Chapter 26: The Mutating Period (New Year's Extra Update)

  Happy New Year everyone!!

  After finishing her morning exercise and having breakfast, Li Qiu's cultural courses for the rest of the day would begin. According to Yamaguchi Yoshiko, since Li Qiu was only 14 years old, she wasn't ready to learn more things yet, so she just let Li Qiu enter the study room and start with simple books, teaching her slowly. Coincidentally, Yamaguchi Yoshiko wasn't good at science either, so most of her cultural courses started from literature and history books, leaving scientific knowledge to be taught by Fujiki Katsu. Before Li Qiu's voice changed, apart from morning self-inflicted lung expansion exercises, it was all cultural courses - Yamaguchi Yoshiko's literature and history in the morning, and Fujiki Katsu's science in the afternoon. What surprised Yamaguchi Yoshiko was that Li Qiu indeed had a strong understanding ability - most things in literature and history were accumulated through learning, but Li Qiu seemed to be an exception; he could understand almost everything after reading a book several times - what it said, and what content should be read from the book. The numerous idioms and allusions in the books, Li Qiu could mostly think of on his own, and even if he couldn't, Yamaguchi Yoshiko's slight reminder would make him immediately understand.

  Now, Professor Yamaguchi Mireiko teaches more about language-related things. There are too many books written in English here. After the Japanese course, Li Qiu welcomed an English course. This is still okay compared to having no foundation in Japanese at all. Li Qiu's English has at least a junior high school level, and this world-wide common language, Li Qiu's talent, is surprisingly similar to his Chinese talent. He didn't notice it before, but now that he's learning, it's actually much simpler, and not too difficult either. The difficulty he encounters is the large number of professional terms in these books. These professional terms are very obscure, sometimes only one word appears in a book, but he must understand the meaning of this word...

  Li Qiu has been fond of reading since childhood, with extremely strong comprehension skills. Many things are immediately clear to him after a glance, as if they were originally in his mind and he just needs to recall them. However, most of the knowledge he acquired is from literature and history, while science subjects are difficult for him to learn. Therefore, he now spends most of his time studying science.

  Yamaguchi Mirei's literature and history courses progress quickly, but Fujiki Katsu's science courses are relatively slow in comparison. This is because Fujiki also starts teaching from high school level knowledge, focusing on the majority of required knowledge that Li Qiu needs to understand, without encouraging him to delve deeper.

  ……

  In the mountains, time stands still, but in the world outside, a thousand years have passed. Of course, it's not that exaggerated here, every day is very routine, practicing, learning, and before you know it, half a year has gone by. During this time, Choi Soo-young and BoA came to visit him twice, and BoA came alone once, still taking the time to come when she was in Okayama for a concert. Of course, Lee Hyori, who is far away in Korea, started to soar, and every time Lee Hyori had a stage performance, he would download it onto his computer and watch it before going to sleep, which made him feel at ease. However, Lee Hyori's brilliance also made Li Qiu work harder to train himself, because he knew that the distance between him and his sister was even farther away, and if he didn't try hard, he wouldn't be able to catch up no matter how hard he tried...

  In early March, it's still cold in Japan and Korea. On a clear morning, the melting snow emits a refreshing fragrance that stimulates the trees and flowers on the mountain to reveal their tender green buds. A sturdy figure, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, is jogging up the stairs leading to the summit, step by step, amidst the lush greenery, full of vitality...

  In half a year, Li Qiu had slowly started to develop, and his daily morning exercises had already made him grow to 1.68 meters tall. When standing next to Cui Xiuying, he no longer needed to lower his head. The feeling of being at eye level made him no longer be misunderstood by Cui Xiuying as "sneaking glances" at her legs! Fifteen-year-old Li Qiu had finally crossed the boundary of being short, although this still wasn't considered tall, but he still held great expectations for his future height.

