34: Chapter 34 Spirit and Flesh and One

After returning to the Main Hall, Chen Mo sat cross-legged on the cushion and began to carefully contemplate every change following his Mental Power Breakthrough.

Prediction and crisis warning were two direct abilities on the mental level, but he always felt that some other ability had been missed.

At the moment of his Mental Power Breakthrough, besides Prediction and crisis warning, there was a third ability.

He could not put his finger on what it was, but deep within his body, there was an instinctive urge to pull his spirit and flesh together.

It was not a physical pull.

It was a more fundamental Fusion.

He closed his eyes, attempting to switch his Mental Energy from the simple state of "Mental Perception" to another mode.

Previously, when he used Mental Perception to observe his body, his spirit was a bystander, and his body was the object being observed; his spirit watched from the outside, while his body operated on the inside.

But now he wanted to try whether he could make his spirit stop being a bystander and instead enter directly into the interior of his body, becoming one with his flesh.

His Mental Energy, like a layer of extremely thin and fine water film, slowly seeped out from the depths of his consciousness, shrouding downward along the inner wall of his skull.

It passed through his cervical vertebrae, shoulders, and moved layer by layer down along the erector spinae muscles on both sides of his spine.

He could feel his consciousness being "sucked" into his flesh bit by bit, and his body was also gradually accepting this foreign yet homologous power.

When the Mental Energy finally shrouded more than half of the muscles in his body, the Fusion occurred.

At that instant, Chen Mo felt his body disappear.

It did not truly disappear.

It was the concept of "body" that had been erased from his perception.

He was no longer a person who "possessed a body"; he "was" this body.

Every muscle fiber was an extension of his consciousness, every pulse of blood vessels was a signal of his heartbeat, and the rotation angle of every joint felt as if he were manually adjusting a precision gear.

That feeling was extremely bizarre, like transforming from a driver sitting in the driver's seat into the car itself—the engine was his heart, the tires were his soles, and the steering wheel was his spine.

He opened his eyes, stood up, pushed open the door, and walked into the courtyard.

The night breeze blew over.

The wind was very light, roughly level two or three.

But in his current perception, this breeze was not a "single gust," but countless extremely fine, long, intertwined transparent threads.

Each thread had its own flow direction, temperature, and speed.

While standing still, his body automatically made a series of extremely minute adjustments—his shoulders tilted slightly by half a centimeter, his head and neck turned at a tiny angle, and his waist muscles tightened slightly. Added together, these adjustments caused the wind that should have blown directly onto his chest to slide past his clothes.

The wind was dodged.

It was not actively dodged; the body dodged it on its own.

There was no need for the brain to issue an order to "dodge the wind," no need for the conduction time of neural reflex arcs; the muscles themselves seemed to possess independent judgment.

In a certain sense, this state was very close to a legendary Realm—the Realm of autonomous body instinct.

Without needing decision-making from the brain, the body itself could make the optimal response to the surrounding environment.

But the cost was also enormous.

The consumption rate of Mental Power was dozens of times higher than usual, like a reservoir with its sluice gates opened, the water level dropping at a speed visible to the naked eye.

He persisted for less than two minutes before his Mental Energy hit rock bottom.

His consciousness actively exited the Fusion state; he did not continue to persist.

He was very familiar with the feeling of mental exhaustion; if he overspent again, he would not even have the strength to walk back to the Main Hall.

Two minutes.

Supported by his Mental Power Breakthrough 3, the perception of Unity of Spirit and Flesh could only be maintained for two minutes at most.

Then Chen Mo discovered that his Force Multiplier had already exceeded 2.0 times. After his Mental Power Breakthrough 3.0, the bandwidth and control precision of his nervous System improved synchronously, and his Force Multiplier naturally crossed that threshold.

But to truly close the loop on this "limit output" link and continue to increase his Force Multiplier, he had to let his spirit completely merge into his flesh, pushing his control precision directly from the "muscle group" level to the single-fiber level.

Further improvements in Force Multiplier could only be achieved through Unity of Spirit and Flesh.

His Mental Energy had been mostly consumed in the last two minutes and needed to be recovered first.

He returned to the Main Hall, sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and regulated his breathing.

After recovering sufficiently, Chen Mo went out to search for spirit energy particles. The speed of absorbing the particles was faster than before, and the feeling of the warm current flowing into his body was even smoother.

Half an hour later, his Mental Power had recovered to about ninety percent.

He took a deep breath and activated Unity of Spirit and Flesh again.

This time, the Fusion was smoother than the first.

His spirit, like a tamed stream, naturally flowed along the texture of his muscles.

He no longer deliberately pushed the Fusion, but instead let his spirit permeate the depths of his muscles in waves, following the Rhythm of his breathing.

Then he tested the training of the Basic Muscle Tension Control Method.

Under the state of Unity of Spirit and Flesh, his entire body's muscles simultaneously entered a state of antagonistic opposition.

The quadriceps and hamstrings wrestled with each other at the knee joint, the rectus abdominis and erector spinae muscles stood in extreme opposition on both sides of the spine, and the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi pulled frantically across the chest cavity. These forces precisely canceled each other out at the joints, and his body remained completely motionless.

Because his spirit had already merged into his muscles, his consciousness directly became the muscles themselves, and the control precision increased significantly.

Previously, controlling seven non-adjacent muscle groups simultaneously was his limit, but now, he could mobilize more than two-thirds of his skeletal muscles throughout his body at the same time.

He was still a little short of mobilizing his entire body.

Then he suddenly felt a pattern in his body.

At a certain moment while maintaining Unity of Spirit and Flesh and full-body antagonistic opposition, his breathing and muscle contractions suddenly synchronized on their own.

It was not something he actively adjusted; it was a Rhythm his body had found itself.

When inhaling deeply, the tension of the full-body opposition climbed simultaneously; when exhaling deeply, the tension fell back in sync.

The length of inhalation, the depth of exhalation, and the amplitude of muscle contraction—these three perfectly overlapped to form an extremely precise cycle of Rhythm.

Then, something full of warmth, an energy that did not belong to him, seeped in through the pores all over his body.

It was Spiritual Qi.

It was the Spiritual Qi escaping from the spirit energy particles in the air, which was actively attracted by his body through the Rhythm of his breathing and muscles, and pulled into his body from the surroundings.

This efficiency was ten times that of his body's passive absorption.

Furthermore, it did not require his consciousness to manipulate the system panel; it was this body itself performing autonomous absorption.

He was shocked by this discovery, then quickly forced himself to calm down.