0094 Powerful New Panel Feature

Seeing the prompt that popped up on the panel, Chen Jue felt that the fierce pain and stinging sensation he had just endured had been more than worth it.

Lying there and still being able to raise his attributes—wasn’t that even more satisfying than training?

If the masseur had not warned him that the fascia blade, like rehabilitation massage, could not be used every day and that overdoing it would only worsen muscle inflammation, he would truly have wanted to come to the rehabilitation center every day and enjoy this feeling.

“Painful, but in a good way!”

“Whoever invented this fascia blade was no ordinary genius,” Chen Jue said after the massage and stretching were finished, his body already covered in a fine sheen of sweat.

Seeing this, the masseur thoughtfully brought over a clean towel and wiped him down, while continuing the conversation. “Who else could have invented it? Of course it was our Chinese ancestors!”

“You know those scraping boards, right? This is just the stainless-steel successor to them. Even the Great Encyclopedia of the Yongle Era recorded the benefits of iron scraping boards for releasing fascia tension.”

“A few years ago, a lot of people were still worshipping foreign methods. It’s only in recent years that cultural confidence has slowly started to return. Once the games began, even foreigners came here for scraping, acupuncture, and cupping.”

The masseur was quite talkative, and chatted with Chen Jue about amusing things that had happened in the rehabilitation center.

Chen Jue listened with growing curiosity. He had never expected that coming in for a massage and stretch could be tied to traditional culture as well.

After the stretching and basic massage, the middle-aged practitioner also adjusted Chen Jue’s bones.

After feeling the protrusion in Chen Jue’s lumbar spine, the masseur clicked his tongue. “You’ve been sitting for a long time, haven’t you? Your lumbar disc herniation is pretty severe.”

“At this level, you’ve been sitting like this for at least several years.”

Hearing that, Chen Jue was surprised. “Several years? I’ve been sitting since I was in school, all the way until I was almost thirty!”

“Could it be that my recent exercise and the increase in my physical attributes have eased it?”

As Chen Jue silently speculated, the masseur used nimble techniques to press and twist him with a series of crisp pops.

A numb, tingling feeling spread through the bones of his lower back, and even the panel flashed a prompt:

[ Ding ]

[A qualified correction of joint misalignment has been completed. Your spinal curvature and lumbar disc herniation have both improved slightly.]

[Physique attribute +0.01]

“Comfortable!”

Chen Jue let out a long, refreshed breath.

“Lumbar disc herniation used to be something only old people had,” the masseur joked while continuing to work.

“Nowadays, young people all sit in offices, nobody exercises anymore, and their physical condition is worse than the old men in the park.”

Though the words were blunt, they were not wrong. Chen Jue found the joke quite reasonable.

From an evolutionary perspective, the last one or two generations of humans may well be the first in history who could support themselves simply by sitting still. Over the long run, physical condition would naturally grow worse and worse.

“Master Liu, is there any way to improve a lumbar disc herniation?” Chen Jue glanced back at the name tag on the masseur’s chest. He felt this man was highly skilled.

From the résumé posted outside the massage room, Master Liu had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sports medicine and rehabilitation, and had more than a decade of experience. In terms of professionalism, he was in no way inferior to an ordinary university professor.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that he only worked in massage, which might seem like humble labor. An hour’s service here started at several hundred yuan, making it a genuinely high-paying profession.

“For you young people who want to improve lumbar disc herniation and a protruding belly, besides strengthening the core muscles, you can also try the four-point squat. Keep the head, shoulders, waist, and tailbone in a straight line, and lower into a half squat with the back straight.”

“Start by squatting against a wall. Once you’ve adapted for a while, move away from the wall and squat freely. The problem will naturally improve.”

While adjusting Chen Jue’s bones, Master Liu introduced several common rehabilitation methods used for lumbar problems, and even handed him a booklet to browse on his own.

“The four-point squat?”

“Isn’t that exactly the same as horse stance and Tai Chi standing postures?” Chen Jue looked at the illustrated explanation in the booklet and suddenly felt that the wisdom of the ancestors was not nearly as mysterious as he had once imagined.

Not only the modern fascia blade, which had evolved from scraping boards, but even this four-point squat for lumbar issues showed the wisdom of the past.

“No wonder my lumbar condition has improved so much!”

“So it was corrected bit by bit through horse stance and standing practice without me even realizing it,” Chen Jue thought to himself, and casually looked over the booklet’s introduction to human fascia.

