Chapter 13 : Being Overpowered Feels So Lonely
Chapter 13 : Being Overpowered Feels So Lonely
Being Overpowered Feels So Lonely
Back home, Chu Tianxing carefully tucked away Gu Dongcang's business card and pulled out that bottle of Body-Strengthening Pills to examine.
He popped off the cork and took a light sniff. A refreshing fragrance assailed his nostrils, clearing his mind and making his mouth water.
He poured out one pill to get a better look. The thing wasn't big, just about the size of a soybean, but it was perfectly round with a jade-green color that somehow gave off this amazing sense of vitality.
"This pill definitely looks like the real deal."
Chu Tianxing muttered to himself.
But my parents always taught me never to eat stuff from strangers...
"My intuition isn't sensing any danger, and Gu Dongcang seems like a decent person, so he probably wouldn't try to poison me. Still, it's something I'd be putting in my body, so I'm a little worried. If only I could analyze it somehow..."
Just as he was thinking this, a light screen dropped down in front of his vision, projecting an image of the Body-Strengthening Pill.
A line of text appeared next to the image of the pill: "Analyzing, please wait..."
Chu Tianxing grinned. "My cheat system actually has an appraisal function? Well, that makes things easy!"
Soon enough, the screen refreshed with the analysis results.
[Body-Strengthening Pill
Main ingredient: Spirit Fruit.
Additional materials: Flesh Mushroom, Dragon Bone Powder, Blood Orchid Pollen, Soybean Powder, Peanut Pieces... Non-toxic, easily digestible.
Function: Cultivates vital energy, enhances constitution, strengthens bones, improves and purifies internal energy.
Side effects: May cause diarrhea, heat sensations, skin itching. ]
After reading the results, Chu Tianxing was stunned for a moment.
"Spirit Fruit as the main ingredient? What the hell is that?”
"And what's Flesh Mushroom? Some kind of special mushroom? Then there's Blood Orchid Pollen... uh, pollen from blood-colored orchids?”
"As for Dragon Bone Powder... I remember back in my original world, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners used to treat turtle shells and animal bones with oracle bone script carved on them as dragon bones.”
"Well, if it's listed alongside down-to-earth stuff like soybean powder and peanut pieces, it's probably just ground-up oracle bones, right?"
Even though the ingredients in these Body Strengthening Pills were pretty confusing, Chu Tianxing was satisfied with their functions.
Cultivating vital energy, enhancing constitution, strengthening bones; that's exactly what he needed at this stage.
The internal energy improvement and purification function would be kind of wasted on him though.
But this just proved how much Gu Dongcang valued him. This pill was probably something Gu Dongcang used for his own cultivation.
As for the side effects, compared to the pill's powerful functions, those minor issues were not even worth mentioning.
Without another word, Chu Tianxing picked up a pill and tossed it in his mouth.
Once the pill hit his stomach, a warm current burst out from his gut and quickly spread throughout his entire body. His whole body felt feverish, his skin became incredibly sensitive, and his neck, back, and chest started itching.
He endured the discomfort and, while the pill's effects were at their peak, began practicing the External Refinement Section of the Muscle-Transforming & Bone-Tempering Chapter in his room.
After completing one full routine, Chu Tianxing felt his body had become much lighter and stronger. Furthermore, the warm current that made him feel hot and itchy had not yet completely disappeared, a clear sign that the pill's medicinal power had not been fully absorbed.
Before, a single run-through of that routine would have left him totally wiped out.
But today was totally different.
With the Body-Strengthening Pill's support, he still felt energetic and alert even after finishing the routine. Without wasting time, he got back into position and started the Muscle-Transforming & Bone-Tempering Chapter from the beginning again.
The results from this second session were incredible.
Not only did he sweat the impurities accumulated within his body, he felt even lighter and stronger than before. More importantly, he could feel a faint warmth gathering slowly within his lower abdomen.
