Pure Yang Lu Zu, enlightened in the Complete Truth.

Rowing the boat ashore, Chen Jue found his clothes completely soaked. He went down the mountain and returned home to take a shower. He didn’t go to Linjia Village for breakfast, instead cooking himself a bowl of noodles and putting the last packet of the “All-Purpose Tonic Soup” on to simmer.

“Time to buy more tonic again!”

Glancing at the empty package, Chen Jue went online and ordered another batch of the tonic soup. Due to his rapid training progress, the dosage that would take an ordinary person two or three months to finish, he had consumed in less than half a month.

But with his attributes skyrocketing, Chen Jue didn’t hesitate to spend more money. After all, with a monthly allowance of 6,000 yuan, he wasn’t worried about going broke from all the supplements.

After breakfast, he spent some time browsing trending news on his phone, then sat and rested for an hour, recovering the stamina he’d spent training underwater.

It was barely past nine in the morning. The sunlight outside had just crested the summit of Leigong Peak, spilling through his window. Feeling sufficiently rested, Chen Jue began another round of training at home.

He practiced the Twelve Forms of Tendon Transformation, Boat Fist, and the Eight Immortals Stance in succession. With his pores sealed, the current of energy and blood flowed turbulently beneath his skin, gathering more and more in his arms and legs.

This was the sign that hidden strength was about to be achieved!

It was a pity, though, that Boat Fist was only a shallow art—its ceiling too low, as the saying went—unable to circulate hidden power throughout the entire body.

Even Master Li Xiangning, who had spent half his life training, had only managed to develop overt power in his hands and feet, which spoke to the limitations of this minor style.

But Chen Jue wasn’t bothered by this. To him, these martial arts were simply tools for boosting his attribute points.

If one art had its limitations, he’d just switch to another. As long as proficiency and level could still rise, and attributes could be gained, Chen Jue’s enthusiasm for training never waned.

…

He trained until after eleven, and his free attribute points increased by 0.04. Including what he had previously saved up, Chen Jue now had 0.36 free attribute points in reserve.

If not for the day lost to the martial arts tournament, he might already have been able to level up the Twelve Forms of Tendon Transformation or the body conditioning technique.

“Still too impatient,” Chen Jue muttered, shaking his head as he went to the kitchen to prepare lunch.

After eating, he took a nap for over an hour. In the afternoon, he started working out with equipment.

A single 50-kilogram dumbbell was already feeling light, so Chen Jue added another plate, bringing the weight up to 75 kilograms.

Gripping one in each hand, he lifted them up and down with force, sweat steaming from his body. After more than half an hour, his strength attribute increased by 0.01, now reaching the threshold of 1.70.

His arm muscles looked impressively large, and with the combination of overt power and sealed pores, his arms appeared almost as if cast in iron, dark and gleaming.

After over two hours of training, he went to the kitchen for a small bowl of tonic soup.

Watching as his stamina, depleted from exercise, was slowly restored by the soup’s medicinal power and the Twelve Forms of Tendon Transformation, Chen Jue smiled with satisfaction.

It was a slight disappointment that breaking the “2” mark in constitution hadn’t triggered any extraordinary phenomena, but this also prevented him from overthinking.

However, after surpassing 2 in constitution, his breathing and heartbeat had both become even deeper and steadier than before.

According to his smartwatch, his heart rate had dropped to about 30 beats per minute, sometimes even dipping to 28 or 29—a pace comparable to a turtle in water.

The two sessions of underwater training had greatly improved his cardiopulmonary function, making his heartbeat more powerful and increasing his recovery speed.

…

By the time he checked the clock again, it was already five in the afternoon. Chen Jue cooked dinner.

After eating and resting until seven, he donned his new weighted running gear and began jogging up the mountain.

His new gear consisted of a 50-kilogram vest and 20-kilogram wrist and ankle weights, totaling a hefty 70 kilograms.

Such an extreme load would be too much even for special forces soldiers, but with his boosted constitution and strength, 70 kilograms was no more than a single dumbbell—perhaps even lighter.

He jogged around the reservoir with the weights, working up a sweat and gaining a small increase in agility.

On the way, Chen Jue met some villagers out for a stroll, greeting each of them with a smile.

Having lived in the village for over half a month, the residents had become accustomed to his presence. Seeing him running up the mountain no longer struck them as odd.

To the elders, a young man like Chen Jue was better off getting plenty of exercise.

Alternating between running and walking for an hour, he gained 0.02 points in agility. With the increased weights, his efficiency had clearly improved.

Once night had fully fallen, Chen Jue arrived at the reservoir dam. He went down the steps, took off his weights, and left them on the shore, then jumped into a small boat and rowed to the swirling vortex.

With a splash, he plunged into the water, holding his breath as he swam to the floodgate. Settling into the Eight Immortals Stance, he began to sense the turbulence of the underwater currents.

This time, Chen Jue lasted nearly twenty minutes.

When the proficiency bar for the Eight Immortals Stance finally filled, he stopped at last.

A new, unfamiliar muscle memory spread through his body. Just as he was about to finish, Chen Jue felt a surge of heat gather in his arms and legs. He extended his arms to the sides, and a wave of hidden power shot from his palms, churning the water outward.

At the same time, a similar surge erupted from his feet, stirring up the silt below into a cloudy mess.

There was no time to think. As the four streams of power burst forth, Chen Jue’s heart thudded several times in rapid succession, his lungs running out of air. He shot to the surface as fast as he could.

Clambering back into the boat and gasping for breath, he finally felt better.

“The Eight Immortals Stance didn’t just break through to Level 3—it went straight to perfection, just like the child’s strength technique!”

Chen Jue glanced at his attribute panel. The now-perfected Eight Immortals Stance had gained an additional annotation, similar to the “Vital Energy Rising with the Sun”: “Pure Yang Patriarch Lü, Enlightened in Complete Reality.”

[Pure Yang Patriarch Lü, Enlightened in Complete Reality]: Greatly increases training speed for Daoist internal arts.

This was the second extraordinary bonus that had appeared in his attribute panel. Just reading its description left Chen Jue a bit baffled.

How could a stance art, developed by coastal fishermen to resist pirates, be connected to Daoism?

Shaking the water from his body, he rowed ashore, put the weights back on, and jogged home.

After a hot shower and a change into clean clothes, Chen Jue sat down to look up related information online.

This search opened his mind, helping him piece together many of his theories about the origins of Boat Fist and the Eight Immortals Stance.