54: Chapter 54 Lake Bottom Training

Chen Mo did not pause in the water; with a single opening and closing movement of his body, he dove dozens of meters downward.

The light around him dimmed rapidly.

Near the shore, one could still see the light patterns cast by the sun through the water's surface, but by the time he reached a depth of one hundred meters, those patterns had turned into a blurry bright spot above his head.

The lake water around him transitioned from transparent light blue to jewel blue, and as he went deeper, the blue became increasingly dark.

Five hundred meters.

Water pressure squeezed in from all directions.

If it were an ordinary person, this depth would have long since exceeded the limits of the human body, but for Chen Mo, he was only just beginning to feel the weight of the surrounding water.

The light had almost vanished; the surroundings were a thorough deep blue. Occasionally, a few transparent fish unique to Beier Lake swam past him, their internal skeletons faintly glowing in the residual glimmer.

Eight hundred meters.

The water pressure had increased significantly.

For every ten meters of descent, the pressure increases by one atmosphere; eight hundred meters meant eighty atmospheres.

Chen Mo felt a distinct sense of pressure on the surface of his skin, and his thoracic and abdominal cavities were being compressed inward by the water pressure.

At this depth, he was still far from the bottom of the lake.

Descending. One thousand meters.

Upon reaching one thousand meters, Chen Mo felt the pressure.

Every inch of skin on his body was being pressured from all directions simultaneously.

Expanding his chest cavity required more effort, blood vessels bulged slightly beneath his skin, and a continuous humming sound came from his eardrums; that was his body self-regulating to balance the internal and external pressure.

His body density far exceeded that of an ordinary person, but even so, one hundred atmospheres was not something to be taken lightly.

His muscles began to tense involuntarily, as if he were performing static resistance training.

Chen Mo did not stop.

He knew the true training area was still below.

Descending. One thousand four hundred meters.

The pressure continued to rise.

The surroundings were now in total darkness.

No light could penetrate down here; the entire world at the bottom of the lake was a pure, ink-black void.

In this darkness, his perception became his only sense.

He could perceive the direction of the currents deep in the lake and the thickness of the sediment layer on the lake bed beneath him.

Descending. One thousand six hundred meters.

Chen Mo's feet touched the bottom of the lake.

The sensation was that of hard rock.

The deepest basin of Beier Lake had accumulated silt and rock layers over billions of years.

The water temperature was constant between three and four degrees Celsius, and the cold penetrated through his skin deep into his muscles.

One hundred and sixty atmospheres, with over one hundred and sixty kilograms of pressure per square centimeter, covered every inch of his body.

Merely standing in place was an extreme training session.

Chen Mo clearly felt the pressure being applied from all directions simultaneously.

His chest cavity was compressed; every expansion required dozens of times more effort than usual to force his ribs apart.

The deep muscle groups of his back and abdomen were forced to exert continuous effort to provide support.

He felt his hands; the surface of his fingers had turned slightly white from the water pressure, and clenching his fist required several times more force than in the air.

But this was not yet the limit.

He could still endure more.

It was just that the training efficiency at the lowest point of the lake basin was already high enough, and there was no temporary need to search for deeper crevices.

He stood in the very center of this Deep Pool at the bottom of the lake, his feet planted firmly on the rock, and began to perform the movements of the Basic Muscle Tension Control Method.

Performing this set of movements in the air was purely self-antagonism; he was only resisting his own muscles.

At this depth, every movement was simultaneously resisting the water pressure and the resistance from both ends of his own muscle groups.

Tightening from the soles of his feet, the front and back muscle groups of his calves exerted force simultaneously, and the line of force traveled upward to his knee joints.

The front and back of his thighs antagonized each other, along with his gluteus maximus and hip flexors.

Then to his core—the rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, erector spinae, and quadratus lumborum—his entire torso felt as if it were being tightened by coils of steel bars.

With his shoulder blades retracted, his latissimus dorsi and pectoralis major exerted force from front and back; the power traveled from his shoulder joints to his elbow joints, then to his wrists, and finally spilled out from his fingertips, churning the surrounding lake water into tiny vortices.

Every single muscle fiber contracted under the double load.

That feeling of soreness was completely different from training in the air; it wasn't just the burning before exhaustion, but a continuous, intensifying oppressive ache that permeated from deep within the muscles outward.

The lake water outside was bone-chillingly cold, yet inside his muscles, they were burning furiously.

The boundary between cold and heat was right beneath his skin; it felt as if there were only a thin membrane separating ice from magma.

The Human Breathing Method began to accelerate.

Scattered Spiritual Qi began to permeate in through the pores all over his body.

The efficiency of absorbing scattered Spiritual Qi at the bottom of the lake was similar to when he was in the Deep Pool in Shennongjia, but the training intensity now was many times higher than it was then.

The rate at which the scattered Spiritual Qi permeated into his muscle cells could not keep up with the rate of destruction; with every movement, his micro-muscle fibers were being torn, then repaired by the Spiritual Qi, and then torn again by the next set of movements before they were fully healed.

