71: Chapter 71 Deepening the Seabed

November 8th, above the Mariana Trench.

Chen Mo returned from Mount Everest and hovered above the sea surface.

The sea breeze, carrying salty and damp water vapor, swept past his body, causing his clothes to flap loudly.

He summoned the system panel.

A dark gray, semi-transparent interface unfolded silently before his eyes:

[Name: Chen Mo]

[Age: 23]

[Height: 190cm]

[Weight: 179kg]

[Ability: Infinite Growth]

[Strength: 35274kg]

[Mental Power: 10.6]

[Force Multiplier: 6.9x]

In two days of traveling the world, his Mental Power value had rapidly increased from 10.3 to 10.6.

His Mental Perception range expanded to nearly 1,200 meters.

He closed the system panel.

A Force Field surged from within his body, forming a teardrop shape around him.

The sea surface was pushed aside by the Force Field, creating a three-meter-diameter depression.

The next instant, he pierced into the sea surface like a cannonball.

The seawater was pushed aside by the outer wall of the Force Field.

Light faded rapidly within seconds, from azure to deep blue, and from deep blue to pitch black.

Twenty seconds later.

His feet touched the seabed.

His soles sank into the soft siliceous ooze, kicking up a fine dust of sediment.

At the bottom of the sea, 11,000 meters deep, the temperature was near freezing.

This was not his first time training here.

During those first few days, just standing at this depth made his whole body emit painful groans.

But now, his body had gradually adapted.

The water pressure of 11,000 meters had transformed from a fatal threat into a comfortable weight load.

Chen Mo opened his eyes, his Mental Energy penetrating the sediment beneath his feet to perceive the structures deeper down.

But the Mariana Trench was already the deepest part of Earth's oceans.

There was no path further down.

As this thought surfaced in his mind, another sentence followed immediately.

"Then I'll just dig it myself."

The method Chen Mo thought of was simple to the point of brutality.

Use his fists to smash a deep pit into the seabed.

In the air, his full-strength punch could unleash a terrifying destructive power of over two hundred tons.

But before, when he punched underwater without a Force Field, the seawater would envelop his arm, and the immense resistance would cut his power by more than half.

When he threw a punch, the water's resistance was like thousands of ropes pulling at once; his fist speed would plummet, and the impact force would be dissipated and diluted by the seawater.

Now, it was different.

The Force Field could keep the seawater away.

Inside the Force Field cavity, the seawater was completely evacuated, allowing his fist to swing without any obstruction in a dry environment.

His punching force would act completely upon the seabed rocks, without losing a single bit.

By shattering several meters of rock layers and lowering the bottom of the pit to a deeper position, the water pressure would naturally increase.

This meant he didn't need to rack his brains looking for places with greater pressure.

He could directly dig the seabed deeper and manually create greater water pressure.

Chen Mo stood firm on the seabed.

The Force Field expanded violently, propping up a waterless space with a diameter of five meters around his body.

Air was squeezed out from the matter inside the Force Field, creating a dry environment suitable for breathing and movement.

He raised his right arm.

His shoulder joint rotated, and his spine twisted like a great bow, storing power.

Power traveled from his soles to his calves, merged into his thigh muscles, passed through his waist and hip pivot, climbed up along his spine, gathered at his shoulder blades with his upper arm muscles, and finally surged into his right fist.

Twist the waist. Rotate the hips. Punch.

The fist struck down.

A deafening, muffled sound exploded within the Force Field cavity.

The air vibrated violently, and the sound waves rebounded within the enclosed space, creating a deafening echo.

The rocks beneath his feet shattered under the impact of his punch.

With the point of impact as the center, cracks extended several meters in all directions like lightning.

Dense, spiderweb-like fissures filled the seabed beneath him, and debris and rock fragments sprayed in the opposite direction, hitting the inner wall of the Force Field and making a sound as dense as a rainstorm.

A pit nearly two meters deep appeared beneath his feet.

Chen Mo did not stop.

He used the Force Field to move the shattered rocks out of the pit.

Then he punched again.

The second punch.

