0131 Equipped with built-in ultrasonic diagnostics!

Chen Jue withdrew from his "Meditation" state, his face filled with astonishment as he opened his status panel.

"So, the skill leveled up! It has enhanced my nervous system and my five senses!"

"No wonder my hearing seems to have improved so drastically; I can even clearly hear the sounds of my own organs and bones." After reading the prompts on the panel, Chen Jue’s expression shifted to one of sudden realization.

However, after exiting "Meditation," Chen Jue discovered that when he tried to use his normal hearing to listen for those two subtle sounds from earlier, they were drowned out by the ambient noise from inside and outside the room.

With no other choice, he settled into the lotus position again, adjusting his breathing rhythm to slowly enter "Meditation."

Perhaps due to the upgrade and his increased proficiency with the skill, it took Chen Jue only a little over three minutes to enter this wondrous state of low-frequency brain activity. In this state, he felt his mind grow tranquil, and the stray thoughts in his head began to dissipate.

Gradually, he began to try using his ears to listen to the sounds within his own body.

The eardrums are miraculous structures; though they are merely thin membranes, they possess a peculiar duality. Whether sound comes from outside the ear canal or originates from within, it stimulates the eardrum to vibrate, triggering a reflex in the auditory center. Normally, holding one's nose and mouth while blowing hard can increase the sensitivity of the eardrums, but the "Meditation" state Chen Jue had entered was clearly far more effective. As soon as he settled in, he began to hear various strange sounds from inside his body.

First was the loud thumping of his heart; the rhythm sounded like the backfire of a powerful motor. Chen Jue listened carefully—there were no murmurs. Instead, because he had entered the meditative state, his metabolic functions had slowed, and the frequency of his heartbeat began to drop.

"Not bad! The heart is fine!" a simple thought arose.

Next were the peristaltic sounds of his digestive system. Having eaten dinner not long ago, his stomach and intestines were hard at work. When a normal person is hungry, they can hear their stomach growling because, in a fasting state, gastric acid secretion increases and the gastrointestinal tract begins to contract, squeezing internal air to create noise. But the sounds of a full stomach were different—they resembled a blender churning through food mash, a soft, rustling sound with no other irregularities.

"The stomach and intestines are also fine; very healthy." Another simple thought arose.

After checking his digestive tract, Chen Jue tried to listen to the area around his gallbladder. The gallbladder is also part of the digestive system; whenever the biological clock signals a mealtime and food enters the stomach, the gallbladder contracts to expel concentrated bile, a process similar to squeezing a water balloon. However, Chen Jue had a small stone in his gallbladder, much like a pebble dropped into that balloon. Naturally, the sound of the bile being expelled was different—there was an irregular, rasping noise, like a stone rolling in water, as the stone was pushed around by the contraction of the gallbladder.

"There is an irregular sound in my gallbladder!"

"But the noise is very faint. It seems this stone has shrunk again." A thought of pleasant surprise arose, and Chen Jue shifted his auditory focus to his skeletal joints.

Combining the practice with yoga poses, he tested every joint he could hear. Aside from some abnormal clicking sounds in the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, the movement of all other bones and joints was normal.

"That must be my lumbar disc herniation!" Chen Jue opened his eyes and excitedly exited the wondrous "Meditation" state.

He discovered that this newly learned skill, besides training his mental willpower, had the greatest utility in creating a synergistic effect with his increasingly sharp hearing. It allowed him to explore, monitor, and detect ailments within his body, acting much like an ultrasound diagnostic in a hospital. Having only just learned this "internal listening to diagnose illness" technique, he was not yet skilled, and hearing the sounds of his heart, stomach, gallbladder, and joints was his current limit.

"If my hearing improves a bit more to cover my entire body, wouldn't I not even need to go for hospital checkups?"

"If I continue to improve my medical knowledge, I can perform my own monitoring and diagnosis in the future, detecting lesions or abnormalities within my body! Then I won't have to worry about injuries or accidents during exercise." Chen Jue’s eyes burned with excitement, as if he had developed an incredible tool for the human body.

…

The night of yoga and meditation was incredibly fulfilling. Most importantly, through the practical application of the skill, Chen Jue mastered a special method he called "Internal Listening."

After the two-hour meditation session, his proficiency increased by another 100 points, and his Spirit attribute grew by 0.02. He estimated that another night of practice would lead to another level-up.

