0095 Being handsome is a lifelong matter.

Hair loss is a hurdle every balding man approaching middle age must eventually face, and it is also one of the great medical riddles that still vex the entire field of medicine today.

If Fermat’s Conjecture, the Four Color Conjecture, and Goldbach’s Conjecture are the three great mathematical mysteries of the world, simple in their wording yet immeasurably profound in their meaning, then hemorrhoids, appendicitis, and hair loss are the medical field’s equivalent of those three towering enigmas.

Outwardly, medicine seems to have thoroughly studied the pathological causes behind these three conditions, yet in actual treatment the results are often crude and far from satisfactory.

Either the problem is cut away in one stroke, or hair is forcibly transplanted, or all kinds of random topical medicines are applied that never truly address the root cause.

Even now, for something like hair loss, no universal miracle drug has been found that works for everyone.

If someone could solve hair loss with a single miracle drug, setting aside fame and fortune, they would at least collect a few Nobel Prizes in medicine; becoming the richest person in the world by selling hair-loss medicine would be effortless.

After all, as many as two billion people around the globe suffer from hair loss, and China alone accounts for two hundred and fifty million of them.

A few years ago, when Chen Jue discovered that his hair had begun to thin, he even went online to study the condition and visited the hospital several times.

According to the doctor’s diagnosis, he had the most common form of androgenetic alopecia, also known as seborrheic or hereditary hair loss.

As for the cause, it was because excessive male hormone secretion entered the hair follicle cells of the scalp through the bloodstream, where it reacted with the 5-alpha reductase in the cytoplasm to form dihydrotestosterone at five times the normal concentration. This then exerted a toxic effect on the hair follicles, causing them to gradually shrink, shortening the hair growth cycle until the follicles died.

This was the burden of his genetic inheritance, and Chen Jue was nothing more than the poor fool left to carry it.

His entire Chen family line had the genes for male-pattern baldness.

As far as Chen Jue could remember, the same condition had affected both his father’s generation and his grandfather’s.

Not the kind of baldness where it all falls out at once, but a gradual thinning that began in adolescence and worsened year by year.

Especially after he entered society and began working, with no regular schedule to speak of, his hair loss grew more and more severe.

From a distance he still looked normal, but once someone came near and a gust of wind blew through, the scalp beneath was impossible to hide.

For a man in the prime of his youth, that was no small blow.

It was not that he had gone bald and therefore become stronger.

Rather, once hair loss began, a man’s confidence was the first thing to be shattered.

This was especially true in today’s dating and marriage market, where no one wanted to end up with a partner who was already going thin on top.

So when he discovered that this new feature, this targeted stat allocation, could actually be directed straight at his scalp, Chen Jue did not hesitate for even a second. He immediately dumped the extra free attribute points into that area first.

After all, free attribute points could be earned again every day. If targeted allocation could improve his hair loss, then Chen Jue would gladly spend every last point he had!

After all, for a man, becoming stronger is only a momentary desire, but becoming handsome is a lifelong pursuit.

A tiny amount of free attribute points was successfully spent, and the Constitution attribute rose by another 0.01.

Chen Jue could clearly sense a warm current gathering from his whole body and flowing into the scalp region he had designated.

Then a faint coolness spread across the crown of his head, and he felt as though his scalp had just undergone a treatment, every pore opening at once.

At that moment, the panel displayed a brand-new prompt.

The tiny amount of free attribute points had been successfully spent, and the Constitution attribute rose by another 0.01.

Chen Jue could clearly sense a warm current gathering from his whole body and flowing into the scalp region he had designated.

Then a faint coolness spread across the crown of his head, and he felt as though his scalp had just undergone a treatment, every pore opening at once.

At that moment, the panel displayed a brand-new prompt:

Ding.

Consuming 0.01 free attribute points to target the scalp area has accelerated blood circulation in that region, with a slight improvement in metabolism and in the sweat glands’ ability to secrete through their ducts.

"Huh?"

"That’s it?"

"Nothing else?"

Chen Jue stared at the new prompt, his face full of question marks.

The scene he had imagined, where a few added points would make the lost hair grow back, did not happen.

Instead, the top of his head felt slightly warm, as if the scalp had just received a massage. His pores were open, yes, but there was no information at all about any dead follicles.

Chen Jue was a little unconvinced. Hair was a matter of male dignity, after all.

