Chapter 9: Power and Strength, a Bug is Born! Fitness LV1, Trait Obtained

"No need for an illegitimate child; if possible, I'd be perfectly fine just being an adopted son!"

Lu Mingfei wiggled his butt, signaling that being blinded by greed and having no integrity was his normal mode of operation.

"You..." Su Xiaoqiang was momentarily speechless; this really was a case of "the shameless are invincible."

"Since you two are so familiar, do you need to train together?"

The female coach leading the way stopped and smiled brightly.

"Who would want to train with him/her!" the two said in unison.

"Heh, I have no interest in watching a skinny monkey work out," Su Xiaoqiang said, crossing her arms. "Don't let you end up doing a 'butterfly wing flutter' while pushing an empty bar and making me laugh so hard I can't even grip the bar."

"Impossible!"

Although Lu Mingfei didn't quite understand what "butterfly wing flutter" meant, he could guess the gist from her tone, so he refuted it first just in case.

"That is blatant disparagement and slander!"

"Disparagement and slander?"

Su Xiaoqiang looked Lu Mingfei up and down, who was as thin as a monkey, with suspicion, and ultimately confirmed her hypothesis.

"How about this: my one-rep max for bench press is 40kg including the bar. If you can push it up once with proper form today, I'll apologize to you!"

Forty kilograms?!

Lu Mingfei, who couldn't even carry a bag of rice up a few flights of stairs, widened his eyes, a retort nearly slipping out—where did this muscular T-Rex come from!

The problem was, you couldn't tell at all from looking at her! She had the figure of a tall, hot girl!

"Then if I can do it today, is there any need to compete in the arm-wrestling match a month from now?"

Lu Mingfei felt a bit guilty and prepared to make Su Xiaoqiang back down by raising the stakes. "Besides, two bets just to get an apology from you is too cheap; you have to pay more!"

"Fine, how much do you want?" Su Xiaoqiang agreed immediately.

"Money is a worldly possession; I don't want money, how vulgar!" Lu Mingfei racked his brain, needing to think of something Su Xiaoqiang couldn't possibly agree to... Got it!

"If I win, I want you to agree to one request, the kind you can't refuse," Lu Mingfei said.

"Eww~" Su Xiaoqiang immediately looked at Lu Mingfei with eyes that looked at trash.

It was fortunate that Lu Mingfei wasn't a hardcore otaku, otherwise he would have gotten excited right then.

"Refusing, are you? Then forget it!" Lu Mingfei quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Refuse?"

Su Xiaoqiang saw Lu Mingfei's guilt and felt victory was in her grasp. She gave a cold laugh and agreed without hesitation. "I accept! It'll be you losing anyway; when that time comes, you'll have to agree to one request of mine."

Lu Mingfei was dumbfounded—she actually accepted that?

"I take it back."

"No way, a gentleman's word is as good as a team of four horses!"

"I'm not a gentleman, I'm a petty person!"

"Forget being a petty person; even if you stop being a human today, you can't take it back."

Su Xiaoqiang sneered. "Let's go, just use one fitness area. I want to see if you can actually do it!"

【Warning: The execution time for the 【Fitness (Muscle Building)】 Schedule has arrived, please immediately...】

At seven o'clock in the evening, Lu Mingfei, having finished his warm-up, took a deep breath: "Let's start, Chen Shu! How do I use this machine?"

"This is a Butterfly Machine, used for chest flys."

Chen Shu explained while demonstrating. "Sit up straight, pull in your stomach, puff out your chest, and keep your head up. Keep your forearms slightly lower than your shoulders. Exhale when exerting force, inhale when relaxing... You try a simple set first, ten reps at the lowest weight."

He was a retired soldier turned driver and was very familiar with this kind of fitness training, so he didn't hire a fitness coach but taught Lu Mingfei directly.

Lu Mingfei sat down immediately and adjusted his posture to begin training.

The Schedule's judgment was very precise; it wouldn't count down for teaching processes that couldn't be skipped, but when it was his turn, the countdown would ring immediately, never giving him a moment to slack off or rest.

After ten reps, Lu Mingfei discovered a very sad fact—Su Xiaoqiang's assessment of him really wasn't disparagement or slander.

By the last few reps of the lowest weight set, his arms were already trembling uncontrollably!

At this very moment, he finally realized that this was the "butterfly wing flutter" mentioned earlier... the involuntary twitching of muscles when reaching exhaustion.

Chen Shu fell silent. Although he knew from his physique that Lu Mingfei had basically no exercise experience and was indeed weak in terms of strength... but to be so weak, how did he dare to bet against Su Xiaoqiang!

"Why don't you just try the bench press now?"

Chen Shu thought for a moment and whispered his advice. "There might still be a chance now if you use all your strength to push it up once, but if you do it after strength training, it'll be even more impossible once you're exhausted."