Not only did he sweat profusely—his sweat mixed with lots of gray-white impurities—but his body felt even lighter and stronger. More importantly, somewhere below his navel in his lower abdomen, he could faintly sense wisps of warm current slowly gathering.
The spot where the warm current gathering was exactly where his Qihai Acupoint was located. Or widely known as the Dantian.
When Chu Tianxing had been looking up martial arts information online, he'd already learned from various public martial arts resources that warm currents gathering in the Dantian were a sign of naturally developing internal energy.
This internal energy could actually be generated "from external to internal" naturally.
It means that if you have the right external cultivation methods and your physique has reached a certain level, you'd naturally develop internal energy.
Chu Tianxing's cultivation method was the External Refinement Section of the Muscle-Transforming and Bone-Tempering from the Nine Yin Manual. It was a sophisticated cultivation method that far outperformed the publicly available methods.
He'd also used two Lesser Marrow Cleansing Pills earlier, which had already dramatically improved his natural talent. And just now, he'd taken a Body-Strengthening Pill.
This was a cultivation pill that even someone like Gu Dongcang, a peak Inner Force Realm martial artist who had already condensed a True Qi Seed, could use for daily cultivation. If it weren't for his good luck, Chu Tianxing couldn’t even dream of getting a whiff of a pill of this quality.
In any case, thanks to Gu Dongcan’s generosity and his own effort, Chu Tianxing had successfully cultivated a seed of internal energy for the Inner Energy Realm.
Of course, those wisps of warm current in his Dantian were currently just a growing seed that couldn't be used in actual combat yet.
He'd need to keep working at it, continuously cultivating to nurture and strengthen that seed until it could flow through his meridians and connect all his energy channels before it would have practical combat value.
For example, once internal energy flowed through the arm meridians, he could focus that internal energy into his hands and fingers when attacking to boost his attack power and speed dramatically. Once internal energy flowed through his leg meridians, he could do what Qin Ling did—walk on water without getting his shoes wet.
But Chu Tianxing's current internal energy was still in the starting phase. That tiny bit of internal energy couldn't even leave his Dantian, let alone flow through his meridians.
Still, it was a good start.
Chu Tianxing was planning to keep going and practice the Muscle-Transforming & Bone-Tempering Chapter one more time when his stomach rumbled like thunder and he felt sharp cramping pains.
Well, shit. The "diarrhea" side effect had finally kicked in...
He had no choice but to clear his stomach first and then take a hot shower to wash off all that oily sweat.
Afterward, even though he felt refreshed and clear-headed, he had an instinctual feeling that continuing to practice would probably harm his body.
He also couldn't take another pill right now as it would backfire and damage his body.
So he patiently held back and didn't rush to continue cultivating.
Looking at the time, it was almost noon. Qin Ling wouldn't make dinner until evening, so he'd have to rely on his greatest skill and make himself a bowl of mixed rice.
Although it was just the most common lard and soy sauce mixed with rice, Chu Tianxing ate it with great relish.
He felt it tasted countless times better than when he used to eat beluga caviar mixed rice while looking at the total reader counts of his old novel.
Speaking of readers, Chu Tianxing was reminded of his novel.
Holding his rice bowl, he shoveled down big mouthfuls of food while opening his computer to log in to the Huankong Net. He checked his author dashboard and was pleased that his collections had already increased to over three hundred.
He then went to the novel's main page and saw that the total clicks were already in the thousands, with over two hundred recommendation votes and over a hundred comments in the comment section.
Keep in mind that his novel had only passed review and officially entered the database during dinner yesterday. It hadn't even been a full twenty-four hours.
Less than twenty-four hours and already these numbers, with the comment section this active—
Okay, even after filtering out the few comments from editors acting as shills, there should still be over a hundred real comments. This book was probably going to blow up soon.
Excited, Chu Tianxing decided not to hold back anymore and posted five more chapters worth of ten thousand words of content in total.
Then he returned to the website's homepage and checked the New Book Rankings and discovered that his novel had reached thirteenth place on the ranking and would soon be displayed on the homepage.
