Chapter 31: The Darkness of the Raging Torrent in the Rain

"I can't do it, I can't do it, I'm going to die..."

Lu Mingfei lay limp on the ground, having no desire to stand up at all, wishing he could just pass out like this. He felt as if he had lost his legs, for there was absolutely no sensation in them!

Standing stake is a very painful thing. At first, Lu Mingfei relied on the five points of Proficiency he gained to master the correct posture, but no matter how correct the posture is, it still consumes physical energy; otherwise, there would be no training effect.

Once a long time passes, one will shake if they are going to shake, and go numb if they are going to go numb.

Chu Zihang observed continuously until Lu Mingfei began to fail to maintain the standard posture and passively used other body parts to compensate, only then letting him rest.

Such a rigorous standard even gained the approval of the Schedule, and Lu Mingfei wasn't even warned while lying limp on the ground!

"It's always like this at the beginning; you have already done very well."

Chu Zihang continued to encourage him according to the "method for cultivating motivation" he learned from a book.

"Is it really very well?"

Lu Mingfei expressed some doubt.

Chu Zihang fell silent.

The silence was because he did not know how to answer this question from Lu Mingfei.

The "very well" he spoke of was judged from the perspective of an ordinary person, while from the perspective of a Hybrid, it naturally wasn't quite enough.

Can Lu Mingfei be considered a Hybrid now?

Chu Zihang wasn't quite sure. If he had to say, he felt that Lu Mingfei was still in the process of "Bloodline Awakening," but for a Hybrid, this process seemed a bit too long.

"Senior, your silence is truly deafening..." Lu Mingfei quipped.

He struggled to crawl up, and even though his thighs were still trembling slightly and uncontrollably, he attempted to continue standing stake.

"You can rest for a longer time," Chu Zihang said.

"I'd love to rest, Senior..."

Lu Mingfei wore a mournful face; it wasn't that he didn't want to rest, but that he couldn't!

The Electric Shock Warning countdown was already flashing before his eyes, and the cold, emotionless mechanical voice kept counting down; if he continued to lie there, he might never need to get up again.

Lu Mingfei sighed and stood up properly, muttering things like "Heaven is about to place a great burden on this person" as he did so. He didn't even need Chu Zihang to repeat the instructions; he could complete the posture very standardly.

There was no help for it; not being standard counted as slacking off, and he would get shocked!

Yet, such a scene, in Chu Zihang's eyes, was inevitably somewhat moving.

"The reason that can make Lu Mingfei persist like this is probably only the girl he likes, right?"

Chu Zihang thought to himself.

"No need to think to know that this girl is definitely not Chen Wenwen, because if it were Chen Wenwen, he should have started working hard two and a half years ago instead of now... Has he had a change of heart?

But who exactly is this girl who can replace Chen Wenwen's position in Lu Mingfei's heart?

Is it Su Xiaoqiang, who made a bet in the gym and has a bit of a 'not enemies, not lovers' vibe, or Liu Miaomiao, whom he happened to meet and got along well with during Piano lessons?"

Chu Zihang learned about these things from Chen Shu.

The point where the word 'gossip' is a compliment rather than an insult when applied to him is exactly this—he eats melons and watches gossip, but his lips are sealed.

"Better short and refined than long and crooked. Move Qi through the body, sink Qi to the dantian..."

Being a gossip at heart did not hinder the task at hand; Chu Zihang continued to teach.

"What does 'move Qi through the body, sink Qi to the dantian' mean?"

Lu Mingfei was completely confused, "Air? But if there is air inside the blood vessels, a person would die."

"This 'Qi' refers to a type of energy; it feels like a kind of 'heat'."

Chu Zihang explained, "It doesn't matter if you can't feel it; I can't feel it either."

"Ah?" Lu Mingfei was stunned.

"This is the original quote from the physical training teacher who taught us 'Tai Chi'."

Chu Zihang said, "He said that for the vast majority of people, Tai Chi Fist is just a fighting technique.

And those who can generate Spirit Sense and move Qi to the dantian are the extreme minority. The number is so rare that it's comparable to jumping off a cliff, not dying, picking up a long-lost martial arts manual, and having a dying white-bearded old man pass on his power."

"That is indeed very rare."

Lu Mingfei nodded, "This teacher sounds very interesting!"

"Indeed."

Chu Zihang agreed.

"He also said he verified it with his own actions; he jumped off thousands of mountain cliffs and never found any martial arts manual or white-bearded old man passing on power, but he did find many human skeletons of people who had fallen by accident or been deliberately murdered, and because of this, he cracked several cold cases and received banners and cash commendations from the police station."