"No, Chen Shu, I want to do three hours of strength training first, and then bench press forty kilograms!"

Lu Mingfei shook his head and decisively refused.

If Chen Shu had said this earlier, Lu Mingfei would have surely agreed, but now it was absolutely impossible, because he knew very well that with his current strength, he definitely couldn't do it.

But this didn't mean Lu Mingfei had given up; just because he couldn't do it now didn't mean he couldn't do it three hours later!

【Through diligent fitness, your 【Fitness】 level has increased, gaining 1 point of Proficiency】

"Yes, that's it, exactly this!"

Lu Mingfei shouted internally that this was exactly what he wanted—how could a skinny weakling with basically no training experience increase his strength in a short time?

There was only one answer, and that was to cheat!

Without waiting for Chen Shu to respond, Lu Mingfei started his set again.

"Three hours, I originally thought it was quite long. Now it seems it's still too short; I must race against time!" he thought.

Lu Mingfei's declaration of "bench pressing 40kg after 3 hours of strength training" successfully made Chen Shu silent again.

"If you want to give up, just say so, there's no need to make such excuses..."

Chen Shu wanted to say more but stopped.

"Three hours of strength training, what kind of superhuman is this? Back when I was a soldier, those who could train like this were considered elite; an average person would be exhausted after an hour!"

But after he turned his head to glance at the other end, he quickly understood.

"Young people these days sure play wild!"

"Hoo, psh... hoo, psh..."

Beads of sweat the size of peas rolled down from his forehead, merging and growing along the way, finally turning into a stream of sweat that vanished into his already soaked clothes.

Lu Mingfei kept his head lowered; at this very moment, his breathing was already clearly difficult, intermittent, and he couldn't catch his breath.

Yet after the one-minute rest between sets, he still struggled to lift his head, his hands gripping the plastic-wrapped metal bar.

"That's about enough, isn't it?" Chen Shu couldn't help but advise again, "You've already been training for an hour!"

Judging by Chen Shu's perspective, Lu Mingfei was in a state of "complete exhaustion" no matter how you looked at it; continuing further would not only fail to provide any training effect, but it might also cause physical injury.

But Lu Mingfei decisively shook his head in refusal; although the movement of his head was slight, it was extremely firm.

"No, it's only been an hour..." Lu Mingfei's lowered eyes were filled with despair.

He didn't want to be this firm at all.

Given Lu Mingfei's habit over the past seventeen years of drifting through life, lying down whenever possible, and slacking off whenever he could, he should have given up long ago.

After all, it was just agreeing to a condition from Su Xiaoqiang that he couldn't refuse... how big of a deal was it? It wasn't like she would actually drag him off to sell his organs!

But Lu Mingfei couldn't give up, because that damn Schedule Plan countdown would only follow the agreement like a cold machine.

Let alone giving up, if Lu Mingfei's rest between sets exceeded half a second, it would sound!

Compared to the torture of being shocked, that kind of convulsion where his body was almost completely out of control, the pain piercing into his marrow and penetrating his soul... Lu Mingfei would rather choose the persistence of being exhausted!

It was nothing more than choosing the lesser of two evils.

But to those who didn't know the inside story, Lu Mingfei's perseverance seemed quite impressive.

Chen Shu finally understood why his young master had suddenly asked him to look after Lu Mingfei—someone he had never heard of before and who didn't seem to have any outstanding qualities—and even called him a friend.

Friend—a status like that was something Chen Shu had never heard from Chu Zihang before; at most, it was classmate!

"This boy truly has extraordinary qualities!"

Su Xiaoqiang, standing to the side, was also paying attention to the situation here.

Actually, at first, she didn't care much; bench pressing 40 kilograms after three hours of strength training? How was that any different from just giving up?

Not to mention anything else, just the three hours of strength training would be impossible to persist through, unless it was that kind of training where you do one set and rest for half an hour...

If he really followed the one-minute rest per set, she felt Lu Mingfei wouldn't even last half an hour!

But now, it had already been an hour... and Lu Mingfei was really doing the training intensity of reaching failure every set and resting for one minute!

Of course, this kind of training intensity couldn't just focus on one body part; Lu Mingfei was rotating between chest, back, and legs. Because he had just started and couldn't precisely control his posture, he was using fixed machines for everything.

But even so, the physical exertion alone was already quite frightening.

With such perseverance, was this still the Lu Mingfei in her impression?

"So tired, I can't do it, I really can't hold on anymore..."

After finishing another set, Lu Mingfei could no longer speak.

Sweat pouring like rain had long since become the norm; at this moment, his vision was blurred, exhaustion surged like a tide, crashing against his mind in waves, and his body's instincts were urging him to rest immediately.

Every cell seemed to be groaning, calling out: "Rest, it's fine, you'll be better after a sleep"!

