My Two and a Half Meters

In the entire world, only one person knows what the word "cultivation" means—because in this world, cultivation has never existed. Lin Bei, a freshman at Northern Sports University, discovers one day that the air within two and a half meters of his body has changed. Where everyone else breathes oxygen, he breathes something else entirely—a mysterious force that drives his body to grow stronger at an insane rate, at a concentration five hundred times denser than the normal environment. There is no system, no technique manual, no sect, no senior master—nothing at all. A single ten-thousand-meter run tempers his body the way five hundred rounds of refinement would, and one set of boxing forms is worth five hundred days of cultivation. Yet he dares not tell a soul. In a world where the word "spiritual energy" doesn't exist and "cultivation" is an unheard-of concept, saying it aloud would only earn him a one-way trip to the psychiatric ward. Then, one day, on the track field of Northern Sports University, the timer flashes a number that should not be possible. The entire school erupts, and the call from the national team comes through. And as Lin Bei stares down at his trembling hands, only a single thought fills his mind: "This thing... can it actually be taught to other people?"