16: Chapter 16 Only Hard Training

Returning home, Chen Mo took a cold shower and stood in front of the whiteboard in the Main Hall for a long while.

The whiteboard was densely packed, filled with his training records and insights from the past half month.

In the top-left corner was the change curve for his punch force data, from 200 kg to 591 kg, with every number marked with its corresponding date.

In the center was a classification table of his training architecture: Strength Training, speed, and Practical Combat Technique, with specific training items and execution frequencies listed under each section.

In the bottom-right corner was the Spiritual Qi research section, featuring a simple particle distribution map, with several unverified inferences written beside it.

He picked up a pen and added a line under the "Practical Combat Technique" section: Control training, highest priority.

After writing, he stepped back to re-examine this entire training System.

After his Mental Power Breakthrough 2.0, his understanding of his body had risen by more than just one level.

But understanding alone was not enough; he needed to convert understanding into training, training into data, and data into growth.

His progress was all built up through sweat and time.

The System gave him the possibility of Infinite Growth, but it would never train for him.

The system panel was a mirror, responsible only for telling him where he stood now; it would not walk even a single step for him.

He re-planned his daily time allocation on the right side of the whiteboard.

Previously, he trained for about fourteen hours a day.

Strength Training took up the bulk of it, followed by speed training, Practical Combat Technique, and Spiritual Qi tracking.

Now, he wanted to single out control training, which would take up at least four hours or more every day.

The total training duration also had to increase, from fourteen hours up to sixteen hours, or even higher.

Sixteen hours.

It couldn't be called easy, but he didn't feel it was unbearable either.

More than four hours of sleep a day, combined with high-efficiency recovery, was enough for him.

After his Mental Power improved, his body's tolerance for fatigue became stronger, and short sleep could replenish his energy.

He woke up at 4:00 AM, ate his first meal shortly after 4:00, and entered the mountains at 5:00.

In the morning, he practiced strength and explosive power, searching for Spiritual Qi to recover himself during breaks.

In the afternoon, he practiced speed and control.

In the evening, he practiced Practical Combat Technique.

Returning at night, he continued to practice control until bedtime.

With a daily expenditure of 30,000 to 40,000 calories, he relied on peanut oil, glucose powder, and compressed biscuits to force-feed himself.

His stomach was fine; under the blessing of Infinite Growth, his digestive System had long since turned into an efficient biological reactor that could burn any fuel poured into it.

There was no period in his life as pure as this one.

Eating, training, sleeping.

Just these three things.

No need to deal with anyone, no need to care about anyone's gaze, no need to think about rent, performance reviews, or whether his salary would increase at the end of the year.

He only needed to do one thing: become stronger.

Chen Mo sat cross-legged on the mat and began tonight's control training.

Closing his eyes, he activated Inner Vision.

A map of his internal body unfolded in his mind, and he focused his attention on the sole of his right foot, beginning to activate the small muscle groups of the sole layer by layer.

The abductor hallucis, flexor digitorum brevis, and abductor digiti minimi—these muscles almost never exert force independently in an ordinary person's foot, because the arch of the foot is passively supported when walking and does not require active control.

But what he wanted was exactly this kind of "unneeded" control.

Only by incorporating every muscle in his body into precise control could he truly achieve the ability to lift heavy as if it were light.

After the foot muscles came the stabilizing muscle groups around the ankle, followed by the triceps surae, tibialis anterior, hamstrings, quadriceps, gluteus maximus, quadratus lumborum, and transversus abdominis.

He traced the force transmission chain from his lower limbs to his core, combing upwards all the way.

Every node was precisely located, precisely activated, and precisely relaxed.

Then came the upper limbs, from fingers to wrists, from forearms to upper arms, from the shoulder girdle to the back, from the rib cage to the neck.

He divided his entire body's muscle groups into hundreds of independent functional units, training his control over them one by one.

The process was extremely boring, requiring total concentration without distraction, and the drain on his Mental Power was significant.

After half an hour of training, sweat had already begun to seep from his forehead; it wasn't just physical exertion, but more so a drain on his Mental Power.

But he didn't stop, continuing for nearly two hours.

