Chapter 179 - 132: Eating Salt Gives You Great Strength?

Staring at the new skill that had appeared on the panel, Chen Jue was momentarily stunned.

However, on second thought, he realized that Ice Skating was a skill humans mastered for survival in extremely cold weather, and it instantly made sense.

After all, people all over the world used sleds or skates to glide across ice and snow to hunt prey.

For instance, in northeastern Huaxia and many other remote regions, people would use ice skates to go out onto frozen rivers, cut holes in the ice, and fish. The famous winter fishing at Chagan Lake was a scene he remembered from a food documentary.

He never expected that just casually slipping on a patch of thin ice could actually be recorded by the panel.

’This skill should be pretty useful!’

’Too bad there aren’t any suitable venues here in Hang City. If I want to practice, I’ll have to go to an artificial ski resort to raise the Skill Level,’ Chen Jue thought to himself, rubbing his chin.

According to the training materials Teacher Li Rui had sent him, ice skating and skiing were great for improving one’s coordination and balance.

However, due to environmental limitations, Li Rui had only included some materials on ice sports and hadn’t actually added them to Chen Jue’s daily training regimen.

...

After stomping on the ice by the lake with Wu Fang and sharing a moment of childish fun, the two began their respective morning workouts.

Chen Jue went through his usual routine by the lake, drawing his bow to build strength and practicing his Horse Stance Training to raise his Attributes.

He found that in the sub-zero temperatures, his body generated heat much faster. Even the internal muscle control needed to close his pores during his Horse Stance felt much easier than usual.

It was likely a stress response, the body’s natural reaction to the cold.

In such temperatures, the pores of the skin naturally tighten and contract to prevent heat from escaping and causing hypothermia. It was like a safety lock for his body heat.

When he added high-intensity bow practice on top of this, the heat building up inside his body was far greater than normal.

After just a few dozen draws of the hard bow, Chen Jue found his body scorching hot. Even his hands, gripping the bow, had turned a shade of crimson he had never seen before—a clear sign that his blood was flowing faster and pooling in his hands as he exerted himself.

After half an hour of practice, his panel showed an increase of 0.01 to his Strength Attribute, and his Skill Level in Horse Stance and Pile Skills had risen by over 200. Only then did Chen Jue let out a long breath toward the lake with a "HUUUU..."

A plume of white vapor shot from his mouth, forming a focused, arrow-like stream that traveled two meters before dispersing.

The moment he released the bowstring, relaxed his tensed tailbone, and opened his pores, a cloud of white steam erupted from his body, visible even through his thick coat.

Wu Fang, who was practicing with her Rope Dart nearby, stared in stunned silence. She tried exhaling sharply but found she couldn’t replicate the focused, arrow-like breath Chen Jue had produced. Hers became a diffuse cloud after a meter at most.

After a few more tries, she even started to feel dizzy, clearly from a lack of oxygen.

’Exhaling an arrow?’

’His lung capacity is incredible!’

’I wonder just how strong Brother Jue is now. He can draw such a high-poundage bow with no effort... He could probably handle several of me at once, couldn’t he?’ Wu Fang mused.

She was sure her judgment of character was spot on. Seeing Chen Jue radiating a masculine aura with steam rising from his body right after his strength training, Wu Fang found herself looking forward to their weekend date with a bit more excitement.

...

After their morning workout, the two left the park, chatting and laughing. This time, Wu Fang didn’t refuse Chen Jue’s offer and joined him for breakfast at a small shop in a nearby residential area.

They were all familiar neighborhood faces, so the moment Wu Fang walked in, the woman who owned the breakfast stall recognized her.

"Well, well! Teacher Xiaowu, are you dating now?"

"I never thought I’d see the day!"

"Out for breakfast with your boyfriend?"

"Your boyfriend is so handsome!"

The women who ran these ground-floor shops outside the complex were always enthusiastic, and with no major news to occupy them, they loved to gossip about the local goings-on. Since they were all regulars, just a few sentences from the owner was enough to make Wu Fang blush crimson. She mumbled her order in a voice as quiet as a buzzing mosquito before finding a seat in a corner.

Seeing this, Chen Jue just chuckled and smiled at the owner, mentally giving her a big thumbs-up. ’These aunties sure have good taste!’ he thought. He then placed his order, paid by scanning the code, and happily sat down with Teacher Wu to enjoy their breakfast.

...

Being quite shy, and with the breakfast shop full of familiar faces, Wu Fang kept her head down, wolfed down her food, and quickly made her escape home.

Seeing how embarrassed she was, Chen Jue didn’t offer to see her off.

This was just breakfast. If he walked her to the high school where she taught and a student happened to see them, the entire student and faculty body would probably be in an uproar.

’Teacher Wu is such a great catch. I’m definitely punching above my weight trying to court her. I’ve got to keep working harder!’ Chen Jue thought to himself with a sigh.

He drove back to his apartment, gathered his textbooks, and headed off to class.

In the morning, he had a physiology class for his clinical medicine program, taught by a young teaching assistant.

The topic was the contractile function of muscle cells. The lecture covered four key points: first, the transmission of excitation at the neuromuscular junction; second, the excitation-contraction coupling of skeletal muscle; third, the mechanism of skeletal muscle contraction; and fourth, the efficiency of skeletal muscle contraction and its influencing factors.

Though these concepts sounded hardcore, breaking them down revealed they were just simple scientific principles used to analyze the working mechanism of muscle cells.

And since skeletal muscle is the most abundant tissue in the human body, accounting for about 40% of a person’s weight, it was given special focus in the analysis.