"Holy shit—that was too easy!"
The first time he got even a little serious, he nearly pushed the barbell right out of his hands and into the ceiling. Su Zhou's face was a picture of shock. He sat up with a strange expression, grabbing the barbell with one hand and giving it a shake. "Is this thing a cheap knockoff? It barely feels heavier than a can of soda!"
Though he said that, he knew better than anyone what the weight on the barbell was—a solid 100 kilograms!
If the barbell hadn't already weighed more than him, Su Zhou felt it would have been even easier. Waving it around with one hand wasn't difficult now; the only tricky part was maintaining his balance so the barbell didn't send him flying.
'Something's really not right…'
Su Zhou couldn't help but mutter to himself. A 100 kg bench press... He could do it easily before, but it had never felt so light, as if it would fly right out of his hands. 'Then again,' he thought, 'I can already do a one-finger handstand. A weight equivalent to my own body should be a piece of cake.'
'On second thought, I might be ridiculously strong, but this is *me* we're talking about, so it's not that surprising. As for Yara's comment that "the boost from my Undying Blood is just that good!", well, I suppose that counts as half an explanation.'
He continued the test, trying a heavier barbell.
After a moment of thought, Su Zhou took off the twenty-kilogram plates and replaced them with twenty-five-kilogram ones. He added three plates to each side, and the weight instantly jumped to 170 kilograms.
It might sound like the weight of just one and a half large men, but in reality, it was incredibly heavy. An ordinary person couldn't manage 170 kilograms even with training. Without Talent, you simply couldn't lift this weight.
A fitness enthusiast who could manage this would already be at an incredible level, good enough to consider going pro and competing for their country.
'Of course, I don't think this is my limit,' Su Zhou thought, 'but it's best not to be too sensational.'
'But... how is it... still so easy?'
But 170 kilograms put no pressure on Su Zhou at all; he even felt it was a bit floaty! How to describe the sensation? It was like lifting an ordinary wooden pole. While not so light that he'd lose his grip and send it flying, it was pretty much there.
In disbelief, and after noticing no one was around, Su Zhou cautiously added another 25-kilogram plate to each side.
A 220-kilogram lift is a world-class weight, and it was also the limit Su Zhou had reached when he'd previously tested himself in secret.
This weight was already more than twice his body weight. For someone of his build and weight, achieving this before receiving the Holy Snake Spirit Blood would have been extremely difficult.
Of course, that wasn't his absolute limit, either. If Su Zhou had intentionally bulked up, then with his muscle tissue—which surpassed a normal human's and was that of a Transcendent—he might have been able to challenge a three-times-body-weight bench press. But Su Zhou didn't *only* do bench presses; he also had to maintain his agility.
An excessive focus on strength would only ruin his fluidity of movement and decrease his combat effectiveness.
"Fuck, am I even human anymore?!"
After casually knocking out three sets of ten reps at 220 kilograms, Su Zhou shot up with a horrified look on his face. He stared at his arm, flexed his muscle, and felt the explosive power hidden within his body, his expression a mixture of shock and disbelief. "Three sets of ten with 220 kilograms... thirty reps in a row, and I don't feel even a little bit 'tired'?!"
'This is beyond what a normal human can do... No, even an *abnormal* human couldn't do this! An ordinary person doing this would have... well, an ordinary person couldn't even lift it. A professional athlete on steroids probably couldn't bang out three consecutive sets like that. Even if they somehow forced their way through it, they'd probably have rhabdomyolysis by now!'
'And this is far from my limit… I still feel completely fine.'
'What does this kind of strength even mean? It means with my current physique, grabbing someone by the head and ripping their spine out of their body probably wouldn't be all that hard. I could crush a skull just by pressing down with both hands.'
'To put it more simply, with this kind of strength, I could probably roll an ordinary person into a ball and toss them around like a bowling pin. Right now, I feel like if I used my full strength, I could punch a bull straight into the ground and kill it in one hit, or even win a wrestling match against a large brown bear!'
Although the latter might sound like a daily routine in Ross Country, everyone knows how difficult that actually is.
"What kind of silly thing is that to say?"
Hearing Su Zhou's exclamation, Yara replied in a peculiar, matter-of-fact tone, "Of course you're human! You're a person, I'm a person, we're all people!"
Su Zhou: "?"
"It's just that you need to add a prefix before 'person', like 'Dragon' or 'Snake'. The Holy Snake Spirit Blood has already transformed your body into Extraordinary tissue—your muscle fibers now contain a certain kind of Spiritual Qi structure that can absorb Spiritual Qi to enhance your strength. What you're experiencing now is only the most Junior Level. Once the Spiritual Energy Revival begins, it wouldn't be surprising if you could lift a car with one hand and play with it like a dumbbell."
Yara's tone was joking, but for some reason, Su Zhou could detect a trace of bitterness in its voice. "As for the identity of being a 'person,' anyone who wants to be one, can be one. It's a matter of personal conviction, so don't get hung up on it."
In any case, he was done testing his bench press. After receiving the Perfect Blood, Su Zhou felt his strength had far surpassed what it was before. Rui'an Fitness Center was professional, but it probably didn't have the equipment to measure his true limits... Of course, this was enough for now. By his estimation, his current strength was about one-and-a-half to two times what it used to be.