Chapter 41 - 36: A Glorious Sunset

Watching the "Skill Level +1" text constantly float up on the panel, Chen Jue grew more and more motivated as he trained.

This[Tai Chi Twelve Forms]was currently his most efficient Skill for raising his Attributes.

Compared to[Stone Skimming]and[Darts], which relied mainly on arm Strength, the movements of Tai Chi Twelve Forms involved the entire body.

This martial art not only improved his Constitution, but it also allowed him to quickly accumulate Free Attributes.

He trained from about 10 AM to nearly noon, his clothes becoming soaked with sweat.

A health-preserving art that blended motion and stillness was being practiced by Chen Jue with the intensity of someone pumping iron at the gym. It was quite a jarring change of pace.

However, seeing the new increases to his Attributes on the panel, Chen Jue felt it was all worth it.

——————

Name: Chen Jue

Strength: 0.82+

Constitution: 1.01+

Spirit: 1.08+

Skills: [Stone Skimming (Perfection)][Darts Lv4 (126/5000)+][Tai Chi Twelve Forms Lv3 (726/2000)+][Climbing Lv0 (23/100)]

Assignable Free Attribute Points: 0.05

——————

’I grinded out 0.03 Free Attribute points this morning, and my Constitution went up by 0.01 on its own.’

’Great efficiency. I’ll keep it up this afternoon!’ Chen Jue smiled slightly as he glanced at the panel.

He found that when he was completely immersed in exercise, his focus was far greater than when he was slacking off at work.

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was noon.

After resting on the lawn for a bit to catch his breath, Chen Jue packed up his things and left the park.

He found a place to eat lunch and then opened his phone, first checking WeChat.

To his surprise, he had messages from two people.

One was from Jiang Zhe, who wanted to celebrate Chen Jue finding a job tonight. He invited him for the full package at the Jingtang Club: massage and spa, a buffet dinner, and then grouping up for some gaming afterward.

Since he had the cash voucher Chen Jue had given him, he figured they should keep the spoils to themselves and use it together.

But Chen Jue knew these were all just excuses.

The main reason was that it was the weekend, and that guy Jiang Zhe was ready to let loose.

Young people in Hang City were under a lot of pressure. If they didn’t take the opportunity to go out and have some fun on the weekends, they’d basically burn themselves out from the inside until they were nothing but dried-up husks.

"Your ’full package’ had better be the legitimate kind (side-eye)," Chen Jue typed back after shoveling in a few mouthfuls of rice.

Besides Jiang Zhe, Wu Fang had also, to his surprise, sent him a message.

She was now a newly minted celebrity teacher!

The video of her using a Rope Dart to fight off a dog had gone viral over the past two days. Reporters from all over flocked to the high school where Wu Fang worked, all vying to interview her.

On top of that, she was gorgeous, and as a PE teacher who practiced Martial Arts, she had a killer figure. Riding this wave of popularity, she instantly became a fixture in the "favorites" folder of every lecher online.

Any random interview clip or daily school life video uploaded by her students easily racked up millions of views.

The comment sections, of course, were a complete mess of derailed threads:

"The first time I saw Teacher Wu, I’d already picked out our kids’ names (doge)."

"Is it too late to go back to high school now? (smirking)."

"Alright class, your PE teacher is busy. I’ll be taking over for her today (side-eye)."

"I was there. I was the microphone in the reporter’s hand (distressed face)."

"I’m the Rope Dart in Teacher Wu’s hands (stunned)."

"If I’d had a PE teacher like her, I definitely would’ve paid more attention in school (crying)."

In short, the comedians came out in droves.

Even footage from Wu Fang’s on-camera interviews and her profile photo from the school’s official website were being Photoshopped into all sorts of memes and avatars. It seemed she was on the verge of surpassing Bingbing in popularity.

Wu Fang herself never expected to go viral like this.

She was a low-key person by nature. Normally, she just went to school to teach her classes, or spent her free time in the park with her grandfather, practicing the Rope Dart and Martial Arts routines.

She never imagined that a single act of bravery would make her this famous.

Out of consideration for the school’s administration, she had already dealt with several waves of reporters that morning.

Now, during her lunch break, she sent a message to see how Chen Jue was doing.

This was because Chen Jue had previously given her some well-intentioned advice, which helped her successfully avoid a few pitfalls during the interviews.

Grateful, she had taken the initiative to start a conversation with him.

But how could an ordinary person like Chen Jue receive this kind of viral-sensation treatment?

After rejecting Zhu Hongbin and Liu Li’s offer that morning, he didn’t even get a chance to be interviewed on camera.

As for the Stone Skimming video he’d just uploaded, it was still dead in the water.

It only had a few dozen bot views, without a single real comment or like.

As for the viral rescue video, after Wu Fang’s popularity exploded, the ending that showed Chen Jue killing the dog with a single dart had long been edited out.

These video platforms’ instincts and methods for chasing trends were even keener than that of the now-dead pit bull!

After just one day, almost nobody paid any more attention to the other young man with superb Darts Skill.

’Damn this superficial world!’ Chen Jue couldn’t help but grumble.

Still, seeing that Wu Fang had reached out to him first made Chen Jue quite happy.

He casually sent a few replies, adding a special reminder for her to protect her privacy and stay safe, and to watch out for any creepy perverts trying to follow her after work.

After all, these days, fame attracts trouble.

A pretty young woman like her, once she went viral, was highly likely to be targeted by obsessed fans.

However, when Wu Fang sent back a sticker of a "Muscle Barbie" flexing with the caption "Big Sis has got your back," Chen Jue knew his worries were for nothing.

With her family’s traditional martial arts and her skills as a PE teacher, she could probably handle any number of creeps that came her way.

’I probably couldn’t beat Wu Fang, could I?’

The thought that he, too, was one of those perverts—just one who was better at hiding it—made Chen Jue’s face twitch. His motivation to train harder suddenly intensified.

...

After lunch, Chen Jue returned to his apartment for a nap.

His morning workout had been very effective; the nap actually triggered the[Deep Sleep]effect again.

In addition to his Constitution increasing by another 0.01, his Spirit Attribute also rose by 0.01.

’Awesome!’

The sensation of his body and mind being simultaneously relaxed and restored left Chen Jue feeling exceptionally refreshed when he woke up.

He glanced at the time—it was already 4 PM. He had slept for over three hours.

’Jiang Zhe probably won’t get off work until after 6. That gives me two more hours to train!’

Remembering Yu Jie’s discipline—how he even used his class time to train—Chen Jue silently motivated himself.

He ran to the park to continue grinding his[Tai Chi Twelve Forms]for Skill Level and Attributes.

He continued until the distant sun began to set, its orange-red light dyeing the entire sky.

The lake before him, the grass at his feet, and even his own body were bathed in the brilliant, golden-red glow of the setting sun. Chen Jue, in the middle of his Tai Chi practice, found himself mesmerized by the sight.

’What a beautiful sunset!’

’So red! So round!’

Chen Jue stared, captivated. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

But to his surprise, after squinting at the disk-like red sunset for a short while, the Attribute panel, which should have been closed, popped up with a new notification.

It wasn’t an increase in[Tai Chi Twelve Forms]Skill Level, nor was it a rise in Free Attributes. It was a completely new notification:

——————

[Ding~]

[After a period of exposure to long-wave light of a special wavelength, the mitochondrial activity in your retinas has increased. The function of your photoreceptor cells has been slightly enhanced, and your visual ability has experienced a minor improvement.]

[Constitution Attribute +0.01]