44: Chapter 44 Evidence

The camera angle could cover the entire scene.

He raised his right arm.

No energy buildup.

Just a twist of the waist and turn of the hips.

The moment his fist snapped out from his shoulder, the muscle chain of his entire arm exploded in sequence: anterior deltoid, upper pectoralis major, long head of the triceps, and forearm flexor group.

Power traveled from the soles of his feet to his waist and hips, twisted from his waist and hips to his shoulders and back, and then surged into his fist.

The entire conduction line was completed in one-tenth of a second.

The fist slammed into the trunk of the fir tree.

The trunk, thick as a hug, was hit as if by a cannonball.

It didn't snap.

It shattered.

Debris and wooden splinters sprayed in the opposite direction, hitting nearby bushes with a dense, pattering sound.

The upper half of the trunk slowly tilted to one side, the crown brushing against the branches and leaves of another nearby fir tree with a rustling friction sound.

Then the whole tree crashed to the ground, the impact making a dull thud against the earth.

Chen Mo didn't look at the fallen tree; he was already walking toward the next one.

Second punch.

Another fir tree snapped on impact, the bark rolling outward at the break, white wood fibers exposed to the air.

Third punch.

Fourth punch.

His movements became faster and faster.

Each punch landed on the trunk from a different direction.

A destructive force of over sixteen tons was released from the small cross-section of a fist.

The pressure was high enough to crush plant cell walls in microseconds.

In less than ten seconds, a small patch of forest in the center of the valley had been cleared.

The fallen fir trees were piled up in disarray on the ground, the broken ends of the trunks all sharp angles, with tree sap shaken out of them clinging to the white wood splinters.

Sunlight shone directly through the cleared gap, illuminating the wood chips scattered all over the ground, and the air was filled with the strong, fresh scent of wood pulp.

Chen Mo did not stop.

He retreated dozens of meters, stood on a rock, and adjusted the camera angle.

Then he said a simple sentence to the camera.

"Speed is another dimension of evolution."

As the words fell, his whole person turned into a blur.

This was not a metaphor.

In the action camera's sixty-frame-per-second recording mode, his figure blurred into a streak, with a peak speed exceeding 70 meters per second.

The water mist floating in the forest air was stirred up by the high-speed movement, pulling out thin white lines.

He rushed from one end of the valley to the other, leaving a dozen shallow pits where he stepped, the soil at the bottom of the pits compressed solid.

Then he suddenly turned back.

The trajectory of his run formed an extremely sharp right angle.

For an ordinary person, changing direction at this speed would instantly tear the ligaments in their knees and ankles.

But for Chen Mo, this was just a simple movement of changing the direction of force from forward to reverse.

He stopped in front of the camera.

No panting, no sweating, his breathing as steady as if he had just finished a walk.

"Did you see that?"

He said, his voice still hoarse.

"This is the result of training."

"Cheng Jian, practice hard. Study the movements above and feel the results. In the early stages, do not let anyone know about it."

"Once you feel the effects, you will know how important it is."

"Then find someone you trust and hand it over to the state."

He paused.

"I trust you."

"And there is no need to look for me. Just pretend I never existed. I don't want to expose myself either."

There was no sentimentality in his tone, no condescension; he was simply stating facts.

But when he said the last sentence, his speaking speed slowed down slightly.

"However—we will meet again."

Chen Mo walked to the camera and reached out to press the stop button.

The screen went dark.

He stood in the center of the valley, his tall figure appearing abrupt among the remaining stumps and broken wood.

Then he began to clean up.

The fallen trunks were moved away and scattered in a pile of rubble in the distance.

The wood chips shattered by the force of his punches were swept together with branches and buried under a thick layer of fallen leaves.

The footprints on the ground were carefully smoothed over and covered with newly fallen leaves and dead branches.

The memory card of the action camera was taken out, and the camera's data interface was shredded with a sharp stone and buried in different locations in the valley, so that even if someone dug up the fragments in the future, they would not be able to recover any data.

After finishing this, Chen Mo began to run back.

He deliberately chose different routes for his arrival and departure.

He would not leave two sets of traces on the same path.

Even if someone tracked him here, they wouldn't be able to find the direction he returned from, and the vegetation here was growing wildly by the day; it wouldn't be long before all traces were swallowed by newly grown grass and vines.

Returning to Yi City was in the afternoon.

Chen Mo did not enter the city directly.

He stopped at an abandoned garbage transfer station on the outskirts of the city.

It had been out of use for several years, and the tin roof was full of rust holes.

He found what he needed among a pile of discarded old books and waste paper: a notebook.

Hardcover, the paper intact.

It might have been thrown away during that big cleanup.

The pattern on the cover was a style from many years ago, without any markings that could be traced back to a specific person.

Chen Mo opened the notebook and took out the black gel pen he had prepared long ago.

Then he began to copy the Human Breathing Method manual, and also wrote down his discoveries about Spiritual Qi afterward: that Spiritual Qi in all areas was uniform, the Spiritual Qi concentration was consistent, the Spiritual Qi concentration was slowly increasing, and so on.

Every character was not in his own handwriting.

The force and angle of the pen tip on the paper were controlled in a completely unfamiliar style of writing.

The whole page was written in neat but stiff handwriting, as if traced one by one from a dictionary.

This type of physical manual written on paper would not leave any digital traces.

There was no creation time for an electronic document, no keyboard typing habits, and no access records on a server.

Even if someone got this manual, they would only be able to look for clues from a garbage station without any geographical markings, a second-hand notebook, and a completely unfamiliar handwriting.

And the clues were zero.

Everything was ready.

A Human Breathing Method manual copied in untraceable handwriting, and a memory card containing that absurd video.

Chen Mo sat in the Main Hall, his fingers pressed on the tabletop, thinking through the delivery plan step by step.

The timing was approaching.

The official announcement from the government would be the node.

When that day came, the mountains and forests would slowly become restricted areas, and the city would begin to expand.

But it would also be on that day that Cheng Jian and countless others like him would be the busiest.

They would appear in every corner where help was needed—the foot of the mountains, intersections, temporary shelters.

At that time, the opportunity for contact would appear.

Chen Mo put the manual, the memory card, and the notebook together into a sealed bag, sealed it, and hid it in the most hidden corner of the old house.

He got up to do his evening training.

From the direction of the mountains, the night wind blew in, carrying the scent of wildly growing vegetation, mixed with the dampness of the earth and the greenness of the leaves.

Those smells were much stronger than in previous years, as if the earth itself were breathing.