6: Chapter 6 Decision

Chen Mo left the gym and first went to the breakfast shop next door for a second meal.

Two baskets of xiaolongbao, two bowls of wontons, three fried dough sticks, five tea eggs, and a cup of soy milk.

The landlady glanced at him when she brought the third round, probably wondering where this young man had just escaped from.

After eating, he didn't return to the gym.

There were no classes this morning. When Xu Lei left yesterday, he said he had things to take care of on a business trip, so he rescheduled his classes to next week.

He had a little time to himself.

Walking slowly back along the sidewalk, a thought kept turning in his mind.

Resign.

This thought wasn't something that had just come to him today.

It had been buried since the first night the system panel appeared, like a seed.

Now, this seed was starting to burrow into his bones.

The gym was too small; the squat rack could only handle a maximum of three hundred kilograms.

Last night, he had already reached 155 on the bench press, 250 on the squat, and 270 on the deadlift.

At this rate, in two more weeks, there wouldn't be a heavy enough barbell in the gym for him to train with.

And there was an even more realistic issue: the eyes of his colleagues.

That remark Da Liu made yesterday, "Coach Chen must have taken some medicine today, right?" was half-joking.

But jokes, when repeated, turn into observations, and observations turn into conclusions.

The fitness circle is neither big nor small; if someone's performance improves rapidly, they will be remembered and compared.

He didn't want to be remembered, didn't want to be compared, and didn't want to appear in anyone's chat logs or social media posts.

He needed a place that was big enough.

A place where no one knew him.

A place where he could punch with all his might and run with full speed without anyone seeing him.

His hometown.

Yi City, in the northwest of Yunmeng Province, backed by the Shennong Mountain Range.

The spine of central Xia Country was right there, with primitive forests stretching for hundreds of kilometers, extremely low population density, and forest coverage exceeding ninety percent.

His old family house was in a town under the jurisdiction of Yi City, and less than a li behind the house was the mountain.

After his parents passed away, his uncle had been helping to look after the house.

Every year, he would go to the old house a few times to open the windows for ventilation, and if the grass in the yard grew tall, he would hoe it.

Chen Mo would return to stay for a few days every Chinese New Year, have a New Year's Eve dinner with his only relative, and then return to Li City.

He had almost no social circle in Yi City.

He had attended middle school elsewhere, and his classmates were all there.

The relatives on his parents' side were few to begin with, and they didn't interact much.

If he went back now, there wouldn't be more than ten people in the whole town who knew him.

And among those ten people, probably no one would care what he was doing on the mountain.

This was the best place he could think of at this stage.

Two o'clock in the afternoon, the coaching department of Jili Fitness Center.

Manager Yang Ming's office was inside on the fifth floor; it wasn't big.

A desk, a filing cabinet, two chairs, and a half-dead devil's ivy plant on the table.

Yang Ming was thirty-five and had been in the industry for over a decade. He was a shrewd person, but he had a good personality and took decent care of his coaches.

"...Are you sure?" Yang Ming looked at Chen Mo, his pen suspended in mid-air.

"There's something at home; I have to go back." Chen Mo stood in front of the desk, his tone calm, exactly the same as usual.

"What is it? Is it serious?" Yang Ming frowned and put down the pen. "If you need leave, you can take a few days of annual leave first. You haven't taken a single day off in the past six months. You can go back, handle it, and then come back."

"It's quite troublesome; I can't determine how long it will take to resolve." Chen Mo said. "So I'll resign first, to avoid delaying the scheduling here."

Yang Ming leaned back in his chair and looked at him for a few seconds.

Chen Mo had arrived at this time last year.

When he first arrived, he had only been graduated for a year, and apart from his good physique and appearance, there was nothing special about him.

He had all the flaws a newcomer should have; in his first class, he was so nervous that he even messed up the order of the warm-up exercises.

But this kid had two strengths: he learned fast, and he was steady.

His personality was reserved, he didn't talk much, but his performance was always good, and he could occasionally win the monthly sales championship.

In an industry that relies on course renewal rates and client word-of-mouth, people like this who work quietly but get things done are actually the hardest to find.

"What about Xu Lei?" Yang Ming asked.

"He'll be back next week; I'll communicate with him then. The remaining classes can be transferred to Old Zhou; Old Zhou has more experience in fat loss training than I do." Chen Mo had thought through this explanation before coming.

Old Zhou was the most senior coach in the coaching department, and Xu Lei wouldn't have any problems training with him.