Modern medical research shows that human fascia is divided into superficial fascia, deep fascia, and visceral fascia, accounting for about twenty percent of the body’s tissues and organs.

Its function is to restrain and protect moving structures such as bones, joints, muscles, and internal organs.

Its appearance is visually like a spiderweb wrapping around the entire body.

For ordinary people who do not exercise for long periods, the body begins to feel as if it has rusted. Stretching hurts, movement exhausts them, and they instinctively want a massage. The main reason is that the fascia inside the body has become adherent.

According to scientific research, after only three weeks without exercise, the originally neat and orderly fascia can become a complete mess and form adhesions. This is the origin of the saying that laziness makes the body stiff.

As for why fascia adhesion occurs, it is because fascia produces a special kind of cell called fibroblasts. These cells proliferate and crawl around like slugs, leaving trails of sticky slime across the surface of the muscles and filling in the spaces where muscles should slide freely, as if strong glue had been poured inside. The muscles then lose their flexibility.

When ordinary people do not exercise for long periods, the reason they feel tired as soon as they move is, besides muscle aging and decline, mainly that so much energy is consumed in overcoming fascia adhesions.

“Learned something new!”

By the time Chen Jue finished reading the rehabilitation center’s self-published booklet, Master Liu had also finished the massage.

He reminded Chen Jue not to overexert himself over the next few days. He should wait until the inflammation had fully subsided and the fascia and muscles had healed themselves before resuming exercise, so as not to worsen the inflammation.

Chen Jue accepted the advice humbly. During the rest break, he asked the other man for guidance on daily fascia care and stretching methods, then went to the locker room to shower and change back into his own clothes.

By the time he left Tianyu Sports Rehabilitation Center, it was already past eight in the evening. Looking at the bustling night scene of the riverside district and feeling the evening breeze by the river, Chen Jue pulled his clothes tight around himself.

“Compared with the superficial massage at Jingtanghui, this place is the one that really works for health,” Chen Jue said, stretching by the roadside, thinking that a cigarette afterward would make things even better.

Unfortunately, he was already in a half-quitting state. Otherwise, maybe next time he should drag Jiang Zhe, that idiot, here too?

For something this miserable and wonderful, he had to bring his best friend along and let him experience it.

Buffeted by the wind, Chen Jue took a taxi back to Wangyang Apartments.

The day had indeed been exhausting, but today’s gains in attributes were the highest since he had obtained the panel. From morning to night, he had raised his attributes by a total of 0.11.

According to Chen Jue’s guess, this should have something to do with the words “break the limit” that had appeared on the panel.

His previous exercise had always been relatively gentle, and the highest feedback he had ever received was “perfect,” so his attribute gains had never been as efficient as today’s.

It was like a spring: only when compressed to the limit could it unleash its greatest rebound.

“So as long as I squeeze my physical capacity completely dry and touch the panel’s so-called limit, I can get the greatest return?” Chen Jue analyzed inwardly, and at the same time recorded this new discovery, together with the fascia knowledge he had learned today, into the data file for his “Strongest Human Training Plan.”

Because he had just undergone stretching and massage, Chen Jue slept especially soundly that night.

When the biological clock began to function normally the next day and his consciousness became clear, Chen Jue immediately felt that the muscles throughout his body were unusually loose and elastic.

Compared with before he went to the rehabilitation center, his whole body seemed to have gained a bit more suppleness.

Even the places like the lumbar spine, which had long been stiffened by years of sitting, had become more flexible after a night’s sleep.

The only slight imperfection was a faint stinging sensation beneath the skin, which should have been the mild inflammation Master Liu and the panel had mentioned.

“Looks like I really do need to recover for two days,” Chen Jue muttered.

With inflammation in his body, he could not do any major exercise, but he could still continue with small daily workouts.

After going upstairs to the rooftop and massaging his eyes and ears toward the morning sun, Chen Jue stood in stake posture and horse stance under the warm autumn light.

These two exercises were highly effective in training fascia, and because they involved no large bodily movements, they would not worsen the inflammation.

After practicing for more than an hour, he had gained dozens of points in proficiency and even increased his free attribute points by 0.01.

Feeling that he had trained enough, Chen Jue packed up his books and went to the Jiang University campus.

Since he needed to let his body rest for a few days, he did not bring his large sports bag again. Instead, he went first to the Jiang University cafeteria for breakfast, then found a classroom for the morning’s lecture and sat reading his books.

After two morning classes in clinical medicine, during which he learned some knowledge related to the human respiratory tract, the twenty-four-hour countdown at the top of the panel finally reached its end under Chen Jue’s anticipation.

