"It actually leveled up!"
Chen Jue let out a long breath, finished his boxing sequence, and hurriedly checked his stat panel.
Name: Chen Jue Age: 27 Strength: 0.86 Agility: 0.78 Intelligence: 1.22 Constitution: 1.17 Skills mastered: [Boat Boxing Level 1 (1/200)] Unallocated attribute points: 0.06
The panel had changed quite a bit. His strength and agility had each risen by 0.01 as his boxing improved, but the most striking change was Boat Boxing reaching Level 1.
At Level 0, his Boat Boxing had barely amounted to anything. Chen Jue had just been copying other people and fumbling his way through it.
Once it reached Level 1, however, Chen Jue's understanding of the martial art began to change.
"Did this mean I'd truly grasped the basics?"
Seeing that no one was around, Chen Jue went through another boxing sequence.
This time, both his transitions between moves and his delivery of force felt much smoother than before. Compared with the awkwardness of Lv0, he now had a thorough grasp of Boat Boxing, with no more gaps in his technique.
Even without someone else to guide him, Chen Jue could keep practicing without making any major mistakes.
It wasn't like the instant enlightenment in martial arts novels, where all the knowledge of a technique was poured into Chen Jue's head at once. Instead, practicing it himself had seemingly allowed his body to develop a complete system of muscle memory.
"Huff, huff!"
After another two rounds, Chen Jue felt that Boat Boxing grew more comfortable the longer he practiced. Heat surged throughout his body.
Meanwhile, his unallocated attribute points had quietly increased by another small increment!
"My training efficiency had improved!"
"Before, it took a dozen or so cycles to save up 0.01 attribute points. Now I could earn that much in just three rounds!" Excited, Chen Jue recalled what had happened during his breakthrough.
He realized that practicing on the dam did more than help him adapt to the surroundings. The silence around him also helped settle his thoughts.
It felt like the legendary meditative states of accomplished monks and Taoist priests.
Undisturbed by stray thoughts, he focused entirely on his boxing.
"It looked like I'd have to come up to this dam more often to practice!" Having discovered that the location provided an environmental buff, Chen Jue practiced for another half hour.
It wasn't until after nine, when the wind began to chill him to the bone, that he followed the main road down the mountain and returned home.
By the time he finished his hot shower, it was already ten at night. In Hangzhou, the nightlife would probably only just have been getting started.
Karaoke, clubbing, gaming together at an internet café, or watching a movie-peaceful as Chen Village was, it lacked many of the city's amusements. Chen Jue still needed time to adjust.
Surprised at how quickly he had become hungry, Chen Jue reheated some crispy duck and dried shrimp for a late-night snack. He also opened a beer, propped up his tablet, and browsed fitness videos online while he ate.
He had ordered quite a few pieces of exercise equipment online that afternoon and planned to use scientific methods to further improve his physical capabilities.
Although he had already mastered the ancient art of Boat Boxing, Chen Jue felt that modern, scientific training methods should also help raise his attributes considerably.
After all, fitness training was the mainstream form of exercise these days. Twenty years earlier, martial arts practice might still have ridden the popularity of martial arts television shows and films to spark a craze, but now it had fallen completely out of favor.
Yet after watching these bodybuilding influencers for a while, Chen Jue began to feel that all this muscle-building and fat-burning training had gone down the wrong path.
Those so-called bodybuilding influencers, in particular, had developed muscles and physiques as finely defined as sculptures, but the visibly unnatural aging in their appearance put Chen Jue on his guard.
According to scientific research, human cells continued to divide, but once they reached their division limit, aging and death became inevitable.
He checked the bodybuilding influencers' ages. Although they were relatively young, their unnatural wrinkles and withered appearance suggested that excessive stimulation of muscle-cell division had caused premature aging.
From a martial arts perspective, these so-called bodybuilding influencers had lost their way through training and strayed onto a dangerous path.
Of course, that was only Chen Jue's own interpretation. He had only just begun exercising himself, and his understanding of physical conditioning was still extremely superficial.
Still, after watching those bodybuilding videos for a while, Chen Jue couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, as though they lacked some essential spirit.
Although he envied their perfect physiques, their unnatural premature aging convinced him to abandon the idea of following the videos to the letter.
"Even after the exercise equipment arrived, I'd have to train in moderation."
"If I only chased muscle gain, fat loss, and so-called core strength, it probably wouldn't help me live longer."
Chen Jue felt that truly grasping the basics of Boat Boxing had broadened his understanding of the body considerably.
The fitness tutorials weren't entirely useless, though. Some of their scientific explanations of movements interested him greatly. He planned to try them once his equipment arrived and see whether he could at least get rid of his beer belly.
At that thought, Chen Jue put down his half-finished beer.
"Drinking damaged the liver and dulled the brain. I'd have to drink in moderation from now on, rather than make a habit of it every night." Chen Jue poured out the beer and tidied the dining table.
After going upstairs and lying down to digest his food, he turned his attention to the attribute points he had accumulated that day.
Unallocated attribute points: 0.08
His breakthrough in Boat Boxing had considerably increased the rate at which Chen Jue earned attribute points.
After glancing at the various stats on his panel, Chen Jue barely hesitated before putting all his newly earned points into constitution.
The higher his constitution, the better his stamina and the faster his recovery, which would help improve his overall physical condition. In martial arts novels, that would mean stronger innate aptitude and greater vitality.
As for strength and agility, both were currently below the reference values for an adult man, but Chen Jue believed they would certainly rise on their own after a period of training. There was no rush to spend points on them.
"From now on, constitution would take priority whenever I earned attribute points!"
Having made up his mind, Chen Jue allocated all 0.08 points to constitution, raising it from 1.17 to 1.25.
A warm current spread throughout his body. His heartbeat slowed, his breathing deepened, and his pulse became much steadier.
A constitution of 1.25 was 25 percent higher than the reference value for an adult man. Even if Chen Jue never added another point, it would be enough for him to live into his eighties or nineties.
And so, that night, Chen Jue slept more soundly, sweetly, and comfortably than ever before!
Before you continue