Don't blindly follow others in your practice.

“It actually works!”

“Was it because I was doing the eye exercises incorrectly before?”

“Is it only the original version that the panel recognizes?”

Chen Jue gazed at the newly popped-up panel prompt, excitement stirring in his heart.

He had always assumed that this attribute panel would only trigger skill options for relatively obscure sports. He never expected that even something like the Eye Health Exercises, which leaned toward acupoint massage, could be activated.

Following this logic, could the martial arts techniques, traditional stances, and even the much-hyped qigong or cultivation manuals found online also be possible?

“Others can’t see their training progress, but I can!”

“Turning seemingly useless skills into real abilities—perhaps this is the greatest function of the attribute panel!” As this thought struck him, Chen Jue’s mind expanded, no longer fixated solely on the Eye Health Exercises.

He deliberately searched for some of the most mystical tutorials circulating on the internet, like the Eight-Part Vajra Skills, Inner Strength Eight-Section Brocade, Five Animal Play, and Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic, and practiced along with the videos.

After all that exertion, drenched in sweat, Chen Jue was once again bewildered!

“Still can’t activate the skills…”

“Is it because the online versions are wrong?”

Feeling parched, Chen Jue grabbed his water cup, gulped down several mouthfuls, and sat down to ponder.

The reason he was able to master the Eye Health Exercises was that he found the original Liu-style eight-section version online.

This Liu-style eight-section routine is the origin of all Eye Health Exercises currently available. It was developed by Director Liu of the Capital Medical Academy’s Sports Teaching and Research Group, who referenced traditional Chinese massage techniques and combined them with his own and his children’s experiences with myopia. Through personal trials and clinical experiments, he distilled this set of exercises.

There are eight sections in total, the movements are simple and easy to learn, just like the Tai Chi Twelve Forms Chen Jue had studied before.

The resources online also included the corresponding massage techniques, diagrams of eye acupoints, and an old-fashioned, pixelated demonstration video featuring Director Liu himself.

It was thanks to this original tutorial that Chen Jue was able to learn and master the Eye Health Exercises through self-study.

As for those high-level methods encompassing Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, their widespread dissemination online meant they had been revised, abridged, and simplified, making it nearly impossible to find the original versions.

And the so-called “qi sensations” described in those tutorials were vague and difficult to grasp.

Seeing this, Chen Jue became alert.

He suspected that many of the tutorials available online had questionable guidance for their movements. If ill-intentioned individuals mixed in their own “goods,” anything was possible!

After all, in ancient times, master teachers deliberately withheld a few tricks when teaching disciples, fearing that teaching everything would leave themselves destitute.

Passed down through generations, few truly received the authentic transmission.

Some misguided disciples, eager for quick results, would make a living in the martial world, sometimes fabricating or imagining things, adding their own touches.

This resulted in the current scarcity of genuine martial artists.

Once these techniques reached the internet, without any way to authenticate them, curious netizens would blindly practice along.

Sure enough, after browsing through qigong forums and martial arts boards, Chen Jue noticed many veteran users advising newcomers to seek out a genuine master nearby for guidance.

As the saying goes, “A master leads you to the door; cultivation is up to the individual.”

Without a good master to guide you, it’s easy to go astray and end up hurting yourself instead of improving.

Chen Jue’s current predicament was having a powerful attribute panel but lacking a master to lead him in.

Unless he was willing to test every single manual and tutorial online, hoping to stumble upon a skill recognized by the panel and then use the panel to correct his movements.

Such an approach would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, hardly worthwhile.

Better to find a genuine master nearby!

“Where can I find a master around here?”

“Wait… wouldn’t a young and attractive female master be even better!”

With a sly grin, Chen Jue opened WeChat and sent a request for instruction to Wu Fang.

He planned to start by seeking entry-level methods from Wu Fang, who was both an experienced practitioner and a high school PE teacher.

…

Probably fed up with harassment during the day, Wu Fang didn’t reply right away.

Based on Chen Jue’s estimate, her daily routine was very regular: she practiced in the park early in the morning, taught classes during the day, and was likely already asleep with her phone off.

It wasn’t even 10 o’clock yet.

Chen Jue began practicing the newly solidified Eye Health Exercises on his panel.

This routine consisted of eight sections, and in the original version, completing one set took nearly ten minutes.

It was nothing like the simplified four-section, five-minute version he learned as a child.

After finishing a full routine, Chen Jue felt warmth around his eye sockets and a cool, refreshing sensation within his eyeballs.

“So our entire generation was practicing incorrectly!” Chen Jue ranted internally, then started another cycle.

He practiced for about thirty minutes, completing three sets, and his proficiency was rapidly increasing.

A new panel prompt appeared:

——————

[ Ding~ ]

[ You’ve completed a qualified eye health exercise. The internal arteries around your eye sockets, ophthalmic arteries, and optic nerves have been stimulated through pressure, accelerating blood flow and promoting the metabolism of your visual cells. Your visual ability has improved ever so slightly. ]

[ Constitution Attribute +0.01 ]

[ Friendly reminder: This set of exercises exerts pressure on eye blood vessels. Excessive use may cause vascular damage. Please arrange exercise duration reasonably. ]

——————

“Thirty minutes is about the limit?” Chen Jue mused, recalling experiences shared by Nana and Xiao Mo, massage therapists at Jingtanghui Spa.

Massage, as a leisure activity, isn’t better the longer it lasts.

Everyone’s constitution and sensitivity vary, so the duration must differ.

Ordinary clubs… ahem… bathhouses usually schedule sessions for forty-five minutes or an hour, and full-body massages stretch to ninety minutes.

Beyond that, continued pressing yields diminishing returns and can even cause muscle fatigue or injury.

Since the Eye Health Exercises involve acupoint massage and the eye’s blood vessels and muscles are more fragile, having a time limit is only natural.

…

That night, Chen Jue drifted into a meaningful, euphoric dream.

He didn’t go to the park the next morning.

Instead, he rode the elevator to the top floor of the talent apartment. As the clock struck six, a sun tinged with orange and blue slowly rose over the city’s eastern skyline.

He tried staring at it for about three minutes, until his eyes couldn’t take it anymore. Closing his eyes, he began performing the Eye Health Exercises facing the morning sun.

As the saying goes, “The day’s plan starts in the morning.”

Thirty minutes of closed-eye massage left his eye sockets burning, and behind his eyelids, his vision glowed red—the sunlight filtering through his eyelids, his eyeballs feeling a relaxation they’d never known.

It was an extraordinary sensation, reminiscent of childhood mornings in elementary school, closing his eyes on the playground and doing exercises under the sun.

Novel and comfortable.

His whole body felt warm, and even his eyes experienced release.

After thirty minutes, the panel had popped up a string of notifications.

Not only had his Constitution increased by 0.01, but even his free attribute had jumped up a notch.

“Up to 0.07—just a few more points and I can merge the skill bar!” Chen Jue grinned.

Opening his eyes to look at the world, everything was bathed in green.

This was a normal phenomenon after staring at the sun with your eyes closed—the retina tricked by prolonged red light.

A few blinks and seconds later, his vision returned to normal.

Putting his glasses back on, Chen Jue was delighted!

He discovered that the glasses, which had gone two years without an updated prescription and had become somewhat blurry and under-corrected, were suddenly clear again.

Though not quite at a normal 5.0 vision level, distant objects were no longer hazy or doubled.

“Just two days of practice, and my prescription dropped by more than fifty degrees!”

“Even my astigmatism improved!”

“These Eye Health Exercises are truly the GOAT!”