An epiphany?

It was just past nine by the time Chen Jue finished breakfast. He noticed that the time it took him to walk down the mountain to Lin Family Village kept getting shorter.

Although he still had four kilograms of weights strapped to him, his stamina had become remarkably abundant, perhaps because his constitution had improved overnight.

Even after a whole morning of boxing and stance training, he felt he still had energy to spare.

After putting away a large bowl of sticky rice, some savory soy milk, and two steamed rolls, Chen Jue sat scrolling through his phone for over ten minutes. Once he felt the food had settled in his stomach, he got up, ready to power-walk to Panlong Town to buy groceries.

He had tried power-walking there once before. The round trip was only a little over ten kilometers, yet the return journey had left Chen Jue daunted.

Now that all his attributes had surged, Chen Jue resolved to complete this power-walking grocery challenge.

He paid and left the Lin family's breakfast shop. This time, he did not run into his old classmate Lin Ruomeng. Her mother, who sold breakfast there, said she had gone into the city for work.

These days, every rural household had a car, especially in economically developed regions like Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Plenty of people bought cars costing tens or hundreds of thousands of yuan to commute to the city.

As for Lin Ruomeng's little daughter, the mischievous child had been left at the breakfast shop in her parents' care.

This was a snapshot of life for many ordinary people: having children, supporting a family, and living out a quiet, unremarkable lifetime.

As Chen Jue walked, he pondered life's larger questions.

His brief conversation with Old Mr. Huang at the reservoir had given him plenty of information.

The elderly man from Huang Family Village who had taught Old Mr. Huang boxing was probably a tragic example of a martial artist's fate.

In his youth, he had fought on the battlefield to repel foreign invaders. After returning home, he had lived alone, with nothing but his relentless martial arts training.

On top of that, material necessities had been extremely scarce during his lifetime, and he had died in his sixties.

There was much about the story that Chen Jue did not know. Perhaps that martial arts elder had suffered injuries and illnesses on the battlefield that had shortened his life.

Otherwise, Boat Boxing and the Eight Immortals Stance alone should have been more than enough to keep him fit and help him live into his seventies or eighties.

Still, human lifespans were unpredictable. When Chen Jue was in high school, one of his physics teachers had died unexpectedly from a heart attack triggered by a game of table tennis, despite being strong and only in his forties.

That physics teacher had loved sports. He had always looked healthy, laughed and joked with his students, and never overworked himself.

Yet somehow, he had suddenly passed away.

All anyone could say was that life and death were unpredictable, and the King of Hell had come to claim him!

After all, few members of Chen Jue's own family had died peacefully of old age. Both his grandparents had succumbed to illness in their later years, while one parent had died of cancer and the other in a construction-site accident. Those losses had dealt the young Chen Jue a devastating psychological blow.

That was why, after awakening this attribute panel, he had developed such an intense interest in a theory of life evolution he had found online.

Even if he could not ascend to immortality in broad daylight or train himself into an immortal from a novel, he still hoped to live past a hundred without illness or calamity, and see just how far the world would change and advance.

With countless thoughts swirling through his mind and the road passing beneath his feet, Chen Jue came back to his senses to find that he had already reached the market in Panlong Town!

The sensation was extraordinary, as though time had fast-forwarded and he had covered all five kilometers in the blink of an eye.

He was still carrying four kilograms of sandbag weights, yet a glance at the time showed it was only ten in the morning. He had covered the entire journey in less than an hour.

Even Chen Jue himself was startled by how quickly he had walked!

Instinctively, he checked his attribute panel:

Name: Chen Jue

Age: 27

Health index: 98%

Strength: 0.95

Agility: 0.92

Intelligence: 1.23

Constitution: 1.57

Skills mastered: [Boat Boxing Level 1 (100/200)] [Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic Level 1 (6/200)] [Eight Immortals Stance Level 1 (76/200)]

Free attribute points available: 0.12

My agility actually went up by three hundredths in one go!

And why did my intelligence rise too?

Could that state I was in just now... have been the legendary epiphany? The increased attributes startled Chen Jue, and he wondered whether his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Both his agility and intelligence had improved, and he had even accumulated another 0.02 free attribute points.

Such an inconceivable rate of progress was like having a cheat enabled.

Moreover, after power-walking five kilometers, Chen Jue did not feel tired at all. He had only worked up a light sweat, which dried as soon as a cool breeze brushed over him. His toes, however, had been rubbed rather sore, clearly because his sneakers did not fit properly.

Could a stronger constitution make training more effective?

Delighted, Chen Jue had initially planned to put all his newly earned free attribute points into constitution again. But after checking the proficiency of the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic, he abandoned that sudden impulse.

In Chen Jue's view, leveling up this extraordinary Shaolin art could boost his constitution substantially, making it far better value than the modest returns from assigning points directly.

Adding points to constitution was a one-off deal. Once spent, that was it.

But investing in the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic could keep producing constitution gains. Compared side by side, it was obvious which option carried more weight!

Adding points feels good for a moment, but training pays off for a lifetime!

Skills are like tools for developing the body's attribute points. The better the tool, the more attributes I can dig out.

I'll hold off for now. Once I'm back, I'll save up more points and grind another level in the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic first. Having worked out the reasoning, Chen Jue put aside the idea of assigning points and entered the market to stock up.

Softshell turtle, an old hen, an old duck, pigeon-Chen Jue bought a little of every nourishing ingredient he could find. Of course, he needed a balance of meat and vegetables too, so he also bought some dried mushrooms and fresh beef, planning to treat himself to a proper meat feast when he got home.

But the shopping left him a little overloaded. By the time Chen Jue walked out of the market, he was carrying almost fifteen kilograms in his hands.

Feeling the temperature steadily rising outside, he knew the bloody raw ingredients in his bags would soon spoil. With no other choice, he flagged down another seven-seater minivan and paid a few yuan for a ride back to Chen Village.

Ugh! My legs still aren't up to it. I still haven't managed that round-trip grocery power walk.

I wonder how the Marvelous Traveler in Water Margin trained to cover a thousand li by day and eight hundred by night. Was it really some kind of immortal magic, or just exaggeration in the novel?

Still, even the world record for the twenty-kilometer race walk is over an hour. Once I've built up my attributes, there's no way I won't be able to finish this grocery power-walking challenge!

Grumbling inwardly, Chen Jue glanced again at his agility, which had yet to exceed the standard value of 1, and temporarily let go of his fixation on power-walking the twelve-kilometer round trip.