After completing the relaxation of the last unit, he slowly opened his eyes and exhaled a long breath.

There was an indescribable sense of transparency inside his body, as if every muscle in his body had been recalibrated, and every fiber had returned to its optimal position.

He suddenly thought of a possibility.

Since he could precisely control individual muscle fibers, could he achieve training effects without relying on external weights, relying only on his own muscle opposition?

Not by imagining it, but by actually making the muscle fibers contract.

If he could make the agonist and antagonist muscles pull against each other with maximum force simultaneously—for example, by having his biceps and triceps contract with full force at the same time.

Then the effect would be equivalent to doing high-load training with extreme weight.

There would be no load on the joints, but the process of muscle fiber tearing and repair would be exactly the same as weight training.

This was like a super-enhanced version of Standing Post.

A Move often appearing in novels: standing motionless in place, while intense changes are happening inside the body.

What he wanted to do now was exactly this.

He began to try.

Right forearm, biceps contracting with full force, flexing the elbow; simultaneously, the triceps contracting with full force, extending the elbow.

The two forces canceled each other out at the elbow joint, and his arm didn't Move an inch, but his forearm muscles instantly entered a state of extreme load.

He could clearly see the muscle fibers beginning to show micro-tears under extremely high tension; that familiar tingling sensation, the signal of repair and strengthening, came even faster than when he was squatting while carrying stones.

Found it.

He continued to deduce.

If his control continued to improve, extending this antagonistic training to all muscle groups in his body, then he could train at any time and in any place.

No need to go up the mountain, no need for giant rocks; he could practice while lying in bed, or even use a portion of his muscle groups to train while eating.

In this way, his effective daily training time could be greatly increased, because he could stagger the training of different muscle groups, with one part working while another part was resting.

Of course, this required extremely high control.

He couldn't yet manage to differentiate and control so many muscle groups simultaneously.

But the direction was already there.

He opened his eyes, stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and added another line under "Control training": Goal, full-body muscle group antagonistic training simultaneously at will, 24/7 uninterrupted training.

Then he flipped through his notebook and wrote down today's summary on the latest page.

After writing, he sat by the table and had an extra meal: three spoonfuls of peanut oil, two bags of glucose powder water, and five compressed biscuits.

While eating, he thought about his next plan.

Tomorrow, he would continue to go up the mountain to find spirit energy particles, while integrating control training into every segment of his training.

Practicing core control during weighted running, practicing isolated muscle exertion during Strength Training, and practicing antagonistic pulling during rest.

Every day, he had to be clearer than yesterday about which muscle in his body he had mastered more.

Every day, he had to be a little stronger.

Chen Mo put down the pen, leaned back in his chair, and looked at the ceiling.

He had only been here for two weeks, but it felt like a very, very long time had passed.

The internal changes he had experienced in these two weeks were more than all the previous four years combined.

He recalled the words he had written a few days ago: "Driving strength with control—this is my fundamental Cultivation Technique."

When he wrote those words, he was still just an enhancer with Inner Vision ability, and his understanding of control was still at the most superficial level.

Now he truly understood how much those words weighed.

Control was not an auxiliary; control was strength itself.

With the same amount of muscle, the higher the control precision, the greater the output strength.

With the same training volume, the finer the control, the higher the growth efficiency.

Pushing control to the extreme meant turning his own body from a semi-automatic machine into a fully intelligent combat weapon.

There were no shortcuts on this path; every step of progress had to be built up by countless practices.

But he liked it.

Down-to-earth, lonely, and fulfilling.

No need to prove anything to anyone, no need to respond to any expectations, just polish himself to the extreme bit by bit.

Outside the window, the night was deep, thin mist had risen in the mountains, and the moon was obscured, leaving only a blurred outline.

Chen Mo stood up, turned off the light, walked to the bed, and lay down.

Closing his eyes, he didn't fall asleep immediately.

He was still controlling the small muscle groups of his right foot, making them contract, relax, and contract again, one by one.

According to the current progress, in about another month, he would be able to incorporate all the skeletal muscles he could control at will into the scope of precise control.

Then he would go deeper, to cells, hormones, until he had complete control.

That day would not be too far off.