044 Practicing Tai Chi at Night

Chen Long’s bullying didn’t affect Chen Anquan’s mood in the slightest.

At home, Chen Anquan cooked a big pot of noodles, sliced up a bit of lean pork, poached three eggs, and added some cabbage leaves, making himself a hearty meal. After savoring every bite, he headed to the basketball court.

The crack in the center of the court had been patched up; although a careful eye could spot the repairs, it didn’t affect play at all. Chen Long, that old troublemaker, was simply looking for something to complain about. His strained relationship with Second Uncle had led him to take out his grievances on Chen Anquan instead.

Planting all fours firmly on the ground, Chen Anquan tensed his legs and, with an explosive surge of strength, flipped himself up into a handstand. Lowering one hand, he balanced on the other and began doing one-handed handstand push-ups. After completing five hundred with his left hand, he switched to his right, pushing through another five hundred. By the end, he’d finished a thousand single-handed handstand push-ups.

Feeling thoroughly warmed up, Chen Anquan began practicing breakdancing. Around this time, a woman who’d just finished dinner and was wandering by the pond spotted him on the court and was taken aback. Was that street dance? She didn’t know what breakdancing was, but Chen Anquan’s moves looked a lot like the street dancing she’d seen before.

Ordinary street dance was mostly about standing moves that tried to look cool, maybe a few rolls on the ground at best. But Chen Anquan was different. Balancing on one hand, his legs spun beneath him like the wheels of a racing car. He’d leap and flip across the court—front flips, side flips, back flips, even spinning multiple times in the air—so fast that the woman’s eyes could hardly keep up.

But she was not one to be outdone; she quickly took out her phone and started recording. When Chen Anquan finally felt finished, he stopped and stood in the middle of the court, gazing at the moonlit pond.

To his surprise, dozens of people had gathered at the pond’s edge—women, men, even children.

“Young man, you’re so skilled! Are you on the national gymnastics team?” a woman called out with a beaming smile.

“I’m just an amateur,” Chen Anquan replied, shaking his head.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she pressed, undeterred.

“No,” he answered, standing at the front of the crowd, dabbing sweat from his forehead with the handkerchief he’d brought along.

“Want me to introduce you to someone?”

“No need, but thank you,” he replied politely, barely acquainted with the woman.

“Don’t be so quick to refuse! My niece is tall and slim—she’s an elementary school teacher, and very pretty.”

“Thank you for your kindness,” Chen Anquan said, as always turning down their goodwill.

By now, quite a few people had gathered, and many had their phones out, ready to record his exercises. Chen Anquan packed up, preparing to head back home.

“How come you’re not dancing anymore?” someone from the crowd asked curiously.

He couldn’t help but twitch a smile. To them, it looked like dancing, but for him, it was just training his body. With so many people watching, how could he shamelessly continue? What if these folks turned him into an internet celebrity?

Back home, he turned on the gas stove to cook another bowl of noodles. Tonight’s workout had been intense, and noodles digested so quickly that he was already hungry again. Ever since he’d started this path of enhanced training, his appetite had grown astonishingly. It was now routine to eat several pounds of noodles or rice in one sitting. Even that wasn’t sufficient—he also needed eggs and meat for extra protein.

“At this rate, I’ll barely be able to feed myself, let alone think about dating,” he joked to his reflection in the mirror, scrutinizing himself in the bedroom.

Aside from a strong body, he had neither savings, nor a new house, nor even a car. He truly had nothing to his name.

“Looks like tomorrow I’ll have to go into town and sell some of the lesser medicinal herbs to make ends meet!”

He hadn’t gone herb-gathering many times, but every trip yielded an abundance, as if the mountains were just waiting for him to dig up their bounty. He’d never realized how many medicinal plants grew wild and uncollected in these parts.

“Maybe it’s just that no one around here gathers them, so they’re everywhere,” he mused, but didn’t dwell on the thought. Instead, he focused on the attributes panel in his mind.

After a night of steady training, his stats had improved:

Name: Chen Anquan
Age: 24
Strength: 1.93
Agility: 1.95
Spirit: 5
Constitution: 2.73
Unused Attribute Points: 0.05
Skills: [Taiji Fist LV1 (100/500)], [Forty-Nine Forms Wudang Taiji Sword LV1 (30/500)], [Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms LV1 (40/500)]

After that whole night of training, his progress was steady and solid, mainly boosting his agility and unused attribute points.

After downing three bundles of noodles, three eggs, two ounces of lean pork, and a handful of greens for a late-night meal, he opened his door and headed back out to the basketball court.

The crowd had long since dispersed, leaving him alone under the bright streetlamp at the court’s edge.

With no one else around, Chen Anquan took advantage of the night to practice Taiji Fist.

“Eh? That young man’s dancing again!” At that moment, a woman who had gotten up in the night to use the bathroom in a large house nearby noticed him. She realized with surprise that he was practicing Taiji.

Her drowsy eyes brightened immediately. After hurrying to the bathroom, she stood on the second-floor balcony, phone in hand, and started recording.

Though Chen Anquan had excellent night vision, he didn’t notice the distant house with its lights off, and so believed he was practicing alone, unseen.

Before he knew it, it was already 2 a.m.

Satisfied with his progress, Chen Anquan returned home, locked the door, and prepared for a cold shower. The nighttime temperature was just seven or eight degrees Celsius; normally, anyone practicing Taiji outside in just a shirt would have caught a cold by now.

But Chen Anquan felt nothing of the chill. On the contrary, he felt as if he were basking in the cool comfort of air conditioning on a summer day—utterly at ease.