0159 Jumping Higher and Higher

They say a good relationship is a two-way journey, one that brings joy to both body and mind the longer it lasts.

Seeing that her beloved had actually woven a rainbow out of thin air just for her, Wu Fang felt her heart swell with happiness and sweetness. Subconsciously, she hugged Chen Jue’s arm tighter, practically trying to burrow into his embrace.

If Wu Fang had an NPC status bar above her head, her affection meter would probably be popping up with constant "+100, +100" love hearts.

Standing nearby, Xi Guancheng and Wang Jin felt like they were being forced to swallow a faceful of romance, their teeth aching with envy from the bottom of their hearts.

As a professional photographer, Xi Guancheng thought to himself, "As expected of the number one stunt master on the entire internet! His flirting skills are also max-level! In all my years of photography, I’ve never seen anyone able to pull off such special effects purely with their bare hands!"

Wang Jin, on the other hand, felt a pang of envy toward Wu Fang, thinking, "I wish I had a boyfriend this amazing."

Realizing they were playing the role of the ultimate third wheels, the two hurried to slip away right after capturing the video footage. Otherwise, if they stayed a moment longer, they wouldn't even need lunch; they’d be completely full just from witnessing the couple's affection.

Before the two operations team members left, however, Chen Jue still walked Wang Jin through his envisioned editing effects, just to ensure that the final post-processed cut wouldn't leave his fans confused.

……

After shooing away the two third wheels, Chen Jue packed his shooting props into a large backpack.

He now maintained a steady weekly update schedule every Saturday, having developed a solid work routine.

Compared to his former nine-to-five grind, this kind of work, which only required four mornings a month to complete, was unimaginably relaxed.

Moreover, he was earning thousands of times more than before, naturally turning what he had previously envisioned as a side hustle into his main career.

Just as the two third wheels walked away, Wu Fang curiously asked Chen Jue about the methods and techniques he had used to weave the rainbow.

Aside from the seven-needle flying throw technique, Wu Fang eagerly babbled on about the instantaneous rainbow that had been almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

"This technique is actually very simple: it's all about speed."

"Not just fast hands, but fast eyes too."

As he explained, Chen Jue picked up a flying needle and test-threw it at the trunk of a ginkgo tree.

With a soft thud, the needle embedded itself deep into the wood.

"Did you see how many needles I threw just now?" Chen Jue asked.

Wu Fang shook her head, "I couldn't really see clearly."

Seeing this, Chen Jue led her right up to the tree trunk. There, embedded in the bark, were three neat rows of sewing needles, numbering an astounding nine in total.

"There were nine needles?!"

"I only saw a blurry flash, they really were fast!" Wu Fang was deeply shocked.

An ordinary person whose eyes haven't been specially trained can at best process visual information at thirty frames per second.

If Xi Guancheng hadn't brought a high-speed camera to stretch the footage—which was originally recorded at sixty frames per second—up to a thousand frames per second, slowing down Chen Jue's stunt performance by more than ten times, they never would have been able to capture that fleeting woven rainbow.

……

The two young lovers chatted by the lakeside for a while about dart-throwing skills. During the conversation, Chen Jue asked Wu Fang if there was a reliable traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy nearby, preferably one that stocked aged, premium medicinal herbs.

Since Chen Jue was planning to practice the "Iron Sand Palm" technique outlined in the manual next, he needed to brew the secret medicinal wash passed down through the Longmen school.

"For traditional Chinese medicine, you can go to Grandpa Zhang's place. He and my grandfather are old colleagues and know each other very well." Thinking that it wasn't quite lunch time yet, Wu Fang led Chen Jue over to a corner traditional Chinese medicine clinic named Zhang's Herb House, located in a nearby residential compound.

The clinic wasn't large, covering only a few dozen square meters, but patients queued endlessly for consultations.

Along the walls were rows of tall black apothecary cabinets. An assistant was busy filling medicine prescriptions, while a white-haired elderly man sat at the consultation desk.

Chen Jue recognized this old man instantly; he was the retired professor who had been rehired to teach traditional Chinese medicine classes at Jiang University.

