Chapter 139: As If Hair Appeared Overnight

Chen Jue excitedly ran his fingers through his hair, searching his scalp for the little black dots.

After a look around, the previously bare patches of his scalp were now like a field of sprouting bamboo shoots, a dense forest of black hair tips emerging. There were an incredible number of them, packed tightly together.

If Chen Jue hadn’t parted his hair and peered closely into the mirror, he wouldn’t even have been able to see the large, previously bare patches of his scalp.

‘My previous Designated Points into my scalp’s Constitution actually worked!’

“Wait a minute.”

“Normal hair shouldn’t be able to grow this fast.” Chen Jue frowned, recalling a bit of trivia he’d learned back when he was researching baldness and hair loss online.

An average person’s hair grows about 0.2 to 0.4 millimeters a day. For a new hair to emerge from the follicle and break through the scalp, it needs to cover a distance of at least 4 millimeters. By that calculation, it should take at least 10 days for new hair to become visible.

‘In other words, adding points to my scalp didn’t just improve blood circulation there, but it also accelerated the division and proliferation process of the hair matrix cells?’

‘Five small points into Constitution equals a 10-day speed-up in hair growth, which means 0.01 is equivalent to accelerating the growth process by two days…’ His mind sharp in the early morning, Chen Jue quickly jotted down this major new discovery in his notebook.

…

Lacking effective reference data for a comparative analysis, Chen Jue didn’t dare to delve any deeper into researching the panel’s core operational logic.

This was because it had already deviated from his initial hypothesis that the panel was based on existing factors of the human body. Now, it was involving the damn concept of time—a physical quantity that became more terrifying the more he thought about it.

Even the most brilliant human scientists hadn’t fully grasped the operational logic of time, so Chen Jue wasn’t going to waste his own on it.

In any case, just seeing his hair growing back was enough to keep him happy for days.

For a man who cared about his appearance, getting his hair back was tantamount to regaining his confidence in life.

And so, in high spirits, Chen Jue’s steps were jaunty even as he climbed the stairs.

He went up to the roof of his apartment building and finished his morning exercises, managing to grind out another 0.01 Free Attribute point from his Pile Skills and Horse Stance.

But before that tiny point could even warm his metaphorical pocket, Chen Jue immediately used Designated Points to add it to his hands.

He wanted his hands to recover sooner so it wouldn’t interfere with his daily training.

However, when he thought about how it took two and a half hours after sunrise to grind out such a measly amount of Attribute, he couldn’t help but feel a bit of disdain for the low efficiency.

He guessed it was because his body had gotten stronger. Light exercises like standing postures and the Horse Stance were no longer enough to effectively stimulate his muscle and bone growth.

Practicing them more now only served to stretch his fascia and correct his skeletal alignment; the improvement to his overall physical fitness wasn’t as significant as he’d imagined.

So, while heading downstairs to Jiang University for breakfast, Chen Jue went online and searched for how ancient warriors trained their strength.

Since things like Horse Stance and Pile Skills were developed by those same ancient warriors, Chen Jue refused to believe they could generate strength out of thin air just by relying on a few standing techniques.

Sure enough, after searching for a bit and finding information on stone locks and stone barbells, a faint smile unconsciously appeared on Chen Jue’s face.

‘Aren’t these just the predecessors to dumbbells and barbells?’

‘As expected, the wisdom of the ancients wasn’t that far behind modern people.’

‘It’s just that those Traditional Martial Arts phonies embellished everything, spouting nonsense like “practice the fist but not the power” to fool the ignorant. Real kung fu isn’t something you can get from just holding a static stance.’

‘How are you supposed to deal high damage without muscle mass?’

Chen Jue continued to read while he ate, and he came across a post on Zhihu mentioning that drawing a bow was a way to build strength.

In the ancient military examinations, regardless of the dynasty, archery proficiency was highly valued. It was the pinnacle of cold-weapon combat power and a decisive weapon in ancient warfare.

Take the Qing Dynasty, the closest to modern times, for example. It had an event called “Drawing the Hard Bow” in its military exams to screen for exceptional military talent.

The Qing bow, a masterpiece of ancient archery, could compete with early firearms. The bows were categorized by draw weight: 8-Li, 10-Li, 12-Li, and up to a maximum of 15-Li, where 1 Li was equivalent to 10 modern jin.

By the standards of an average modern person’s feeble arm strength, an 8-Li Qing bow alone would be enough to eliminate 99.99% of people today. If someone could draw a 15-Li special-grade bow, they could be directly appointed as the top military scholar.

However, Chen Jue was of Han ethnicity, so he felt a certain aversion to things left over from the Man Qing.

He opened WeChat and sent a message to the head of Rainbow Light Studio, asking if they had any high-poundage traditional bows, preferably a Han Bow. He planned to buy one to incorporate drawing it into his morning Horse Stance practice.

After all, he had just triggered the [Archery] Skill on his panel. It would be a waste to let it sit idle. Using it in conjunction with his morning exercises might increase the efficiency of his Attribute growth.

“A high-poundage traditional bow?”

“Our shop only produces cold weapons like sabers, swords, spears, and Darts. Bows are really outside my area of expertise. But I have a friend in the bow business, let me ask for you.”

The head of Rainbow Light Studio was very enthusiastic. After Brother of Special Skills’s account blew up last night, their online shop’s business had also grown significantly.

They were busy until the middle of the night yesterday, with people still coming to buy the same Darts used by Brother of Special Skills, nearly exhausting the studio’s customer service staff.

To capitalize on the popularity of Chen Jue’s Flying Needle embroidery, the studio had even rushed out a Flying Needle Hidden Weapon overnight. Orders exploded instantly, and the factory had to work overtime to create the molds and produce stock, fully embracing the business strategy of following hot trends.

Having made a pretty penny, the head of Rainbow Light Studio naturally thought of Chen Jue, the “benefactor” who was driving all this traffic to them.

Before Chen Jue had even finished his breakfast, the man sent over a few short videos of traditional bows.

“Big shot, I asked around for you. The highest poundage Ahjie has are these 120-pound Han-made Qilin Bows.”

“If you want anything higher, you’ll have to get one custom-made by his shop.”

“I went ahead and bought this black Qilin Bow for you, along with a bundle of arrows. Just send me an address.”

The head of Rainbow Light Studio was quite savvy. He didn’t even mention money, simply buying the bow for Chen Jue out of his own pocket. It seemed he planned to latch onto Chen Jue’s coattails for the long haul to keep making a profit.

Chen Jue didn’t refuse this enthusiastic gesture. He replied with a [fist and palm salute] emoji and then sent the address of the courier station below his apartment building.

He also added a WeChat contact the manager had pushed to him. The contact also ran a cold weapons studio, but this one specialized in ancient Armor and bows. If Chen Jue ever needed custom work, he could look for this person, “Wubei Ahjie.”

‘Armor?’

‘That looks pretty cool!’

‘I wonder what level my current physical fitness would be considered on an ancient battlefield.’

‘At the very least, I should be a bit stronger than General Lingling, right?’ Chen Jue clicked into his new contact’s online shop to take a look, and his recently fattened wallet immediately began to itch.