This cycle of "destruction—repair—destruction—repair" was the underlying logic of his strength growth.

The deeper the destruction and the more thorough the repair, the faster the growth.

His heart beat increasingly heavily within his chest cavity.

Every pulsation was like someone beating a drum inside his chest, pumping fresh blood to every extremity of his body.

Under this pressure, the heart itself was also being exercised; the cardiac muscle fibers were pushing blood flow while simultaneously resisting the water pressure, and each contraction was more laborious and thorough than it would be in the air.

An hour later, Chen Mo felt completely exhausted, and his oxygen was depleted.

All the muscle groups throughout his body were sending out signals simultaneously.

Every muscle fiber had accumulated a large amount of metabolic waste, and the soreness spread from deep within the muscles to the fascial layers; even his bone joints felt a dull, oppressive pain.

His Mental Power consumption was also immense; maintaining the Basic Muscle Tension Control Method under high pressure in deep water required several times the concentration compared to a normal environment.

Chen Mo exerted force with his legs, and his body sprang up from the bottom of the lake.

The speed of his ascent was faster than his descent; his body rose rapidly through the water, and the surrounding pressure decreased layer by layer.

From sixteen hundred meters to the surface, the ascent only took a few dozen seconds.

By the time he was halfway up, his body had already begun self-repair; after the pressure decreased, his blood circulation accelerated, and the metabolic waste accumulated in his muscles began to be carried away by his blood.

The moment he broke the surface of the water, sunlight struck his face.

He inhaled air in large gulps, his chest cavity finally able to expand freely.

He gripped the rocks at the edge of the lake with both hands and climbed up.

He was soaked through; his skin was flushed red from enduring the high pressure for so long, and his muscles still retained the slight tremors from just having reached exhaustion.

He sat down by the lake and sensed his own state; his skin, muscles, and even his internal organs had sustained minor damage.

Especially his muscles; every fiber was steeped in an extreme, aching soreness, like a rope that had been repeatedly twisted and wrung out before being soaked in ice water.

The training results were visible to the naked eye.

He rested by the lake for a few minutes, allowing his body to repair itself a little.

Chen Mo knew that passive repair was too slow; he had to actively absorb spirit energy particles, as the energy contained within spirit energy particles was more abundant and effective.

Chen Mo sensed and searched for spirit energy particles by the lake, then absorbed the spirit energy particles.

This feeling was completely different from absorbing scattered Spiritual Qi; scattered Spiritual Qi was like water vapor permeating the skin, which was slow, whereas spirit energy particles were more direct and contained more energy.

The Spiritual Qi traveled between his cells, repairing the torn muscle fibers, replenishing his depleted energy reserves, and soothing the micro-damage on his internal organs and bones.

Half an hour later, his state had fully recovered.

Chen Mo summoned the system panel.

A dark gray, semi-transparent interface unfolded in front of him.

[Name: Chen Mo]

[Age: 22]

[Height: 185cm]

[Weight: 140kg]

[Ability: Infinite Growth]

[Strength: 5283kg]

[Mental Power: 4.9]

[Force Multiplier: 4.0x]

His strength had increased from the initial 5261 kilograms to 5283 kilograms.

He looked at the system panel and calculated silently in his heart.

From entering the water to full recovery, his strength had increased by twenty-two kilograms within two hours.

Back at the Deep Pool, each training and recovery session yielded a maximum increase of five kilograms per hour.

Now, this efficiency had more than doubled.

More importantly, it was the trend.

The concentration of Spiritual Qi was still continuously increasing.

The higher the concentration, the more scattered Spiritual Qi the Human Breathing Method would absorb during training; at the same time, spirit energy particles would also increase, muscle repair speed would accelerate, and the recovery time after each training session would shorten.

And shorter recovery time meant that the number of training sets Chen Mo could complete each day would increase.

More importantly, with the increase in Force Multiplier, the same training load would produce even higher results.

The dual load of the Basic Muscle Tension Control Method combined with the water pressure at the bottom of the lake would make the growth rate of his Force Multiplier faster than before.

The higher the Force Multiplier, the greater the destructive power each kilogram of his base punch force could deliver, and the deeper the water pressure he could withstand during training; this increase in depth, in turn, increased the training load.

This was a self-reinforcing cycle.

The water pressure at the bottom of the lake had raised the starting point of this cycle.

Once the concentration of Spiritual Qi increased further, he could even stay at the bottom of the lake around the clock, completing both training and recovery underwater, only coming up to breathe oxygen.

Chen Mo closed the system panel, tilted his head back, and chugged several large mouthfuls of cooking oil, nearly 1 kilogram.

The viscous oil slid down his throat, and heat spread through his stomach.

His body, having just finished a round of training, was consuming a massive amount of energy; every muscle was like a furnace waiting to be fed, devouring anything that could be burned.

After replenishing, Chen Mo walked to the edge of the lake, leaned over, and dove into the lake surface.

The icy lake water wrapped around his entire body once again.

The ripples spreading across the surface of the water were quickly swallowed by the calmness of the lake.