10: Chapter 10 Traditional Chinese Medicine

After eating, he stood up to continue his Strength Training.

It was the same boulder he had moved over the day before yesterday, estimated to weigh around three hundred kilograms.

He squatted down, hooked his hands onto the protruding edges at the bottom of the stone, tightened his waist and back, exerted force with his legs, and lifted the boulder off the ground.

The stone was thirty centimeters off the ground; he held it steady for three seconds, then slowly lowered it.

Ten reps per set, with only thirty seconds of rest between sets.

By the time he finished, his T-shirt was completely soaked.

Sweat dripped down his chin, landing on the withered leaves by his feet with a pitter-patter sound.

Next was core training.

On the edge of the clearing lay a fallen dead tree with a trunk diameter of about half a meter; he lay on it to do sit-ups.

He was also holding a stone in his arms, and since the tree trunk was round, his body hung over it, requiring more core strength to maintain balance.

With every crunch, his abdominal muscles burned, but he could clearly feel the repair happening after the burn.

It was a sensation from the inside out, as if it were filling in the torn gaps one by one.

Three hours later, his bag was more than half empty.

He stuffed the empty syrup bottles and chocolate wrappers back into the bag, leaving only a few compressed biscuits and the remaining small half-bucket of peanut oil.

Ten thousand calories of food, and most of it was consumed in just three hours.

But the amount of training he completed in these three hours was probably equivalent to the total amount a professional athlete would do in three or four days.

Chen Mo took another gulp of peanut oil, sat down against the tree trunk, and caught his breath for ten minutes.

Then he stood up and did the final sprint of the day. It wasn't a short distance, but a long one: starting from this clearing, running north along the mountain ridge to the cliff, and then returning, totaling about five kilometers.

By the time he reached the cliff, the sun was already very low.

The orange-red sunlight slanted through the canopy, casting long shadows on the ridge.

He stood on the edge of the cliff and looked down.

The dried-up creek bed at the bottom of the cliff was filled with gravel and fallen leaves in the sunset.

He took a deep breath.

The evening breeze blew up from the valley, brushing coolly across his soaked chest.

Then he turned around and ran back.

It was past seven in the evening, and the sky began to darken.

Chen Mo headed home with his bag, which was now more than half empty.

His legs were a little sore, and his shoulders felt tight from the weight he had pressed overhead earlier, but the heat flow deep within his body was still slowly circulating, suppressing the soreness bit by bit.

At ten past eight in the evening, he pushed open the door of the old house, placed his backpack by the doorway, and went to check the kitchen first.

The electric stew pot on the stove had switched to the keep-warm setting; the ginseng and ganoderma water was ready, and the dark brown liquid was emitting faint white steam in the pot.

He poured a cup, blew on the steam floating on the surface to let it cool enough to drink, and then picked it up to drink slowly.

It tasted of a very light, herbal aroma, followed by a faint bitterness.

The bitterness was not heavy, and there was a hint of sweetness in the aftertaste.

He smacked his lips, feeling the liquid slide down his esophagus into his stomach.

Then he stood in the kitchen and waited for three minutes.

Nothing happened.

No heat flow, no special bodily reaction, no feeling at all.

It was no different from drinking a cup of ordinary herbal tea.

He thought for a moment, then did dozens of high-knee lifts on the spot and dropped down to do a set of push-ups, raising his heart rate to one hundred thirty to speed up his body's metabolism.

Then he stood up and checked again.

Still nothing.

He took the remaining ganoderma out of his bag, placed it on the cutting board, sliced it into a few pieces with a knife, and stuffed them directly into his mouth to chew.

The texture of chewing it raw was rougher than boiling it in water, and the bitterness was stronger.

After swallowing it, he waited for a few more minutes.

There was still no special reaction in his body.

Chen Mo put the remaining ganoderma slices back on the table and wiped his mouth.

In fact, it wasn't that he hadn't considered that it might be ineffective.

He had been mentally prepared before the test.

