The Punch of a Million Tonnes
From the first year of high school, then the second, and finally the third, until high school graduation—approximately a thousand days had passed since Xi Gu's awakening.
3437301kg.
His bench press strength had finally reached this level.
And along with this, the metrics of his other physical abilities steadily rose.
Firstly, his eyesight.
Initially, his visual acuity was just good enough to not need glasses.
A few days later, his vision reached an astounding level of 3.0.
A few months after that, Xi Gu's eyesight surpassed that of any human in history. Standing atop a hundred-meter-tall building, he could discern the stitching pattern on a pedestrian's hat below.
But his vision continued to improve.
Beyond the extended range of sight, Xi Gu began transcending human limitations.
Initially, when exerting his vision to its full potential, he could perceive wavelengths beyond the human spectrum—like infrared and ultraviolet.
Over time, the range of visible light expanded. Colors entered his perception that most humans couldn't fathom—hundreds, if not thousands of them. They were neither gold nor violet, neither blue nor black nor white. They were colors that no human-made pigment could reproduce. These colors filled the world, even the air.
As his vision improved further, Xi Gu began to see more—minute connections between skin cells, insects wriggling on body hair, and the intricate network of blood vessels beneath the skin. And even more, far more detailed than that.
His vision began delving deeper—not at the centimeter scale of dust and debris, not at the millimeter scale of minute insects, nor at the micrometer scale of cells.
But the molecular level, measured in nanometers, even possibly the atomic scale.
Such progress might one day allow him to witness the dance of quantum particles.
Such thoughts swirled in Xi Gu's mind, but he did not lose his sanity.
Indeed, his control over vision was meticulously incorporated into his training regimen. His capabilities, meticulously mapped onto his talent tree, allowed him to choose precisely what he wanted to see, preventing distractions like mites on the nose of a girl he's talking to.
Generally, unless necessary, Xi Gu would keep his vision just slightly above average.
The same went for his hearing. Even if his ears could tune into radio broadcasts from across the ocean or perceive the faint background radiation of the universe, Xi Gu maintained his hearing within a normal range.
The adage "Hear no evil" seemed all too relevant.
Of course, during crucial exams, Xi Gu would slightly enhance his hearing—after all, understanding an English listening comprehension section was essential.
But he never used his enhanced abilities to cheat.
Xi Gu now approached life with a calm demeanor, like a player in GTA5 who uses cheats but still chooses to obey traffic rules.
It was ironic and paradoxical, but that truly described Xi Gu.
Although exams might seem trivial, if he were to recklessly break the rules with his abilities, Xi Gu feared he'd develop an inertia for breaking societal norms. He worried that he might suddenly lose control and split the Eurasian continent in two with a single punch.
How would he then be able to enjoy games, animations, novels, movies, and other creations of human civilization?
Even with his immense physical prowess, Xi Gu was still just a person.
At least for now, he believed he couldn't exist isolated from society, if only for the psychological impact.
Apart from heightened senses like hearing and vision, Xi Gu had surpassed human limits in terms of speed and reflexes, racing on an unparalleled trajectory.
In his second year of high school, he could run at 21 meters per second—a speed that would astonish professional sprinters. By his third year, this speed became 590m/s, generating sonic booms when he sprinted.
After finishing his final exams and graduating from high school, Xi Gu's top speed had evolved to 8100 meters per second.
A speed of 8.1 km/s surpassed the first cosmic velocity.
He could literally shoot up into space and orbit the Earth! Xi Gu's fantasies about space had prophetically come true.
Of course, Xi Gu wasn't about to launch himself into space. He had merely tried to sprint at full speed and found himself hundreds of meters above the ground, his heart racing in fear.
Falling from such a height, Xi Gu suffered no injuries. He simply created a crater tens of meters wide in the middle of a forest.
Which was expected since Xi Gu's durability also grew at a daily rate of 1%.
By his second year of high school, his body had turned into an iron fortress. Even knives would blunt if tried against his skin.
To further test his durability, Xi Gu had snuck into a rifle club one night and shot himself several times. Not a single bullet pierced his skin.
He never continued these defensive tests due to the unavailability of stronger weapons. But after a thousand days, Xi Gu was confident he could withstand a nuclear explosion unscathed.
The reason was simple math.
At present, Xi Gu's physical strength was around 3437301kg.
When throwing a punch with all his might, the maximum speed was about 80 km/s (estimated based on his growth in control over his body metrics).
Thus, when Xi Gu threw a full-power punch, it generated kinetic energy of 10,999,363,200,000,000 joules.
Or in simpler terms, an energy of nearly 11 quadrillion joules.
One ton of TNT is roughly equivalent to 4.2 billion joules. This means that Xi Gu's full-powered punch has an explosive force greater than 2.6 million tons of TNT. This power is over a hundred times the strength of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb and one-twentieth of the most potent weapon in human history — the "Tsar Bomba."
Without a doubt, with the release of this energy, the growing resilience of Xi Gu's body ensures that he remains unharmed when striking with all his might. If a single punch from him is equivalent to the detonation of a hundred nuclear bombs, then surely Xi Gu possesses the defensive capabilities to withstand a nuclear explosion, right?
Moreover, compared to the vast shockwave generated during a nuclear explosion, Xi Gu's punch would concentrate the energy on a tiny area of impact. Only when it fully expands would that formidable force then disperse.
From this perspective, even the "Tsar Bomba," with its focus on radiation and broad-scope energy output, might be incapable of harming Xi Gu, who has withstood a localized hundred-fold nuclear blast without damage.
However, it had been a while since Xi Gu threw a punch with all his strength, even in tests on himself.
About three months ago, when his strength and speed weren't as monstrous as now, Xi Gu spent a rare day off by the local coastline, running on water at over a hundred meters per second.
After distancing himself dozens of kilometers from the shore, he dived deep into the sea and tested his full-powered punch at a depth of over a hundred meters.
The immense force transformed into a raging current, and the high-energy output instantaneously heated thousands of kilometers of surrounding sea water by several tens of degrees, silently killing off fish and shrimp. This force continued to ripple, eventually breaking the water's surface, creating waves several hundred meters tall.
Following this energy dispersal, the ocean currents became momentarily chaotic. Combined with the already turbulent atmospheric conditions, it even spawned a small typhoon.
Amidst the storm, Xi Gu made his way back to the shore, leaving behind a meteorological anomaly that baffled marine weather stations and a typhoon that dissipated before reaching land.
Reflecting on the consequences of his actions, Xi Gu felt a wave of remorse.
One could only imagine the devastation if such a force was unleashed in a city. Even if directed at the air, the resulting shockwave and dispersed kinetic energy could obliterate vast city blocks.
For this reason, Xi Gu halted his "limit burst" tests.
"If I possess a power rivaling, if not surpassing, the average nuclear bomb, shouldn't I approach testing with the same caution as one would handle a nuclear weapon?"
With that thought, Xi Gu ceased all such trials.