11: Chapter 11 Secret Manual

Over the next few days, Chen Mo's training entered a stable rhythm.

He woke up naturally a little after four in the morning.

The first thing he did upon opening his eyes was to summon the system panel to check his data.

His punch power changed every day; sometimes it increased a lot, sometimes a little, but it was always increasing.

The increase in Mental Power was clearly slower than his punch power, but it was slowly creeping upward.

Along with this, Chen Mo's five senses were also gradually strengthening; his eyes adapted to the dark three times faster, he could see the wood grain of trees under the moonlight, and the chirping of insects in the distance could be heard more clearly.

After checking the system panel, he would sit on the edge of the bed and spend five minutes writing down that day's training plan in a notebook.

It wasn't written casually; rather, the training content was planned down to the hour.

Because his consumption was so high, just eating every day was a huge expense.

Currently, his training intensity consumed twenty thousand to thirty thousand calories a day, requiring continuous eating to replenish.

Peanut oil had become one of his staple foods, and he would gulp down at least a few mouthfuls after every training session.

At first, it was so greasy it made him nauseous, but now drinking it was just like drinking soy milk.

At five in the morning, he would carry his food up the mountain, train until noon, and then return to eat.

In the afternoon, he would continue running into the mountains or go to the abandoned quarry outside of town.

A few days ago, while practicing squats on the mountain trail, he had just lifted a giant rock over his head when he nearly ran into an old man gathering firewood.

He hurriedly pretended to be clearing the mountain trail to get past it.

After that, he used the quarry as his fixed training ground; no one went there, the gravel ground wasn't slippery when running, and there was nothing on the empty field but the wind.

He would return home after seven in the evening to shower and eat.

Then, he would begin his evening routine, which was neither Strength Training nor endurance training.

It was about those martial arts Secret Manuals.

Before coming here, he had scoured the internet, collecting everything from electronic versions of the Classic of Muscle Transformation and the Marrow Cleansing Classic, to complete instructional videos for the Eight-Section Qigong and the Eight-Part Vajra Gong, as well as various compilations of Daoist Internal Alchemy literature, and he had also saved quite a lot of modern combat instructional materials.

These past few nights, he hadn't trained his physical strength; after eating, he would sit cross-legged on the yoga mat in the Main Hall, turn on his computer, and study the Moves one by one according to the videos.

Today, he opened the Classic of Muscle Transformation.

This Cultivation Technique was very famous online; almost every forum discussing traditional martial arts and physical Cultivate would mention it.

The core of the Classic of Muscle Transformation lay in "stretching tendons and pulling bones, changing strength and reshaping form," which could open up the human body's Twelve Standard Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Vessels, performing a thorough transformation and reshaping from the bones to the fascia.

Chen Mo spent over an hour going through all the instructional versions he could find, then stood up on the mat and began to practice according to the movements on the screen.

The first Move, Wei Tuo Presents the Pestle.

Extend both arms forward, palms facing each other, and slowly bring them together.

The Move itself was not complex; it was a simple stretch.

He finished doing it as instructed, then closed his eyes, trying to feel that legendary "Qi," that flow of heat that was supposed to Move along the meridians.

There was nothing.

He switched to the second Move, Pulling the Tail of Nine Cows.

Stand firmly in a lunge, clench both hands into fists and pull them down alternately; the key was to focus strength through both arms.

His muscles were indeed exerting force while doing it, but this was only physical muscle contraction; he didn't capture even a shred of Qi sensation.

One Move after another, he tried all the common, publicly available Moves.

The improvement in his Mental Power allowed him to understand how to perform the Moves at a glance, and his comprehension ability had increased significantly.

After finishing, he sat cross-legged again, breathing evenly, closed his eyes, and began to carefully experience every tiny change inside his body from the beginning.

He was quiet for three minutes.

Then, he had to admit that there was still nothing.

No breath moved along invisible paths, no heat in the Dantian, no sudden sense of enlightenment when Qi flows through barriers.

The only thing he could feel were the foundations of his own body.

The microscopic tears in his muscle fibers after training were slowly repairing.

Blood flowed steadily and powerfully through his blood vessels.

His heart beat slowly and steadily.

His bones remained immovable while bearing his body weight.

But these were not "Qi sensations"; they were just normal physiological activities he could perceive after his control over his body had improved.

As for the Twelve Standard Meridians.

He thought, even if they really existed, they couldn't be opened just by a few stretching Moves.

However, it wasn't entirely without gain.

Many of the Moves in the Classic of Muscle Transformation were essentially joint stretching and fascial release, which could indeed effectively improve flexibility and joint health for ordinary fitness enthusiasts.

It was just that his flexibility and joint health had long since exceeded the normal range due to "Infinite Growth," so the improvement effect of this Cultivation Technique on his body was almost zero.

