"Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud..."
At this moment, Gu Qianxue's heart was pounding wildly, her eyes slightly red, looking thoroughly terrified.
Li Hao looked her up and down.
"Campus Belle Gu, silence means consent. Look, my injuries haven't fully healed yet! If I don't get a proper massage and warm up before training, something terrible could happen! I'm sure you wouldn't want that, right?"
"You... let me down..." Gu Qianxue said weakly, her voice no louder than a mosquito's.
If it was just a massage, that might still be acceptable!
Gu Qianxue felt anxious, but she had no choice. She was caught in a difficult dilemma and couldn't easily walk away.
Besides, it seemed she couldn't leave anyway...
Li Hao spread his hands with an innocent expression.
Gu Qianxue stepped down from the door, feeling her legs turn to jelly. She stumbled a few steps before managing to stand steady.
"Use this."
Li Hao fished a box of nutritional lubricant out of his drawer and handed it to her, then pulled out a pure white blanket and spread it flat across the bed.
After that, he lay down flat on his back right on top of it.
"Campus Belle Gu, what are you spacing out for? Get started!" Li Hao urged eagerly.
Gu Qianxue took a deep breath, her expression serious as she said, "A massage is fine, but you're going to pay extra!"
"Extra money again..."
Li Hao thought to himself, *This iceberg beauty of a campus belle is really obsessed with money.*
Still, his request certainly went beyond the scope of tutoring, so it was completely reasonable for the campus belle to ask for more money.
"No problem! The only thing this young master isn't short on is money! I'll pay double! Can we start now?" Li Hao was practically bursting with impatience.
Duh, anyone in his shoes would be impatient!
This was the iceberg campus belle Gu Qianxue, for crying out loud!
Was this even a massage? This was pure, unadulterated enjoyment!
Li Hao felt ecstatic inside, though he maintained a cool, arrogant young tycoon facade on the outside.
Gu Qianxue clutched the nutritional fluid in her hand, struggling internally for a moment before a flicker of resolve settled in her eyes. She slowly walked over to the bed.
She cast a quick, sideways glance down at Li Hao's body. Once she had a rough mental assessment, Gu Qianxue opened the nutritional fluid and dabbed a portion onto Li Hao's chest.
The instant Gu Qianxue's fingers touched his skin, a sensation that was both icy and warm, like an electric shock, instantly coursed through Li Hao's entire body...
Ever since she learned this massage technique, Gu Qianxue had never tried it on a man.
Through a strange twist of fate, Gu Qianxue had accidentally come across an incomplete ancient text.
Because it lacked a cover, the contents consisted almost entirely of illustrations with very few annotations, making it look similar to a health and wellness book.
Being an ancient scroll, Gu Qianxue's curiosity was piqued, so she tried practicing by imitating the techniques shown in the illustrations.
And practicing it actually allowed her to figure out a thing or two.
After all, Gu Qianxue was an top student with extraordinary martial arts attainments, and she was extremely familiar with the pathways of the human meridians.
The contents of this ancient text were precisely massage techniques that followed the pathways of the human extraordinary meridians and collateral channels.
The more Gu Qianxue studied, the more astonished she became. Following the application methods recorded in the book, she began testing and deducing the techniques on a dummy.
Eventually, Gu Qianxue was able to confirm that this ancient text was a Meridian Opening method from ancient martial arts.
Unblocking the extraordinary meridians and collateral channels was a supreme technique among the advanced dual-cultivation methods of ancient martial arts—cultivating both mind and body. Past generations of grandmasters had regarded it as a strict secret, and it was never revealed in any alchemy manuals or Daoist scriptures.
The human body possesses eight extraordinary meridians and twelve regular channels, and legend has it there are also thirty-six hidden channels, though their truth remains unverified.
The human meridians crisscross throughout the entire body, serving to connect and circulate human energy.
In the eyes of ancient martial arts practitioners, the meridians within the human body are the key to connecting with heaven and earth and circulating the vital energy of heaven and earth.
