"Forget it!"
"Being an athlete doesn't seem easy either. All those training camps and competitions everywhere-how could that compare to the freedom and ease I have now?"
"Besides, I'm already this old, and I've never trained or competed. Suddenly running that fast would attract too much attention, and that wouldn't be good." Chen Jue shook his head and abandoned the idea of becoming an athlete.
All he wanted was to quietly practice back home, see whether he could break free of his family's tragic fate, and strengthen his body to lay the groundwork for a longer life.
He had no intention whatsoever of chasing fame and fortune!
To put it in trendy terms, his situation was what people online called "going with the flow" and "lying flat."
Except that somewhere along the way, he had accidentally broken through the limits of the human body. Even Chen Jue himself had never seen that coming!
"No wonder I could run so fast this morning. Have I really gotten this strong already?" Chen Jue rubbed his chin, secretly pleased and a little proud.
Who wouldn't want a stronger body and the ability to run a little faster?
He strolled along the cinder track, letting his thoughts wander and calming himself down a little. Then he reached into the backpack he had brought and took out the regulation 7.26-kilogram shot.
"So light!"
"No wonder that twenty-kilogram dumbbell felt lighter and lighter when I lifted it at home. It was all down to my steadily increasing strength!"
Chen Jue instinctively glanced at the strength value of 1.01 on his stats panel.
An agility score of 0.98 was enough to let him break the ten-second barrier in the hundred meters. How weak could his strength possibly be now that it had passed "1"?
Standing beside the shot-put sandpit, he recalled the turning motion his PE teacher had taught him back in school. He nestled the 7.26-kilogram shot against his shoulder, then twisted at the waist, turned, and drove it forward.
Whoosh!
The gray shot traced a perfect arc through the air, then landed in the distant sandpit with a thud.
He picked up the measuring tape and measured the distance.
Good grief!
22.81 meters!
Only a little over half a meter short of the world record!
Unlike the hundred-meter test, shot-put results didn't depend on whether you used electronic or hand timing. However far you threw it was your result.
For this throw, Chen Jue had used the power generation he had learned from Boat Boxing and the force control of the Eight Immortals Stance. With a single throw, he had broken the national men's shot-put record and come remarkably close to the world record.
This made Chen Jue even more certain of his theory about that "1" stat point for a standard adult male.
"Try a few more throws?"
Chen Jue retrieved the shot, his face lit with excitement.
He had competed in his school's shot-put events back in high school, but back then, a little over ten meters was his limit.
The occasional heavyset boy who could throw it a dozen meters or more was always one of the school's big names.
What Chen Jue hadn't noticed, however, was that the boys' shot used in high school competitions weighed five kilograms, whereas the one he was using now was the standard 7.26-kilogram competition shot.
The level of skill involved and the significance of those results were worlds apart. They couldn't be compared.
"Go!"
He launched the gray 7.26-kilogram shot a second time, with a better feel for it than on his first attempt.
He measured it with the tape: 22.98 meters!
It had actually gone a little farther than his first throw!
"Again!"
Caught up in the excitement, Chen Jue retrieved the shot once more and returned to the throwing circle.
This time, he spent a little longer preparing. Once his breathing and muscles had completely settled, he stepped back, turned, and unleashed his strength with a fierce push. The shot landed considerably farther away than the two previous impact marks!
Seeing this, Chen Jue hurried over with the measuring tape. The astonishing result of this throw immediately had him grinning from ear to ear.
"23.40 meters!"
"Did I just break the world record?"
It felt unreal. Chen Jue pinched his cheek, then tugged at the flesh high on his thigh. The pain told him this was no dream.
"How about trying the long jump?"
Chen Jue glanced at the long-jump sandpit nearby. He picked up the shot, wiped off the dirt and sand stuck to it, and put it back into his backpack before walking over to the long-jump runway.
It was late summer, and the long stretch of sunny weather had baked the sand in the pit dry and hard.
Chen Jue found a wooden rake leaning against the foot of a wall, left behind by some villager drying grain. He turned over the sand in the pit, bringing up plenty of softer, slightly damper sand from underneath. This was to keep himself from getting injured if he used too much force on his jump.
Once the sandpit was ready, Chen Jue slowly walked to the starting point at the far end. He fixed his gaze on the white takeoff board, then sprinted forward, his figure racing down the runway like a streak of gray lightning.
When he reached the white takeoff board, Chen Jue drove his foot down with a thud. His whole body soared like a bird taking flight, as though he were stepping on clouds. His legs cycled through the air several times before he bent forward and landed bottom-first in the sandpit. As soon as he landed, he sprang back to his feet, shook the sand off his backside, and turned to measure the distance with the tape. A full 8.62 meters!
Once again, he had broken a national record, this time in the long jump!
And he was only 0.32 meters short of the men's long-jump world record!
"Good thing whoever built this sandpit didn't cut corners. I nearly jumped right out of it just now."
Chen Jue looked at where he had landed. It was less than a meter from the edge of the pit. Had he jumped any farther, his backside might have landed not on sand, but on hard concrete.
The school administrators who had built this long-jump pit probably never imagined that their little Shannan Primary School would produce someone like Chen Jue, capable of jumping such an outrageous distance!
After spending more than two hours testing his various track-and-field results on the grounds of Shannan Primary School, Chen Jue felt as though he were in a dream. With the same backpack he had brought slung over his shoulders, he slowly walked back to his old family home in Chen Village.
By then, the sun was slowly sinking in the west. The clouds on the horizon looked as though they were ablaze, and all of Chen Village glowed a vivid, blood-red hue in the light.
Learning that his physical capabilities could rival those of the world's very best athletes-and even surpass them-had left Chen Jue stunned for quite some time.
"In the end, I really underestimated this stats panel!"
"If I grind out some more stats, becoming a Superman who can't fly shouldn't be a problem." Chen Jue glanced back at the picturesque sunset, feeling that this life held more promise than his old life in Hangzhou.
That feeling of growing stronger bit by bit was just like leveling up and fighting monsters in a game. It was incredibly addictive.
After returning home and taking a hot shower to wash away the dust and sweat, Chen Jue was still in a daze.
He made himself a simple dinner. As he ate, something suddenly seemed to occur to him, so he opened various forums and Tieba boards. After reading some new posts by the experts, he posted a question about his pores closing on their own while he had chased the thief earlier that day.
Before long, an expert with a Tieba level above twenty began replying beneath his post.
"Caught a little level-three newbie!"
"OP, the involuntary closing of your pores that you described probably means you're getting close to mastering manifest force. (smirk)"
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