Yang Ming was silent for a moment, then sighed.

"Alright then. You know I'm not short of people here, but I am short of people like you who make clients feel at ease. If you want to come back after you've handled your affairs, the terms will remain the same. Just call me directly."

"Thank you, Brother Yang."

Finance settled his monthly salary, and adding the previous commissions, he received a total of over 16,000.

He checked his bank card balance: 153,000.

In a city like Li City, for a twenty-two-year-old to save 150,000 after working for just over a year was considered very hardworking.

He didn't drink, smoke, or gamble; his social activities were almost zero, and apart from monthly rent and food, he had almost no other expenses.

When he left, he said goodbye to a few coaches.

Old Zhou walked him to the door, patted his shoulder, and said to come back and get together when he had time.

Chen Mo smiled without replying. He knew that by the next time they met, he might no longer be the Chen Mo these colleagues knew.

That young coach who could squat over two hundred kilograms in the gym, bench press one hundred and fifty, and was usually quiet but very serious in class, would probably slowly fade from their memories into someone who "heard he went back to his hometown later."

It was past three in the afternoon when he walked out of the Jili Fitness Center gate.

He stood at the entrance and looked back. That place where he had worked for a year—the glass curtain wall from the fourth to the fifth floor was shimmering with a pale blue light in the afternoon sun.

Then he withdrew his gaze, turned around, and hailed a car.

His suitcase had already been packed at home; he only brought a few clothes, daily necessities, a computer, and most importantly, that black notebook.

Back at the rental apartment, he sat on the bed, opened his phone, and booked a high-speed rail ticket for tomorrow morning.

Li City to Yi City, a five-hour drive.

After booking the ticket, he put his phone aside and sat against the wall.

This was the second major decision he had made in his twenty-two years of life.

The first was signing papers at the hospital during his middle school years.

After his parents passed away in an accident, there were some documents that required a direct family member's signature.

How old was he then?

Fourteen or fifteen.

After coming out of the hospital that day, he changed; he became less talkative.

Most fifteen or sixteen-year-old boys still felt they were invincible, and even if they got into fights on the playground or broke an arm, they would just think, "It'll be fine in a few days."

But from that moment on, he knew one thing: humans are fragile.

A careless turn, a perfectly normal accident, a piece of rotten weather he still didn't like to recall—all could turn a complete family into a pile of documents and one person.

That was why he started fitness.

At first, he just found videos online to follow, went to the school playground to run laps, and used his body weight when there was no equipment—push-ups, squats, pull-ups—training until his body couldn't take it anymore before stopping.

Later, he realized that wasn't a normal way to exercise.

It was a form of self-protection.

He was helpless against his parents' passing, but he was using his own way to build a fortress on his body.

Now he had this ability.

This was the starting point, a starting point that might never have an end.

The line on the system panel was written very clearly—Infinite Growth.

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

So he had to go back, return to that place with mountains, find a corner where no one could see him, and become strong with all his might.

He opened his notebook and started writing.

The tests over the past two days had given him some preliminary conclusions.

High-explosive training was the most efficient means of stimulation.

Short-distance sprints brought more significant data growth than long-distance jogging.

Heavy-weight Strength Training had the largest growth margin.

The principle of energy conversion still needed to be explored, but the direction was already there: as long as he ate enough high-calorie food, his body could convert the food into that heat flow that repaired everything.

He listed a series of to-dos in his notebook:

· Immediately investigate the terrain of the back mountain after returning to Yi City to find a sufficiently hidden personal training ground.

· Increase purchase of high-energy food reserves (peanut oil, nut butter, glucose powder).

· Study video tutorials on punching force techniques to improve punching force conversion rate.

· Research incorporating Chinese traditional martial arts theory and physical precepts from classic texts into his own training system to see if it would trigger new reactions from the system panel.

· Test the influence of special medicinal materials (ginseng, lingzhi, etc.) on his ability.

After finishing, he put the pen next to the notebook and his gaze fell on the two characters for "ginseng."

He had seen too many tropes when reading novels before.

Thousand-year ginseng, ten-thousand-year lingzhi, heaven and earth Spirit Treasure; after the protagonist eats them, they cleanse the marrow and cut the bones, greatly increasing their power.

This might not happen in the same way in the reality he was in; after all, his ability only acted on himself, not on the outside world.

But he needed to know the answer, and the answer could only be obtained through repeated attempts.