What A Dream Wants

"Alright, so this is a fitness education class," Captain Baker said. "We'll be stopping cultivation for a while, to do a physical assessment."

"The height and weight were already taken during the entrance exam, so all we need to do is the physical portion of the assessment. The fitness assessment is comprised of the pacer test, situps, pushups, and the sit and reach."

Call raised his hand and called out "Um, I dunno. isn't this test pointless?"

"The state mandates it," Baker grumbled.

The call went into silence.

Baker continued, "I will divide you into two groups. Group A will be doing the pacer test and Group B will be doing pushups, situps, and the sit and reach. We'll alternate when the groups are done. Capiche?"

The gruff man then proceeded to assign group letters to each person.

Steven was in Group B.

Steven did 20 pushups. His arms died.

Steven did 50 situps. His stomach was on fire.

Steven did the sit and reach. Ok, that wasn't... bad.

. . .

The teams alternated activities. This time, Team B was doing the pacer test instead of Team A.

Steven was now at the starting line.

"The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20-meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single l.a.p should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a l.a.p before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start."

Steven ran back and forth a lot.

At around 20 l.a.p.s, he started tiring.

Steven run, Steven RUN!

At around 30 l.a.p.s, his breathing became rougher.

Steven run, Steven RUN!

At around 40 l.a.p.s, his lungs were dying.

Steven run, Steven RUN!

At 50 l.a.p.s, he decided that he still wanted his lungs, so he sat down.

Almost everyone else was still running, but at 100 l.a.p.s, the test was stopped.

"Alright." Captain Baker said. "That's it for today, continue cultivating until the bell rings."

'Welp,' Steven thought to himself. 'This is what happens when you don't train your body or cultivate.'

He sighed.

Although he disliked exercise, he still cared about his body. Hence, he exercised in order to burn some of the calories that he consumed. Oddly enough, he didn't exercise enough to cover the massive amounts of calorie intake, but somehow his metabolism managed to keep up.

Disclaimer: The author does not encourage readers to solely rely on metabolism to stay fit. That doesn't always work, but Steven can't relate, sorry.

He closed his eyes.

It was dark for a while before the qi started to light up and circulate in his body.

Inside the body, his Yin qi circulated in his blood system, while the Yang Qi circulated outside. His Pectoral qi circulated in his lung area and the balanced YinYang Qi spread out evenly within his whole body.

Looking inside his body, he could feel it. It wasn't visible, and it seemed shapeless. Perhaps, that was its soul?

He always wondered why there were weird light flow thingies in his body, but now he understood why- Thanks to the gym teacher's amazing lecture and thanks to Zero.

The energy started rapidly increasing and condensing. It was a strange sensation that soothed his body. The internal energy struggled for a while as if stuck on an invisible bottleneck, before breaking through. Instantly, Steven's muscles relaxed, and the soreness in his lungs disappeared. His lungs weren't dying like before.

He opened his eyes. With a few exceptions, everyone was cultivating.

Perhaps he should pick up a book on the school library after class to learn about ranks and cultivation and whatnot. It would definitely be helpful...

. . .

The bell rang.