But—

【Warning, electric shock countdown...】

"Hoo..." Lu Mingfei forced himself to do another set.

【Through diligent Fitness, your 【Fitness (Muscle Gain)】 level has increased, gained 1 point of Proficiency】

Lu Mingfei could clearly perceive that he was more proficient in using this machine, his strength was more concentrated, and his posture was becoming increasingly standard... he had experienced this feeling of becoming stronger many times before.

Even, after every increase in Proficiency, the strength within his body would also increase by a fraction.

It was precisely because of this increase in strength that Lu Mingfei had been able to persist until now.

Otherwise, with his physical fitness, after experiencing five kilometers of Running and three hours of Basketball today, plus one hour of strength training? He should have already collapsed from exhaustion and fainted!

But this time, even with the strength increase brought by that one point of Proficiency, Lu Mingfei couldn't hold on anymore.

The Schedule Plan didn't leave him any room at all; if the weight and number of reps Lu Mingfei did for each set didn't reach failure, it would also start the countdown!

This training intensity was just a little bit more than the strength increased by that one point of Proficiency.

It was probably only as big as a fingernail on a giant, but accumulated over time, it was also constantly wearing down Lu Mingfei's physical strength.

Thus, by now, Lu Mingfei finally couldn't hold on.

If everything were to be turned into game data, then one could see that his stamina bar was completely emptied when he reached the last two reps of this set!

Lu Mingfei stopped; he had to stop. His brain's command was successfully transmitted to his muscles, but his muscles could no longer squeeze out a single bit of strength.

【Warning, electric shock countdown, three...】

The countdown sounded mercilessly.

"No..."

【Two】

"Absolutely not..."

【One!】

"I don't want to be shocked again, ahhhhhhh!!!"

Lu Mingfei screamed desperately in his heart; a great fear enveloped him, and this fear drove him to issue a command to his muscles once more: exert force!

But where would the force come from?

The force was already within Lu Mingfei's body.

Within his lowered eyes, golden light surged in his pupils!

At the moment of near-death terror, the King's command finally bypassed the constraints of "Authority," and the power of the bloodline hidden within this body was activated; boundless strength surged out of thin air inside Lu Mingfei!

If Lu Mingfei were to open his Data Panel at this moment, he would see that his 【Fitness】 Proficiency was skyrocketing at a geometric rate, almost instantly soaring past one hundred to reach LV1, and immediately pushing toward the LV2 limit of two hundred Proficiency.

But all of this was terminated by a puzzled "Hmm?"

The owner of the "Authority," a boy as pretty as a girl, still had his eyes closed as if startled awake from a beautiful dream, his brows slightly furrowed.

Was it... broken through?

He strengthened the constraint.

"Authority" once again restricted "Power."

The Proficiency data began to drop before approaching the LV2 limit of two hundred, but this decline got stuck when it hit 0.

The 【Fitness】 level could not fall from LV1 to LV0!

Two invisible, intangible, and indescribable rules began to collide, yet neither could do anything to the other, as if it were a conflict between two underlying lines of code... in the end, only one result could be produced.

A bug was born.

"Hmm?"

That impossibly pretty boy finally opened his eyes; burning gold flowed within them, and his expression revealed a rare look of astonishment.

He could no longer constrain that portion of "Power," even though that portion of "Power" was extremely minuscule, insignificant...

Lu Mingfei was not aware of all that had happened.

He just inexplicably felt that he suddenly had more strength in his body; this strength was ridiculously great at first, giving him the feeling that he could destroy everything with a sneeze, but it soon began to drop again...

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, I'm not having a final burst of energy before death, am I?!" Lu Mingfei widened his eyes.

Then, he saw the large pile of floating characters before him.

【Congratulations! Through diligent exercise, your 【Fitness (Muscle Gain)】 level has increased to LV1】

【You have obtained the Trait—【Physical Recovery】!】

【Trait: Physical Recovery

Effect: Your physical recovery efficiency has been increased】

"What... leveled up? How?"

Lu Mingfei looked puzzled; he did indeed feel that his strength had increased quite a bit, and the physical strength that had been completely exhausted was now also much restored, but... he remembered that his Proficiency hadn't reached one hundred yet, right?

In one hour, it should have only increased by thirty-something points!

"Could it be that I was too tired earlier and counted wrong?"

Lu Mingfei pondered, but before he could figure anything out, he cast it to the back of his mind under the urging of the electric shock countdown and began to exercise again.

It was just that, this time, the previous weight was already judged by the Schedule as the level of "slacking off."

"Chen Shu, I want to add more weight!"

Lu Mingfei shouted, and meeting the astonished gaze cast by Su Xiaoqiang, he grinned.

"What kind of request should I make? It's so hard to think of one..."

(End of chapter)