013 Weight Training + Stance Practice = Efficient Attribute Boosting?

After dinner, he brewed a pot of ginseng tea.

Chen Jue didn’t go back to the reservoir embankment to practice martial arts; having just recovered from a serious illness, it was best not to expose himself to the chilly mountain winds at night.

The ancients used to say, “When evil wind invades the body, all manner of illness ensues.” Though Chen Jue only grasped the basics of this theory, after being nursed back to health on donkey-hide gelatin, ginseng, and old duck soup, he became increasingly convinced by such traditional medical wisdom—he had, after all, used himself as living proof.

Since both dietary and medicinal supplements had worked, he naturally put faith in the concept of “evil wind.”

Not going out to the reservoir, he closed his doors and began his rehabilitation exercises at home.

The new dumbbells had arrived, five pairs in total, ranging from 2.5kg to 20kg, all in matching stainless steel. The seller had even thrown in a pair of workout gloves.

He changed into athletic clothes, set up the dumbbells, pull-up bar, and sit-up bench, and started his regimen.

His strength attribute was still below the average adult male’s standard of 1, and he was overweight, so after just a few sets he was already breathless.

“Lifting is even more exhausting than practicing martial arts,” he muttered to himself.

After a few sets, Chen Jue began to understand the underlying principle. If the attribute panel could accelerate the growth of martial skills and compress practice time, then lifting weights was all about squeezing the body’s limits in exchange for muscle growth, stronger bones, enhanced cardiopulmonary function, and, incidentally, a stronger will.

The traditional style of Chuan Fist, though ancient and time-honored, was created by those of old and had its limitations; the muscle-building effects paled in comparison to the targeted efficiency of modern fitness routines.

Sure enough, after half an hour of lifting, his strength and agility attributes each increased by 0.01. At this rate, a few days of persistence would see both attributes rise above the adult male standard of 1.

What didn’t surprise him, however, was that while strength and agility edged up, his constitution attribute showed a downward arrow, dropping from 1.32 to 1.31.

Moreover, his health index fell from 89% to 85%—exactly as he’d hypothesized.

“Trading health and constitution for gains in strength and agility... Isn’t this what martial arts novels call a ‘deviant art’?” Chen Jue couldn’t help but laugh at himself.

Luckily, he had a solution.

After gaining 0.02 in strength and agility, Chen Jue drank an entire pot of ginseng tea and began practicing the Eight Immortals Stance at his solid wood table.

Soon, the 0.02 loss in constitution began to slowly restore itself along with his stance practice.

Even his health index rose steadily, climbing back up to 89%.

In this interplay of exertion and recovery, a peculiar idea took root in Chen Jue’s mind: “Weightlifting plus stance training equals an efficient boost in strength and agility.”

And, since he could offset declines in health and constitution, he could accelerate his free attribute accumulation—forming a kind of feedback loop unique to himself.

Most notably, none of the fitness gurus in the videos he watched practiced stance training as he did, and even if they did, they certainly couldn’t monitor their attribute panel’s fluctuations so intuitively.

This only solidified his faith in his combined regimen of martial arts and targeted strength training, along with the online wisdom of “external training with internal nourishment.” At this rate, all his attributes would soon surpass the standard “1.”

...

He began after dinner at seven and kept at it until half past nine.

Exhausted, Chen Jue took a hot shower, then sprawled out on his bed upstairs, breathing in the sun-drenched scent of freshly aired bedding. He scrolled through short videos, checked his friends’ social feeds, and at ten o’clock sharp, turned off the lights and drifted into sleep.

As for his stats, they now looked like this:

Player: Chen Jue
Age: 27
Health Index: 88%
Strength: 0.95
Agility: 0.87
Intelligence: 1.22
Constitution: 1.32
Skills: [Chuan Fist Lv1 (69/200)], [Twelve Forms of Muscle-Tendon Transformation Lv0 (8/100)], [Eight Immortals Stance Lv1 (27/200)]
Free Attribute Points: 0.05

...

At dawn, as the rooster crowed, Chen Jue awoke once more.

He’d slept an hour longer than usual and felt much more refreshed, likely due to the nourishing food and medicine from the day before.

He got up, washed, and found himself full of energy; his previous state of weakness was completely gone, and he felt stronger than ever.

However, after the weightlifting, sit-ups, and pull-ups, his limbs, abdomen, and back all ached to varying degrees.

This soreness was far more pronounced than what he felt practicing Chuan Fist.

But seeing his strength and agility clearly improved on the attribute panel gave him the resolve to continue training.

Still, he wasn’t reckless—he intended to draw up a schedule.

Back in Hangzhou, Chen Jue had been a workaholic, used to making detailed plans; otherwise, he wouldn’t have become a junior supervisor with a monthly income exceeding ten thousand.

He opened his scheduling app, tapped out a plan, set a few reminders, strapped on some sandbags, and jogged toward the reservoir behind the mountain.

The sandbags, delivered yesterday, included a set for his legs and another for his arms. Each could be adjusted up to 2.5kg and were easy to remove.

Since it was his first time trying weighted exercise, Chen Jue didn’t want to overdo it; he strapped on 0.5kg to each limb, adding a total of 2kg to his body.

Sure enough, jogging uphill was noticeably more strenuous.

Fortunately, his constitution wasn’t lacking, and after yesterday’s strength gains, the extra weight was manageable.

It took him over ten minutes to jog up to the reservoir embankment. There, he removed the sandbags and began practicing Chuan Fist and the Eight Immortals Stance.

He’d set himself a daily exercise plan: practice martial arts and stance training for two hours at the reservoir at dawn, then power-walk to Linjia Village for breakfast.

After breakfast, unless other plans intervened, he would return home to rest and recover, spending the remainder of the morning practicing the Twelve Forms of Muscle-Tendon Transformation.

After lunch, a ninety-minute nap.

The internet claimed this was the optimal nap length—any longer and you’d wake more tired, which Chen Jue firmly believed. When his sleep schedule had been irregular, he’d often spend entire afternoons sleeping on weekends, only to feel worse than when he was working.

After his nap, he would continue practicing the Eight Immortals Stance at his solid wood table, then use his gym equipment to brush up his attributes.

At five thirty, he’d start cooking; dinner at six, then an hour for digestion. After seven, he’d repeat the afternoon’s training routine, finishing at half past nine with a shower, and making sure to turn in before ten thirty.

A full and structured schedule, with some flexibility for unexpected events—as long as his routine wasn’t disrupted, Chen Jue planned to follow this regimen for a while to see just how effective it would be.