8: Chapter 8 Taking Root

The fourth day since returning home, five in the morning.

Chen Mo sat at the table in the Main Hall, the black notebook spread out before him.

On the whiteboard nearby, a training plan was densely written. It was an ordinary whiteboard he had bought from the town supermarket, hanging on the wall of the Main Hall, directly facing the dining table.

Next to the whiteboard, a safety notice for the surrounding mountainous areas issued by the Yi City Forestry Bureau was pinned, with key hazard-avoidance areas marked in red.

He had done a few things over the past few days.

The first was establishing a training framework.

He divided his training into three sections.

Strength Training, speed training, and Practical Combat Technique.

For Strength Training, he used giant rocks found on the mountain as a substitute for barbells. After repeated calibration, the two large stones he found were just right for his current squat and deadlift limits.

Speed training involved running on the mountain every day, weaving through the forest, using different slopes and terrains to stimulate his overall coordination.

Regarding Practical Combat Technique, he used his phone to download many free-fighting videos and traditional martial arts instructional courses. After training every day, he would lay out a mat in the Main Hall and study force-generation techniques while watching the videos.

His punches currently still relied on "dead muscle" force generation, depending too heavily on basic strength.

He needed to learn to use his waist and hips, learn the whipping effect, and transmit every ounce of his body's strength to his knuckles.

The second was purchasing the first batch of high-density supplies.

Two barrels of peanut oil, a large bag of glucose powder, two jars of nut butter, as well as rice, flour, meat, and eggs were neatly stacked against the kitchen wall.

He had calculated that this food would last him about a week.

He would restock after a week.

The third was thoroughly inspecting the old house.

The doors and windows were sturdy, the well was usable, and the electricity was fine.

He cleared out the utility room behind the house to use as a toolbox, preparing for the potential need to make his own training equipment later.

At five-thirty, the sun had not yet risen, and the sky was a grayish-blue.

He put on his training gear, locked the door, and walked into the mountains along a path that was barely visible.

Today, he planned to perform a new test: moving through the mountains at a speed close to a sprint to see how far he could go and how much energy it would consume.

The forest was very dark, and the light hadn't yet penetrated through.

However, his eyes quickly adapted to the dimness.

Since his Mental Power value had increased, his night vision had also improved somewhat. Of course, it wasn't like a night-vision device, but it was much better than before.

The soil under his feet was soft and damp, and there was almost no sound when he stepped on it.

He tried to speed up, first by power walking, then jogging, and finally sprinting at full speed.

The mountain path was uneven, with tree roots and gravel everywhere, but he noticed that while running, his body would automatically make many micro-adjustments.

For terrain that previously required willpower and experiential judgment, his body could now handle it on its own.

After running for about forty minutes, he arrived at a cliff.

It wasn't large, a drop of three or four meters, with a dried-up creek bed below.

He stood at the edge, glanced down, and then jumped.

Upon landing, his knees bent naturally, and the moment his feet touched the ground, his entire lower body absorbed the impact like a spring.

After standing up, he flexed his ankle; it was fine, and there were no prompts on the system panel.

He ran along the creek bed for another ten minutes, found an open space, and shouldered a rock to do squats.

After finishing this, he found a thick, dead tree nearby and used his fists to perform continuous, low-weight striking training against the trunk, testing the impact of continuous strikes on his punch force data and the degree of bone strengthening.

By the time he finished this whole routine, the sun had fully risen.

Sunlight shone through the canopy, casting dense spots of light on the forest floor. The forest gradually grew hot, and damp air smelling of rotting leaves began to rise from the ground.

He sat on that giant rock, panting, his t-shirt soaked through with sweat.

He opened the system panel.

Name: Chen Mo

Age: 22

Ability: Infinite Growth

Strength (Punch Force): 289kg

Mental Power: 1.6 (Normal person is 1)

Over the past few days, his punch force had increased from the 224kg it was when he returned to 289kg.

Five days, an increase of 89 kilograms.

This speed, this strength, was already starting to approach that of a heavyweight boxer.

But the growth of his Mental Power had started to slow down; over these past few days, it had only increased by 0.2.

He guessed that improving Mental Power required greater pressure, such as high-intensity confrontation, pain, fear, or the oppression of willpower.

Relying solely on physical training was no longer enough to stimulate his Mental Power.

He wiped off his sweat, stood up, and started running back.

A little past nine in the morning, Chen Mo returned to town and went to the pharmacy on the street.

Inside the pharmacy, there was only an old pharmacist behind the counter sorting herbs, wearing reading glasses, who looked up at him.

This old pharmacist knew Chen Mo's father and asked, "Chen Mo, you're back?" Chen Mo nodded and said he was back to stay for a while.

The old pharmacist didn't ask more, weighing out some dried ginseng and reishi for him; they were all ordinary goods, and the quantity wasn't much.

The old man's face held the calm unique to mountain people—the kind of calm that remains after seeing too much life, death, and worldly change.

Chen Mo paid the money and packed the herbs into his backpack.

It was already past ten o'clock when he got home.

Chen Mo placed the bag of herbs on the table, opened the packaging, and looked at them carefully one by one.

They were all ordinary goods.

He picked up a piece of dried reishi and smelled it under his nose; other than the normal scent of herbs, he couldn't smell anything special for the time being.

He decided to conduct his first herb test that night, starting with boiling the dried reishi in water; if there were any abnormal reactions, he would stop immediately.

After lunch, he didn't go to train immediately, but sat in the Main Hall to rest for half an hour.

The sun shone in obliquely through the window. He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, his breathing steady.

In these five days, his body weight had increased by one kilogram, his body fat percentage had even decreased, and his strength had increased by 89 kilograms.

On the system panel, there was only one name, one ability, and two numbers.

There were no explanations, no guidance, but he didn't need guidance either.

He had already embarked on the path of a superhuman, found his own rhythm: training, recording, adjusting, and continuing to train.

The system panel was not a teacher; it was a mirror.

A mirror doesn't tell you what to do; it just shows you what you couldn't see before.

And now, the person reflected in the mirror was becoming different from yesterday, day by day.

He opened his eyes and checked the time.

One in the afternoon.

It was time to go to the back mountain.