2: Chapter 2 Physical Injury Recovery

May 10, 2030, Xia Calendar, 9:16 AM.

Chen Mo was woken up by hunger.

It wasn't the faint signal of "feeling a bit hungry when waking up in the morning," but a strong protest, as if his stomach had been twisted by someone.

Before he even opened his eyes, his stomach had already woken up first.

He lay on his side in bed, not getting up immediately, but stared blankly for a few seconds at the curtains soaked in morning light.

Then he remembered what happened last night.

system panel.

Infinite Growth.

Pull-ups, seventeen.

That kind of hunger where the refrigerator gets raided.

When these memories surged up, his first reaction was that this was a dream.

A dream that was particularly real and rich in detail.

He pinched his thigh.

It hurt.

The system panel was still there.

The translucent interface hovered steadily right in front of his line of sight, distance unchanged, position unchanged, as if embedded between his retinas and reality.

Name: Chen Mo

Age: 22

Ability: Infinite Growth

Strength (Punching Power): 216kg

Mental Power: 1.4 (Normal person is 1)

Chen Mo stared at those numbers for a long time.

His punching power had changed from 200 kg yesterday to 216 kg.

Overnight, it had increased by 16 kg.

His Mental Power had changed from 1.2 to 1.4, an increase of 0.2.

He hadn't done any training.

He was just sleeping.

Yet his strength had increased.

This meant that "Infinite Growth" did not only take effect during training; the body's recovery process itself was a form of strengthening.

While his muscles were repairing during sleep, they were also transcending themselves.

He slowly sat up and threw the quilt aside.

Then he felt a second change.

His body felt very light.

It was a kind of lightness he had never experienced before, one that seemed to seep out from the gaps in his bones.

He stood up and moved his shoulders.

His shoulder joints made a faint sound when rotated, like the light sound of a smooth new machine operating for the first time.

All the joint discomfort accumulated over four years was gone.

The soreness that occasionally appeared in his right knee when doing squats had disappeared.

The lingering pain in his left shoulder that came and went when he bench pressed was so quiet it was as if it had never existed.

His wrist, which had been strained while doing heavy deadlifts last winter and always had a slight feeling of catching when doing curls afterward, now rotated incredibly smoothly with no popping sound.

He stood by the bed, clenching and unclenching his hands repeatedly a dozen times.

Every tendon in his fingers was sliding in a perfectly rhythmic way, without any lag or discomfort.

The wear and tear left by four years of training had been completely wiped clean overnight.

Chen Mo stood in the middle of the room, barefoot on the cold floor tiles, and suddenly grinned.

"This is even more valuable than becoming stronger itself," he muttered to himself.

Then came the hunger.

When the hunger surged up for the third time, he finally realized he needed to eat.

The memory of last night's crazy eating session was still there, but to his surprise, today's hunger wasn't more intense than last night's.

His ability's recovery and strengthening required energy consumption, but the amount consumed seemed related to the magnitude of the strengthening.

Last night, breaking his limits starting from the fifteenth pull-up, the consumption should have been fine.

The huge consumption yesterday must have been for repairing his body, while the passive growth during sleep had a relatively mild consumption.

As long as he wasn't forcibly breaking his limits, the energy demand remained within a controllable range.

After washing up in the bathroom, he walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to take a look.

After raiding it yesterday, there wasn't much left in the refrigerator, but there were still enough breakfast Materials.

Five eggs, beaten.

150 grams of oats, boiled with water.

Pour the egg mixture into the oatmeal, stir well, turn off the heat, and let it simmer covered for two minutes.

When serving, he sprinkled a little salt and a handful of chopped green onions on top.

Then, a glass of protein powder mixed with milk: sixty grams of powder with three hundred milliliters of milk.

This meal was about eleven hundred calories.

He sat at the table eating spoonful by spoonful, thinking in his head.

Previously, his daily intake for muscle gain was between thirty-five hundred and four thousand calories, mainly because work also consumed a lot.

Breakfast was usually three eggs, eighty grams of oats, and a glass of protein powder, totaling about eight hundred calories.

Now, with the same structure, adding two eggs and seventy grams of oats, the calories had increased by half.

If he continued to get stronger, the energy required would also increase.

"Just eating a lot isn't really a big problem."

He swallowed a mouthful of oatmeal and calculated in his heart, "At worst, I'll switch the protein powder to mass gainer; the carbohydrate density is high, and I can pile on twice the calories. If that doesn't work, I'll just use a blender to make nut paste; one liter could have fifteen hundred calories."

He hadn't reached the point where he needed to "eat a cow a day."

The system panel didn't give him an outrageous metabolic acceleration; it just made his digestive efficiency higher.

What he ate was quickly converted and absorbed, then precisely transported to the places that needed repair and strengthening.

This was good news.

He finished the last mouthful of oatmeal and glanced at the time on his phone: it was almost ten o'clock.

He had a class at ten-thirty.

The student was named Xu Lei, an e-commerce business owner who had bought his first big package when he first arrived at this gym.

Thirty lessons, followed by a fixed schedule of fifteen visits per month, almost always booked for ten-thirty in the morning.

Chen Mo threw the bowl and chopsticks into the sink to soak and turned into the bathroom.

Shaving, changing clothes—his movements were quick.

Before putting on his trainer uniform, he habitually paused in front of the mirror and looked up at himself.

It was the same as yesterday.

The muscle lines were still the same lines; the dimensions hadn't exploded overnight, and no strange patterns had appeared on his face.

The system panel gave him internal changes, while his appearance remained unchanged.

This was good.

He picked up his phone and called a car.

Three minutes later, a white autonomous electric vehicle stopped at the entrance of the residential complex.

Chen Mo opened the car door and sat in the back seat; the door closed automatically.

There was no driver inside the car; in the last two years, major cities across the country had basically completed the transition to autonomous driving for taxis and ride-hailing vehicles.

There was no steering wheel in the driver's seat, only a screen displaying the route and estimated time.

"Destination: Jili Fitness Center."

The car's audio system emitted a steady female voice, "Estimated arrival time: 10:04."

The car merged smoothly into the traffic, the street trees passing by outside the window, their leaves appearing exceptionally lush green in the morning light.

Chen Mo leaned back in his seat, thinking about the line of numbers on the system panel.

216 kg of punching power.

A normal person's full-force punch is between 50 and 80 kg, while a professional fighter's is over two hundred kg.

He had already entered the punching power range of a professional fighter.

From 200 to 216, it only took one night.

He needed to find a place to test it.