Li Bai had no idea what had happened last night.
He only knew that when he arrived at the company that morning, his colleagues were whispering among themselves. The atmosphere felt subtly tense, as if something unsaid was hanging in the air.
Someone came over right away, unable to hold back their curiosity, and asked, “Li Bai, didn’t you go to the recruitment event with CEO Sun yesterday?”
“Yeah, what about it?” Li Bai replied.
“Do you know what happened to CEO Sun?”
“I don’t.”
“He came in early this morning and packed up all his things.”
“What?”
The dismissal order had come down astonishingly fast.
Sun Lincheng, the deputy general manager of the branch, had been directly kicked out of Dawan Mall.
Li Bai didn’t even get the chance to see him one last time. By the time he realized what was happening, Sun Lincheng had already left in disgrace, quietly packing up and disappearing.
The deputy general manager position remained vacant for over a week.
Only near the end of the month did Li Bai finally see a man transferred from the group headquarters, sitting in Sun Lincheng’s former office.
“CEO Dai, these are the interview results from Ocean University last week. Please review and approve them,” Li Bai said after the other department heads had finished reporting and he knocked before entering the new boss’s office.
It wasn’t that he was eager to show off or make an impression. The real reason was that these interview results had been delayed for far too long.
During this time, he had approached several other deputy general managers. Strangely, each of them had dodged the matter, making excuses.
It was as if those thin sheets of paper were burning hot. No one was willing to sign them.
“These are from the interviews CEO Sun conducted before he left? At Ocean University?” Dai Dejie asked.
He was a man in his forties, tall and well-built, unlike Sun Lincheng’s bulky frame. With silver-rimmed glasses resting on his nose, he carried an air of quiet refinement.
“Yes.”
“Did anything unusual happen during the recruitment at Ocean University?”
“I don’t think so,” Li Bai said, then paused before adding, “Nothing happened during the interviews.”
“What about afterward?”
“I’m not sure. CEO Sun went to dinner with the university’s leadership. I didn’t go.”
Dai Dejie nodded lightly, his gaze settling on the report in front of him.
For a moment, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Then, without another word, he picked up his pen and signed his name.
“This matter ends here. Don’t create unnecessary trouble.”
“From now on, post recruitment information online.”
“And don’t go to Ocean University again. Understood?”
Li Bai was a little surprised by those words, but he still nodded.
After returning to his desk, he took out his phone and sent a message to Liang Manjun.
“Teacher Liang, impressive!”
“???”
Her reply came almost instantly, as if she had been waiting.
Li Bai smiled and typed again, “Didn’t I mention before that CEO Sun was suddenly transferred away? Now there’s a new deputy general manager. The first thing he said was that we’re not going to Ocean University anymore. Looks like he’s scared of you—avoiding you like the plague.”
At first, Li Bai hadn’t connected Sun Lincheng’s departure to Liang Manjun.
But now, the answer felt obvious.
There was no way it had nothing to do with her. Someone with a background like hers… it was impossible for it to be unrelated.
Liang Manjun didn’t deny it. Her slender fingers tapped lightly across the screen.
“What? Are you scared too?”
Before she could even put her phone down, Li Bai’s reply arrived.
“What do I have to be scared of? I’m just a runner. The boss gets fired, things fall apart—what does that have to do with my running?”
Reading his message, Liang Manjun couldn’t help but recall the unwavering determination in his eyes when he ran.
She sent another message, “Running at the forest park again this Sunday?”
“Sure. But Teacher Liang, this time I want to run 35 kilometers.”
“Planning to hit the wall?”
“Yeah. I have to try sooner or later, prepare for the full marathon.”
…
After a month of training, Li Bai’s progress was remarkable.
At the beginning, running 10 to 20 kilometers had left him completely exhausted, barely able to stand.
Now, he could run 30 kilometers with steady strides and even breathing.
His attribute panel reflected this clearly.
After a full month, his six base attributes had become:
Stamina: 5
Strength: 5
Speed: 1
Agility: 1
Flexibility: 2
Health: 2
Aside from stamina and strength, the other four attributes had all been improved through his daily running.
In other words, in just one month, he had effectively saved six free attribute points.
However, during this process, Li Bai also discovered a problem.
Not every attribute could be improved through training.
For example, his vision and hearing showed no changes.
Even the values for arm length and leg length remained completely unchanged.
Li Bai couldn’t tell whether those attributes simply couldn’t be trained and had to rely entirely on free attribute points, or whether he was missing the right kind of specialized training.
For attributes like speed and agility, their growth only began after he introduced interval runs and track speed training.
Simply running long distances wasn’t enough to improve them.
There was another issue as well.
As his attribute values increased, further improvement through training became noticeably harder.
For example, raising “Flexibility” and “Health” from 1 to 2 had taken him more than half a month.
In contrast, gaining the first point in each had only taken about a week.
That likely explained why his “Stamina” and “Strength” hadn’t changed at all after a full month of training.
Both were already at 5. To push them higher would require far more effort.
But Li Bai wasn’t afraid of effort.
He would just keep running.
He had already fallen in love with the sport—the rhythm of his legs lifting and striking the ground, the feeling of conquering every inch of land step by step.
At 30 kilometers, he didn’t hit the wall.
Even after 32 kilometers, his breathing was only slightly heavier.
At 34 kilometers, however, something began to change.
The wall had arrived.
It wasn’t what he had imagined.
There was no suffocating breathlessness.
In fact, his breathing was still relatively smooth.
The change seemed to come from deep within his body. His energy supply was starting to lag behind.
His thighs grew heavier with every step, as if they no longer wanted to lift.
That alone wasn’t the biggest problem.
The real challenge came suddenly, when a thought appeared in his mind:
I can’t do this anymore. I need to rest.
It wasn’t something he consciously decided.
It felt more like an automatic warning, triggered when his body’s energy had been depleted to a certain point.
The thought dragged his pace down, uncontrollably.
He didn’t want to run anymore. Not even one more meter. All he wanted was to stop immediately and rest.
No! There’s only one kilometer left! How can I give up now? I have to run! And I have to run well!
The stubbornness deep in Li Bai’s bones surged up.
Ahead of him, Liang Manjun, who had been breaking the wind, had already slowed down, planning to observe his condition after hitting the wall.
But then, Li Bai suddenly let out a shout.
“Ah!”
In the next moment, his legs seemed to restart like small motors. He surged forward in long strides.
He even left Liang Manjun behind, catching her off guard and nearly disrupting her rhythm.
But there was only one kilometer left.
She slowed down instead, following behind him at a steady pace.
Looking at Li Bai’s resolute figure as he ran ahead, her eyes filled with unmistakable admiration.