Chapter One: I, the Esper

On a certain day, exactly fifteen years and three months into his life, Xi Gu suddenly realized he had become someone with special abilities.

At first, there were no obvious signs. It was just that on a Sunday morning, after getting out of bed, Xi Gu distinctly felt something different about his body.

It wasn’t a fundamental, essential change.

No strange markings appeared on his skin.

Neither of his eyes had changed color.

No horns grew from his head.

His limbs showed no signs of deformity.

There was no eerie aura swirling around him.

—It was simply a slow, gradual evolution, building up little by little.

"Has my eyesight… gotten better?" he wondered, taking off his glasses, which had a prescription of 350. To his surprise, the world appeared clearer without them, as if his nearsightedness had halved overnight.

He bounced up and down on the spot, discovering his body felt much lighter than before.

Though he noticed these changes, Xi Gu merely took them as a sign of growing up and quickly dismissed them.

The next day, the transformation continued.

Upon waking, Xi Gu found he was even lighter than the day before, and his eyesight had improved further.

He took off his glasses entirely, and the world before him was bright and sharp, something he hadn't experienced in a long time.

Curious, Xi Gu swung his fist through the air. The wind from his punch made a crisp tearing sound, like fabric splitting.

This put him in an even better mood.

That day during gym class, for the first time, Xi Gu finished the one-kilometer endurance run in three minutes and twenty seconds, and he did so effortlessly. He knew he could have run even faster, but restrained himself to avoid drawing attention.

Still, his friends noticed the change.

“What’s up with you today?” one of them teased, thumping him on the chest with a grin. “Hey, Xi Gu, did you fall for someone? You’re working so hard out there—running like that’s a new record for you. Oh, and what happened to your glasses?”

He laughed it off, saying things like, “No, no,” “I’ve just been training lately,” and, “I found my eyesight was improving, so I stopped wearing glasses… Luckily my prescription was low—maybe it was just pseudo-myopia.” Inside, though, Xi Gu was filled with joy.

He thought, if his physical abilities kept growing like this, maybe he could stand out and become a national athlete. Then, he wouldn’t have to endure the grueling college entrance exams to get into a top university.

A simple wish, yet for a student like Xi Gu, attending high school in a third-tier city with average grades, it was already an ambitious dream.

On the third day, as expected, his physical abilities improved again.

That evening, after school, Xi Gu went to the gym in his apartment complex, signed up for a membership, and made his way past the muscle-bound men lifting weights to the boxing strength tester in the corner, where he recorded his results.

“105 kilograms.”

“107 kilograms.”

“104 kilograms.”

...

He threw dozens of punches with all his strength and, after tallying the results, found that his median punch strength hovered around 105 kilograms, which was quite stable.

Satisfied, he headed to the school track, stopwatch in hand. After pressing start, he sprinted as fast as he could until he crossed the 200-meter mark, panting as he checked the timer—

“24.07 seconds. Not bad.”

On the fourth day, as expected, his physical condition improved once again.

That evening, well prepared, Xi Gu returned to the gym, took another round at the neglected punching machine.

“107 kilograms”—today’s median result.

Xi Gu started to understand.

“Every day, my punch strength increases by 2 kilograms? But that’s impact force—how much has my bench press core strength grown? Probably about the same.”

That day, he ran another 200 meters on the school track—

“23.58 seconds.” A jump of several tenths of a second in a single day was unusual, but Xi Gu knew this was largely because he’d adjusted his running form and stance.

For a beginner, a fluctuation of over a second in a 200-meter dash was perfectly normal.

On the fifth day, his punch strength continued to climb steadily—“109 kilograms.” But his 200-meter time improved only minutely, “23.56 seconds,” just as he expected.

Yet Xi Gu clearly felt that after each punch, most test results were “109 kilograms.” He ran several 200-meter sprints, each time clocking “23.56 seconds.” It was clear his stability and endurance were rising in tandem.

“If I keep improving like this, maybe I can become an all-around Olympic champion… No, better be cautious. To be safe—and to avoid getting picked up by the authorities for investigation—I’ll focus on the 100-meter dash. That’s the sport with the most fame and fortune.”

Both anxious and excited, Xi Gu held onto his small hope, painting a beautiful blueprint for his future.

But this modest hope turned into astonishment just one day later.

“112 kilograms—why is it increasing so quickly?”

Staring at the number on the punch tester in shock, Xi Gu realized something.

“Wait… is my physical strength growing exponentially?”

With this realization, Xi Gu changed his approach.

To avoid attracting attention, he stopped testing at the gym. Using nearly ten thousand yuan from his parents’ inheritance, he bought a weight bench, barbells, and other equipment for home use, allowing him to test his pure chest and core strength without the interference of punch speed.

It pained him slightly to spend so much, but if his hunch was right, this was an extraordinary situation.

He stopped running the 200-meter test at school and, every morning, tested his strength at home.

After several days of progress, his stability had reached a good level, so Xi Gu could confidently test his limits, meticulously recording his daily results—

“101 kilograms,”

“102 kilograms,”

“103 kilograms,”

...

On the tenth day, he felt “110 kilograms” was easily manageable; by the fourteenth day, he barely managed “115 kilograms.” After fifty days, his results surpassed “164 kilograms.”

For a high school student, this was an outstanding feat. But Xi Gu cared little for the numbers—because he knew that by tomorrow, he’d surpass them again, effortlessly adding another kilogram to his bench press.

After carefully reviewing his progress and plotting a smooth curve on his chart, he found the corresponding exponential formula.

At last, Xi Gu fully understood the pace at which his body was evolving—

“So… with each passing day, my physical abilities are increasing by one percent over the day before?!”