Taking advantage of the time reaching 9:00 PM, Chen Jue soaked in a medicinal bath, continuing to rub the purchased ointments and lotions onto his joints. Previously, his exercises were focused on his hands to help him grip gold bricks, so he had concentrated the medicine there. But after monitoring his entire skeletal structure through "Internal Listening," he realized that the sliding sounds of his hand joints were much smoother than his other bones, with almost no noise at all.

To achieve that same silky fluidity in all his joints, Chen Jue expanded the application of the medicine to his entire body—from hand bones to ankles, shoulder blades, and the lumbar spine, treating them all equally. Although it was more expensive, and his stockpile of over a dozen types of meridian-clearing wines and bone-penetrating salves would be exhausted in just a few days, Chen Jue didn't care about the cost for the sake of his physical progress. He was already a big internet celebrity earning over a hundred thousand a month; he didn't mind these small expenses.

…

After applying the medicine and tucking himself into bed, he woke up the next morning and followed his routine of swallowing a handful of supplements, from calcium tablets to vitamins, washed down with warm water. To his surprise, when he opened his panel, there was a new notification from the night before:

[Ding~]
[Under the stimulation of the medicine, your overall bone density has increased, and joint toughness has grown slightly.]
[Constitution attribute +0.01]

"Attributes can grow even while I'm sleeping! It seems full-body application is indeed more effective than local application." Chen Jue looked at the panel with delight.

While his mind was fresh in the morning, he quickly went online to order more of the topical ointments to avoid running out in a few days. Of course, this was his way of casting a wide net; he would try any method that could improve his attributes and physical fitness, hoping that at least some would bear fruit.

He put down his phone, went upstairs, and continued to train his eyes and ears toward the rising sun. The temperature in Hangzhou had dropped to -2 degrees Celsius due to the cold front from the north, but with the morning sun, Chen Jue didn't feel the cold; instead, the more he practiced, the more comfortable he felt.

By the time he drove to the park, his eye sockets and ears were slightly flushed. The blood circulation had accelerated abnormally, generating enough heat to offset the damp, cold weather of the south. One should know that in this "magic attack" that ignores armor, without proper protection for the hands and ears, one could easily develop frostbite during outdoor activities. Yet, Chen Jue relied solely on his own exercise to generate internal heat, providing a powerful defense against the cold—a testament to the extraordinary efficacy of his daily training.

…

When he arrived at the morning exercise park, the number of elderly people exercising had dropped significantly due to the ten-degree temperature plunge. The chess tables, usually bustling by 7:00 AM, were completely deserted; the seniors were likely tucked away at home keeping warm or had moved to an indoor venue. Even Old Man Wu didn't show up. Only Wu Fang was there in the frosty winter morning, using the chess table to stretch her legs, puffs of white heat venting from her nose and mouth as she breathed.

"Good morning!" Chen Jue walked over to greet her.

Seeing Chen Jue arrive with his bow case, a spark appeared in Wu Fang’s calm eyes. "Good morning, Brother Jue! I didn't think you'd come in this cold."

"It's fine. If you move around enough, you won't feel cold," Chen Jue said with a smile. With the girl he liked waiting for him, he would venture even to the Antarctic.

The two chatted by the chess table at the park entrance until the morning sun shone into the park, then they walked together toward the central lake. To his surprise, the overnight temperature drop had frozen the small lake, leaving a thin layer of ice that sparkled beautifully in the sunlight.

Snow was rare in the south, and in Wenzhou, where Chen Jue grew up, such freezing conditions were a once-in-a-decade occurrence. Hangzhou, being further north in Zhejiang Province, experienced snow every year or two. But this year’s weather was abnormal; two weeks ago, it was still warm enough for a thin jacket, and now it required a down coat.

"I wish it were thicker! When I was little, I loved stepping on ice like this in the winter." Wu Fang, still possessing a touch of childhood innocence, went to the edge of the lake to test the thickness of the ice. It was a thin layer that shattered at the slightest touch, lacking the joy of skating on northern rivers.

Chen Jue felt a stir in his heart. He, too, had loved stepping on the thin ice of the sewage ditches near his home as a child. He hadn't expected to share a similar childhood hobby with Teacher Wu. Interested, he stepped onto the ice with one foot, careful not to use too much force for fear of breaking it. He tried rubbing his shoe against the surface, and unexpectedly, a prompt popped up on his panel:

[Ding~]
[Completed a body movement meeting the criteria.]
[Skill Activated: Ice Skating]

PS: Ordinary people can indeed hear the sounds of their internal organs and even bone friction, but it requires a special negative-decibel laboratory.