[ Ding ]

[System maintenance update completed.]

[Two new functions have been added:]

[1. Targeted point allocation: free attribute points can be assigned to a specific human organ or tissue.]

[2. Skill breakthrough: a certain amount of free attribute points can be consumed to break through the upper limit of a skill that has already reached perfection.]

“The update is complete!”

“It actually added new functions?”

After class, Chen Jue excitedly found a patch of grass and sat down, hurriedly opening the brand-new attribute panel:

[Name: Chen Jue]

[Strength: 1.21+]

[Physique: 1.67+]

[Spirit: 1.15+]

[Skills: Throwing Hidden Weapons (Perfect)+, others omitted]

[Free attribute points available: 0.08]

[Character evaluation: An ordinary person full of drive and ambition. Your physical condition has already reached the level of an amateur athlete, but your understanding of yourself remains insufficient. Continue to work hard, arm your mind with knowledge, and explore more of the body’s mysteries.]

The panel’s layout remained very clean, but the plus buttons after the three attributes had changed from yellow to green.

“Targeted point allocation?”

“What does that mean?” Chen Jue murmured inwardly and subconsciously moved a little of his free attribute into the plus sign behind Physique.

The next moment, a completely new perspective appeared before his eyes.

It was a three-dimensional dynamic map of the human body.

Just like the anatomical diagrams he had seen in clinical medicine class, every tissue and organ from head to toe was displayed in dense detail.

Not only that, but the organs and tissues marked with text and annotations each had a green plus button behind them. As long as Chen Jue assigned a little free attribute into one of them, that organ or tissue would be strengthened once in a targeted way.

Amazing.

Chen Jue could only exclaim that it was amazing.

Whether it was the internal organs, the brain, a section of bone, or even teeth and fingernails, as long as there were enough free attribute points, they could all be improved.

“So this is what targeted point allocation means. This function is way too powerful!” After exploring the new feature, Chen Jue could not help but marvel inwardly.

However, perhaps because the knowledge Chen Jue had acquired was not yet sufficiently systematic and comprehensive, many organs carried unknown annotations marked with question marks, except for those such as the gallbladder, which had already been explored and studied.

“So the panel’s annotation logic is based on the information and knowledge I’ve come into contact with,” Chen Jue thought.

“Coming to Jiang University to study really was the right move, even if it was by accident!” He clenched his fist with excitement.

He then tried switching to the green plus signs behind Strength and Spirit.

This time, the targeted point allocation view changed again.

From the organs and tissues related to Physique, it directly became the distribution of skeletal muscles and fascia related to Strength.

Because the essence of human strength comes from the simultaneous contraction of skeletal muscles and fascia, it made sense that raising the Strength attribute in a certain area would require strengthening the corresponding muscles and fascia.

As for the diagram corresponding to Spirit, it was a network of the nervous system spread throughout the body.

From the brain nerves to the spinal nerves, and then to the nerve endings distributed across bones, organs, muscles, and skin, there were so many that Chen Jue’s eyes nearly crossed.

The annotations on these nerves were similarly mostly filled with question marks, waiting for Chen Jue to explore and study them.

“Powerful!”

“This point-allocation system is incredibly powerful!”

“Just lighting up all this knowledge will probably take me several years.”

“And besides assigning points to a specific area, I can still allocate them across the whole body in the old way, though the improvement effect will be weaker.” Chen Jue rubbed his hands together in excitement like a fly that had caught the scent.

As for the second new function, Skill Breakthrough, Chen Jue also tried it.

Take the already perfect Hidden Weapons Throwing skill, for example. Breaking its upper limit would cost 0.70 attribute points, far too expensive for him to afford right now.

As for the other perfected Tai Chi skills, the cost to break through their limits was a little lower, but it was still not as efficient as simply merging them directly.

After exploring this second new function and concluding that Skill Breakthrough was largely useless to him at present, Chen Jue immediately turned his attention to the targeted point allocation for Physique.

He shifted the Physique allocation view to the scalp area. Although most of the five-layer scalp structure still carried question marks, he could still recognize the dermal and subcutaneous layers, which were densely packed with hair follicles.

Without hesitation, he spent 0.01 free attribute points to target this area.

“My sparse hair is finally saved!” Chen Jue nearly burst into tears.

For a moment, he felt that this new Targeted Point Allocation feature was simply too good to resist.

This chapter counts as last night’s.

And thanks as well to the esteemed Hongwu Heavenly King for the continuous rewards.