Lin Hai's figure, just about to walk away, suddenly froze—like a tree braving the storm, standing tall and unmoving, exuding a kind of defiance that said: Let the winds howl, I remain unshaken.
But that moment of stillness passed in a blink.
Lanxi, too, noticed his change. His sharp eyes narrowed, and he stood with arms crossed, staring at Lin Hai with an arrogant smirk that seemed to say: What can you do about it?
Lin Hai turned his head slowly, lips curling.
"Coward?"
Some in the crowd instinctively prepared to boo. What's wrong with being a coward? You admit it, now you're upset? But as Lin Hai turned and smiled faintly, a strange chill ran down their spines—there was a glint in his eyes that made people uneasy.
"Category Three training?" Lin Hai looked at Waymo with a quiet, indifferent tone.
Then, he walked straight toward the resistance machine.
The moment people realized he was accepting the challenge, the whole crowd perked up, eager to witness Mad Bull Lanxi crush someone again.
"Good!" Lanxi bellowed, striding over. He set the machine to its maximum strength, grabbed both handles, and began pulling with alternating arms.
His bulging muscles tensed, rippling with an almost artistic beauty, swollen to a nearly unbelievable degree, demonstrating the explosive strength beneath his bronzed skin.
"One, two, three… eight, nine, ten!"
With the crowd counting loudly, Mad Bull let go of the handles with a grunt.
Ten reps!
Maximum resistance. A record in the gym. He crossed his trembling arms over his chest like a victor, glancing down at Lin Hai with an air of superiority. The machine's weight arms still shook from the force of his motion.
Under the smirking gaze of the crowd, Lin Hai stepped up. As the arms of the machine were still bouncing, he reached out—and grasped the handles with ease.
Laughter paused.
The moment Lin Hai's hands made contact, the wild oscillations of the handles instantly steadied—as if locked in place.
"He… actually grabbed the handles mid-bounce!"
A gasp broke the silence.
Then, Lin Hai pulled—hard. The machine let out a deep mechanical moan, like an old diesel engine trying to start.
It was a familiar sound to Lin Hai.
Back on the garbage planet, in the golden-red twilight of Haizhou, he had often yanked the cords of old diesel generators to keep broken machines alive.
Compared to that, this resistance arm was laughably light.
The machine creaked, whirring like a beast.
One, two, three, four… ten, eleven, twelve… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!
At the tenth rep, Lanxi's face had already twisted. Gritting his teeth, he rushed back and grabbed the other handles, trying to keep pace. But he only managed two or three more before his arms began shaking violently. He stared at Lin Hai in disbelief—as if looking at a demon.
Twenty reps.
Waymo's glasses slipped slightly down his nose.
Lin Hai didn't even glance at his opponent. Instead, he looked up, straight into the yoga studio's crystal display, locking eyes with Lin Wei, who stood behind the glass with arms crossed, watching.
He said casually,
"Compared to the diesel bull engine back on the garbage planet, this thing's nothing."
Lin Wei's face flushed with a mix of shame and anger, but before she could react, Lin Hai turned to the stunned crowd.
"So, what else you got? Gravity room. Where?"
A muscular man hesitated, then slowly pointed toward a side room.
Without waiting, Lin Hai strode off into the gravity room.
His fingers tapped rapidly across the interface. The treadmill on the floor began to rotate.
Outside, everyone stared as the control panel displayed rising numbers:
"1x gravity… 1.5x gravity… 2x… 3x…"
"God—it hit 4x gravity!" a woman exclaimed.
The track whirled faster. Under four times normal gravity, Lin Hai began to run.
Each footstep landed like the beat of a war drum, hammering directly into the hearts of the onlookers.
100 meters.
200 meters…
400 meters!
The room finally shut down. The doors opened.
Lin Hai walked out, calm and breathless.
All around him, expressions were frozen in dumb shock. Even Lin Wei—watching from the yoga studio's screen—instinctively raised a hand to her lips.
She was holding back—trying not to lose control in front of him.
But Lin Hai didn't let her off the hook.
With a faint smile, he looked straight through the screen at her and said:
"Back on the garbage planet, sandstorms would sometimes roll through with a pressure far greater than this gravity room. If you think a few hundred meters under 4x gravity is impressive… you'd have died out there."
Though he hadn't publicly humiliated her, everyone understood who those words were meant for. All eyes turned toward Lin Wei.
Her face turned red with rage.
"You!"
If she could, she would have stormed over and kicked him to death.
The gym fell into absolute silence.
This was the same delicate-looking young man from earlier?
Mad Bull Lanxi, unwilling to lose what little pride he had left, staggered toward the punching force meter, his arms still trembling. Gritting his teeth, he slammed three punches into the machine.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The display lit up:
950 pounds.
That was a powerful result—close to his usual best of 1,000. Given his exhaustion, 950 was impressive.
Lin Hai chuckled coldly.
He walked up to the meter.
People barely had time to blink—Lin Hai had leapt into the air, spun, and unleashed a whip-kick.
CRACK.
The entire machine bent backward, then crashed to the ground, skidding across the floor with a metallic screech.
The screen flashed: 00000.
The entire hall fell still.
Only then did Lin Hai turn to face Mad Bull Lanxi.
His voice was icy and sharp:
"You call that strength? Earlier you called me coward, trash, loser. I'll return those to you—plus one more: idiot."
Lanxi, once a respected figure here, had no comeback.
In fact, under Lin Hai's cold, detached stare, a chill rose up his spine.
He unconsciously stepped back.
He was a head taller than Lin Hai. Physically stronger. Yet here he was, retreating.
The crowd was stunned.
No one even dared joke anymore. They simply stared, wide-eyed.
Waymo, sweat forming on his brow, finally understood: This youth… is a monster.
Category Three training—the club's hardest—was like child's play to him.
Zhang Sheng and Laiken, who had mocked Lin Hai in the lounge earlier, were watching everything on the screen. The cigarette between Zhang's fingers burned down unnoticed—until it singed him.
They dropped the cigarette and stared at each other, speechless.
Lin Hai turned to address the crowd, his voice like a blade cutting the silence:
"I grew up in the slums of Haizhou. Twenty years in that hell, I didn't learn much—but I did learn how to survive.
These training programs? Compared to the storms and wreckage on the garbage planet, they're children's toys.
So don't test me again.
I'm not your entertainment."
As he spoke, every crystal screen in the building lit up with his image.
And Lin Wei—now under the gaze of everyone from every section of the gym—felt hundreds of eyes land on her.
Judging. Piercing.
For the first time, even she, with all her social grace, bit her lip and clenched her fists tightly. Her graceful figure trembled with shame and fury.
She realized, painfully, that her plan had backfired.
She had brought Lin Hai here to humiliate him in public.
And now, for the first time in her life—
She felt like a complete fool.