7: Chapter 7 The Return Journey

10:00 AM, Li City High-Speed Railway Station.

Chen Mo carried a black backpack on his back and a small suitcase in his hand, standing in the crowd in the waiting hall.

The high-speed railway station was crowded on a weekend morning. Long lines formed in front of the security scanners at the entrance, and the latest train information played on a loop over the loudspeakers.

The seats in the hall were full; some people were scrolling on their phones, some were eating breakfast, and others were dozing off against the back of their chairs.

He stood in line for about ten minutes before passing through security.

The security officer asked him to take out his power bank for inspection before letting him through. Just like with everyone else, no one gave him a second glance, and no one noticed him.

He found an empty seat against the wall in the waiting hall and sat down.

He had woken up at 3:30 AM today. His sleep duration was about the same as yesterday, but after waking up, his Mental Power remained full.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking for ten minutes, then got up to make breakfast, pack his luggage, check the utilities, close the doors and windows, and hide the key to the rental apartment on the fire hydrant by the door for the landlord to collect.

He left a WeChat message for the old landlord saying, "The rent is paid through next month, my things are moved out, and the key is on the fire hydrant."

The old landlord replied with a "Good," and didn't ask any more questions.

After the high-speed train left the urban area of Li City, the buildings outside the window gradually thinned out, turning into vast fields and occasionally appearing low hills.

Chen Mo sat by the window, his forehead resting slightly against the glass, watching the landscape outside change bit by bit.

The further west they went, the higher the terrain became, and the more mountains there were.

He took the black notebook out of the side pocket of his backpack. He didn't look at the previous records but instead flipped to a blank page and wrote down today's date.

Then he thought of something.

After leaving Li City, the tests and records he could make now were all based on his own feelings and the system panel data, lacking more precise support.

But he had a way. Training distance, time, body weight, terrain—he could quantify all these factors.

As long as he measured the changes in his punch force data on the system panel after each training session, he could deduce the efficiency and direction of his training.

He didn't need to know exactly how many kilograms each punch was; he only needed to know that the numbers on the system panel were rising, which training methods made them rise faster, and whether there were differences when training in different natural environments.

That was enough.

He drew a simple table in his notebook, with the date on the horizontal axis and the punch force value on the vertical axis.

He marked the first point at the start of the table, corresponding to 221, and then began to write down a preliminary training plan for the next three days next to it:

Physical adaptation, focusing on long-distance cross-country running to get familiar with the terrain of the mountain behind the house at medium-to-low intensity;

Core strength and explosive power maintenance, using large stones or tree trunks as substitutes for barbells for squats and overhead presses;

system panel observation, observing changes in system panel data after recording training content and duration.

While writing, he suddenly stopped his pen.

Outside the window, mountains began to appear.

Not the kind of mountains in Li City that were only a few dozen meters high and developed into parks, but real, massive mountains.

The ridgelines stretched out layer upon layer in the distance, the nearby mountains were covered with dense dark green forests, and the peaks were wreathed in a thin layer of mist.

Tunnels followed one after another; the high-speed train plunged into darkness every few minutes, only to rush out from the other end.

Each time it emerged, the mountains were higher and the valleys deeper than the time before.

This was the Xiazhong Mountain Area.

The closer they got to Yi City, the higher the mountains and the denser the forests became.

Chen Mo looked out the window, pen in hand, and did not write any further.

He remembered the first time he took this train to Li City for school four years ago; back then, he was thinking about escaping, leaving that environment.

Now, he still respected civilization, still respected order, and had never thought about doing anything like "I don't eat beef."

But he no longer believed that the rules of the world were only the kind he had understood in the past.

The appearance of the system panel let him know that other possibilities existed in the world.

He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

The system panel hovered quietly directly in front of his vision, the numbers on it the same as what he had seen before boarding at his last stop: Punch Force 224kg, Mental Power 1.4.

The high-speed train continued westward.

Yi City West Station, 3:40 PM.

Chen Mo carried his luggage out of the station.

The air outside the station was much cooler than in Li City, and the wind carried a hint of the crisp scent of the mountain forest.

A few taxis and electric tricycles were parked in the square in front of the station, with the drivers standing in twos and threes by their vehicles, smoking and chatting.

In the distance were the mountains; standing in the station square, one could see the continuous ridgelines. The entire urban area of Yi City was built tucked into a valley, with mountain ranges pressing in from both the north and south.

He hailed a car and told the driver the address in the town.