To test this targeted allocation function, he tried adding another 0.01 to his scalp.

Again, a wave of warmth rushed across his scalp, and the panel popped up another prompt:

Ding.

Consuming 0.01 free attribute points to target the scalp area has accelerated blood circulation in that region, with a slight improvement in the nutrient absorption capacity of the subcutaneous fat layer.

"It still doesn’t work!"

"Even stat points can’t cure hair loss and baldness?" Chen Jue was beginning to refuse to believe it.

Ever since awakening this attribute panel, it had given him more than one boost of confidence.

It had not only helped him lose weight and build a set of respectable muscles, but even his herniated disc and hemorrhoids had improved considerably.

Most importantly, even something as hard to reverse as myopia could be cured. Chen Jue did not believe this "tiny" matter of hair loss could defeat the panel.

"Clearly I haven’t added enough points!"

Chen Jue took a deep breath and tried adding the Constitution attribute to the scalp area three more times.

Three more surges of heat battered his scalp, followed by the familiar sensation of his pores opening and a clear, refreshing coolness spreading over the skin.

The first half of the prompt on the second and third occasions remained unchanged, still indicating that blood circulation in the area had been accelerated.

But the latter half produced two different new lines of text. One read that the secretion function of the sebaceous glands in that area had been slightly improved; the other said that the peripheral nerve network in that area had undergone mechanical stimulation, with a slight increase in the sensitivity of the hair shaft nerves.

Only on the final enhancement did Chen Jue finally catch sight of hope for his hair’s return through this targeted allocation.

Ding.

Consuming 0.01 free attribute points to target the scalp area has accelerated blood circulation in that region, and the damaged capillary network has begun to rebuild.

Some of the follicular stem cells, having been stimulated, have begun to differentiate into entirely new follicles. They will replace the dead old follicles, and some of the dormant hair matrix cells within the dermal papillae have begun to divide and proliferate again.

Friendly reminder: your lost hair now has the possibility of growing back. Please maintain a good routine, proper nutrition, and scalp cleanliness to increase the chance of hair regeneration.

"It worked!"

"It worked!"

"My hair is coming back!"

Seeing the new prompt appear, Chen Jue felt as if his pounding heart were about to leap straight out of his throat.

Because only 0.03 free attribute points remained on the panel. If there was still no effect, he would have to consider suspending targeted allocation and reverting to the earlier, all-around Constitution enhancement.

That would also help ease the mild inflammation in his fascia and muscles.

The sooner he recovered, the sooner he could throw himself into the next round of exercise, earn more attributes, and create a healthy cycle between physical training and panel enhancements.

Who would have thought that just as the door of hope was about to close, the panel would still deliver him such a huge surprise?

The hair loss that had plagued humanity for countless years had finally been solved by him through a cheat-like method.

Though he had only just glimpsed the dawn, Chen Jue, who had studied androgenetic alopecia for a while, knew that once the follicles returned and the hair matrix cells resumed dividing, his sparse hair would surely recover its former fullness.

From here on, all he needed was regular care, plus continued allocation of free attribute points to the scalp area.

Still, looking at the five lines of targeted allocation prompts scrolling across the panel, Chen Jue could not help sighing, "I never thought curing hair loss would involve so many factors."

"Blood circulation, metabolism, nutrient delivery, waste removal from the follicle environment, and then the related neural stimulation. Only after all that comes the key step of awakening the follicles and hair matrix cells."

"No wonder medicine still hasn’t produced a miracle drug for it. The pathology is this complicated, and there are individual differences on top of that. Developing a broad-spectrum drug would never be easy."

After staring at the panel and analyzing it for a while, Chen Jue felt that his own case of curing hair loss without medicine could hardly be promoted or shared with ordinary people.

After all, other people did not have this magical attribute panel in front of their eyes.

In addition, through the continuous targeted allocation, Chen Jue also discovered a very crucial point.

Namely, Constitution allocation seemed to have a very strong connection to the frequently appearing blood circulation in the prompts.

Thinking back on all the Constitution points he had added before, the warm current that had spread through his entire body was clearly just the speeding up of his own blood flow.

There had been something he needed to do outside, and it had held him up for a while. Weekends really were hard to come by.

Now that he was finally home, he hurriedly wrote a short chapter and posted it first. In the end, he would still have to rely on Monday through Friday to write more.