At Chen Jue's current speed, it took him less than a minute to run from his house along the village paths to the entrance several hundred meters away.
When he spotted the delivery guy, who looked about his age, Chen Jue hurried over to greet him and gave him his Taobao username.
"You're Mr. Chen?"
"Seriously, man! What on earth did you buy?"
"How is it so heavy? It took me and four coworkers a ton of effort just to get it into the van." After a few complaints, the delivery guy got out and opened the side door of his little van.
A large, rectangular wooden crate lay sideways beside the door. Its outer panels had been securely nailed shut, clearly to prevent any mishaps during transport.
"Just some workout equipment!"
Feeling a little embarrassed by the questions, Chen Jue gave an awkward laugh, walked over to the crate, and reached out to lift it.
His first impression was that it was heavy!
The pair of custom-made electroplated dumbbells weighed 400 kilograms altogether. Even with his greatly increased strength stat, Chen Jue couldn't simply haul them up.
"No luck, huh?"
"The stuff in there is way too heavy! You won't move it without a few people. You'd better get some friends to help." Watching from the side, the delivery guy wore a faintly amused smile.
Getting this crate into the van had taken quite some effort from the staff at their delivery depot. Now that he had met Chen Jue, the unfortunate customer responsible, he naturally intended to stand aside and enjoy watching him struggle.
What he hadn't expected was that, after failing to lift the crate on his first attempt, Chen Jue would sink into a shallow horse stance and draw a deep breath. His skin seemed to take on a bluish-black hue. Clamping both hands around the protruding grips on either side of the crate, he gave a sharp grunt. Right in front of the delivery guy, he unleashed a burst of bright force and forcibly raised the huge crate a few inches, then tipped it sideways and sent it crashing heavily onto the roadside.
"Holy... holy shit! You're a strongman!" The delivery guy's eyes widened as though he had witnessed something utterly unbelievable.
After that burst of bright force, Chen Jue relaxed his pores, and beads of sweat the size of beans welled out of his body. The bluish-black tint slowly faded from his skin, returning it to its usual fair complexion with a healthy flush.
The exertion had seemed brief, but the load was so heavy that it had drained almost as much stamina as a 200-meter run.
"Sorry for holding you up!"
"As long as it's out of the van, we're good. I'll open the crate in a bit and carry everything home piece by piece." Chen Jue turned back to the delivery guy with a chuckle.
"Not bad, man! With strength like that, you'd definitely earn more than anyone else hauling bricks on a construction site." It took the delivery guy a while to recover before he gave Chen Jue an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
He hadn't expected to meet someone so impressive on a delivery run out to the countryside!
A wooden crate that had taken several fit young men at the depot to load had been unloaded by this man in a single go.
And judging by his movements, he seemed to have practiced martial arts, too. What an eye-opener!
What the delivery guy didn't realize, however, was that Chen Jue had also used a clever trick. He had only lifted the crate slightly and tipped it sideways, allowing him to flip it out of the van in one motion.
If he had actually tried to hold that load of over 400 kilograms in both arms, he probably wouldn't have been able to take even half a step.
Perhaps he might stand a chance once his strength stat increased further.
After chatting with the SF Express delivery guy for a bit, Chen Jue figured he would probably be buying more unusual things in the future, so he added him as a friend and told him to send a WeChat message directly whenever he came to make a delivery.
The delivery guy readily agreed. He covered several villages around Panlong Town and had already added quite a few villagers as friends. After a little more conversation, he hurried off in his van to make deliveries in the next village.
Glancing at the large wooden crate that had landed by the roadside, Chen Jue reached out and wrenched its wooden lid off by force, revealing a pair of large, shiny silver electroplated dumbbells wrapped in foam.
Each weighed 200 kilograms, with eight screw-on weight plates across its two ends. Each plate weighed 25 kilograms, or 50 jin. In a gym, these would absolutely be in the champion's league.
"Good thing they come apart. Otherwise, getting them home would be a real headache." Chen Jue couldn't help smiling faintly at the sight. He crouched down, dismantled both dumbbells, then picked up four plates and slowly walked home.
Chen Village had decent people and few residents, so nobody would take the remaining dumbbell parts if he left them beside the road for a while.
Carrying two plates weighing 50 kilograms for several hundred meters might have been difficult for an ordinary person, but Chen Jue could just about manage it. It only took a little extra effort.
He made eight trips back and forth, sometimes walking and sometimes running, before finally bringing all the parts of the two large dumbbells home and reassembling them.
As for the wooden packing crate, Chen Jue left it beside the trash bins at the village entrance. It was useless to him anyway, so he might as well leave it for the village's elderly residents to take home for firewood.
After testing them at home, Chen Jue discovered that he couldn't lift a 200-kilogram dumbbell with one hand at all!
But he had considered this before buying them. Removing the plates one at a time and making several attempts, he finally established the maximum dumbbell weight he could lift with one hand: 100 kilograms.
And that was only by using the pore-closing technique of bright force to boost his explosive strength for an instant!
If he relied entirely on his own raw strength, he could only lift a 75-kilogram dumbbell with one hand, and he couldn't sustain it for long, making it of little use for training.
I'll probably need to get my strength above 2 before I can really make use of these 200-kilogram dumbbells, Chen Jue guessed. After resting for a moment, he reassembled and secured both dumbbells at 50 kilograms each, with two plates apiece, then took one in each hand and began his workout for the day.
The newly arrived dumbbells certainly lived up to their reputation as invaluable workout tools. After just a few sets, Chen Jue saw his strength stat rise by 0.01.
He kept exercising for three hours, increasing his strength by 0.05. It was a remarkable rate of progress.
For some reason, however, once his agility stat passed the benchmark of 1, it stopped increasing in tandem with his strength. Only after his strength had risen by the full 0.05 did his agility sluggishly creep up a tiny amount.
As for the constitution he had lost, Chen Jue restored it by practicing the Eight Immortals Stance and the Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic. It remained steady at 1.94 without any fluctuations. His health index had dropped by just 1%, which would probably recover on its own after a day's rest.
In addition, he had earned another 0.02 free attribute points.
His strength stat of 1.33 had visibly enlarged the muscles throughout his body, however, and as he burned fat, he was growing leaner at a rate he could see with his own eyes.
It probably wouldn't take more than a few days for Chen Jue to regain the strong, fit physique he wanted.
Player: Chen Jue Age: 27 Health index: 98% Strength: 1.33 Agility: 1.06 Intelligence: 1.23 Constitution: 1.94 Skills mastered: [Boat Boxing Level 2 (52/500)] [Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic Level 2 (5/500)] [Eight Immortals Stance Level 2 (57/500)] [Shaolin Body Conditioning Skill Level 1 (2/200)] [Internal Strength Child Prodigy Skill (complete mastery)] Available free attribute points: 0.19
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