Physical Training

"The goal right now isn't fitness or looking good, so we'll focus mainly on the core muscle groups while learning stamina adaptation. But the biggest priority is preventing strains, so you absolutely mustn't overdo it. You also need to learn to control your exertion..."

Dressed in a Yoga Outfit, Zhao Xiaowen pressed against Lin Hao, constantly correcting his movements. Her smooth fingers slid over his muscles, and a tantalizing fragrance filled his nose, leaving him a little distracted.

Still, Lin Hao knew what mattered most and kept doing his best to steady his mind.

"Here, I'll help you. Push against me and keep the tension steady."

"Okay."

Lin Hao began training with Zhao Xiaowen's help. She really had taken professional courses, unlike those crash courses for coaching certificates.

She knew exactly what each muscle did, how to train it, and how to prevent injuries. With her support, Lin Hao kept practicing.

To truly build muscle, aerobic exercise wasn't enough. He needed sufficient resistance training.

There wasn't much equipment in the room, but Zhao Xiaowen had a few dumbbells of her own. Combined with her using her body as a close-contact resistance training aid, the results were quite noticeable.

Lin Hao put down the dumbbells and moved into a plank. Zhao Xiaowen lay beneath him, adjusting the angle of his arms with her hands while using her long legs to correct the position of his waist and abdomen.

The position, however, looked rather intimate-even erotic.

Yet Lin Hao still managed to complete his exercises faster in this setting.

"Hormones are also an important factor in muscle synthesis. I don't advocate taking external hormones, but if we want better results in this environment, we'll have to use a little unorthodox training. You can let your mind wander a bit, but don't let your form slip~"

Zhao Xiaowen's pretty face was slightly flushed, and tiny beads of sweat had formed on her nose. Her somewhat hazy gaze met Lin Hao's eyes from mere inches away, her voice turning honeyed.

Lin Hao said nothing and doggedly completed several sets.

"All right, don't overdo it. A strain would be bad. Let's do two sets of cardio to cool down."

Zhao Xiaowen stopped Lin Hao, who had still been plugging away like a bull.

"Okay."

After several thoroughly satisfying sets, Lin Hao found that the distracting thoughts in his mind had faded considerably. It was as though exercise could suppress all those restless impulses.

He hadn't felt much while straining against the resistance, but now that he had stopped, he could feel an aching tightness in his muscles.

If Zhao Xiaowen hadn't stopped him, he really might have overdone it.

Despite the soreness in his muscles, he somehow felt a sense of satisfaction. People said working out could become addictive, and apparently that wasn't an empty claim. It could even burn away his desires in an instant.

As he did some gentle cardio to cool down, Lin Hao also felt his body relaxing.

He had been training for a week now, and with this sort of unorthodox training, he could feel his body changing every single day!

Even Lin Hao found it hard to believe that committing himself fully to working out could produce such obvious results.

With Zhao Xiaowen's hands-on guidance and an ample supply of nutritious food such as chicken breast, protein powder, and beef jerky, Lin Hao found the exercises easier every day, even as their intensity gradually increased.

Sure enough, the early stages of working out produce the most noticeable results. It's been positive feedback all the way, and the equipment must have helped too...

The bonus from a single piece of equipment might not amount to much, but Lin Hao currently had bonuses from several pieces.

The strength training bonus from [Dumbbell Substitute] stacked with the training bonus attributes from two [Natural-Scent Yoga Outfit] pieces through Trait Stacking. In addition, while scavenging upstairs over the past few days, they had found two pairs of training shoes with training bonuses, one gray and one white.

Lin Hao equipped one pair and simply wore the other on his feet.

Aside from training, Lin Hao had mainly spent the past few days clearing out the Madmen upstairs to make the area safe first.

Afterward, Yi Feng and Zhou Feng led the scavenging, taking Nie Yi along as their little overseer, together with two survivors who had gravitated toward them.

Lin Hao set aside half a day every day to train his body.

He had to admit that making an example of someone that first time had been extremely effective. Combined with his ruthlessness in killing the Madmen, the survivors on the twenty-third floor and above had gradually begun accepting his authority.