He turned off the video for the Classic of Muscle Transformation and opened the Eight-Part Vajra Gong, followed by the Eight-Section Qigong.

These two Cultivation Techniques were widely circulated in Daoist circles, said to be able to "clear meridians, cultivate Origin Qi, and strengthen the five internal organs."

He spent half an hour practicing along with the videos; the Moves themselves were somewhat like stretching exercises combined with breathing regulation, and after finishing, his body felt slightly warm and had a sense of relaxation.

But that was all.

He could reach this level of relaxation now after just ten minutes of natural recovery following his squats.

Internal Alchemy was even more mysterious.

He flipped through the materials on hand; terms like "refining essence to Qi, refining Qi to spirit, refining spirit to emptiness," or "water and fire in harmony, dragon and tiger mating," were all built on the foundation of "Qi."

And his perception of "Qi" was zero.

It wasn't that he was practicing incorrectly; his body simply didn't have this method of energy operation.

Chen Mo turned off the computer and leaned back in his chair.

From the moment he started repeatedly encountering these materials over the past few days, a thought had been vaguely revolving in his mind.

By tonight, this thought had finally become clear.

It wasn't that these Cultivation Techniques were deceptive; it was that the historical context had changed.

The people who created these Cultivation Techniques had lifestyles and physical states completely different from those of today.

Ancient people walked, carried water, and plowed fields every day; their physical activity was several times that of modern people, but their muscle mass and strength levels were far inferior to modern fitness enthusiasts.

Their joint stiffness was local strain caused by long-term monotonous labor, not a lack of strength.

Therefore, the core function of these Cultivation Techniques was to clear, release, and regulate.

Applying these things to him now, when his physical state was at its Peak and far exceeded ordinary people in all aspects, naturally had no effect.

As for Qi sensation, it was probably fictional from the start.

But he still had something more fundamental.

Body control.

During his training these past few days, he had already begun to intentionally or unintentionally engage in a unique type of training.

Closing his eyes, he could clearly perceive the state of every part of his body: the rhythm of his heartbeat, the tension of his muscles, and the angle of his bone alignment.

He could autonomously control the contraction of a single small muscle, tightening the lower part of his right latissimus dorsi while the rest remained still, or making his left calf gastrocnemius muscle exert force alone while the soleus muscle remained completely relaxed.

This kind of precise control, which other professional athletes might only acquire after years of training, had taken him only about a week.

Tonight, he decided to make a deeper attempt.

Sitting cross-legged on the mat in the Main Hall, he closed his eyes and focused his attention on his right foot.

First, the entire right sole; the five toes slowly curled downward one by one, gripping the surface of the mat as if grasping something.

Then the gastrocnemius muscle on the back of his lower leg; he made only this part of the muscle contract while keeping the soleus muscle relaxed.

Then he moved up along the line of force, tightening his hamstrings and relaxing his quadriceps.

His gluteal muscles were slightly activated, and his waist and core participated in stabilization.

All the way from the soles of his feet to his shoulder blades, all lines of force connected into an uninterrupted chain.

He could "see" the direction of every muscle fiber contracting under the command of his consciousness.

It wasn't through vision, but a deeper perception, an internal tactile sense built up through countless training sessions, each time precisely monitoring his body movements.

He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands.

Clench, release, clench again.

When his fingers flexed and extended, he could feel the tendon bundles of the flexor digitorum profundus and flexor digitorum superficialis moving smoothly within the synovial sheaths without a single hitch.

This was his Cultivation Technique.

Not Qi, not meridians, not Dantian.

It was control.

It was treating the body as a precision machine, knowing every part by heart, and being able to make every movement precise to the millimeter.

He didn't need to open the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, because his energy was not Qi stored in the Dantian, but directly converted into the mass of his muscles, bones, and fascia themselves.

What he needed to do was not to guide it along any specific path, but to be precise down to the individual muscle fibers during training, letting every tear and reconstruction proceed in the most perfect direction.

He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and added two words under the "Practical Combat Technique" section: Control.

Then he turned to a new sheet of white paper and wrote down his realization just now, word by word, and stuck it to the head of his bed:

"External skills train strength, while Internal Skills training Qi are mostly fictional.

From beginning to end, I have been walking the correct path: training body control and driving strength with control.

This is my fundamental Cultivation Technique; any other Secret Manual can be used as a reference, but there is no need to be attached to them."

After writing it, he put the pen back into the whiteboard slot and stood in the Main Hall for a while.

From the time he obtained the system panel until now, it had been exactly eleven days.

He had embarked on a path that no one had ever walked before.

There was no map, no coach, and no task prompts on the system panel.

But he already knew the direction.