Chapter 67 – Lightening Up

Originally orderly and calmly flowing, the street fell into a brief standstill.

Not even the sweltering heat could stop people from wanting to see what was happening.

Many rushed out from the shaded areas.

Lu Yuan was also startled and took a few quick steps forward with the crowd.

Like many others, he strained to look in the direction of the loud noise.

Lu Yuan kept shifting his position, dodging the tall buildings in front of him.

Vaguely, he seemed to see smoke rising from the direction of the south district.

Under the blazing white sky, he wasn’t sure if it was really smoke.

“South district.”

What’s in the south district?

That area is a large industrial park, and…

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered slightly.

Mosa?

At this moment, Lu Yuan saw many scattered black dots quickly drifting towards him in the sky.

He placed his hand on his forehead, squinted his eyes, and kept staring at the black dots.

The dots got closer and closer, revealing the outlines of birds.

Lu Yuan finally saw clearly.

They were crows.

So many crows.

Twenty minutes later, Lu Yuan was sitting at his desk in his bedroom, continuously scrolling through his mobile phone.

The truth about the loud noise seemed to have been uncovered by a bunch of curious onlookers.

“A chemical plant in the south district caught fire and exploded.”

Lu Yuan even found a video recorded by a witness at the moment of the incident on the largest gossip forum in Jiaoyan.

The video was shot from the third floor of some building.

Through the window, one could see billowing black smoke in the distance, and even the lava-colored flames beneath the black smoke were clearly visible.

The video uploader wrote that they were an employee of a neighboring factory and were resting in their dormitory at the time.

The explosion happened without warning, instantly shattering the glass.

And the crows! There were so many crows in the sky, flying around in chaos. Many were burned to death by the fire. Some even rushed into my room.

As if afraid no one would believe them, the person promptly uploaded another video.

This video was zoomed in many times, and indeed, you could see black birds scattering in the thick smoke.

One bird, completely engulfed in flames, nearly crashed into the camera lens.

The dramatic exclamations of “Oh my God!” from the videographer could be heard repeatedly.

[Crows are scavengers, they feed on carrion and flock to places with dead bodies. How could there be so many crows at a chemical plant?]

[Could it be that they sensed a lot of people were going to die, so all the crows in the area gathered there?]

[Oh my God! Stop talking, this is getting creepier!]

[Seriously, the older generation did say crows could predict death!]

Lu Yuan scrolled through dozens of comments, watching as the post quickly gained more and more replies.

The direction of the discussion began to veer off, shifting from casual chatter to eerie folklore.

Shaking his head, Lu Yuan exited the forum.

Even though the netizens’ chatter seemed unreliable, Lu Yuan himself felt that this didn’t seem like a normal explosion case.

There was one point the people online got right.

There was no reason for so many crows to suddenly gather in the south district. No matter how he looked at it, there was an unusual vibe to this incident.

Lu Yuan casually pulled out a book from the “Exploring the Medieval Period” series, hoping to find any references to crows in Ancient Deity myths or legends.

He flipped through a couple of pages but soon closed the book in frustration.

Ever since discovering the existence of the extraordinary, Lu Yuan had subconsciously started attributing any strange occurrences in the real world to the extraordinary.

But this only made him feel more helpless.

“Even if I guess right and find out the truth, what can I do? I can’t get involved or do anything about it.”

Lu Yuan picked up his mobile phone, hesitating over the contacts of Lin Zhiqin and Ge Wenjun for a while, but ultimately decided against it.

“What’s the point of asking? I won’t get any useful information.”

He sighed, stood up from his desk, and grabbed the newly purchased peephole camera before hurriedly heading downstairs.

“Buzz buzz buzz—”

“Buzz buzz buzz—”

The mobile phone on the desk vibrated continuously, quietly breaking the silence in the room.

A young man, standing on one leg in a Crane Spreading posture on the cool mat, had his eyes closed, motionless, with steady and deep breaths.

It was as if he hadn’t heard the phone vibrating at all.

Half a minute later, the mobile phone on the desk stopped vibrating.

The small room returned to its quiet state.

After some time, the air in the room seemed to circulate slightly faster.

Accompanied by a deep inhalation, like that of a whale drawing in water.

“Crack, crack—”

The boy who had been standing still opened his eyes, his robust body emitting a series of crisp cracking sounds.

Sweat poured off him like rain, as if expelling all the pent-up heat from the past few hours in one go.

The mat under his feet quickly became soaked.

As he returned to normal, his physique seemed to have changed slightly.

“Plop, plop—”

Lu Yuan walked barefoot to the full-length mirror in the room, ignoring the sweat covering his body.

He examined himself in the mirror.

The boy in the mirror was quite “handsome.”

Standing at over six feet tall, with clear and well-defined features.

His muscle lines were sharp and smooth, proportionate and aesthetically pleasing like a sculpture in an art gallery.

“Finally got my physique back.”

Lu Yuan exhaled a breath of relief, a satisfied look on his face.

Just now, he had finally managed to break through to Level 3 of the crane stance.

It was two days slower than he had anticipated.

Perhaps he had almost fully grasped the crane stance techniques he had learned from Lin Zhiqin.

With his current understanding of the crane stance, the experience points gained were increasingly slow.

What was originally planned to be a day’s progress, had dragged out to three days.

“Either Lin Zhiqin is still holding something back, or advancing further in the crane stance truly requires external aids.”

Lu Yuan recalled Lin Zhiqin mentioning that even official disciples of the martial arts gym found it hard to inherit the latter six moves of the crane stance.

Apart from the increased difficulty of the latter six moves, which were not achievable by ordinary people.

Another crucial reason was that they needed to be paired with the gym’s special secret ointment for training.

“Breaking ties with Lin Zhiqin is not an option.”

Lu Yuan thought, as he casually opened his attribute panel to check.

[Name: Lu Yuan]

[Age: 17]

[Strength Points: 13]

[Agility Points: 12]

[Constitution Points: 12]

[Intelligence Points: 12]

Breaking through from Level 2 to Level 3 of the crane stance directly increased both his agility points and constitution points by one each.

The increase in constitution points was noticeable since he could feel incremental progress every day.

However, the effect of the agility points increase was truly apparent.

“I feel lighter overall.”

Lu Yuan tried jumping in place, easily surpassing the height of the desk by a significant margin.

This sense of “lightness” wasn’t about his weight decreasing.

It was more of a perceived “lightness,” or rather, an ease of movement.

“It’s like in martial arts novels where a two or three hundred-pound person can still be a lightweight master with graceful, footprint-free movements!”

Lu Yuan couldn’t quite grasp the mechanics behind it.

Since speed is actually closely related to the explosive power of the calves.

And the explosive power of the calves is linked to the strength attribute.

“Agility points enhance the coordination of all my muscles.”

Lu Yuan suddenly threw a punch forward.

“Whoosh”

“Air resistance?!”