The New Book Rankings these days only count clicks without any other complicated algorithms.
They didn't separate veteran and new authors; everyone's novels competed on the same new book list. As long as a novel had been in the database for less than a month and had fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand words, it could get on the list based on its click count.
Looking around, Chu Tianxing saw that he'd left quite a few established authors with previous success behind him.
Most of those ranked above him were also veteran authors.
Looking at the data for those new books ranked ahead of him and calculating the growth rates, Chu Tianxing was confident that after posting those five chapters, he'd make it to the top ten of the new book list and get homepage display within an hour or two at most.
"Authors these days are really slow with updates!"
In this era, authors updated their works with the passion of a salted fish.
The web novels industry of this world had just started to gain momentum and the prospects weren't particularly clear. The platform also offered little to almost no incentives to the authors. Plus, the vast majority of the authors are part-time.
The very few full-time authors actually made their living from print publishing. They'd post online to earn a bit of electronic manuscript fees, but their real money came from print publishing.
So current web novel update schedules were slow.
Most authors were casual writers.
Many updated every two days, every three days, or even once a week. Though chapter word counts were usually decent and they hadn't yet become the evil "2K-word chapter party," being able to update fifty to sixty thousand words a month was already impressive.
(TL Note: The audacity, kek. Btw, the average word count of this novel is about 2.5k to 3.5k a chapter depending on the arc and scene.
It was completely incomparable to the update pace of Chu Tianxing's original world.
Chu Tianxing's new book hadn't even been in the database for twenty-four hours and he'd already updated thirty-six thousand words.
Just this update speed alone could demolish all other authors.
The readers in the comment section had things to say about Chu Tianxing's update speed too:
OldGluttonOfTheBookSea: Holy shit, another update! This book just entered the database yesterday, right? Less than twenty-four hours and already eighteen chapters updated! This update speed is absolutely godly! Great Author Skywalker is too awesome!
XiaoHu2215: Hard work pays off! Just like how I dedicate at least four hours daily to martial arts practice, which is why I could open all Twelve Principal Meridians at seventeen. Heaven favors the diligent. With Author Skywalker updating so fast while maintaining such high quality, there's no justice if this book doesn't blow up!
FlowerOfTheEasternDepo: Author, keep it up! Looking forward to updates every day!
EunuchLi: Hmph, so what if updates are fast with lots of words? Over thirty thousand words and still can't tell who the main character is. Even classics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West weren't written like this. If this book gets popular, I'll eat the keyboard in my hands. Mark my words!
LickTilYouMakeIt: Marking this. Looking forward to the eunuch above eating his keyboard.
LoveIsAGreenHolyLight: Same here. Also looking forward.
OfCourseYouForgiveHer: Marked. Also, very curious what happened to the person above?
(TL Note: In case you are wondering, Green = NTR. So yes, that username is like saying love is ntr.)
FlowerOfTheEasternDepot: Wow, the author updated again! Keep it up, looking forward to updates every day!
"..."
Chu Tianxing's eye twitched again. "My dear editor, when you're 'watering' the comments, could you please try to be a little more creative? Two comments in a row, both shamelessly fake..."
A light screen suddenly appeared on his retina as he read the comments and ate his meal.
"Reached top ten on the New Book Rankings, displayed on website homepage. Growth Package obtained: First Time Ever on the New Book Rankings Gift Pack. Open package?"
"First Time Ever on the New Book Rankings? I get the feeling this cheat is throwing shade at me!"
Chu Tianxing had been a failed author for ten years without ever making it to the New Book Rankings even once. He could make his book appear on the rankings by paying but he refused that since he believed in his ability and wanted to get on the list by his own merit.
Unfortunately, the facts proved he really had no self-awareness back then...
"Whatever. Now I have a cheat. And a life with cheats doesn't have to play by the rules... Man, being overpowered is so damn lonely!"
Chu Tianxing gave a "lonely" sigh and opened the gift pack.
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