Shaolin Impact-Conditioning Skill

As the saying went, train the sinews, bones, and skin externally, and train the breath internally.

Over the past week, Chen Jue had thoroughly mastered that "breath," even grasping the advanced Bright Force technique of sealing his pores. A single strike from him could punch a hole through a brick wall.

Yet his skin, bones, and connective tissues were not strong enough. Before he had even learned how to hit someone, he had already injured himself.

That made Chen Jue want to try learning a body-conditioning art to see whether he could improve his resistance to blows.

During his frequent visits to Tieba these past few days, he had often heard the experts say, "Before you train to fight, learn to take a beating!"

So he went online and searched for the body-conditioning arts those experts had mentioned.

Iron Sand Palm went without saying. A quick search turned up all sorts of training methods, and once mastered, it supposedly let practitioners chop bricks and smash glass bottles with their bare hands.

But chopping off the unsupported half of a brick was really a physics lesson. Back in high school, Chen Jue had watched his physics teacher demonstrate it himself. With the fulcrum positioned correctly and enough force behind the strike, even someone who had never trained in Iron Sand Palm could break off half a brick.

That was a clever trick, not genuine martial skill. Ordinary people could do it too after a few practice attempts.

Traveling street performers in ancient times also liked to fool people with that unsupported-brick trick. Stunts such as smashing a large stone on someone's chest while they lay on a bed of nails likewise exploited physics. In that ignorant age, such tricks could fool practically anyone.

True Iron Sand Palm allowed a practitioner to lay a brick flat on the ground, then split bricks and crack stone with a single palm strike.

However, most people who practiced Iron Sand Palm had frighteningly thick calluses on their hands. Chen Jue had even seen people whose training had left their hands deformed, with the flesh around their knuckles and the backs of their hands swollen like loaves of bread. It looked terrifying.

They must have used the wrong method and gone off the rails with their training, right? Seeing those images of hands, Chen Jue could not help shaking his head.

He simply abandoned the idea of practicing Iron Sand Palm and searched for the Impact-Conditioning Skill instead.

Many schools had their own Impact-Conditioning Skill, but Chen Jue settled on Shaolin's version at first glance.

After all, he had learned his Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic from instructional videos by Shaolin warrior monks. Feeling that he had a connection with Shaolin, he began studying the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill first.

The Shaolin Impact-Conditioning Skill was one of Shaolin's Seventy-Two Supreme Arts. Also known as the Slapping Skill, it trained both the internal and external aspects of the body.

Practicing it took considerable time. In the first year, practitioners used a long brick-shaped block made from hardwood or a broad piece of bamboo to strike their entire bodies. In the second year, they replaced the wooden block with an ordinary Kiln Brick, then switched to a Metal Brick after another six months.

Despite its name, the Metal Brick was not made of gold, but cast from copper and iron. After another six months of practice, the muscles throughout the body would become exceptionally firm. The skill also included complementary breathing methods that strengthened the internal organs and some of the body's softer areas.

"Doesn't look difficult to learn! It just takes a lot of time. Everything is measured in years." Chen Jue smacked his lips. Fortunately, he had his attribute panel, so the time requirement did not worry him.

His only concern was that some areas requiring Impact-Conditioning Skill practice, such as his back, were blind spots he could not reach himself. He would need someone else to help him practice.

Chen Jue was currently fumbling his way through all his training alone. Even finding a training partner would not be easy.

After all, few villagers still lived in Chen Village, and most were elderly men and women. The handful of middle-aged residents were busy farming or working away from home. They would probably find it hard to agree to such an absurd request to help him train.

I'll start with the areas I can reach and see whether I can unlock the skill first.

If I can unlock it, I'll just use attribute points to force it up afterward. With that thought, Chen Jue relaxed.

As for the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt that the experts had mentioned, Chen Jue had no energy to learn them for now. He would only bite off more than he could chew. He planned to begin with the straightforward, easy-to-understand Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill.

He rose early again the next morning. After his breakthroughs in stance training and fist techniques the night before, all of Chen Jue's attributes had increased substantially.

His constitution in particular had reached 1.63, giving his energy and stamina another boost. He woke up feeling refreshed and full of life.

Beyond that, his soaring constitution attribute had also brought extraordinary recovery abilities.

Although his right hand had suffered some superficial injuries, a thin, dark scab had already formed over the wound overnight. In less than three days, it would probably fall off to reveal new skin.

Previously, a wound like that would have taken at least ten days or so to heal completely.

The tiny fracture inside was a little more troublesome, though. He had sprayed on some Yunnan Baiyao the night before, and while it seemed to have helped, the discomfort remained.

I'll buy some large marrow bones today and make bone broth for a nutritional boost. Some shrimp for extra calcium, too. There's no need to see a doctor over such a minor injury. With that thought, Chen Jue replaced the gauze, sprayed on more medicine, and wrapped his hand again.

He glanced at the weather outside. A steady drizzle was falling. After a whole summer of sweltering heat, some rain had finally arrived.

He could not go train on the reservoir embankment in the rain, so Chen Jue took an umbrella and the woodcutting machete his grandfather had left behind, then headed to a bamboo grove behind the village.

Spotting a fallen bamboo stalk in the grove, he chopped off a section and brought it home, then used the blade to shave it into a broad bamboo board.

"Let's try this Impact-Conditioning Skill!"

After returning home and shutting the door, he pulled up the video he had downloaded before bed the night before and cast it to his newly purchased large-screen television.

Then, following the Shaolin warrior monk on the screen, he began striking the areas of his body he could reach with the bamboo board.

Rhythmic smack, smack sounds rang through the house as he struck his limbs, hands, feet, chest, abdomen, both sides of his rib cage, and head. Apart from his injured right hand and his back, which he could not reach, he covered most of his body.

While trying out the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill, Chen Jue also incorporated the advanced Bright Force technique he had mastered the night before. His pores alternately closed and relaxed as he imitated the warrior monk's breathing in the video, and he soon established his own distinctive training rhythm.

After nearly half an hour of this conditioning practice, the skill section of his attribute panel finally flickered indistinctly, and a new entry appeared: [Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill Level 0 (1/100)].

Looks like another martial art like the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic. Half an hour of training only raised its proficiency by one point. Chen Jue could not help sighing inwardly.

He kept practicing for another half hour, watching the proficiency creep up by another point. Finding this snail's pace truly unbearable, Chen Jue abandoned the idea of improving the skill through practice alone. Instead, he jumped onto the Solid Wood Square Table and assumed the Eight Immortals Stance.

An hour of practicing the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill had not only been inefficient, but had failed to earn him even a single free attribute point. To Chen Jue, it was far too much of a waste of time.

With that time, he would be better off practicing his stance, earning more free attribute points, and putting them straight into the skill!