"Hello, Professor Zhang. I've attended your lectures before." Once the previous patient finished their consultation, Chen Jue stepped forward to greet him.

"Oh!"

"Are you a student at Jiang University?"

Zhang Zhaozhong pushed up his reading glasses, looked Chen Jue over, and then turned his gaze to Wu Fang standing behind him. "Xiaofang! What brings you here? Where on earth has your grandpa, Wu the Monkey, wandered off to recently? I haven't seen him around in a while."

"Grandpa Zhang, this is my boyfriend."

"My grandpa went traveling to Lingnan; he'll be back before the Chinese New Year," Wu Fang stepped forward and said affectionately.

"You've got a boyfriend?"

"My goodness! You really are all grown up!"

Zhang Zhaozhong chuckled heartily. Looking at Chen Jue again, he suddenly felt a sense of familiarity. "I remember now! You're that young man who came asking me about the Mingtian Drum acupuncture points earlier!"

“You’ve got quite the blessing to win over a good girl like Xiaofang, young man! We watched this child grow up right here in the faculty residential compound.”

Professor Zhang reminisced about some old times around the Jiang University faculty compound, such as the childhood mischief of Wu Fang smashing someone else's window with a ball—tales she had plenty of to her name.

Listening to it all, Chen Jue felt the wondrous workings of fate; he never expected that Grandpa Wu and Professor Zhang were former colleagues.

After sitting inside the medicine clinic and chatting about everyday matters for a while, Chen Jue wrote down the medicinal ingredients he needed.

This was a secret recipe from the inner lineage of the Longmen school. The herbs had to be purchased externally, and outsiders were strictly barred from decocting them. Both the proportions and the heat management were kept under strict confidentiality. Because of this, he bought a massive pile of ingredients, deliberately tossing in a few extra herbs to serve as smoke and mirrors.

Holding the list, Professor Zhang clicked his tongue in wonder. "Young man! This prescription of yours is quite fascinating!"

"While this common violet is primarily used to treat carbuncles and sores, it contains over a dozen weak alkaloids, which possess antibacterial and antiviral properties externally. And this fossilized bone, once calcified, has the function of generating tissue and stopping bleeding."

"The remaining ingredients are also meant for strengthening bones, clearing toxins, promoting blood circulation, removing stasis, and beautifying the skin."

"Judging by this, it's an old formula meant for martial arts training. Nowadays, very few people still prescribe such traditional formulas."

With his extensive medical experience, Professor Zhang guessed the specific purpose of the prescription after just a few glances. He then looked up at the graceful Wu Fang and the bright, handsome Chen Jue with a sigh of emotion. "No wonder Xiaofang chose you as a boyfriend—you young rascal are a martial artist just like Wu the Monkey! It seems people of the same kind always end up together!"

Though his secret was pointed out by Professor Zhang, Chen Jue showed no trace of awkwardness, instead smiling along and chatting for a while longer.

As for the prescription itself, the old man kept it, likely struck by a sudden academic curiosity and planning to take it home for further study.

……

After picking up the medicinal herbs, Chen Jue and Wu Fang went out for lunch. Afterward, he drove her to tour the neighborhood of his newly purchased villa at Fuyue Xiangxi.

Upon seeing the sprawling space—five stories above ground and two below—Wu Fang couldn't help clicking her tongue in astonishment. "Such a huge house, Jue-ge, can you possibly manage living here all by yourself?"

Back at the equestrian club when they made their relationship official, Chen Jue had already revealed his family background to her.

Knowing that Chen Jue was the surviving direct-line scion of the old Chen family, wandering and fighting for his career alone in Hangzhou, and yet able to accumulate such massive wealth and assets before the age of thirty, Wu Fang admired him deeply from the bottom of her heart.

"There's no way I could live here alone, but aren't you here now?"

"With so many empty rooms, we can just have a few more kids in the future to fill them up," Chen Jue chuckled mischievously, immediately earning himself a round of Teacher Wu's "affectionate little fists."

