585: Chapter 585 Lingbo Weibu (Light Steps on Water), the embryonic form of flight skill

Chapter 585: Lingbo Microsteps, Prototype of Flight Skill

A little past five in the morning, by the shores of Yulong Lake.

The sky still maintained a deep, dark cyan hue.

The surface of the lake was shrouded in a thin layer of mist, gently stirring with the breeze like a veil covering a face.

The surroundings were dead silent, save for the dull roar of a freight truck occasionally driving past on the distant national highway.

And the faint, rustling chirps of insects coming from the grass by the lakeside.

"Whoosh—"

A Running figure abruptly tore through the tranquil night curtain.

The intense wind pressure generated even whipped up fallen leaves and dust by the roadside, dragging a long wake of air waves behind.

The figure's speed was astonishingly fast, while his movements were graceful and smooth, resembling a speeding Ferrari supercar.

Not until Running to an area near the national highway equipped with surveillance cameras did the figure abruptly slow down, his pace becoming light and relaxed.

"Tap, tap, tap..."

Fang Cheng switched to a steady jog, his breathing remaining long and deep.

Over the past few days, he had basically been living in Wanghu Town, his daily routine as regular as an ascetic monk.

During the day, to give his mother and grandfather peace of mind, he spent most of his time locked in his bedroom, pretending to seriously look through the thick stack of exam materials sent by Wei Zheng.

In reality, relying on his extraordinary memory, those past exam question summaries for various subjects had long been burned into his mind like scanned files, able to be recited backward and forward.

He spent more of his free time communicating via phone with Lin Chuqiao and the professor, as well as Cultivating Visualization and Qigong in his bedroom.

As for the restlessness of his body and his unexpressed energy, he left all of it to the darkness before dawn.

Every day at four in the morning, Fang Cheng would wake up on time.

He would first go to the secluded little mountain park by Yulong Lake to do fitness training and practice Shadow Boxing.

Then, he would casually run a circle around Yulong Lake to increase his Running experience.

Today was no exception.

Having just finished targeted Jiu-Jitsu training on the mountain, he came to the lakeside for Running.

Fang Cheng raised his head to glance at the sky.

It was still early, and the morning light had yet to appear.

Moreover, the surroundings were completely deserted, save for the rustling sound of the wind blowing through the leaves.

An urge to try couldn't help but well up in his heart.

He wanted to challenge the Breakthrough of the sound barrier once more, pushing the limits of his Running speed.

It was not just to test the maximum load of his Physical Body under supersonic conditions, but even more to verify an idea that had been hovering in his mind for a long time.

When a person runs at full speed to reach the speed of sound, can they achieve Flight without the aid of wings, relying solely on the power generated by the Physical Body compressing the air?

Just like an airplane accelerating its glide on the runway and eventually taking off into the air.

With Fang Cheng's current strength, he was fully qualified to give it a try.

Previously, his Physique attribute had already broken through the 80-point human physiological limit milestone.

After his Qigong skill rose to the Grandmaster level, it added an extra 3 points of Physique.

This body, tempered through countless trials, had a tolerance for high temperatures and high pressure that was vastly superior to before.

In the past, Running a kilometer or two at the speed of sound would mean facing the risk of bodily collapse.

Now it could definitely support him for much longer!

Once the thought arose, Fang Cheng's steps unconsciously grew heavier, his muscles beginning to tense as he prepared to exert force.

However, the moment he prepared to accelerate, his gaze swept across the asphalt road beneath his feet, and his movements suddenly stalled.

He remembered the consequences of trying to break the sound barrier by Yulong Lake the previous few times.

Because he pushed off the ground too hard with his soles, the fine ring-lake road was kicked into shallow pits by him, cracking and deforming the road surface.

So much so that the town recently began circulating an urban legend that "monsters haunt Yulong Lake late at night".

Some even swore they saw a mutated wild boar rooting up the ground.

If he continued to destroy things so recklessly, I'm afraid before the Special Investigation Team's exam even began, the local police would have to come and stake him out as a "vandal of public property".

"It seems I still need to change places..."

Fang Cheng shook his head helplessly, reluctantly dismissing the idea of sprinting at full speed on the track.

He continued to choose a slow jog, adjusting his breathing within his lungs along the way.

A few minutes later, he passed a section of gentle uphill road.

Fang Cheng slowly stopped in front of a lake cove with an expansive view.

The surroundings were surrounded by forests, with lush vegetation.

Ahead, the misty, boundless lake surface extended to the end of vision, merging as one with the cyan mountains.

The mist flowed slowly, the entire body of water serene and deep, like a secluded wonderland isolated from the world.

This expansive and mysterious scene stirred Fang Cheng's heart slightly.

He cast his gaze toward the center of the lake in the distance.

The water ripples undulated, bottomless.

