Chen Jue knew where he stood. With his humble background and no influential patron to support him, becoming wealthy through his own efforts alone would be difficult.
Without material comfort, he would probably spend his entire life scrambling to get by like any ordinary person, running himself ragged for money.
But now that he had awakened this attribute panel, another path through life had opened up before him.
Cultivation!
As long as I succeed at cultivation, my life will be completely different. Chen Jue made up his mind.
When he first returned to the countryside, he might still have felt some lingering dissatisfaction, occasionally recalling the pleasures of the glamorous world outside.
But after meeting Lin Ruomeng, he suddenly felt that money, social standing, and romance no longer mattered so much.
Time passed, the years rolled on, and the world changed rapidly. All they left people with were aging faces and deteriorating bodies.
Perhaps forging an extraordinary path of cultivation in the real world was the life Chen Jue truly yearned for!
After leaving the Lin family's breakfast shop, Chen Jue felt that his state of mind had improved considerably.
Although he had added his former elementary school deskmate on WeChat so they could stay in touch, Chen Jue knew that he and she would not have much contact afterward.
By the time he finished breakfast and strolled back to his home in Chen Village, it was just past ten in the morning.
The sun was high, and the lingering heat of late summer was still fierce.
Chen Jue closed the door and showered off the sweat from his morning training. Then he changed into clean clothes, sat on the sofa, and began practicing breathing exercises, imitating the middle-aged man in the video tutorial.
This breathing method accompanied Boat Boxing, but without anyone to guide him, Chen Jue soon began seeing stars and feeling dizzy.
Looks like I can't practice the breathing for this moving exercise while sitting still. With that thought, Chen Jue began searching online for cultivation methods such as Daoist meditation and Buddhist seated meditation.
The information online was a mixture of truth and falsehood, with all sorts of bizarre cultivation methods.
If he could find Boat Boxing, he could surely find similar stillness exercises for training his mind and willpower.
After all, Chen Jue could not keep practicing Boat Boxing twenty-four hours a day. His body needed time to rest and recover, and he also wanted to make use of his spare time.
Reading more or trying some kind of stillness exercise might produce unexpected results.
Indian yoga?
Tantric Mahamudra?
Marrow-Cleansing Classic, Muscle-Tendon Change Classic?
With the intention of learning, Chen Jue spent half an hour studying what he found online before finally deciding to start with Shaolin Temple's Muscle-Tendon Change Classic.
According to the information he found, the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic originated in the guiding and stretching exercises practiced by adepts during the Qin and Han dynasties. It reached Shaolin during the Tang and Song dynasties and became a fitness practice that monks used between meditation sessions to promote circulation and disperse blood stasis.
Passed down to the present day, it had been organized and classified by eminent monks of Shaolin Temple into a set of twelve stillness postures.
The online tutorials explained everything thoroughly, in much greater detail than the scant descriptions available for the other stillness exercises.
If the monks of Shaolin Temple can practice it, I might as well learn it too! It should be genuine.
In martial arts novels, the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic is a divine art that Shaolin never shares with outsiders. Now it's posted online like something you can find anywhere. Chen Jue could not help marveling at it.
He felt that obtaining these materials had been barely any harder than learning the broadcast calisthenics taught at school.
Fortunately, he already had a foundation in Boat Boxing, so the twelve forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic came readily to him. Before long, a new skill appeared on his attribute panel: [Twelve Forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic Level 0 (1/100)]
However, the twelve forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic were clearly much harder to train than Boat Boxing.
After he went through the entire set of postures, his skill proficiency showed no sign of increasing at all.
Chen Jue could only open the instructional videos made by the Shaolin monks and watch them repeatedly, studying every word. He corrected his postures while trying hard to recreate the meditative state he had entered during his morning training.
After an hour or so of trial and error, he finally saw his proficiency increase by one point.
"Ah!"
"My technique still isn't good enough. The Muscle-Tendon Change Classic is supposed to be a stillness exercise, yet practicing it has left me drenched in sweat." Chen Jue sighed, feeling that he had been too impatient.
He got up, went to the bathroom to wipe his face with cold water, and returned to his practice.
Once he adjusted his mindset and resumed practicing the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic, his proficiency began increasing a little faster.
One point every half hour, then another point the next half hour. By the time Chen Jue got up to make lunch at noon, his newly learned twelve forms of the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic had accumulated four proficiency points.
More importantly, practicing this stillness exercise from the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic promoted circulation and dispersed blood stasis, easing some of the fatigue Chen Jue had felt from his morning training.
After lunch, Chen Jue went upstairs for a nap.
At three in the afternoon, the vibration of an incoming call on his phone woke him.
When he answered, he learned that the solid wooden square table he had ordered the day before had arrived. He hurried downstairs and outside, where he spotted a small delivery truck at the village entrance.
He led the two delivery men along the village lanes to his front door. Only after watching them carry the securely wrapped solid wooden square table into the ground-floor living room did Chen Jue transfer the 200-yuan carrying fee.
The two delivery men were in a hurry to reach their next stop and did not linger. Once they received the money, they drove away.
Back inside, Chen Jue fetched a large pair of scissors and stripped away all the foam wrapping around the table. After clearing the rubbish outside, he leaped onto the sturdy square wooden table and stepped back and forth, finding it considerably more solid than the traditional eight-seater square table his family had owned when he was a child.
"I can finally practice the Eight Immortals Stance!"
Eager to begin, Chen Jue washed his face to shake off his post-nap drowsiness. Then, following the video instructions, he started practicing the Eight Immortals Stake Skill that accompanied Boat Boxing.
Until now, Chen Jue had always practiced on level ground. Only after climbing onto this narrow solid wooden table did he realize how difficult the Eight Immortals Stake Skill was.
Fortunately, he had built a foundation over the past two days. After he spent some time adjusting, the Eight Immortals Stake Skill officially appeared on his attribute panel: [Eight Immortals Stance Level 0 (1/100)]
"It's actually an independent skill, separate from Boat Boxing!" Chen Jue was somewhat surprised.
Upon discovering that the Eight Immortals Stance had its own proficiency separate from Boat Boxing, he privately guessed that his previous practice had not even brought him to the beginner level.
So I really do have to follow the instructions and practice on a table!
Excited, Chen Jue began his stance training.
Over the past few days, he had spent plenty of time browsing online forums and discussion boards about martial arts, external styles, internal styles, ancient boxing methods, and the like.
He had seen comments such as "Practice boxing without training its foundation, and you'll have nothing to show for it in old age" so often that he had grown numb to them.
Now that he had learned a new stance-training skill, his excitement naturally surged, and his enthusiasm for training soared!
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