"Hahaha, this teacher really knows how to joke!"

Lu Mingfei was amused, followed by a long pause and silence.

"He... was joking, right?" Lu Mingfei confirmed cautiously.

"No."

"... Awesome." Lu Mingfei was stunned for a moment, and for once, he couldn't even say anything snarky.

"In short, the teacher's meaning is that it's normal not to be able to feel 'Qi'," Chu Zihang concluded.

"Then what if you can feel 'Qi'?"

Lu Mingfei asked curiously, "Does that mean you can cultivate immortality? The kind that flies through the sky and tunnels through the ground?"

"According to that teacher's original words."

Chu Zihang said.

"First, you should consider... whether it's flatulence or prostatitis."

"Oh..."

Lu Mingfei continued to stand stake.

Numbness and stiffness gradually accumulated, spreading like overgrown vines; the nutrients they needed to grow were Lu Mingfei's physical strength.

As his physical strength declined, exhaustion and the desire to "give up" arose spontaneously.

But Lu Mingfei could only persist; originally, the word "give up" should have been at the top of his dictionary, but now, this word had been deleted by his Schedule!

"So tired, so uncomfortable..."

Lu Mingfei waited in agony; under such torture, there was only one kind of comfort that could be effective.

He endured, persisted, and suffered through it...

Finally—

【Through diligent practice, your 【Tai Chi Fist】 level has increased, gaining 5 points of Proficiency】

Like a person dying of thirst encountering rain from the heavens, Lu Mingfei's spirit lifted!

Immediately, he felt a "warm current" emerge from within his body.

That "warm current" was very faint; if Lu Mingfei's brain hadn't been in a state of passive emptiness, it probably wouldn't have been so easy to notice.

Warmth generated out of thin air from all over his body, flowing and converging along his blood. They finally gathered at Lu Mingfei's lower abdomen, circled twice, and then a portion flowed out, traveling throughout his entire body.

"S-Senior brother."

Lu Mingfei swallowed with some difficulty.

"I think I've got prostatitis..."

"The call won't go through; Zhang Laoshi should be asleep by now. I will tell you the first moment I receive a call back tomorrow."

Chu Zihang put down the phone that had failed to connect and looked at Lu Mingfei, who was sprawled on the ground. "How do you feel?"

"I feel like there's a boiler installed in my lower abdomen right now."

Lu Mingfei touched his lower abdomen with a dull gaze; that was the location of the "Lower Dantian," and it was precisely the convergence point where "Qi sinking into the Dantian" was supposed to happen.

The "Qi" was like fuel, "burning" after sinking into the Dantian. The energy produced by the burning was then transported to all parts of the body through the meridians.

It was just that although this reaction was very obvious, the speed was too slow; otherwise, Lu Mingfei would have almost suspected whether he would be burned to a crisp!

"Is this right?"

Lu Mingfei muttered, "Could it be that I am the legendary one-in-a-million martial arts genius, and I've just been waiting so long for an opportunity to prove it..."

The suddenly ringing phone interrupted Lu Mingfei's narcissism.

Chu Zihang picked up the phone again, thinking it was "Zhang Laoshi" calling back after seeing the call; he pressed the answer and speaker buttons without looking closely.

What rang out from the other side of the phone was a delicate female voice.

"Son, son, I was supposed to go back on time, but there's such heavy rain now; we're going to be back later! Don't disbelieve me, listen, listen!"

The receiver seemed to have been moved close to a window; the torrential downpour pounded against the window glass, the *clatter-patter* sound being incomparably clear.

Lu Mingfei, forced to hear the content, twitched the corner of his mouth. As expected, the status of this mother and son was reversed, right? It was just like a child going out to play and wanting to come back late, having to find a reasonable excuse to report in.

"I understand, stay safe."

Chu Zihang responded.

He was just about to hang up the phone when he suddenly heard Lu Mingfei mumble, "The place Auntie went to is quite far, huh. Here, let alone rain, we can't even see a cloud..."

Chu Zihang's movements paused, and then he whipped his head around to look out the window!

Just as Lu Mingfei said, the night sky outside the Basketball court was cloudless for ten thousand miles.

But Chu Zihang knew where his mother had gone; their gathering must be at the club opened by EB Ayi, and that place was less than ten kilometers away from here!

With no clouds, where would the rain come from?

A sudden chill gripped Chu Zihang's heart; that nightmare of the torrential rain, the Maybach, and the elevated bridge seemed to have descended once again.

I went out for the holiday today, I will make up for the missed update with ten thousand words tomorrow! (Confirmed)





(End of this chapter)