25: Chapter 25 Starry Sky and Forest

A punching force exceeding a ton—a figure he wouldn't have dared to even imagine back at the gym—now appeared solid and real on his system panel, manifesting within him.

Chen Mo lay on the gravel beach, his soaked body feeling slightly chilled by the mountain breeze, but he did not move.

However, the rate of his strength improvement had indeed slowed down a bit over the past two days. He carefully recalled his time allocation during the day—traveling in the morning, searching for the source of the Yin River in the afternoon, and the only truly high-intensity training period being the few hours spent in the Deep Pool from evening until late night.

Compared to his previous training rhythm of round-the-clock, non-stop, self-depleting intensity, his effective training time today had clearly shortened.

Aside from the few rounds of high-intensity weighted training in the Deep Pool at night, where the improvement efficiency reached nearly 4 kilograms per hour, it was already comparable to the intensity of Standing Post training.

But the sustainability of this underwater weighted training was far greater than Standing Post—Standing Post consumed too much Mental Energy, requiring him to focus all his attention on controlling the antagonistic force of every muscle fiber, and after an hour of practice, his Mental Power would easily be exhausted.

Once the concentration of Spiritual Qi continued to rise in the future, the recovery effect on his Mental Power would also be enhanced, allowing him to sustain longer periods of high-intensity training, and the efficiency of his growth would naturally rise to a new level.

In the Deep Pool, water pressure and resistance were external forces that didn't require him to expend extra Mental Power to control; he only needed to withstand them.

The two corresponded to different training stages: Standing Post trained precise control over himself, while water pressure trained pure, extreme output.

However, the growth of his Mental Power was actually accelerating. Since entering the mountains, his Mental Power value had been climbing steadily, increasing by zero point two in just two days, which was unimaginable before.

He carefully thought about the reason; it should be that the sights and sounds along the way had allowed his Mental Power to be tempered and broadened in a different way.

The vastness of the primeval forest, the depth of the Yin River gorge, the magnificence of the hundred-meter cliff, and the tranquility of the albino giant salamander—these scenes did not require him to fight against them, only to experience them.

Experiencing itself was a form of mental expansion. In the past, he had desperately squeezed his willpower in the gym and on mountain trails, thinking that was the only way to improve his Mental Power.

Now it seemed that path was only half right. When it came to Mental Power, one side was the resilience of willpower, and the other was the breadth of one's state of mind.

Willpower relied on grinding, while state of mind relied on cultivation.

He recalled those moments when he would rush out of the Deep Pool and lie on the rocks, watching the sky and slowly adjusting his breathing; indeed, his Mental Power felt clear and relaxed from the inside out.

This place was actually more suitable for him.

Undisturbed and isolated from the world. The training ground was just a step away from his tent, and at the same time, he wouldn't lose his judgment regarding danger and the environment.

There was only one problem—supplies. The peanut oil and compressed biscuits would eventually run out. If he didn't want to cut his training plan short, he had to solve the source of food. As for hunting, the caloric density of those prey was generally not high, and they were not convenient to process.

But at least for tonight, he didn't have to worry about supplies.

He stood up, shook the water droplets off his body, and walked barefoot across the gravel beach toward the tent.

Halfway there, he suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky above. Then, he couldn't take his eyes off it.

Billions of stars, as if someone had overturned a whole box of crushed diamonds, covered the entire sky densely, without a single gap.

The Milky Way, like a brilliant silver river, stretched from behind the eastern ridgeline to the sky above the primeval forest in the west, so clear that one could see the dark dust lanes and dense star clusters.

Starlight poured down.

This was the deepest part of the core no-man's-land of the Shennong Mountain Range. Within a radius of over a hundred kilometers, there were no towns, no lights, and not a trace of light pollution.

The starry sky here retained its most primitive and pure appearance from hundreds of millions of years ago, the same sky that ancient humans saw when they looked up from their caves.

He tilted his head back, staring straight at the sky without blinking.

A surge of indescribable impulse suddenly welled up in his chest, something that did not come from his muscles, from the system panel, or from any part of his body.