These medicinal herbs on the table, whether labeled "wild" or "five-year-old" by the shopkeeper, were essentially commodities from artificially cultivated bases, no different in essence from potatoes sold by the catty at the vegetable market.

Ginseng grown in greenhouses, where a one-year-old root as thick as a finger is considered good quality, is simply not the same species as the millennium ginseng in novels that grows on inaccessible cliffs and only grows a few inches in several decades.

Moreover, he had seen it very clearly in the few days since he entered the mountains.

The plants in the mountains were just like ordinary wild grass and vegetation.

There was no unusual behavior; their roots were deeply embedded in the familiar soil, and everything was just as it had always been in the mountains.

He was very clear about his current strength.

A punching force of 316 kilograms sounds scary, but if an adult wild boar were placed in front of him, whether he could kill it with one punch would depend on where he hit it.

A wild boar's subcutaneous fat and muscle thickness can exceed ten centimeters, and its skull is hard enough to withstand bullets.

Not to mention fierce beasts with even greater aggression like bears and wolves.

The hinterland of the Shennong Mountain Range has Leopards, Black Bears, and herds of wild boars.

The odds of winning if he encountered them now—he couldn't say there were none, but it would be very difficult to retreat unscathed.

And that's only considering the fierce beasts, not counting venomous snakes, poisonous insects, swamps, and cliffs.

He did not yet have the ability to enter the core area.

Chen Mo poured away the unfinished ganoderma water, rinsed the cup clean, and put it back on the dish rack.

Tonight's events did not discourage him.

Instead, it made him more clear-headed.

The system panel gave him limitless growth, but it didn't give him any Cultivation Technique, nor did it give him a System that drops loot after killing monsters; everything had to depend on his own step-by-step efforts.

After eating, he took a shower and changed into clean clothes.

He didn't go to sleep right away.

The soreness from the full-body training had mostly faded, but his mind was still sharp, and he didn't feel very sleepy.

He walked into the Main Hall, picked up a pen from the table, opened his notebook, and turned to the latest page.

Below the date "May 15th", he first wrote a heading: "First self-test conclusion: wild medicinal herbs."

"Artificially cultivated herbs are ineffective for ability. Regardless of dosage or method of consumption. Hypothesized reasons: insufficient age, cultivation environment. Will conduct comparative experiments with wild herbs when conditions permit in the future."

He picked up the whiteboard marker on the table and wrote a few large characters on the left side of the whiteboard on the wall.

"Basic herb testing: shelved."

Then he sat back down at the table and started to continue writing today's training data.

Today's total training volume: cross-country running about 50 kilometers, Strength Training about 6 hours, core training 2 hours.

Total duration: about 14 hours.

Total expenditure: about 26,000 calories.

Energy deficit was completely replenished through sugar-oil mixtures.

Drinking peanut oil directly during training caused no indigestion, and energy conversion efficiency was good.

It can be listed as a regular drink during high-consumption training periods in the future.

system panel data shows: Punching force 316kg, Mental Power 1.8.

Compared to yesterday: strength increased by 27kg.

Trained for about fourteen hours today.

Twenty-seven kilograms in one day.

In seven days, it will be five hundred kilograms.

In one month, one thousand kilograms.

What is the concept of one thousand kilograms?

The strength of a professional heavyweight boxing champion is probably between five hundred and seven hundred kilograms.

The world's strongest deadlift record holder can deadlift up to five hundred kilograms, using full-body strength.

And his punching force will be twice that of a professional heavyweight boxing champion.

The force of one punch will be equivalent to the force of a small car hitting a wall.

By then, breaking a tree half the width of a person with a few punches will no longer be a problem.

If a four-hundred-kilogram wild boar stands in front of him, one punch to the skull, even if it doesn't break through, the impact will be enough to shake its brain into mush.

As for tigers?

A tiger's forepaw striking force is about one ton.

One ton, which is his level after one month.

No comparison is needed.

He knows what those fierce beasts will become in the face of absolute strength.

There is a popular term on the internet, "Hajimi," used to describe cute little things.

He closed the notebook, put it back in the drawer, turned off the light, and went to bed.