It took nearly an hour on the bus to get back to Panlong Town.
This time, Chen Jue skipped the seven-yuan minivan ride to the village and jogged all the way back to his home in Chen Village instead.
Chen Village sat halfway up a mountain, and the road home was winding and steep. Back when he had been working, Chen Jue doubted he could even have walked all the way home. But after awakening his attribute panel, he had actually jogged a full five kilometers in one go without stopping to rest once.
"My stamina is kind of insane!"
"Five kilometers of mountain road, and I'm not even feeling it?"
Although he had carried no extra weight on this jog, Chen Jue felt as though his body had an endless supply of stamina.
Even after running five kilometers and taking a hot shower, he still had energy to spare!
"A constitution of 1.58 is already this crazy?"
"If I raise it even higher..."
Chen Jue took a deep breath and glanced at his attribute panel. He felt that he might have underestimated what that supposed "1" in attributes for a standard adult male actually meant.
That standard adult male attribute value of "1" probably did not mean what he had thought it did.
"Maybe I should find somewhere to test it?"
He checked the time. It was only a little past three in the afternoon. To verify his theory, Chen Jue packed a backpack with all the track and field testing equipment he had bought earlier, then headed out again. After a walk of a little over ten minutes, he reached Shannan Primary School, where he had once studied.
Shannan Primary School stood at the entrance to Lin Family Village. Between years of disrepair and a shortage of school-age children nearby, it had been closed for almost ten years.
However, the school had a basic track and field ground. Instead of a rubberized surface, it had a rather crude cinder surface, but it was good enough for nearby villagers to get their daily exercise.
The long jump sandpit, hundred-meter track, and shot put area were all clearly marked off with white lines. None of it looked abandoned, either. Clearly, villagers from nearby Lin Family Village came over to clean it regularly.
The school's iron gate was unlocked, so Chen Jue pushed it open and went inside. He set his backpack on the concrete flag-raising platform, then took out a stopwatch, intending to test his hundred-meter sprint time first.
While chasing that thief in the morning, Chen Jue had noticed that he ran much faster than before, but he had had no way to test it then.
"Online, they say hand timing is more than 0.2 seconds faster than electronic timing."
"Let's see how fast this 0.98 agility can get me through a hundred meters!"
Chen Jue held the digital stopwatch ready in his hand. Without using a crouch start, he dashed across the starting line from a normal standing position and pressed the stopwatch.
A figure shot down the cinder track. With the change in surroundings, level ground, and better traction underfoot, Chen Jue felt even faster and more explosive than he had during his morning sprint!
As he crossed the finish line, he instinctively stopped the watch. An astonishing three-digit reading appeared before his eyes.
"A hand-timed 9.99 seconds???"
"Holy... shit?!"
Three question marks flashed through Chen Jue's mind, and his face looked like that confused guy meme. He glanced back at the cinder track. It really was a standard hundred-meter track.
To verify that the distance was correct, Chen Jue deliberately took out the measuring tape he used for the long jump and measured the track bit by bit along its iron rail edging.
"It really is a standard hundred meters. A few centimeters of error is perfectly normal when measuring."
"So that 9.99 just now was right?"
Still doubtful, Chen Jue put away the measuring tape and returned to the starting line.
Once he felt his body had settled down a little, he sprinted again with the stopwatch in hand.
His second hand-timed hundred-meter result was 10.02 seconds, a little slower than the first. It was probably because he had used up some stamina and his muscles had not fully relaxed yet.
After all, an all-out hundred-meter sprint was extremely physically demanding. Even professional athletes needed a very long time to recover after a hundred-meter race.
Only his formidable constitution attribute had allowed Chen Jue to sprint twice with such similar results.
"A hand-timed 10.02 seconds would be about 10.22 with electronic timing."
"Does that put me at the national master athlete standard?"
Before testing his hundred-meter time, Chen Jue had specifically looked up the qualifying standards online. The national master athlete standard for the hundred meters was 10.25 seconds.
With this hundred-meter time, Chen Jue could absolutely represent his local area at the National Games if he wanted to.
What was more, he was running on cinders rather than a regulation rubberized track, had not used a proper crouch start, and was wearing ordinary sneakers. With a little professional training, he could probably break the ten-second barrier with ease!
A ten-second hundred-meter dash was almost as easy as eating or drinking for some exceptionally gifted Black athletes, but for an Asian athlete, it was like crossing an impassable chasm.
Looking at China today, only the much-discussed "Su the God" had set the fastest Asian record at 9.83 seconds. Worldwide, fewer than five other Asian athletes could break the ten-second barrier!
No, that was wrong!
There were more than five now!
There was one more: Chen Jue, standing on the cinder track at Shannan Primary School in something of a daze!
And Chen Jue was not even an athlete. He was just an ordinary rural homebody, though adding "beginner martial artist" to his list of occupations might have been more accurate.
"My agility hasn't even reached 1, and I can already put up a time like this?"
"If I grind out a few more attribute points, wouldn't I even break the 9.58-second world record?" Chen Jue felt a little stunned.
He had previously assumed that the "1" in attributes for a standard adult male was merely a passing grade. He had never expected that he had misunderstood it. "1" was actually the upper limit of normal human physical attributes!
Exceeding "1" meant breaking through that limit!
And Chen Jue's 0.98 agility was already very close to that upper limit of "1." That was why he had achieved such an outrageous hundred-meter time!
"I honestly don't know what to say!"
When he had first seen the words [Standard adult male] on the attribute panel, Chen Jue had felt that something was off. Now, as he thought it through, realization struck like thunder in his head.
That definition of a standard adult male probably did not refer only to Asian men. Instead, it was a composite value derived from the physical data of all human males-Asian, white, and Black, even those from ancient times and the future!
Otherwise, there was no explaining how Chen Jue had achieved such an unbelievable hundred-meter time before his agility had even exceeded "1."
"Maybe I should sign up to become an athlete?"
"I could compete and bring glory to the country, win prize money, get an apartment allocated to me..." Chen Jue's thoughts were a jumble. He stood on the cinder track letting his imagination run wild for a long time before finally coming back to his senses.
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