Try adding some intelligence!

It was nothing like a parting between life and death, merely a send-off before going to sea. Chen Jue felt like a mere onlooker, watching from beginning to end the emotions of Uncle Yu’s family, and of the fishing-village neighbors who had also come to see off their children setting sail.

In the evening light, everyone was bathed in gold. The scene at the fishing pier held a plain yet heartwarming atmosphere, the kind of touching ordinary life that so many long for in their hearts.

Once the typhoon had passed, the fishermen’s work and lives had to go on, and Chen Jue’s cultivation likewise had to continue.

As for the large yacht belonging to the chairman of Tianchen Group, it had reportedly departed northward early that morning, and was no longer to be seen at the pier.

...

After seeing Yu Yue off, Chen Jue walked back to the small villa with Uncle Yu and Auntie, chatting and laughing all the way. There were still more than two hours before dinner, so he did not rush to practice his Golden Needle Finger Technique, but instead opened the martial arts chat group he had joined.

The unverified skills in the group’s file folder had occupied his thoughts all night.

Now that the attribute panel had recovered, Chen Jue naturally wanted to try cultivating them.

“Which one should I try first?”

He browsed through each technique once, and in the end decided to start with the simplest and most straightforward one: the Small and Large Heavenly Circulation.

This was a Daoist internal alchemy method for guiding and moving qi, said to have endless marvels once mastered.

As mentioned earlier, the “qi” Chen Jue understood was not the inner force or martial energy of wuxia novels, but rather blood and vital energy. Since this was a Daoist method, and with the blessing of the Enlightenment of Patriarch Lü state, so long as the technique was genuine, Chen Jue could begin practicing it at once.

The document also included posture diagrams and charts showing the meridian routes for circulating energy. Though this was Chen Jue’s first time cultivating it, his dark force had already reached great accomplishment, allowing him to initially guide the flow of blood and vital energy within his body.

He still did not fully understand the acupoints and meridian pathways marked on the pages, but then he remembered the many medical books he had ordered online before. Glancing at his phone, he saw that a set of diagrams on human anatomy and meridian acupoints was already out for delivery.

He called the courier, and after learning it would arrive in about half an hour, he waited patiently and continued studying the details of the Small and Large Heavenly Circulation.

Half an hour later, the express delivery driver brought the package to the door. Chen Jue tore open the wrapping and took out a thick full set of books, then slowly and patiently began to read.

He was worried that if he did not thoroughly understand these acupoints and meridians, then blindly moving his blood and vital energy might only worsen his condition. So he calmed himself and devoted himself to studying.

It had been a long while since he had read and learned like this, and after only half an hour, Chen Jue already felt dizzy and his eyes were sore and aching.

He glanced at the free attribute points on the panel, then at the only attribute that could currently be increased, intelligence, and tried adding 0.01 to it.

A cool and refreshing sensation surged up from his brain. Chen Jue’s previously dull and heavy mind suddenly became lively, his thoughts darting and his brain whirring at great speed, like the feeling of early morning upon waking, when distracting thoughts are fewest and the mind is at its sharpest.

His intelligence also rose from 1.24 (0.74) to 1.25 (0.75), reaching the upper limit peak, with the currently usable attribute value increasing in sync by 0.01.

“The intelligence increase works!”

Chen Jue grew interested and once again turned to the thick book in his hands. He felt that when he read now, he absorbed the material much faster than before.

It was as if he had swallowed some marvelous elixir and suddenly found enlightenment. He could take in three lines at a glance, and his memory seemed to improve a little as well.

But that state did not last long. After a little more than ten minutes, the feeling of clarity vanished again, replaced by an even stronger sense of dizziness and eye strain.

“Keep adding points!”

Chen Jue invested another 0.01 free attribute point into intelligence. In this way, after more than an hour, intelligence rose to 1.31 (0.81) before he finally stopped reading.

By then, he had noticed that after adding 0.07 intelligence points, the hunger in his stomach had grown increasingly intense.

Though his mind was still clear and sharp, that hunger had already overcome his desire to continue studying.

Seeing that it was time for dinner, Chen Jue went to Uncle Yu’s house again and mooched another meal.

That evening, the dishes were mostly a repeat of the noon spread. In the morning, Uncle Yu had bought plenty at the market, so at night they simply set out a table in the same style as lunch.

