090. Golden Bell and Iron Shirt (Please add to your favorites and cast your recommendation votes)

The day had barely begun when fate had already kicked him into the gutter. Being crippled had surely dragged his luck down to rock bottom.

“Then, Doctor Chen, we’ll be heading back now.” Zhao Xuan walked reluctant steps to the driver’s side, her hand resting on the door handle. She did not open it right away, but looked at Chen Anquan with a hopeful gaze.

“Xuan, let’s go. Stop chatting with this kid for so long!” Zhao Hai urged impatiently.

“Go on, take the old fossil and scram already. He’s irritating to look at,” Chen Anquan said with equal impatience.

Zhao Xuan nodded slowly, then got into the car.

The car drove off.

Chen Anquan’s life returned to quiet again.

That old fossil’s guidance from earlier had actually been useful.

Chen Anquan was not afraid of the villagers passing by and watching, so he began practicing his sword form right there.

By the time dusk was falling, he finally eased out of the stance.

Several middle-aged men and women had gathered around the basketball court.

His sword practice video had already been posted online by them.

Back in the main room, Chen Anquan opened his status panel.

After several hours of sword practice, he should have gained at least one hundred proficiency points.

Normally, after half a day of practice, his sword skill would improve by at least fifty points. This time, with that old man’s pointers, doubling the speed was not too much to ask, right?

The panel opened, and Chen Anquan’s mouth fell open.

“Damn, damn, damn!”

The Forty-Nine Form Wudang Tai Chi Sword had reached level one, at 355 out of 500.

An afternoon of practice had boosted his proficiency by a full two hundred points.

“That old fossil really does know a thing or two!”

The reason he had asked Zhao Xuan to come the day after tomorrow was mainly because he planned to go to the township clinic tomorrow to find an old colleague and get hold of some medical equipment.

He also needed to take out a Blood Crimson Demonic Flower, pluck one petal, and use the biology and chemistry he had learned in high school to extract some essence from the blossom.

He would then apply that essence to acupuncture needles and, through external absorption of medicinal power, quietly cure Zhao Hai’s illness without anyone noticing.

The Blood Crimson Demonic Flower was far too fierce and domineering in effect. Chen Anquan worried that if he simply fed it to Zhao Hai, the man might drop dead on the spot.

Besides, he did not want the existence of the Blood Crimson Demonic Flower exposed.

He did not think Zhao Xuan or her father were the sort to forget kindness and repay it with betrayal, but in this world one had to be cautious. You could know a face and never know a heart.

Wasting one petal cost him little. If it could buy him an inner cultivation method, it was worth it.

After dinner, Chen Anquan appeared at the foot of the quarry hill dressed in black training clothes.

It happened to be early in the lunar month; the night sky was black as ink save for a faint remnant moon, and the ground was nearly swallowed in darkness.

To his surprise, ever since he had eaten the Blood Crimson Demonic Flower, his night vision had become almost as sharp as it would be beneath a full moon.

He had come running all the way here wearing his two-hundred-kilogram weighted suit.

Twenty breaths.

Heart rate: eighty.

Blood oxygen: ninety-nine percent. That was Chen Anquan’s own wild guess.

“I’ve actually completely adapted to running with two hundred kilograms on me. My breathing and heartbeat are no different from normal!” Chen Anquan was deeply shaken, amazed at how much the Blood Crimson Demonic Flower had improved his physical attributes.

What a pity his punch force tester had already been ruined; the new machine was still on the way. Otherwise, he would definitely have tested his current punch power.

He did not dare use the Dragon Subduing Eighteen Palms to test the punch-force machine again, or else he would lose several hundred more yuan.

“Run!”

Chen Anquan roared, his legs exploding with force like a tiger descending the mountain.

Under the dark canopy of night, a black shadow shot out like lightning, covering ten meters in an instant.

All the while, Chen Anquan avoided the large boulders instead of leaping straight over them, since that was an extremely draining movement.

He darted left and right like a streak of lightning, weaving through the jagged quarry below.

One hundred meters.

Two hundred meters.

Three hundred meters.

He had already broken his previous sprint limit.

A faint smile appeared on Chen Anquan’s face as he continued to push harder.

Five hundred meters.

One thousand meters.

“Hahaha...” Chen Anquan could no longer hold it in. He spread his legs, braced his hands above his knees, and panted heavily.

His all-out sprint limit had increased to one thousand meters.

After resting for twenty minutes, Chen Anquan stood before that six-hundred-jin boulder. He had no intention of taking off his weighted suit; instead, he spread both arms and hugged his old companion.