The third punch.

The fourth punch.

Every punch carried over two hundred tons of impact force, smashing fiercely into the bottom of the pit.

Before his punching force, the basalt shattered like a biscuit, and each impact made the pit deeper.

The pit was dug deeper and deeper. Sinking. Sinking further.

The temperature of the rock layers began to rise.

The geothermal gradient at the seabed here increased by about one to three degrees every hundred meters.

With every increase in depth, the surrounding rocks became hotter. The rock walls, which were originally near freezing, began to emit a warm aura.

One hour.

After one hour, he had deepened the pit to nearly 10,000 meters below the seabed.

Adding the original 11,000 meters of the trench, the total depth was about 20,000 meters.

20,000 meters.

The pit was cylindrical with a diameter of about five meters, enough for him to move freely inside.

The rock walls of the pit were repeatedly compacted by the force of his punches, forming a layer of crushed rock on the surface that was so dense it reflected light.

This violently compacted crustal layer was enough to support the immense surrounding pressure and would not collapse.

The temperature at the bottom of the pit had already reached over two hundred degrees.

The rocks felt scalding to the touch and could easily burn an ordinary person's skin.

But Chen Mo's physical strength could withstand temperatures exceeding two thousand degrees, and with the isolation of the Force Field, this temperature had absolutely no effect on him.

The surrounding seawater was also constantly cooling the rock layers.

With the alternation of cold and heat, steam hissed out from the tiny cracks in the cave walls.

Chen Mo stood at the bottom of the pit.

He took a deep breath.

He retracted the Force Field.

Water pressure of over two thousand atmospheres slammed down from all directions simultaneously.

It was a feeling that could not be described in words.

It was as if the entire Mount Everest had been compressed into liquid and then pressed down from every angle at once.

Skin, muscles, bones, internal organs—every inch of his body's tissue was simultaneously enduring the grinding of two thousand atmospheres.

The capillaries on the surface of his skin burst within a fraction of a second, and fine beads of blood seeped out from his pores.

All 206 bones in his body emitted a teeth-grinding "creak" sound simultaneously.

That was the sound of bones deforming, colliding, and scraping under the heavy pressure.

His spine was forcefully compressed by three centimeters, his intervertebral discs were compressed to their limit, and the sensation of friction between his vertebrae was terrifyingly clear.

Every muscle fiber in his body was trembling simultaneously.

His muscles were pressed inward, and the fibers squeezed and rubbed against each other, emitting subtle snapping sounds that only he could hear.

The most uncomfortable part was his internal organs.

His stomach was flattened, his intestines were squeezed until they were pressed together, and his liver and kidneys felt like they were being gripped by a giant hand.

Every heartbeat felt like it was exhausting all the strength in his body.

Pain surged up simultaneously from his bone joints, fascia, internal organs, and nerve endings.

There was so much that he couldn't distinguish the source.

But Chen Mo's expression did not change at all.

His body automatically recovered under the stimulation of pain.

Tiny tears were filled by new tissue, ruptured capillaries reconnected, and micro-cracks in the trabecular bone were instantly filled with calcium.

Damage and repair erupted simultaneously within his body.

The cycle of destruction and Rebirth repeated a dozen times between every breath.

Muscles, bones, and internal organs rapidly grew stronger at a visible speed amidst the repeated grinding and repair.

He stood firmly while trembling.

He did not fall.

This was what he needed.

Chen Mo felt the trembling of his body and then began his Basic Muscle Tension Control Training.

The first movement.

Under the water pressure of two thousand atmospheres, he raised his right arm.

This movement, which was so simple it wasn't worth mentioning on land, now required him to mobilize all the muscle groups in his shoulders, back, chest, and arms to exert force simultaneously.

Every muscle fiber was stretched to its limit under high load, the contraction of his muscles and the squeezing of the water forming a dual confrontation, and his muscles were repeatedly ground and shaped in this extreme confrontation.

Every movement felt like he was fighting the entire ocean.

After one set of movements, his muscles quickly became exhausted.

