Wu Haoran and Fei Baixue entered first, then the two jokers Chen Zhiyu and Lu Tai poked their heads in before entering. The four of them each carried a bag of fruit in and placed them on the table by the bed.
After placing down all of the bags, the four of them grabbed a nearby chair and sat down.
Wu Haoran was the first to speak.
"Here is your school bag." With that, he placed the battered backpack next to the bed.
"Rest assured, I did not look at the bag's contents."
"Thanks." Tian Qingfeng said
After Wu Haoran returned the backpack, Chen Zhiyu, Lu Tai, and Fei Baixue piped up, grilling Qingfeng and Wu Haoran for details.
Tian Qingfeng, with Wu Haoran's assistance, explained what happened last night in detail. Occasionally, they would tacitly leave out some details, like Wu Haoran being a successor.
Eventually, after explaining everything, they let them both off the hook. After inquiring, Tian Qingfeng learned that since the terrorist incident was so close to the school, they had the rest of the week off, which only amounted to two extra days off in addition to the two weekend days.
Since Qingfeng wouldn't be able to leave until later in the afternoon, they settled in and chatted about video games, animated shows, and music. Occasionally delving into political gossip and celebrity controversies.
At some point, Chen Zhiyu had pulled out a deck of cards, so they played a couple of games. Amusingly, Fei Baixue didn't have that good of a poker face. After losing a couple of rounds, she stormed out of the room with a pout.
In the afternoon, the room gradually regained its peaceful quiet ambiance as Chen Zhiyu, Lu Tai, and Wu Haoran also left.
Tian Hongxian also returned home, carrying the bags of fruit along with his tattered backpack, as Qingfeng had to stay in the hospital one more day for observation.
After she left, the room was quiet once again. With Qingfeng being all alone, he began to recall the battle. When he performed the third stance of the Eight Tigers Fist Art, the inner qi generated exceeded his limits, which caused internal damage, but it also allowed him to know where his limits were.
Qingfeng tried to remember and recall the sensation of how the inner qi surged throughout his body when he utilized the third stance. While recalling the flow of inner qi, he also recalled every move he made. Recalling every twitch of his muscles and how his breathing rate affected the generation of inner qi, he gradually adjusted each movement of the Eight Tigers Fist Art.
When he opened his eyes again, the sun had already set behind the city walls, casting an orange haze across the sky.
Letting out a sigh, he loosened his unconsciously clenched fist. As he did so, there came a knock at the door. Then the door opened to show a nurse coming in with a cart to deliver his supper.
The next day, he was officially discharged from the hospital. His sister, Tian Hongxian, came to pick him up.
After arriving home and storing everything away, Qingfeng headed down to the basement. He had only made subtle adjustments based on theory; he still had to test the adjustments to see if they would work.
Standing in the middle of the basement training room, he calmed his heart and recalled all of the mental adjustments that he had made. Slowly, he began to perform the first two movements of the Eight Tigers Fist Art.
He released the first punch; the modified movements seemed to generate more inner qi than it did originally. As he continued to test, modify, and verify his deductions, some of his deductions didn't help, while others boosted inner qi generation.
Eventually, about 45 minutes later, he had finished testing all of his modifications. Removing all the movements that had been hindering the amount of inner qi generated.
He pulled up his status panel and checked the progress on his martial arts proficiency.
Looking at the Eight Tigers Fist Art on the panel, he notices some notable changes.
⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
[Tian Qing Feng] [Age: 15]
[Phase: 1] [Level 4]
[Cultivation: Muscle Strengthening Fourth layer]
Progress: (Intermediate)
[Techniques:
____________________________________________________⌟
When Qingfeng tapped on the percentage, a new screen popped up.
⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
Eight Tigers Fist Art (Well-versed: 35.76%)
Base Stance <100%>
First Stance <100%>
Second Stance <100%>
Third Stance <20%>
Fourth Stance <1%>
Fifth Stance <0.3%>
Sixth Stance <0.2%>
Seventh Stance <0.2%>
Eight Stance <0.1%>
______________________________________________⌟
I guess this means that once I 100 percent every stance, I would reach the perfected state with this martial art.
While checking out the art, he seemed to realize that there were benefits to perfecting a stance. When you perform a stance that was not at 100%, you only get the normal amount of inner qi generated, resulting in just the standard ten percent boost.
When you perform a perfected stance, you get an extra 0.025 percent on top of the initial ten percent boost.
To put this into perspective, when he performed the third stance before perfecting both the first and second stances, he would get a 30 percent boost in strength, but after perfecting the first two stances, you get an extra 5% boost in the amount of force you can release, increasing the final increase to 35%.
After organizing his thoughts, he sat on the meditation mat and stepped on the swirl icon on top of the screen.
⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
[Entering World 0: Practice Room]
_________________________________________⌟
When he opened his eyes again, he was in the infinite white room again. After getting up, he began performing the Basic Body Tempering Technique. He was already at least one muscle-strengthening layer behind his classmates, so he had to work harder to catch up.
There were still 3 more days till school started up again on Monday, so he had 3 days to try to catch up and at least reach the 5th muscle strengthening layer initial.