The car drove along the mountain road for over an hour. The road conditions got worse and worse; the asphalt road turned into a concrete road, and finally, the concrete road became intermittent and disconnected, the sound of the wheels crushing gravel rustling.

The houses along the road became increasingly sparse, the buildings lower, and finally, almost nothing remained in his field of vision but stretches of dense forest.

The density of the vegetation was even more exaggerated than in previous summers, and in many sections along the road, the tree canopy had already blocked out more than half of the sky overhead.

After 5:00 PM, the car stopped on the side of the main road of a small town.

The town was not big; walking from one end of the main street to the other took only ten minutes.

There were a few shops along the street: a supermarket, a hardware store, an agricultural supply store, and a pharmacy.

There were few people on the street, and the afternoon sun baked the concrete road, making it feel quiet and somewhat aged.

Chen Mo got out of the car and stood on the shoulder of the road to take a look.

The old house was less than two hundred meters ahead.

It was a two-story building, its white tiled exterior walls already somewhat yellowed, with clumps of wild grass growing in the cracks of the steps at the entrance on the first floor.

A few years ago, his uncle had replaced the front door of the house with a stainless steel security door.

He dragged his suitcase over, bent down to feel around in the cracks of the concrete in front of the door, and found the spare key taped into a brick crevice.

His uncle would always put the key back in its original place after visiting.

Opening the door, there was a thin layer of dust in the house, but the tables, chairs, and cabinets were all there, and there was no strange odor.

It seemed his uncle had been here recently too.

On the table in the center of the Main Hall, his parents' portraits were still displayed.

He put down his suitcase, stood in front of the portraits for a while, reached out, and gently wiped the dust off the glass of the frames with his sleeve.

Then he carried his luggage up to the room on the second floor where he used to live.

Pushing open the window, the mountain behind the house pressed into his window frame—a suffocating green, piled up layer upon layer to the horizon.

Chen Mo stood before the window, looking at that expanse of mountains.

This was his new training ground.

It was the mountains, the forests, the wild paths he had walked countless times alone as a child.

There were no mirrors, no barbell racks, no force gauges, but he had the system panel.

As long as the numbers on the system panel were still increasing, he knew he was on the right path.

He turned around and began to tidy up the house.

Sweeping the floor, wiping away dust, making the bed, and checking the utilities.

The water was running, and there was electricity; over the past few years, his uncle had always helped him maintain the house so it was still habitable.

The refrigerator was empty; he would have to go to the supermarket in town tomorrow to buy some things.

But the most important task today was not shopping, but going up the mountain.

He changed into an old T-shirt and a pair of loose sweatpants, locked the door, and walked towards the back of the house.

He walked up the path behind the house, which had been encroached upon by weeds, for ten minutes, and the house was already out of sight, completely swallowed by the dense vegetation.

After walking for about forty minutes, he could no longer hear any human voices or car sounds in the forest, nor could he see any obvious paths—only the soil, fallen leaves, and the dappled light filtering down through the branches overhead.

He found a clearing with a relatively gentle slope, surrounded on all sides by dense forest, the ground covered with thick dead leaves that felt soft underfoot.

Looking up, the tree crowns overlapped above his head into a green dome, with only a few pillars of light leaking down obliquely through the gaps.

This was it.

He placed his newly bought training watch on a rock nearby and set a two-hour countdown.

The first day back home, the main goal was to let his body adapt to the environment.

Weighted squats, using large stones to replace barbells, with the weight estimated by feel.

Upper body push and pull, using fallen branches on the ground for pull-ups, and finding thick tree trunks for wall pushes.

Core training: sit-ups and Russian twists in the forest clearing.

Cross-country running, weaving back and forth on the wild paths of the mountain behind the house.

Two hours later, he sat down leaning against a tree trunk, his breathing steady, sweat not yet dry.

The punch force on the system panel had changed from 224 to 226.

He looked at that number and slowly wiped the sweat from his face.

Two hours, and it had increased by 2 kilograms.

The training intensity was far less than yesterday's all-out sprint at the sports center, so the increase was smaller, but he was in no hurry now.

Here, there were no colleagues, no looks from Da Liu like "Did you take your medicine today?", no residual data from punch force testing machines, and no one to ask him, "How far have you trained?"

Here, there were only trees, stones, mountain breezes, and the quietly rising numbers.

He leaned against the tree trunk, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of the air carrying the scent of damp earth.