Ancient martial arts experts rely on meridian opening to circulate the breath of heaven and earth through themselves. For instance, the well-known Conception and Governing meridians are considered by ancient martial arts experts to be the most crucial meridians of all.
The reason ancient martial arts meridian opening methods were classified as top secrets wasn't because the technique itself was so important, but because it was far too dangerous.
Every single meridian in the human body is connected to several key acupoints—for example, the Governing meridian connects to twenty-eight acupoints, and the Conception meridian connects to twenty-four.
Among them, many acupoints are tied directly to life and death, so their importance goes without saying.
By daring to let Gu Qianxue perform a full-body massage and wander across his acupoints, Li Hao was essentially walking a tightrope, testing the waters right at the gates of the underworld.
His daringness in letting Gu Qianxue massage him was not born of recklessness or a joke, but of absolute confidence.
Centuries ago, the Calamity Space suddenly appeared, and subtle changes occurred across the entire starry sky.
The spirit energy of Blue Star began to revive, and the appearance of the planet gradually transformed.
Later on, exotic beasts from the Calamity Space entered Blue Star through spatial rifts, and human society was plunged completely into troubled times.
After another century and more of war and development, humans began to awaken martial dao talents, thus ushering in the New Martial era.
Compared to ancient martial arts, New Martial arts did not require the tedious and complex process of meridian opening. Humans were born with extraordinary power, allowing them to automatically unlock their body's potential, open their body's gene lock, awaken extraordinary martial skills, and embark on an entirely new path of cultivation.
However, talent awakening was also divided into different ranks. Unfortunately, the talent Li Hao awakened was utter trash.
In his freshman year of high school, when Li Hao's talent awakened, it turned out to be of the lowest grade!
This dealt a crushing blow to Li Hao, utterly shattering his formerly arrogant self-esteem against the harsh reality.
In his sophomore year, Li Hao was attacked by a Purple-Haired Rat, destroying his body and soul completely.
Li Hao, who had been ready to give up on himself, content to peacefully become a good-for-nothing rich second-generation heir and spend the rest of his life in hedonistic squander, was mistakenly deceived by that bitch Liu Yanting, which paradoxically allowed him to find himself again.
Talk about a dramatic turn of events!
To win Liu Yanting's heart, Li Hao decided to regain his confidence and apply himself vigorously.
Since his path in New Martial arts was blocked, he decided to study ancient martial arts. Backed by formidable financial resources, Li Hao visited renowned teachers everywhere and studied ancient texts without sleep or rest.
Finally, he found a breakthrough.
Li Hao discovered that the key to awakening New Martial talent actually lay within the human meridians.
Following the upheaval of heaven and earth, human meridians had undergone a cleansing, and previously blocked meridians would naturally unblock themselves.
This process was equivalent to the ancient martial arts meridian opening method.
Those humans blessed with extraordinary talent were invariably the lucky ones with unobstructed meridians.
Those humans who awakened low-grade talents were without exception the poor devils with relatively blocked meridians.
Upon figuring out this reason, Li Hao began attempting to open his meridians.
In his past life, through unremitting effort, Li Hao successfully completed the opening of all his meridians, and his martial dao talent was boosted to an extraordinary degree.
In the end, he became a peak Martial King expert, stepping half a foot into the supreme ranks.
It was just a pity that later...
When it came to ancient martial arts meridian opening, very few people in the world today understood it better than Li Hao.
This was the real reason why Li Hao dared to let Gu Qianxue massage him.
As for Li Hao's injuries, they indeed affected the circulation of his meridians.
Therefore, Li Hao had asked Gu Qianxue to help him with the massage.
A massage on the surface, but opening his meridians was actually Li Hao's true goal.
"Hmm, she really does have some genuine skills..."
After Gu Qianxue's massage, Li Hao instantly felt that the Conception meridian across his chest had been unblocked.
The acupoints that had been somewhat blocked were now showing faint signs of opening under Gu Qianxue's massage.
Li Hao had truly underestimated Gu Qianxue's capabilities. Originally knowing only that she had studied the meridian opening method, he hadn't expected her technique to already show a glimpse of the doorway, stepping across the threshold into mastery.