  On the small platform at the top of the mountain, Li Qiu faced the newly risen sun, panting heavily to steady his body, and once again used the self-injurious lung expansion breathing method to train his lung capacity. In the past six months, he himself had felt an increase in the activity of his lungs. A month ago, after six months of hard work and adaptation, Li Qiu was finally able to climb to the top of the mountain with one breath.

  Li Qiu can now hold his breath for half a minute with the self-inflicted lung expansion breathing exercise. After twenty attempts, Li Qiu sat quietly for a while, recalling the sensation of practicing lung expansion earlier. These past few days, whenever he trained with this method, he always felt an itchy sensation in his throat accompanied by some minor pain, especially when inhaling. The burning sensation in his lungs and the dizziness in his head were already torturing him enough; now, add to that the discomfort in his throat...

  It's useless to think about it, I'll just go back and tell Grandpa Fujimori. Fujimori Shou couldn't accompany him for morning exercises a month ago. Half a year of hard work, plus the harsh weather, had taken its toll on Fujimori's aging body, making it increasingly unsuitable for such intense exercise. So, Li Qiu began his solo morning training...

  "It's so cold! Practice dancing to warm up, then go home." Putting aside his previous thoughts, Li Qiu began to practice dancing. When he first saw Li Qiu practicing dance, Teng Mu Sheng had already warned him that if he ever stood on stage and wanted to sing, he absolutely could not dance. Li Qiu was puzzled - singing and dancing, why couldn't he dance if he could sing? Although Teng Mu Sheng didn't allow him to practice dance, he still practiced every day after his morning exercises, alone on this small platform, practicing the long-abandoned dance. After a month of familiarity, he slowly regained the feeling of dancing from before. Of course, at first, pulling tendons and such also made him suffer a bit.

  No music, no correcting mirror, only a small platform, surrounded by branches that have just sprouted tender green shoots, and the eastern horizon, with a red and yellow sun rising...

  "Alright, time to go back!"

  All along, Tōnoki Masaru had been instilling in Akito the will to protect his throat, so no matter where or when, even if he was already gasping for air, he would control his breathing rhythm, this is what Tōnoki taught.

  "Back already? Finished practicing so quickly today?" Tōnokizuki didn't know that every morning Li Qiu practiced dance on the mountain, did he? He knew, he just didn't want to say it. He had seen Li Qiu dance before and of course knew how much he loved dancing, but his singing method was really not suitable...

  "Alright, done with practice."

  "Let's have breakfast." Inside, Yamaguchi Mireiko had already set out the usual plain rice porridge and mountain vegetables.

  Li Qiu's eating habits were also well managed by Yamaguchi Mireiko, who made sure he only ate what was good for his throat and avoided anything that could harm it. As a result, Li Qiu gradually got used to this way of eating, and every day, he would eat the same plain food as the other two people. Now that he has started growing taller, Yamaguchi Mireiko also made sure to provide him with the best nutritional meals, which is one of the reasons why Li Qiu was able to grow so tall in just over half a year.

  "Grandpa Fujiwara." After dinner, Li Qiu, who was about to start her cultural training course, called out to Fujiwara Shou, who was just about to enter the lab.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I've been practicing lung exercises these past few days, but every time I inhale, I feel a slight pain in my throat. What's the reason for this?"

  "Is it painful? Did it hurt? Quick, come with me! Let me check you out!" Upon hearing Li Qiu's words, Tōmoki Seiya became visibly excited and hastily pulled Li Qiu into the laboratory.

  "Ah! Although it's almost a month late, but finally it has arrived, haha!" After Li Qiu finished checking, Fujimori Shou's face immediately turned rosy.

  "Is that really Grandfather Teng?" Li Qiu was also somewhat excited, representing the turning point of her own life, had it finally arrived?

  "Yes! Xia Qiu, your voice change period has arrived!"

  "Here I come!"

  "I'll go discuss with Grandma Shan Kou, you study by yourself today, and tomorrow we start our new training!"

  "Yes! Grandpa Fujiki!" It's finally here, the moment I've been waiting for, has it finally arrived?

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