A bold idea quickly formed in his mind.

Since the land could not bear his trampling, what about the water's surface?

This was not sheer fantasy.

According to fluid dynamics principles, when the speed of an object hitting the water surface is fast enough—fast enough that the water body has no time to flow to both sides and produce displacement—the surface tension and inertial resistance of the liquid will rise exponentially.

At least in that instant, the soft water surface truly had the possibility of providing unimaginably powerful reaction force.

This was the so-called "skipping stones" effect.

As long as the speed was fast enough and the kinetic energy was large enough, a person could run across the water surface like that thrown stone piece.

Even...

Fang Cheng's eyes narrowed slightly, gazing brightly at the ripples undulating on the lake surface.

He could completely use this method to more realistically simulate the feeling of ground-hugging Flight.

Utilizing an extremely high horizontal sprint speed, he could turn his body and arms into wings, forcibly generating upward-lifting aerodynamic lift.

And the water surface under his feet would serve as the "pedal" used to leverage force and maintain altitude.

At the moment when kinetic energy was about to exhaust and the body was falling, by lightly tapping the water surface with his toes, he could obtain the support point brought by tension and take off forward into the air once again.

Just like the "Lingbo Microsteps" executed by those peerless experts in the movies.

The more Fang Cheng thought about it, the more he felt it made sense.

Right now, his airborne time was only the final 0.02 seconds away from completely unlocking the Flight skill.

But this negligible 0.02 seconds was like a natural chasm lying before his eyes.

Originally he planned to wait for the Agility attribute to break through the 80-point mark, relying on the qualitative change in physical fitness to make up for this final shortcoming.

But the actual progress was still too slow.

With a slight movement of Fang Cheng's mind, he summoned the panel and swept his gaze across the skill bar.

Among the densely packed entries, only two skills were close to a Breakthrough.

[Jiu-Jitsu lv2 (457 / 500)]

[Muay Thai lv2 (401 / 500)]

These two skills seemed to be less than a hundred experience points away from leveling up, but Fang Cheng knew very well in his heart.

If combat skills relied solely on daily solo fist-punching and kicking without high-intensity actual combat confrontation, the experience gained was actually pitifully little.

According to the current progress, if he only carved out time every day to practice Shadow Boxing, he would have to wait at least half a month to a month before leveling up.

Most crucially, a skill leveling up did not necessarily mean he would obtain rewards of free attributes.

Just like a few days ago, when Qigong advanced to the Grandmaster level.

Aside from mastering the new skill effect "Hunyuan True Domain", he only received 3 fixed Physique attribute rewards, with no chance at all to add them to Agility.

Therefore, Fang Cheng changed his train of thought.

Regarding this final 0.02-second gap, rather than passively waiting for illusory attribute rewards.

It was better to rely on his usual training and the method of challenging limits to make up for it.

Just like before when he engaged in a life-or-death battle with Ghost Sickle at an altitude of a thousand meters, finally descending from the sky.

He treated that extremely dangerous high-altitude fall as a life-and-death trial, utilizing wind gliding to simulate Flight.

Eventually, he successfully captured the rhythm of the wind and comprehended a few points of nature's mysteries.

When he successfully landed, the panel also logically provided prompt information for increasing airborne capability.

With this precedent, it proved that this path of self-cultivation was completely viable.

Only recently there had been many matters during this period, with various accidents coming one after another.

Fang Cheng had never had the free time, nor suitable conditions, to find a building hundreds of meters tall or a cliff to jump off of to further attempt how to simulate Flight.

Seeing this boundless lake surface right now, combined with the terrifying power brought by supersonic Running, a sudden whimsical idea struck him, and he wanted to give it a bold try right here.

"Let's give it a try."

Thinking of this, Fang Cheng no longer hesitated.

He then looked around left and right, and seeing that there was no one around, he slipped into the dense little grove beside the road.

A few seconds later, he took off his cumbersome sportswear and shoes, walking out wearing only that iconic red athletic underwear.

Barefoot on the moist, soft mud, his ten toes curled slightly, gripping the ground tightly like a beast's claws.

Ahead was an expansive mudflat extending toward the lake water.

Fang Cheng took a deep breath, his chest swelling high as a large amount of oxygen was forcibly pumped into his blood.

Thump! Thump!

His heart began to beat violently, making a dull sound like a battle drum, resembling an engine starting up.

"Rise!"

Along with a low shout, the muscles in his thighs instantly swelled, blue veins coiling like horned dragons.

Boom!

The mud burst open, and two deep pits half a meter in diameter suddenly appeared, mud splashing in all directions.

Fang Cheng's entire body was like a heavy artillery shell exiting its barrel, instantly disappearing from where he stood.

Twenty meters! Thirty meters! Fifty meters!

