His health index had also fallen from 89% to 85%, completely matching his earlier suspicions.
"Trading constitution and health for strength and agility-wouldn't that count as some crooked, evil technique in a martial arts novel?" Chen Jue could not help making a few self-deprecating remarks.
What Chen Jue did not know was that this was entirely the result of overtraining and pushing himself too hard. An ordinary person who had not exercised in a long time might even suffer muscle breakdown and bloody urine from training like this. His limited knowledge had led him to misunderstand fitness training.
Compared with martial arts whose lineages had lost parts of their teachings, scientific fitness training could actually produce better exercise results.
Fortunately, he was not without a way to address his declining constitution!
After lifting weights until his strength and agility had each increased by 0.02, Chen Jue downed a pot of Ginseng Tea and began practicing the Eight Immortals Stance on the Solid Wood Square Table.
Before long, the 0.02 points of constitution he had lost began slowly returning through his stance training!
Even his health index kept rising in increments of 1% until it recovered to 89%.
This cycle of loss and gain gave Chen Jue a very peculiar idea: Lifting weights + health-nurturing stance training = efficient increases in strength and agility.
What was more, he could stop worrying about drops in his constitution and health index while accelerating the accumulation of free stat points. It was as though some sort of closed loop had formed within him!
Most importantly, few of the fitness experts in those videos practiced stance training like Chen Jue did. Even if some did, they probably could not see the fluctuations in their stat panels as directly as he could.
That made Chen Jue even more confident in his scientific approach of combining martial arts practice with weight training. Add in the external training and internal supplementation mentioned by the Tieba Expert, and he could probably grind all his stats above the standard "1" in just a few days!
He started at seven after dinner and kept training until he stopped at nine thirty.
Utterly exhausted, Chen Jue took a hot shower, then lay down on his bed upstairs, breathing in the pleasant, sun-filled scent of the freshly aired bedding. He watched videos for a while and browsed his Moments feed, then switched off the light at ten and fell into a deep sleep.
His stats had reached the following values:
Name: Chen Jue Age: 27 Health index: 88% Strength: 0.95 Agility: 0.87 Intelligence: 1.22 Constitution: 1.32 Mastered skills: [Boat Boxing Lv1 (69/200)] [Muscle-Tendon Change Classic, Twelve Forms Lv0 (8/100)] [Eight Immortals Stance Lv1 (27/200)] Available free stat points: 0.05
The next morning, as roosters crowed at dawn, Chen Jue woke once again.
He had slept an hour longer than usual that night and felt considerably more rested. The nourishing food and medicinal supplements he had taken the day before probably had a lot to do with it.
He got up and washed, feeling refreshed and energized. His depleted condition had completely disappeared, and he was full of energy, with stamina that felt even better than before!
The weightlifting, sit-ups, and pull-ups had, however, left the muscles in his limbs, abdomen, and back sore to varying degrees.
The soreness was much worse than what he felt after practicing Boat Boxing.
Still, the strength and agility on his stat panel had indeed increased considerably, strengthening Chen Jue's resolve to keep exercising.
He did not intend to train blindly, though. Instead, he planned to draw up a schedule for himself.
Back in Hangzhou, Chen Jue had been a workaholic who made plenty of plans. Otherwise, he would never have worked his way up to a junior supervisory position earning over ten thousand yuan a month.
He opened the Plan It App on his phone, tapped away, and set a few reminders. Then he strapped on sandbag weights and began jogging toward the reservoir in the hills behind his house.
These sandbag weights had also arrived by courier the day before: one set for his legs and one for his arms. Each bag could be adjusted to a maximum of 2.5 kg, and they were detachable and very convenient.
Since this was his first attempt at weighted exercise, Chen Jue did not dare add too much. He strapped a 0.5 kg sandbag to each limb, adding a total of 2 kg to his load in one go.
Sure enough, that made the jog uphill considerably harder.
Fortunately, Chen Jue's constitution was no joke. With his strength stat having risen a fair bit the day before, he could still handle the extra 2 kg.
After jogging for a little over ten minutes to reach the reservoir dam, Chen Jue removed the sandbags and began practicing Boat Boxing and the Eight Immortals Stance.
He had set himself a daily training schedule: head to the reservoir early in the morning, practice boxing and stance training for two hours, then power-walk to Lin Family Village for breakfast.
After breakfast, if he had nothing else planned, he would return home to rest and recover his stamina, then spend the remainder of the morning practicing the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic.
After lunch, he would take a ninety-minute nap.
According to what he had read online, that was the ideal length for an afternoon nap; any longer would only leave him more tired. Chen Jue firmly believed it, since his old irregular routine had often led him to sleep all afternoon on weekends, only to end up feeling more exhausted than on workdays.
After his nap, he would get up and continue practicing the Eight Immortals Stance on the Solid Wood Square Table, combining it with workouts on his exercise equipment to grind his various stats.
He would start cooking at five thirty, finish eating at six, and allow an hour for digestion. After seven, he would repeat his afternoon training routine, finish at nine thirty and shower, then go to sleep on schedule before ten thirty.
It was a very full schedule, with room for flexibility here and there. As long as nothing outside interfered, Chen Jue intended to follow this training plan for a while and see how well it worked.
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