Amidst playful laughter, the two finished touring the villa. Afterward, Wu Fang accompanied Chen Jue to a nearby hardware market, where they bought a large old-fashioned iron wok, a high-precision digital scale, a traditional clay pot for decocting medicine, a earthen stove paired with coal briquettes, and several dozen pounds of premium mung beans.

They lingered affectionately until around 3:00 PM, when Chen Jue reluctantly drove Wu Fang back home.

Even though it was the weekend, Chen Jue still had to complete his daily training; he couldn't let romance get in the way of his attribute gains.

As for the black iron sand needed to practice the "Iron Sand Palm," since the local hardware market didn't carry it, he had to order a batch online.

……

Returning to Wangyang Apartment, Chen Jue weighed and apportioned the newly purchased traditional medicine according to the secret formula, planning to brew it slowly that evening.

He wasn't in a rush to practice the Iron Sand Palm that afternoon. According to the precautions in the manual, the optimal time to practice this internal discipline was during the Si hour, which corresponded to the period between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

This was because that specific time frame was the peak operational window for the spleen, when the body's hematopoietic function was at its strongest, giving rise to the saying: "During the Si hour the spleen meridian flourishes, nourishing the blood makes the body robust."

Practicing this mildly toxic internal Iron Sand Palm technique during the Si hour naturally yielded twice the results with half the effort, making it much less likely to injure oneself.

With a little time left in the afternoon, Chen Jue strapped on his weighted vest and went for a slow jog toward the Jiang University campus.

His trip north to visit masters and study martial arts had delayed him for four or five days, and Chen Jue felt like his whole body had rusted up; if he didn't push himself hard, every fiber of his body felt uncomfortable.

The exercise volume from that morning's routine truly hadn't felt like much.

Therefore, he loaded himself down with a full 40 kilograms of weights, a 10-kilogram increase from before, which was equivalent to having a petite young woman strapped to his back.

On top of that, Chen Jue packed a resistance band in his bag for training his jumping power and high knees.

Fueled by a double boost of pre-workout and adrenaline, he jogged all the way to the Jiang University track and field stadium. Under the stress of the heavy load, he successfully squeezed out 0.01 points of Constitution and a free attribute point.

Next came the frog jump sets, executed continuously according to the jumping training regimen Li睿 had given him, followed by binding his legs with the resistance band to intensify his high knee raises.

By the time his training wrapped up over an hour later, Chen Jue felt as though his leg muscles had been filled with molten lead.

A striking notification popped up on his status panel:

——————

【Ding~】

【You have completed a high-intensity comprehensive training session. Your lower limb muscle groups have been strengthened, and the contractility of your leg joint ligaments has been drastically enhanced.】

【Constitution Attribute +0.01】

【Strength Attribute +0.01】

【Free Attribute +0.01】

——————

"Aww, that's the stuff!"

After such an intense workout, Chen Jue couldn't help letting out a satisfied cry.

While sipping his supplement and walking around to accelerate the lactic acid clearance in his legs, he wandered over to the basketball court where he had previously dunked. By then, only the top half of the sunset lingered on the horizon.

Looking at the orange-red dusk, Chen Jue acted on a sudden impulse and stripped off his weighted vest.

Free of the heavy load and stretching his limbs, he felt as light as a swallow. With an accelerating sprint, he launched himself toward an empty basketball hoop.

With no basketball in hand this time around, Chen Jue didn't bother with any flashy, stylistic dunks. Instead, as he soared to the apex of his jump, he slapped the backboard directly behind the rim.

With a dull thud, his palm struck heavily against the top edge of the backboard.

When Chen Jue landed and checked, the slightly sweat-stained imprint of his palm had actually reached three-quarters up the backboard, falling short of the very top edge by just half a palm's length.

Seeing this height, Chen Jue merely muttered softly to himself, "Not bad, my jumping power has improved by about a palm's length compared to before."

Meanwhile, a group of Jiang University students nearby who had just finished a half-court game were completely dumbfounded!

"Holy shit!"

"That vertical touch height feels kind of heaven-defying!"

"He practically reached the very top of the backboard!"

"Does our school actually have a high-jumper this ferocious?!"

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