He accelerated frantically on the mudflat, and with every step he landed, the earth trembled accordingly.

The muddy water behind him was sprayed several meters backward, forming a muddy dragon.

In a mere 0.1 seconds, his speed was pushed to the limit.

Fierce winds shrieked in his ears, and the air became as sticky as glue.

That invisible sound barrier wall lay across his path once again.

If it were before, Fang Cheng would still need to grit his teeth and sprint, enduring excruciating pain like a thousand cuts.

But at this moment, a Physique as high as 83 points was enough for him to ignore that pressure capable of tearing his body apart.

"Break!"

Sharp light burst from Fang Cheng's eyes, and his figure smashed through that barrier without any obstruction.

Boom——

A ring of visible white shockwave clouds exploded around his body, and the huge sonic boom resounded across the lakeside, shaking down countless leaves.

The next second, carrying massive kinetic energy, he stepped out of the mudflat in a single stride and stepped onto the lake surface.

Snap!

There was no sound of falling into the water.

The moment Fang Cheng's soles contacted the water surface, he felt a subtle yet distinct tension.

That was not the rigid feedback of stepping on solid ground, but a highly elastic support.

Just like a dragonfly skimming the water.

This high-speed stamping in that instant caused the soft water surface to generate sufficient surface tension, becoming a fulcrum for him to leverage force.

Fang Cheng did not sink down because of this.

Instead, on the water surface, borrowing this recoil force, he took off into the air!

At this time, his Running speed had long surpassed the speed of sound.

At this speed, the oncoming air was no longer a gentle breeze, but turned into an extremely dense, nearly substantial fluid wall.

Facing the wind, Fang Cheng immediately felt the terrifying wind resistance coming head-on, as if it wanted to flip his entire body backward.

And this was precisely the key point he wanted to verify.

Fang Cheng did not stubbornly fight it with brute force; instead, he held his breath and concentrated, releasing all his perception to capture the movement of every wisp of airflow.

He slightly raised his chin, his torso leaning forward moderately, his arms spreading out to both sides like wings, meeting the violent airflow head-on with his broad chest and abdomen.

In just a single instant, he precisely adjusted his body posture in mid-air.

The effects of fluid dynamics thus completely manifested.

The high-speed airflow slammed fiercely against his body, guided and deflected downward along the streamlined muscle contours, and then swept upward along the body's curve.

The airflow was obstructed on the underside, slowing down in speed and increasing in pressure; it passed smoothly on the upperside, speeding up in speed and decreasing in pressure.

The massive air pressure difference formed between the upper and lower surfaces caused a strong lift to naturally arise.

This force was like a pair of invisible hands supporting him, forcibly offsetting a considerable portion of his weight.

His body, which should have quickly fallen following a parabola, miraculously began to translate and glide in mid-air.

At this moment, Fang Cheng felt that he was no longer a person Running, but an ultra-low-altitude fighter jet.

The water surface under his feet was no longer a runway that required forceful kicking.

His body under supersonic conditions seemed to come with its own Flight mode.

He only needed to lightly tap the water surface with his toes at the moment when his kinetic energy slightly decreased and his body slightly sank.

Borrowing that instantaneously generated water surface tension, coupled with his already possessed airborne capability, his body could take off into the air once again, continuing to glide forward for dozens of meters.

If anyone were standing on the shore at this moment, they would see an extremely shocking scene.

A humanoid stream of light swept past at extreme speed across the boundless lake surface.

Because the speed was too fast, the lake water he stepped on didn't even have time to burst open immediately.

Until he flew far away, the water waves whipped up by the fierce wind violently rolled to both sides.

Just like that, a straight white water trail was forcibly plowed out on the deep, calm lake surface.

As if wanting to split the entire Yulong Lake into two.

Exhilarating!

Fang Cheng spread his arms, executing the extraordinary "Lingbo Microsteps" across this vast lake surface.

He was like a top-tier lightness skill master, sometimes gliding with the wind like a bird spreading its wings, sometimes tapping the water with his toes to leverage force and ascend.

Fully experiencing that wonderful tactile sensation between "Flight" and "Running".

This was the effect Fang Cheng wanted to achieve.

This... was the prototype of Flight!

However, human strength ultimately had its limits.

After rushing out for a distance of several kilometers on Yulong Lake.

Air resistance began to frantically devour the kinetic energy brought by the initial Running.

Once the speed dropped below the speed of sound, the aerodynamic lift would plummet abruptly.

The tension of the water surface under his feet could no longer support Fang Cheng's weight.

That invisible force supporting him continuously drained away, and finally completely exhausted.

Splash!

Fang Cheng's legs sank, and his originally light gliding posture instantly lost balance.

The huge inertia carried him rolling in the water for several turns, kicking up large patches of spray, and finally crashing heavily deep into the lake water.