The Cost of Strength : Part 2

During this period, he also regularly conducted tests on himself, searching for a method to control the acupoints.

Through intermittent acupuncture, Huang Ji had rapidly grown five centimeters in these ten short days, reaching a height of 183 centimeters.

Based on the personal data that he perceived, his heart was now double the size of an average person's.

His upper lungs could contain over 13 milliliters of oxygen per minute, while his lower lungs could transport in excess of 90 milliliters, both of which were triple that of an average person.

These were precisely the results that were born from the stimulation of his growth hormones and manipulation of his cardiovascular system.

By using pressure points on the cardiovascular system acupoint, and combining it with the regular acupoints of the twelve major meridians and eight extraordinary meridians for support, he could greatly increase the blood supply towards a specific organ, thus greatly increasing the supply of nutrients while strengthening its capability.

With the assistance of growth hormones, the organ would undergo rapid development.

With his data perception ability to help him find any problems, the moment his growth hormones or blood supply proceeded in the wrong direction, he could immediately detect and correct the problem.

As he repeated this process, he gradually grew more adept and was now able to precisely strengthen his heart and lungs.

To supply his body with enough nutrients, Huang Ji had to eat a dozen eggs every day, along with one kilogram of carrots and various amounts of fruit. Unfortunately, his lifespan was still steadily decreasing.

"Even if I never get into an accident or receive any injuries, I'll only be able to live for another 45 years..."

To strengthen the capability of his heart and lungs, he had shaved off 30 years of his lifespan. His body originally had a lifespan of 91 years, but it was now only 61.

"This is the price of direct strengthening. I knew I shouldn't have rushed it. The entire body is a complex, complete system with its own order. Make one change and everything follows! I need to first find a method for health improvement that will allow for overall development on all fronts."

Huang Ji dabbled with the hidden acupoints a bit and then stopped his experimentation.

While his heart and lungs had grown stronger, the burden on his liver and kidneys had increased. His other organs were also under too much stress.

If he continued strengthening his heart and lungs like this, he could potentially trigger a terminal illness.

"I still need to keep learning. My level of knowledge is still not high enough."

Picking up a book, he left the apartment and arrived at his own private apartment, turning on his computer. In a forum, Huang Ji simply asked upfront, "How can I stimulate the acupoints without using acupuncture?"

After waiting for a while, one person responded, "Practice martial arts!"'

Huang Ji hastily searched up martial arts and got a mountain of information.

Upon reading up on martial arts, he typed and asked, "Is qi real? Isn't it just a setting from novels?"

"The novels have their own setting, but qi is also real. The effect just isn't quite as exaggerated." the person replied.

Huang Ji's eyes lit up. However, due to his first experience with the internet, he was constantly reminding himself to scrutinize the information that he found online.

"Do you know qi? How is it practiced?", he asked, while going straight to the source and logging into their blog and cloud storage account.

The person was completely unaware of this and replied, "It's mainly stances paired with breathing techniques. Inhaling clear energy through special breathing methods to nourish and mix with our acquired qi, slowly revitalizing our life force and strengthening the internal organs."

"Trust me, all you have to do is persist. Stand in an open area every night and assume the following pose, keep your head upright and your neck relaxed, breath with your abdomen..."

He sent over a large wall of instructions, and even included pictures with the text.

Once Huang Ji finished reading it over, he asked, "Why does it have to be at night?"

The person said, "We're absorbing the essence of the stars, of course it's got to be at night. You might think it's a load of baloney, but it's true. The stars in the sky are emitting light at every single moment. The nature of this stance training is to open up your body to accept this energy... "

"It's not that I don't believe you, but...aren't the stars still around even during the day?"

"..." The person fell silent for a moment, seemingly trying to wrap their head around this logic. He's right. The stars are there in space regardless of night or day.

"Don't be a smartass. The effect is just better at night. I once trained with a renowned master for ten years and can now clearly sense the warm energy rising from the bottom of my feet..."

"What do you do for a living?" asked Huang Ji.

The person answered, "I'm a businessman. I practice martial arts for the health benefits."

"Then why did you say you were a government employee last year?"

"..." The person fell silent for a moment and then answered, "I quit. I do business now."

"But you're only 20."

After a long while, the person no longer replied. Upon taking a look, Huang Ji saw that they'd deleted their account.

"..." Huang Ji shook his head and gave up on seeking help from others. But he did find a lot of interesting posts on their blog.

Due to their great interest in martial arts, they had amassed the martial arts theory and core principles behind the techniques of all the major existing schools of martial arts.

He had also collected the health regimens and qi cultivation techniques of both internal and external martial arts. In particular, he had over 100 styles of martial arts stored in his cloud drive!

The majority of them all had pictures and even videos to go along with them.

All of the styles also had complete details on the sets and movements. Huang Ji had originally planned on closing it, but as he continued reading on, he was absorbed back in.

To his surprise, a lot of it seemed to make a lot of sense. There were even some styles which mentioned a couple of obscure vital areas that were actually right. Nobody knew the vital areas on the human body better than Huang Ji.

"Too bad qi cultivation is probably still fake. If it was real, how could he collect so much so easily? The concept of qi is too mystical. It'd be more believable if you said it was bioelectricity...but then it wouldn't even need to be cultivated. All living beings have bioelectricity. Electromagnetism and heat are the basis for all lifeforms and their activities... Huh?"

Caught up in his thoughts, Huang Ji noticed that he could suddenly understand another section of data that was once unknown to him.

Observing his own body, he discovered that his body was filled with millions of intersecting paths of electrical currents.

If he marked all of these energy paths in a blue color, then the human body would be a machine made up of countless blue bifurcation diagram lines. This all used to be unknown data, but Huang Ji had now grasped the necessary concepts to understand them.