He suddenly wanted to do something he hadn't done for a very, very long time—not training, not recording data.

He wanted to stand at the highest place, to be closer to this starry sky, just a little bit closer.

He turned and walked to the base of the hundreds-of-meters-high cliff, looking up. The cliff face was covered in dents and cracks worn away by the waterfall over the years.

He hooked his fingers into a narrow crack and began to climb.

Every step was steady and fast. The mist stirred up by the waterfall hit his face and shoulders, feeling cool.

In just a few dozen seconds, he had grabbed the protruding eagle-beak-shaped rock at the top of the cliff and vaulted up.

The moment he stood on the peak of the precipice, he couldn't help but spread his arms.

Beneath his feet was an endless sea of black forest.

The primeval forest of the Shennong Mountain Range looked like a crouching black beast in the night, stretching continuously to the ends of the earth.

The mountain breeze blew from the distant horizon, crossing ridge after ridge, setting off layers of forest waves.

The treetops swayed and rose in the wind like the waves of the sea, rolling in from afar and rolling away, emitting a deep and vast rustling sound.

Above his head was the Milky Way.

Beneath his feet was the forest sea.

He stood alone between the two, spreading his arms, embracing the vast starry sky and the boundless forest sea.

This feeling was different from the numbers on the system panel. The numbers on the system panel let him know how strong he was, while this starry sky let him know how small he was.

But being small did not make him panic. Being small made him quiet.

He remembered the night he obtained the system panel.

He was lying in that thirty-square-meter rented room in Li City, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, thinking that the system panel was real, the effects were real, and the infinity was real, and then he turned over and went to sleep.

At that time, he thought the end of this path was strength—strength great enough to protect himself and to withstand all accidents and harm.

But now, standing under this starry sky, he suddenly realized that what he wanted was far more than that.

Strength was not the end, nor was it the most important thing on the road.

Strength was the ticket. It was the ticket that allowed him to stand here, the ticket that allowed him to climb this hundred-meter cliff, and the only reason he could see this starry sky.

If not for the system panel and the hard training day and night for the past half month, he would never have known that such a scene existed in the world in his entire life.

And beyond this starry sky, there was an even vaster starry sky. There were one hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and one hundred billion galaxies in the observable Universe.

The stars he saw now were just a corner on the edge of the Milky Way; ninety-nine point nine percent of the Universe was something humans couldn't even see.

But what was that line on the system panel again?

"Infinite Growth."

Any form of exercise would produce permanent, stackable positive effects.

No upper limit, no ceiling, no genetic locks.

If those four words were true—and he had already verified in countless training sessions that they were true—then the stars might not be impossible to reach, and the Universe might not be impossible to transcend.

It was not arrogance.

It was that he had spent over half a month transforming from an ordinary fitness coach into a human capable of shattering reinforced concrete with a single punch.

And he had only just begun to walk this path.

If he were given a year, ten years, a hundred years, given enough time to run, and enough willpower to grind—where could he go?

He stood at the peak of the precipice and looked down at his right hand.

That hand had broken through red brick walls, shattered concrete load-bearing columns, and smashed granite walls in the past half month.

But at this moment, it was just quietly grasping the wind, grasping the starlight, and grasping a hot and firm power surging up from the depths of his chest.

No matter what the future held, he believed in himself.

The moment he vaulted down from the cliff top, he suddenly discovered that the Mental Power attribute on the system panel had increased again—2.7.

Previously, every zero point one increase required using extreme training to push his willpower to the edge of collapse, but tonight, just by standing on the cliff top for a moment, his Mental Power had jumped up with an unprecedented magnitude.

Chen Mo landed back by the pool, stepped barefoot on the gravel beach, took one last look at the Milky Way above, and turned to walk toward the tent. The tent's fabric flap swayed gently in the night wind, and a miniature camping light inside emitted a faint, warm glow.

He sat back on his sleeping bag, opened his notebook, and wrote down the experience of tonight word by word.

Then he turned off the light, lay flat, and closed his eyes. The waterfall outside was still roaring, and the starry sky above was still rotating.

And he lay quietly between the two, his breathing steady, his expression calm.