Seafood, unlike eggs, meat, and vegetables, does not spoil or stink overnight. Coastal fishermen generally do not eat leftovers of seafood from the previous day.

Aside from salted and pickled goods, fresh seafood prepared at noon could only just barely be kept in the refrigerator for half a day and then reheated at night. Otherwise, if the ingredients were frozen and later thawed out, the flavor would be a world apart from when they were fresh—practically like chewing wax.

At dinner, Chen Jue also peeled a large plate of blood cockles. When stir-fried in boiling water for just over ten seconds, they were cooked to a near-raw tenderness, with an especially peculiar texture. So long as the blood cockles were fresh and still carried traces of blood within, they were extraordinarily addictive to eat.

Moreover, Chen Jue had added quite a bit of intelligence in the afternoon, and he still carried a slight internal injury, leaving his body in urgent need of nourishment, so he ate more of these iron-rich seafoods.

The Compendium of Materia Medica also records: blood cockles are sweet and warm in nature, and besides nourishing the blood, they can moisten the five organs, strengthen the stomach, clear heat and transform phlegm, relieve acidity and pain, and are chiefly used for phlegm-heat cough, pain in the chest and flanks, and phlegm streaked with blood.

However, because of the cooking method, the blood cockles were only heated for a few seconds to a dozen seconds at most, making them liable to carry bacteria. After eating more of them, it was best to drink a little yellow rice wine to kill the germs.

So Chen Jue asked Auntie for a small cup of the family’s stored yellow rice wine. He did not dare drink much, and since he still had internal injuries, he merely accompanied Uncle Yu in sipping a small amount.

...

After dinner, he strolled slowly to the beach. A small cup of yellow rice wine would not make Chen Jue drunk. He stood in the sea breeze, listening to the tide washing over the sand with a continuous rush.

Feeling his meal gradually digest within his stomach, and gazing for a while at the night sea and the bright white moon above it, Chen Jue felt his mind settle into perfect calm, his heart utterly still.

Back at the small villa, he once again picked up the books and continued reading and studying.

Over the course of the night, he spent another 0.05 intelligence points, bringing his intelligence to 1.36 (0.86). As for the atlas of human anatomy and meridian acupoints in his hands, Chen Jue had already memorized it well enough to know it by heart.

By the end, drowsiness crept over him, and he went upstairs to sleep.

Before fully digesting the contents of those diagrams, he did not dare rashly attempt cultivation of the Small and Large Heavenly Circulation technique.

...

The next morning, when he got up after seven, Chen Jue felt his mind was even clearer and more alert than before, likely the result of having increased his intelligence repeatedly the day before.

He glanced at his health index, which had already recovered to eighty percent. The red exclamation marks after his force, body, and agility attributes had completely disappeared, and he could now continue adding points normally.

However, the state of slight internal injury still remained. It was probably that his organs had been damaged rather badly by the earlier impact, and he would need some time to recover.

Taking advantage of the early morning clarity, Chen Jue washed his face with warm water, took his medicine, applied the nameless ointment, and then went downstairs to continue studying the atlas and its annotated explanations.

He read until eight o’clock, then went to Uncle Yu’s house to eat breakfast.

This morning, the flavors changed. On the way back from the market, Uncle Yu had brought home steamed buns, fried dough sticks, and glutinous rice, so at last they did not have to slurp seafood noodles again or eat plain noodles.

Food is the first necessity of the people. Changing the taste now and then also helps stir the appetite.

After breakfast, Chen Jue carried the books up to the villa roof, where he read in the warm sun and sea breeze. Along the way, he also put fish gelatin and a ten-full-tonic soup to simmer in the kitchen.

Having continuously increased intelligence the day before, he had discovered that directly adding attributes could trigger a siphoning effect similar to a skill breakthrough, so he made preparations in advance.

By the end of the morning, he had poured another 0.05 intelligence points into himself. His intelligence reached 1.41 (0.91). He also finished reading and memorizing all the human anatomy and meridian acupoint diagrams he had bought, repeatedly checking them to confirm there were no omissions.

Only then did Chen Jue begin attempting to guide his blood and vital energy, sitting cross-legged according to the posture for the Small and Large Heavenly Circulation, and slowly moving his blood and qi along the meridians and acupoints described in the technique.