The soup needed two hours to simmer, so Chen Jue first practiced the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic to get his blood flowing, work his tendons, and ease the fatigue from his morning training.
Once the Ten-Ingredient Tonic Decoction was ready, he spent 0.1 free attribute points, putting all of it into the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill.
Soon, the skill's proficiency shot straight up to its maximum of (100/100).
But the breakthrough he had expected never came. Instead, a notification appeared after [Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill]: "One prerequisite for upgrading is missing. This skill can only be upgraded once it has been unlocked."
Chen Jue had assumed allocating attribute points could do anything. He had never expected there to be restrictions!
This caught him completely off guard!
An upgrade prerequisite?
Chen Jue pondered for a moment. With its proficiency maxed out, however, the skin and flesh all over his body felt exceptionally firm, as though he had spent more than a year training by striking himself with bamboo boards.
His skin had not developed calluses, but the increase in hardness and toughness was unmistakable. Even when he scraped it hard with a fingernail, he left only a faint white mark.
My ability to withstand blows really has improved! Chen Jue marveled inwardly. It certainly lived up to its reputation as a Shaolin hard-body art.
The upgrade prerequisite still baffled him, though. He went back over the training instructions for the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill and suddenly remembered that once he reached a certain level of proficiency, he needed to switch to a kiln brick to strike his body.
Chiding himself inwardly for letting his reliance on attribute points dull his thinking, he hurried outside and found a dusty blue brick to bring home.
In the past, houses in the countryside had been built with red bricks, but firing red bricks was now explicitly prohibited. Blue bricks were all he could find.
This particular blue brick was left over from construction at a nearby household, stacked in a corner outside their door beneath a plastic sheet.
Many rural households had this habit. After building a house, they would keep a few leftover bricks stacked in a corner of the yard, just in case something needed repairing someday. That way, they would not have to make a special trip to buy new bricks.
After rinsing the blue brick clean, Chen Jue began using it in place of the wooden brick to strike himself all over.
At first, the blows from the brick hurt quite badly, but after he channeled his strength and closed his pores, Chen Jue found that his resistance to blows had improved considerably.
He kept up the rhythmic slapping blows for nearly half an hour, until the skin all over his body grew hard and took on a bluish tinge. This was the result of blood and qi circulating beneath his skin as his fascia thickened and hardened.
He glanced at [Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill]. Sure enough, the prerequisite mentioned in the notification had unlocked automatically, and the skill shot from its stalled Level 0 (100/100) straight to Level 1 (2/200).
An unfamiliar wave of muscle memory spread throughout his body. His skin, already hard and bluish, actually began growing even harder!
The muscles and fascia beneath his skin continued strengthening as well, and his constitution and strength attributes kept rising. A hollow, depleted feeling swept over him. Alarmed, Chen Jue immediately unwrapped a Mighty Pill and swallowed it, then went to the kitchen, poured himself a large bowl of Ten-Ingredient Tonic Decoction, and gulped it down. A surge of warmth coursed through his body.
Huff, huff!
Chen Jue felt his breathing grow louder and heavier as a warm current raced beneath his skin. When he exerted his strength, dense patches of goosebumps rose across the bluish areas.
His tough fascia and muscles seemed like coiled dragons, forming what looked like a pale blue protective shield over his body!
Only now had he truly gained an initial mastery of the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill!
With the siphoning effect produced by the skill's breakthrough, Chen Jue's constitution rose by 0.03, while his strength jumped by a full 0.05.
I never expected this hard-body art to increase my strength by so much!
Looks like the training paid off!
Pleased, Chen Jue glanced at his attribute panel:
Player: Chen Jue Age: 27 Health index: 99% Strength: 1.28 Agility: 1.05 Intelligence: 1.23 Constitution: 1.94 Skills mastered: [Boat Boxing Level 2 (53/500)] [Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic Level 2 (4/500)] [Eight Immortals Stance Level 2 (49/500)] [Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill Level 1 (2/200)] [Internal Strength Child Prodigy Skill (complete mastery)] Available free attribute points: 0.17
My constitution is almost at 2 already! I wonder if crossing 2 will bring some kind of qualitative change. A faint anticipation stirred in Chen Jue.
As for his remaining free attribute points, he planned to save up some more first. Once the conditions were right, he could use them to break through in either the Impact-Conditioning Skill or the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic.
But after glancing at his hard, bluish skin, then at the dent he had punched into the wall a few days earlier, Chen Jue felt another surge of impulse. He drove a fist into a spot near the dent.
Thud!
With a muffled impact, the old country house shook once again.
Chen Jue's punch broke another brick and drove it inward, exposing the broken cross section of the red brick inside, along with a dense web of cracks in the white paint around the dent's edges.
"Huh? Nothing happened to my hand!"
He withdrew his fist and inspected it. Unlike last time, his right hand had not been injured. The skin had not split, and there was no bleeding. His bones only ached faintly, with a little bruising beneath the skin.
He checked the health index on his attribute panel. It had not dropped even 1%!
"Haha!"
"I'm tough enough now!"
Chen Jue laughed excitedly, then sprayed some Yunnan Baiyao onto the bruised area over his knuckles.
He reckoned that once the Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill rose another level, punching the wall probably would not leave so much as a bruise.
Such an extraordinary art was worthy of Shaolin. It could almost rival the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic.
No wonder its proficiency had risen so slowly during his earlier training. The harder an art was to cultivate, the more powerful it was!
Still buoyed by excitement, Chen Jue went to the kitchen and made two simple dishes. He could not resist opening a bottle of beer to enjoy with his meal.
After lunch, he slept for a little over an hour before his phone rang unexpectedly.
He rolled over, answered the call, and learned that it was the SF Express delivery guy.
The delivery guy grumbled for a while on the other end, saying that the shipment was too heavy for him to handle alone. He asked Chen Jue to come to the village entrance and help unload it, his words laced with complaints.
"Something really heavy?"
Chen Jue hurried out of bed and ran outside, knowing that his pair of ridiculously oversized dumbbells had arrived.
At 200 kilograms each, the pair weighed 400 kilograms-nearly half a tonne! An ordinary person could never lift them through brute strength alone.
The delivery guy had clearly needed help from his coworkers to get them as far as the village entrance. Before leaving the transfer depot, they had barely managed to hoist the pair of dumbbells onto the vehicle.
But getting them onto the vehicle was one thing. Unloading them at their destination was another!
After all, he was the only delivery worker in the vehicle. Without any coworkers to help, he could only call Chen Jue, the unfortunate recipient.
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