F1: Starting with a Simulator Master

On Sunday morning, the community park was filled with the aroma of soy milk and fried dough sticks.

The old men are practicing Tai Chi, and the old women are doing square dancing.

Ten minutes ago, Luo Xiu had just come out of the fitness equipment shop at the park entrance.

Before this, he originally intended to ask the old man where he could buy a ready-made headgear for hanging from a southeast branch.

I thought it should be sold in a relatively professional sports equipment store or something similar.

As it turned out, the old man simply pointed and said that he could buy it at a small shop just a hundred meters away!

Luo Xiu was shocked.

The surrounding amenities of this community park are simply outrageously complete.

The convenience store at the entrance not only sells water, but also latex resistance bands and headgear that are most needed at this time, and even yoga mats and sweat-absorbing terry cloths.

Luo Xiu immediately felt that he had made the right choice.

Since professional Iron Neck trainers are expensive and hard to find, let's build a low-spec version ourselves using basic physics principles.

As long as the direction of resistance is correct, muscles cannot distinguish between high-end equipment and ordinary rubber elastic bands.

I took out my phone, scanned the QR code, and paid with WeChat Pay for 59.9 yuan.

Then, in the corner of the horizontal bar area, the style suddenly changed.

This place looks like an execution site.

Luo Xiu wrapped three high-strength latex elastic bands around the horizontal bar posts and crossbeams respectively.

The other end is connected to a simple headgear, which hangs below the horizontal bar, about two meters above the ground.

After it was installed, Luo Xiu found a stool, stood on it, and put the hood over his head.

A mischievous kid who was always looking for trouble stopped when he saw this scene and watched with great interest, his nose running.

Luo Xiu, after securing the headgear, gave it a quick test.

He stood ramrod straight, then slowly leaned forward, stretching the elastic band.

The final image freezes.

Luo restored Michael Jackson's classic 45° straight-body anti-gravity move, and it was almost identical except for the area above the neck.

At that moment, he felt incredibly cool.

The muscles on both sides of his neck bulged out like taut steel cables, and every tiny tremor was a reminder that his neck was about to give way.

He could only maintain the position for two or three seconds before realizing something was wrong. He exerted his strength and, without serious injury, managed to stand upright back to the ground.

"Perfect."

Luo Xiu felt that the three elastic bands were more than enough to hold his body weight, so he no longer hesitated and used his toes to push the stool to the side.

The person was completely suspended in the air, and then he mustered all his strength to sway left and right, looking just like a bitterling that had just been fished out of the water and was struggling.

The scene was like someone hanging themselves.

A little girl passing by pointed at him and asked her mother, her voice trembling with tears, "Mommy, is that brother hanging himself?"

The young mother quickly covered her child's eyes and hurried away, saying, "Don't look, that's a mentally ill person."

Upon hearing this, the mischievous child who had been watching the commotion from the sidelines was also frightened and fled in panic.

Luo Xiu automatically blocked out the surrounding noise; he only needed to focus on one thing now—

Hang in there.

The moment you reach exhaustion is when muscle fibers are torn, then remodel and become stronger.

This is neck strength training.

Luo Xiu felt like he was a genius at coming up with ideas.

Luo Xiu decided to name this training method the "Luo's Training Method" (again, please do not imitate it).

Not far away, a black Volkswagen Magotan silently glided into the residential area.

The car body was spotless.

The car door opened, and a middle-aged woman in a gray business suit stepped out.

She was carrying freshly bought celery, but she stood ramrod straight with sharp eyes, like an invigilator inspecting an exam hall.

Ms. Pan is a top-notch physics teacher at a key provincial high school and also Luo Xiu's mother.

She changed her schedule today and left work two hours early.

This variable was clearly beyond Luo Xiu's expectations.

Ms. Pan pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, and behind the lenses, her eyes, which always seemed to see through students' cheating methods, were now quietly watching the horizontal bar area not far away.

She saw that familiar figure.

I saw that狰狞 expression, as if he were being tortured.

I also saw those elastic bands digging into my flesh.

An ordinary mother who saw this scene would most likely scream and rush to save the person.

But Ms. Pan simply stood there and calmly watched for a full ten seconds.

She is evaluating.

Is this teenage performance art? Or is he really having a mental breakdown?

Or is it some kind of stress response caused by excessive pressure?

The surrounding air pressure seemed to drop instantly.

Luo Xiu, who was on the verge of exhaustion, suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

This intuition is more sensitive than any sensor; it's an alert instinct ingrained in our genes, like Spider-Man's spider-sense.

Training terminated.

Luo Xiu gripped the horizontal bar posts with both hands, preparing to tiptoe and move the stool that had been pushed aside earlier back to its original position.

Ms. Pan walked forward carrying celery, her high heels clicking crisply and rhythmically on the cement floor.

She stood two meters away, without becoming hysterical or bursting into tears.

Her tone was chilling, as calm as if she were announcing a disciplinary decision:

"If it's to avoid the monthly exam, this self-inflicted injury is a bit too costly."

Luo Xiu, panting heavily, reached down and removed the towel from his forehead, which was already soaked with sweat.

A deep purplish-red ligature mark was clearly visible on his neck, a shocking sight at first glance.

Ms. Pan's gaze lingered on the ligature mark for 0.5 seconds before quickly moving upwards to look at the elastic bands tied to the horizontal bar.

"If you're trying to drive me crazy, I suggest you find a more dignified way."

She walked up to Luo Xiu, extended a slender finger, and disdainfully picked at the elastic band that smelled of rubber, as if inspecting a defective teaching aid.

"The school waived your 300,000 yuan tuition fee for the year, hoping you would make a name for yourself on the college entrance examination honor roll."

"If you cripple yourself, that constitutes malicious damage to public property."

Ms. Pan turned her head and stared at Luo Xiu.

"Not only will we have to give back the scholarship, but we can't afford the penalty for breach of contract."

Luo Xiu calmed his breathing.

"You're back early."

As Luo Xiu disassembled his low-end training equipment, he spoke with feigned composure.

His voice was still a little hoarse, caused by congestion in his neck muscles compressing his vocal cords.

"It's not early." Ms. Pan glanced at the quartz watch on her wrist.

"Just in time for this good show."

The second half of this "good show" moved to the living room at home.

There was no joint trial as I had imagined.

Ms. Pan sat at the head of the table, even holding a red pen in her hand, grading a set of science comprehensive test papers that had just been collected.

The only sound in the air was the scratching of the red pen on the paper; each stroke felt like a surgical operation.

For the answers being reviewed, they are precise and fatal.

Luo Xiu didn't have the leisure for such refined pursuits.

He turned the pockets of the large school uniform inside out.

Then, he took out a stack of banknotes.

That's the prize money from yesterday's competition, 5000 yuan.

The red banknotes, stained with the smell of sweat, created a strong visual contrast with the dark wood of the dining table.

Snapped.

Luo Xiu slammed the money on the table.

The sound wasn't loud enough because the money was too soft.

But he captured the air of "I'm coming clean."

Ms. Pan stopped writing with her red pen.

She pushed up her glasses, the lenses reflecting a cold light, and her gaze shifted from the momentum conservation problem on the exam paper to the stack of banknotes.

"Isn't this suicide compensation?"