Humans were social creatures, after all. Faced with an apocalypse like this, they naturally began gathering together.

The fact that Lin Hao had dealt with the Madman threat alone was enough to keep raising his prestige.

And with the decisiveness he had shown in mercilessly beating Zhong Yong to death, no one dared try to guilt-trip him anymore.

Guilt-tripping was something you used on pushovers. This man really would kill people!

Being able to stay alive like this was good enough!

Lin Hao had set their expectations low at their first encounter. When he later offered to exchange supplies for Wish Power items, quite a few people were instead overwhelmed by the unexpected favor.

It was practically Stockholm syndrome.

Some of the more perceptive people noticed that Zhou Feng and Yi Feng were living pretty well too, and began gravitating toward their group of their own accord.

Within a week, the beginnings of a small team had taken shape.

Whether this little team was reliable was another matter. A bit of outside pressure would probably make it collapse.

But at least while things were going smoothly, everyone could play their part, freeing up time for Lin Hao to train and strengthen himself while providing him with a steady supply of Wish Power items.

"Lin Hao, we found two 500-gram gold bars!"

Yi Feng returned looking delighted. They occasionally found gold jewelry, but those pieces generally weighed anywhere from a few grams to a few dozen grams. This was their first time finding gold bars this heavy.

"They were in a safe, along with a pretty valuable Rolex and some gold jewelry."

Yi Feng handed everything to Lin Hao.

A single 500-gram gold bar was worth over ten thousand Wish Power. More importantly, it didn't take up much room.

"Thanks for your hard work. Keep this watch. It'll make checking the time easier."

Lin Hao put the items away, then handed the watch to Yi Feng.

He already had one himself. Besides, Yi Feng was a major contributor to their scavenging efforts. Without his lock-picking skills, those security doors would have been a real obstacle.

"What would I need that for? This ordinary mechanical watch of mine works just fine."

Despite his young age, Yi Feng already possessed impressive lock-picking skills. He had clearly spent plenty of time scraping by out in the world, and had always shown a good sense of what was appropriate.

"You little rascal

..."

Lin Hao didn't force it on him. He more or less understood that Yi Feng was worried that, with more people joining, Lin Hao might stop taking him along.

It wasn't just the supplies they scavenged now. The survivors had also brought out plenty of items stored in their homes to exchange for food.

Over the course of a week, Lin Hao's place had filled with Wish Power items. Most were high-value items like gold, already worth seventy to eighty thousand Wish Power!

Lin Hao had distributed some of the cheaper, bulkier items among the others.

There was a limit to how much he could carry into the Teleportation Point, and it couldn't interfere with his movements. Naturally, taking only the high-value items was enough.

Through the daily broadcasts, Lin Hao had gained a rough understanding of Wish Power. Being able to gather so much at once was definitely a "perk" of having only just fallen into the Abyss.

It was essentially picking up ready-made items from his original world to serve as startup capital.

It would be difficult to acquire such a large amount of Wish Power this quickly again in the future.

Aside from the Wish Power items, they had collected around ten jin of silver jewelry and silver handicrafts, equivalent to a hundred taels of silver.

Regular Evacuation at the Teleportation Point had already opened. Some people had now returned from it, and after asking around, they had roughly confirmed that the world connected to this location was the same Great Qi as the one connected to University Town.

This silver would make a substantial amount of startup capital!

"Brown rice costs seven wen per sheng, polished rice twelve wen, and pork thirty-five wen per jin. A healthy adult man only earns forty to fifty wen a day, barely enough to feed a family."

Even without spending anything on food or drink, an adult man would only earn a dozen or so taels of silver in a year. What he could actually save might be less than a tenth of that.

A hundred taels of silver in ready cash was an absolute fortune.

Not to mention the even more valuable gold he had!

And some rooms still hadn't been searched, so there would certainly be more later!

Everything's on track now. Once this period of rapid improvement ends, I'll set out...

Fitness and physical training both had an initial period of rapid gains. Sharpening the axe wouldn't delay the chopping. It was essential to make the most of this relatively safe environment and finish reaping those gains...