The subtle sounds of fibers tearing merged into one, and pain surged in like a tide.

But the next moment, Spiritual Qi surged into his body.

Repair began.

The freshly torn muscle fibers were rewoven, and the broken microstructures were repaired to be even denser.

The micro-damage to his bones was filled, the wear on his joints was repaired, and every heartbeat under high pressure became stronger and more powerful.

Destruction and repair alternated within the same breathing cycle. The efficiency was far higher than his training on the original seabed.

The growth of his strength was clearly visible every day.

At the end of every training set, he could clearly perceive that his body had become stronger by a fraction.

One set of training ended.

Chen Mo expanded the Force Field, isolating the seawater.

His body suddenly felt light.

The load of two thousand atmospheres disappeared instantly, and he floated upward rapidly, stopping in the mid-level waters of the trench to move quickly and absorb the abundant spirit energy particles in the surroundings.

Spiritual Qi surged into his body like a tide.

His parched muscles were refilled with strength.

A few minutes later, recovery was complete.

He removed the Force Field and let his body sink back to the bottom of the pit.

The pressure slammed down again.

This time, his body felt lighter than it had the previous time.

His adaptation speed was astonishingly fast.

When his body had fully adapted to the water pressure at a depth of 20,000 meters, Chen Mo did not stop there and settle for it.

He continued to dig deeper.

25,000 meters. 28,000 meters. 30,000 meters.

The bottom of the pit was dug to nearly 20,000 meters below the seabed, with a total depth exceeding 30,000 meters and water pressure exceeding three thousand atmospheres.

If an ordinary person were standing here, they wouldn't last even a second, and their body would instantly be crushed into a bloody sphere.

But Chen Mo just steadied his body and began training.

Further down.

35,000 meters. 38,000 meters. 40,000 meters.

The total depth exceeded 50,000 meters, and the water pressure soared to over five thousand atmospheres.

This pressure was already great enough to crush the vast majority of known Materials into thin sheets.

Steel would be crumpled like paper here, diamonds would develop cracks, and even the hardest alloys could not withstand such squeezing pressure.

Yet Chen Mo's flesh and blood body endured it while trembling.

After every round of deepening, a brand-new extreme water pressure slammed onto him again.

Adapt, train, exhaust, recover.

Then dig deeper, adapt again, and train again.

The cycle repeated, never stopping.

Pain was the norm, exhaustion was daily life, and destruction and Rebirth were the fixed rhythm of every training session.

His strength grew at an astonishing speed in this endless cycle.

35,000 kilograms, 40,000 kilograms, 50,000 kilograms.

The numbers jumped every day, and the strength value on the system panel climbed at a visible speed.

Sometimes, during training breaks, he would fly out from the seabed.

With the Force Field enveloping his body, like a reverse-flying meteor, he shot up into the sky from the abyss of nearly 50,000 meters.

Then he flew over hundreds of kilometers of sea surface to the sky above Guam.

In the United States military base on the island, soldiers were still conducting routine training.

Radars were rotating, fighter jets were parked on the runway, and military vehicles were coming and going.

Chen Mo was invisible in the air, his Mental Energy spreading like mercury spilling on the ground.

The Force Field silently connected to several nearby mobile phones, his Mental Perception reading the content on them.

The Xia country urban agglomerations were still expanding, and the national training promotion plan had already covered all the people.

Children in schools no longer chased and played during breaks, but instead practiced basic skills on the playground.

The Xia country's Green Ivy monitoring network had already covered all cities.

Every street and every building was within the monitoring scope, and the Spiritual Qi concentration data was updated once a week.

The curve rose steadily, with every data point telling the story of the progress of this global upheaval.

The reconstruction progress in Japan after the typhoon had passed was more than halfway complete.

The United States announced a new round of national physical examination plans, and the latest paper from the life extension research team had sparked fierce debate in the academic community.

Spiritual Qi was indeed changing human physiological structure, and the extension of life had become a new focus of contention for all parties.

Chen Mo finished browsing the information and withdrew his Mental Energy.

Then he flew in the direction of the Mariana Trench.