“Brother, mind if I carry you for a walk?” Chen Anquan looked at the boulder with satisfaction and wrapped both hands around it.

The boulder, which reached up to his chest, was lifted in one smooth motion.

Heavy...

But no longer as unbearable as before.

“Wait a minute!” Chen Anquan suddenly realized that just a few days earlier, he had only been able to hug the six-hundred-jin boulder and move forward slowly.

Yet now, with the same six-hundred-jin boulder in his arms and another four hundred jin of weighted gear on his body, he actually felt far lighter than he had a few days ago.

“My strength has improved this much?”

“Not bad!” he muttered to himself, then strode forward without fear of falling.

Thud.

Thud.

Chen Anquan was like a giant; every step he took thundered against the ground.

He wanted to try jogging, but he simply could not manage it.

Being able to walk relatively easily under a total load of one thousand jin was already remarkable enough.

He had never expected that within just a few days he could cultivate enough to punch through an aircraft carrier, nor had he ever dreamed of squeezing a nuclear bomb in his hands after only a few days.

When he truly felt he could endure no more, Chen Anquan threw down the six-hundred-jin boulder and began training his physical conditioning with frog leaps, push-ups, breakdancing, and other exercises.

Only when midnight drew near did he reluctantly leave.

Back home, he opened the status panel:

Name: Chen Anquan

Age: 24

Strength: 4.85

Agility: 4.6

Spirit: 9

Physique: 5.17

Unused attribute points: 0.30

Others omitted...

After a night of training, strength, agility, physique, and unused attribute points had all increased by 0.1.

That pace was already equal to the gains of the previous two days combined.

“Worth every bite of the Blood Crimson Demonic Flower. This effect is really excellent. It’s almost like the bone-cleansing and marrow-refining treasures from fantasy novels!”

Chen Anquan sat at the table, looking at the six Blood Crimson Demonic Flowers placed there.

He began to consider eating another one.

“Novels always say the first dose of a bone-cleansing medicine works best, the second is a little worse, the third much worse, and maybe by the fourth there’s no effect at all. Some medicines even stop working after the second dose!”

Chen Anquan took out one Blood Crimson Demonic Flower. Looking at its luscious, captivating beauty, it was like a lavish imperial consort, impossible not to covet, impossible not to touch.

As a medical student, he knew that if such a miraculous flower ever reached the market, it would surely stir up a storm of blood and greed. The unimaginably wealthy would likely pay fortunes to seize it.

Chen Anquan planned to eat one more Blood Crimson Demonic Flower and see how effective it was. If the results were mediocre, he would keep the rest carefully, and when the day came that he had the strength to reveal such a wondrous flower, he could sell it for a sky-high price and become fabulously rich in an instant.

For now, he was merely a cultivator who was five or six times stronger than an ordinary person. No matter how powerful he became, a single bullet could still take his life, unless he learned a body-protection art.

Speaking of body-protection arts, Chen Anquan thought of the package waiting at home.

His second aunt, seeing that he had helped his second uncle recover the wages that had been withheld, had kindly made a late-night trip to deliver the package, and inside it was the manual for Golden Bell Shield and Iron Cloth.

Chen Anquan put away the Blood Crimson Demonic Flower and placed it in the most hidden spot in the bedroom, on top of the eaves.

He opened the parcel and took out a rather plain-looking manual.

He had no idea whether these things were really useful.

With skepticism, Chen Anquan opened the first page.

The red book looked like a bootleg copy. On the cover was a man in a horse stance, balancing a boulder on his head.

The man looked a little like Bruce Lee.

The four large lines on the opening page read like the creed of a martial school:

True secret manual. Fast track to mastery. Iron fists and steel fingers. Crushing gold and shattering stone.

Especially those last four words, which seemed almost absurdly powerful.

Chen Anquan read for half an hour and felt as though he were staring at heavenly scripture, as if he had been transported back to the days of dozing off in high school class.

Soon enough, he could not bear it any longer. He closed the manual, lay down in bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

He was very curious why, after reading for half an hour, his status panel had not displayed any Golden Bell Shield and Iron Cloth skill.

When he learned the monstrously overpowered skill Dragon Subduing Eighteen Palms, even the slightest progress would trigger the skill display in the panel, and then he could keep training it endlessly.

But Golden Bell Shield and Iron Cloth did not work that way.

The twentieth will go on sale.

Please favorite and vote for me.

Thanks to the Moon Vote from "No Way Out."