Fingerprints Left on the Dumbbell Plate!

Strange muscle memory surged throughout his body once more. This time, Chen Jue noticed that the pores on his face, scalp, armpits, groin, and every part of his skin suddenly stood erect and closed in an instant. He had cultivated internal force to the level where it suffused his entire body!

A rush of heat coursed beneath his sealed skin, wild and turbulent. His skin, usually fair with a rosy glow, now flushed crimson, as if intoxicated.

He moved slowly through a set of Tai Chi forms in the living room, his pace deliberate and measured, lasting nearly ten minutes. All the while, the surging heat within his body grew ever more intense, threatening eruption like a volcano on the brink. Unable to restrain the explosive rush, he unleashed a Tai Chi single-whip. With a loud crack, the air before him seemed to burst from his strike.

The two floor tiles beneath his feet splintered apart as his energy pulsed downward, testament to the sheer power contained in his single-whip.

“Damn, I’ve messed up!” he groaned. “I’ll have to pay for this!”

Glancing at the shattered tiles, his face twitched. At that moment, the siphoning effect caused by his breakthrough in fist techniques and stances began to manifest. Quickly shelving his thoughts of compensation, he darted into the kitchen, grabbing the fish gelatin and gulping it down in huge mouthfuls.

The nourishing fish gelatin entered his stomach, and his gut churned violently as his body absorbed nutrients with unprecedented speed. Soon, the whole pot was digested and gone.

He then seized the pot of ten-herb tonic soup he had prepared in advance, drinking it down in greedy gulps. Once the soup was finished, his pores unconsciously relaxed, heat and sweat evaporating, and the rosy flush faded back to normal.

Only when the warmth in his stomach subsided did the effects of his dual skill breakthrough finally abate. Chen Jue exhaled in relief, collapsing onto the sofa to recover, his eyes lingering in regret on the two broken tiles in the living room.

“Forget it. I’ll tell Uncle Yu and his family after the typhoon passes. Compensation is compensation; it’s only two tiles, after all.” With that, he shifted his attention to the attribute panel.

Breaking through both fist and stance skills to level four had caused dramatic changes in his attributes. Achieving mastery of internal force had propelled them sharply upward.

His physical constitution had soared to 3.01, strength and agility climbed to 2.77 and 2.16 respectively. Intelligence, however, seemed sealed—no matter how much he trained, it never budged.

Information on Tai Chi and the Thirteen Stances had also changed: after “Lv4,” there was now a long string indicating skill proficiency limits (1/5000), doubling from before the breakthrough.

“Tai Chi is incredible! Its ceiling must be sky-high—far better than Fist of the Boat.” he marveled. “Just breaking through to level 4 increased my attributes so much. If I break through again, I can’t even imagine what would happen.” Staring at the full 5,000 points of skill proficiency, he realized that raising them with free attribute points would cost five whole points—a terrible trade-off. It would be better to train underwater and grind proficiency.

Moreover, he sensed that with internal force now suffusing his entire body, he could stay underwater longer and gain more attributes.

“But why haven’t my teeth changed yet?” he wondered. “Is internal force throughout my body still not enough for true transformation?” Resting for a while, he browsed the forum, reading the old, featured posts from the masters.

There, he found analyses of training and mastery of the three forces: explicit, concealed, and transformative. He had mastered explicit and concealed force, but still had no clue about transformative force.

He pondered the masters’ posts for a long time but remained baffled: “Fusing explicit and concealed force, releasing them together? Strong enough to hold an iron ball and knead iron into mud? That sounds impossible!” He doubted level 4 Tai Chi could achieve such effects.

He removed a plate from a dumbbell, gripped it, and exerted force. At most, he left a shallow imprint on the steel. Turning iron to mud was out of the question.

Several attempts only added more finger marks to the plate.

When lunchtime arrived, he finally set the dumbbell aside and went to the neighbor’s for a meal.

Breaking through two skills had drained him immensely. Even after eating fish gelatin and drinking tonic soup, Chen Jue still felt hungry.

Luckily, Auntie’s cooking was excellent, and with her son back from the sea, the lunch was even more lavish than before. Fried shrimp, salt-and-pepper mantis prawns, braised ribbonfish, red-braised pork, stir-fried black fungus and yam, and two huge basins of steamed swimming crab—so much that they didn’t even bother with plates or dishes, just brought them out in big stainless steel basins. Chen Jue’s appetite soared.

He ate half a pot of rice—about five bowls—so Auntie, knowing his appetite, had cooked extra, almost overflowing the rice cooker.

After the meal, he sat peeling crabs. Chen Jue licked the crab meat clean, leaving no scraps behind. Even Yu Yue, who had grown up by the sea and was a seafood expert, praised his skill.

This was thanks to Chen Jue’s martial arts progress, which he now applied to his teeth and tongue. Even the toughest crab pincers, or the shell’s tricky corners that usually required chopsticks, he could easily bite open and suck out every morsel, leaving nothing to waste.

He had brought his martial arts into daily life—walking, sitting, eating, and living were all expressions of his training.

After a sumptuous home-cooked feast, he helped tidy up the table and dishes, then sat with Uncle Yu’s family, sipping tea and chatting about typhoon stories for half the afternoon before returning to his room for a long nap.

Outside, the sea wind howled, waves surged, and pea-sized raindrops hammered the windows. Inside, all was calm and peaceful. Chen Jue drew the curtains before bed and felt the room was much quieter than before.

He slept soundly until four in the afternoon. On waking, he opened the curtains and saw the sky was pitch-black, nothing like what afternoon ought to be.

He washed up, letting the warm water clear his drowsiness. Then, he went downstairs to practice the Tiger’s Roar Iron Vest he had just learned.

He still had no clue about transformative force, planning to dive later that night and seek inspiration from the underwater currents.

With two hours left before dinner, he didn’t want to waste time. With double buffs stacked, he had to strike while the iron was hot and train his new hard skill as much as possible.