Chapter 15 — Body Refinement

Once his mouth recovered enough to speak, Lin Che sat on the sofa beside his wife.

“I’ve already gone through all of the movements,” he said.

Shen Yue muted the television but kept her eyes fixed on the subtitles as he spoke. “The Hollow Bell Technique is like that,” she said. “Very simple to learn, but takes a very long time to go anywhere meaningful with it.”

“So I’m stuck at the beginning for a while.”

“You’re not stuck. The early stages work on you whether you notice them or not.”

“Have I noticed them?”

“You’ve already gone through your first qualitative change,” she said. “You just haven’t looked for it.” She paused the show, realising just how many questions she’d have to answer. “When did you last do something physically demanding?”

Lin Che thought about this. “Define demanding.”

“Anything. Carrying something heavy, or going on a run, you know, something that would have tired you a month ago.”

He thought back to his daily activities of sitting down on a train to go to work, then sitting down at work, then sitting down on a train back to work, and more sitting down at the pharmacy too. “I don’t think I’ve done anything like that recently. Yeah… it’s been so long I can’t remember.”

She picked up her phone. “Book a private gym after work tomorrow. There’s one about an hour from here which takes single person bookings.”

His phone buzzed and she placed hers back on the coffee table.

***

The gym was a place called Unit 4, which was exactly what it sounded like: a single room in the basement of a converted industrial building forty minutes by train from the office. The booking page advertised it as a private strength facility with a maximum of two persons per session, with no instructors or anything. In essence, it was a room with a mirror, some weights and machines, and some bars to hang off of.

He got changed and stood in the middle of the room.

His phone buzzed.

i sent you a list of workouts. start with the deadhang without liuhe and time it

He went to the pull-up bar and jumped to reach it, the gym clearly catering more for the taller gym bro archetype. He hung off it as he set a stopwatch on his phone, and simply waited. Lin Che had done deadhangs before, albeit infrequently, and recalled them being vastly unpleasant after about thirty seconds, mostly in his forearms, but eventually his hand muscles would also tighten up.

He lasted just under two minutes before his hands gave out.

He texted the number back.

that’s actually not bad for baseline, she replied. now do it again with full circulation

He massaged his forearms as he circulated the Liuhe Breathing Method and waited for a minute to fully recover before going grabbing the bar again.

The difference was immediate.

It didn’t necessarily feel like a surge of strength, but more that his Qi bar started to deplete before he had to tap into his own physical stamina bar. The hang that had felt effortful before now felt effortless, at least until his Qi depleted.

After that, he lasted an extra 90 seconds before tapping out.

4:30 he texted.

Shen Yue reacted with 👍 to your message.

The next item on the list was the barbell, for which she had set a sequence of weights beside each movement and targets for him to achieve. He loaded the bar and pulled.

The weight moved with ease, so he added more. Still clean, so he worked up the rack in increments, texting each weight back, and receiving a thumbs up in response for each one. He felt that his actual limit was much higher than before, and that was without circulating the breathing method.

can you stop sending numbers and just tell me when it gets hard

The rest of the protocol was a series of weighted movements: farmers carries from one end of the room to the other, and a static wall sit which genuinely felt just fine. There were also a series of movements which involved the cable machine, though he wasn’t sure if he was completing them properly given the lack of fatigue in the muscles he was meant to target.

He looked at himself in the mirror, but he looked the same as he did earlier. He definitely had more strength, but his frame did not suggest it at all.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He picked up his bag and left the gym.

***

As soon as he stepped out, he felt a warm sensation across his entire body, but chalked it up to having worked up a sweat. The cool late-afternoon breeze felt nice on his skin.

The station was a ten minute walk from Unit 4 through a neighbourhood that consisted mostly of warehouses. Lin Che walked with his jacket unzipped, bag over one shoulder, and kept his eyes peeled for anywhere he could purchase a drink from.

There was a small convenience store just across the street, so he pushed the door open and walked directly towards the drinks section. As he walked past the shopkeeper, a man in his fifties, the man immediately shouted at him.

“You need to leave,” he said.

Lin Che looked at him. “I’m just buying a drink.”

“You need to leave. There’s a smell coming off you, and you’re going to put off all the other customers. I can’t have you in here.”

Lin Che opened his mouth.

“I’m not arguing about it,” said the man. “There’s a vending machine behind the shop.”

Lin Che left.