Jin Yinuo hid that booklet under his bed for three whole days.
Every day after school, he would lie on the floor, lift the bedsheet hanging down from the edge of the bed, and confirm that the oiled paper package was still in its original position. After confirming, he would lower the bedsheet again, then sit at his desk and start doing homework. This checking process never exceeded five seconds, like some kind of compulsive ritual.
On the fourth evening, his parents had already gone to bed, and the living room was left with only the low hum of the refrigerator compressor starting up. Yinuo closed his bedroom door, retrieved the package from under the bed, and unfolded it under his desk lamp.
The brush calligraphy on the cover gave off an aged luster under the lamplight. He opened the first page, and the edges of the paper made a subtle friction sound beneath his fingertips.
The title of the first page was "Introductory Mental Method."
Yinuo began reading. The text was written very densely, without punctuation marks, all in vertically arranged traditional characters. He read slowly—some characters he recognized, some he could only guess at based on context. The content sounded mystical and abstruse, full of terms like "circulation of breath," "consciousness descent," and "awakening of instinct."
He read for twenty minutes, closed the booklet, and leaned back in his chair.
This thing looked like street stall literature, or the delusional notes of some pseudoscientific old man. Yinuo recalled the old man's cloudy eyes from that dusk, recalled the words he had said. Practice to the first stage and you won't be able to be beaten to death, practice to the twentieth stage and you can shatter the world. It sounded like a plot from a web novel.
But Yinuo still reopened the booklet and continued reading.
What really made him pause was a passage on the third page: "Those who cultivate this method must first abandon thought. The speed of human cognitive operation is far inferior to the body's instinctive reactions. When danger arrives, conscious judgment often lags behind by half a second to one second. This method trains the subconscious to take over combat decisions, enabling the body to automatically produce optimal solutions the instant it perceives a threat. First stage objective: subconscious recognition of killing intent, autonomous bodily evasion."
Yinuo stared at this passage for a long time.
Abandon thought and let the subconscious take over. This concept sounded absurd, yet unexpectedly conformed to a certain logic. He thought of his experience playing basketball in PE class—those who were truly skilled at sports indeed didn't think too long before catching the ball; their hands would automatically extend toward the ball's trajectory. Perhaps this was the so-called muscle memory, or bodily instinct.
He continued flipping forward and saw the specific training methods.
"First stage, first step: sit in meditation, perceive your breathing, allow consciousness to gradually descend. Every morning from five to six o'clock, continue for three months."
"First stage, second step: walk blindfolded, use hearing, touch, and smell to perceive your environment, train the acuity of non-visual senses. Every evening, continue for two months."
"First stage, third step: catch objects with eyes closed, have others throw objects at you, rely on changes in airflow and sound to judge direction and catch them. Every night, continue for four months."
After Yinuo finished reading the entire first stage training process, he discovered it required nearly a year in total. This was only the first stage—there were still nineteen stages waiting after this.
He placed the booklet on the desk and looked at the pitch-black night sky outside the window.
Practice or not practice?
The answer to this question was actually obvious. His life had already deteriorated to a point where it couldn't get worse. The bullying in class happened at least three times a week. Last week Chen Hao had thrown his textbooks into the toilet bowl, and the day before yesterday someone had stuffed a dead rat in his drawer. The teacher saw it, only told him to deal with it himself, then continued teaching.
Yinuo had already tried endurance, tried invisibility, tried all the strategies of weakness. He had even thought about transferring schools, but his parents' financial situation couldn't afford private school tuition at all. Transferring between public schools required complicated procedures and sufficient reasons, and "being bullied by classmates" was clearly not sufficient.
He picked up the booklet and turned back to the first page.
Even if this thing was fake, even if the old man was a fraud or a madman, at least the practice process itself had no harm. Sitting in meditation, walking blindfolded, catching objects with eyes closed—these exercises sounded like some kind of attention training and reaction speed training. Even if he couldn't develop any special abilities in the end, at least it could make his body a bit more agile.
Yinuo closed the booklet and glanced at his phone screen. Eleven-forty at night. He needed to get up at five tomorrow morning to begin his first meditation session, which meant he only had five hours of sleep.
He turned off the desk lamp and lay on the bed. In the darkness, sounds of cars driving past occasionally came from outside the window. He closed his eyes, and that passage repeatedly surfaced in his mind: subconscious recognition of killing intent, autonomous bodily evasion.
If this were real, if he could truly cultivate this ability, what would happen to those who bullied him? The next time Chen Hao pushed him, would his body automatically dodge? When someone wanted to hit him, would he instinctively block or counterattack?
Yinuo turned over and forced himself to stop thinking. Tomorrow morning at five, the alarm would ring, and a new life would begin. Or nothing would change, and he would just waste a year doing meaningless movements.
But at least, this was his own choice.
The next morning at four-fifty-five, the alarm vibration woke Yinuo. He turned off the alarm and sat up in the darkness. Outside the window was still the color of deep night, the streets silent and still.
He turned on the desk lamp, retrieved the booklet from under the bed, and turned to the page with detailed instructions for sitting meditation.
"Sit cross-legged, spine straight, hands placed on knees. Close your eyes and focus your attention on your breathing. When inhaling, feel the process of air entering the nasal cavity, passing through the throat, and filling the lungs. When exhaling, feel the process of air rising from the lungs, passing through the throat, and leaving the nasal cavity. When distracting thoughts arise, do not resist—let them naturally flow past, then return to the breath."
Yinuo sat cross-legged on the bed and adjusted his posture until his spine was straight. He closed his eyes and began to focus on his breathing according to the instructions.
On the first inhalation, he could clearly feel the flow of air. On the second inhalation, he began thinking about how he hadn't finished today's math homework. On the third inhalation, he recalled Chen Hao's mocking laughter in the hallway last week. On the fourth inhalation, his lower back began to ache.
Yinuo opened his eyes and looked at his phone. Three minutes had passed.
He closed his eyes again and continued trying.
At five-fifty, the hour of meditation ended. Yinuo's legs had already gone numb, the muscles in his lower back taut as if about to snap. He slowly straightened his legs, enduring the needle-like sensation as blood circulated again.
During this hour, he had probably spent fifty minutes struggling with various distracting thoughts. Only in the last ten minutes had he barely entered a relatively calm state, his breathing becoming even, the flow of his thoughts slowing down.
Yinuo stood up and moved his stiff joints. The sky outside the window was beginning to lighten—the city was awakening. He put away the booklet, changed into his school uniform, and prepared to start a new day.
When he walked out the door, his gait was the same as always, without any change. The pedestrians on the street were also the same as always, hurrying on their way. Everything was the same as yesterday.