The Beginning: Body Tempering

"Metal and tiger, lead... lead and mercury, did not lie beyond the Five Elements. All things came into being, formed through yang, born through... yin..."

A slight youth in green walked along the mountain path from Tianyu Peak to Tianhao Peak, reciting under his breath as he limped along. He carried a large bamboo basket in his hand. It was Lin Hang, delivering meals for Luo Bei.

If anyone in Shushan had listened closely to what he was reciting, they would have known that he was still reciting the principles from the ordinary introductory scriptures of Shushan.

Scriptures were generally profound and difficult to read. Being able to recite them aloud smoothly often made them easier to remember than silently reading them. But Lin Hang stuttered. Though he often remembered the words, once he got stuck on a sentence, he would forget the next one he had originally memorized and be unable to recite it. Moreover, much of his time was assigned to menial chores, leaving him far less time to cultivate than ordinary disciples. Naturally, it took him much longer to memorize the scriptures.

In the eyes of so many martial brothers, Lin Hang was not only useless, but also withdrawn, introverted, and unable to fit in. Yet if one looked carefully at the basket in his hand, one would find that not only was its top covered with thick cloth, but the inside had also been wrapped layer upon layer in cloth.

He had clearly done this so the food would stay warm better.

All because of a single word of concern from Luo Bei, because Luo Bei had not looked down on him, this withdrawn youth silently used this method to repay him.

"Senior Brother Lin Hang, you're here?"

With a creak, Lin Hang had only just pushed open the courtyard gate when Luo Bei's clear voice came from within.

"Luo... Luo Bei... Junior Brother..."

"Come in quickly." Luo Bei promptly opened the door and welcomed him inside.

Though it was only a simple gesture, Lin Hang already felt a wave of warmth. But... one was a genius valued by all of Shushan, while the other was a piece of trash whose two years of cultivation had not measured up to three months of an entry disciple's training... The distance between them was truly too great.

Lin Hang silently set the still-steaming food on Luo Bei's table.

"You... you..." What Lin Hang had wanted to tell Luo Bei was that Senior Brother Ming Zhe had specifically instructed him that if Luo Bei found any dishes unpalatable, or had anything he particularly liked to eat, he could say so. Since those in Shushan who had cultivated to Xiao Xiao's level basically ate very little, the food in Shushan's ordinary kitchens was roughly limited to those few kinds. Yet before Lin Hang could even get several words out, Luo Bei had already swept through one bowl of rice like a whirlwind and was serving himself a second.

"Today's... today's food was... delicious?" Watching Luo Bei quickly finish his second bowl, Lin Hang finally managed to say a complete sentence.

"Yes." Luo Bei chuckled and nodded. "Senior Brother Lin Hang, you haven't eaten yet. If I finish quickly, you can go back and eat earlier too."

Warmth welled up in Lin Hang's heart again. "No... no rush... I'm not hungry."

"Actually, next time you can eat before coming over. But... Senior Brother Lin Hang, there's something I wonder if you could help me with?"

"Wh... what?"

"My appetite seems especially large these past two days. I keep getting hungry at night... Could you bring me a little more rice for dinner...?"

"Th... that can certainly be done."

"Thank you, Senior Brother Lin Hang. Oh, and this is for you. You can use it if you get tired on the way there and back."

"Th... this..." At a glance, Lin Hang saw that what Luo Bei handed him were the Divine Speed Talismans Zi Xuangu had given Luo Bei that day. These Divine Speed Talismans were nothing at all to Shushan, but to Lin Hang... they carried tremendous weight.

For they were not merely several talismans that could save him considerable effort and time, but also a heavy... friendship.

"If there's... anything else you want, you can tell me."

Lin Hang silently accepted the talismans Luo Bei handed him. As he gathered up Luo Bei's finished bowls and chopsticks and left the room, he spoke this entire sentence smoothly.

Lin Hang himself did not realize that this was the most fluent sentence he had spoken in nearly two years.

As he walked along the already pitch-black mountain path, for the first time Lin Hang did not feel humiliated that, though he too was a Shushan disciple, he had to serve someone else.

Because Luo Bei treated him as a friend!

Why had Junior Brother Luo Bei's appetite become so huge? He ate three whole bowls of rice and would still be hungry at night. Tomorrow, I'll bring more food, and some pastries he can eat at night too. Amid the biting mountain wind, this frail youth merely felt such warm thoughts rise in his heart.

"Martial Uncle Xiao Xiao said that, judging by how quickly I learned to read and recognize characters and recite scriptures, in another ten-odd days I could go to Tianyu Peak and cultivate with the other martial brothers."

Watching Lin Hang's figure vanish into the black mountain scenery, Luo Bei worriedly thought, I wonder whether Martial Uncle and the others will grow suspicious now that my appetite is so large...

It turned out that on that day, when Luo Bei had eagerly begun cultivating the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion, the moment the vital energy within his body completed its tenth circulation, his meridians seemed to be forcibly torn apart. Agonizing pain, utterly unlike ordinary bodily pain, shot straight into his Sea of Consciousness, making his scalp tingle and his Primordial Spirit tremble.

But before cultivating, Luo Bei had learned through the transmission that if he failed to hold onto his consciousness at that moment and lost control of the vital energy in his meridians, that scattered energy would surge rampantly through his body like floodwaters bursting through a dike. Even if he did not die, he would be blasted into a state of severe internal ruin.

External wounds were easy to treat, but such injuries within the body were the most dangerous. The difficulty of cultivation lay greatly in this as well.

Thus, even though every inch the vital energy traveled through his meridians brought sharp, excruciating pain like knives slicing and needles stabbing, Luo Bei still held tightly to his Spiritual Sense. Only after that stream of vital energy had circulated once through all the meridians in his body and returned to his Sea of Consciousness, only after he emerged from the state of Internal observation and selfless visualization, did Luo Bei realize that he had cultivated for merely half an hour, yet his whole body was drenched in sweat, as if he had just been dragged out of water. Every meridian in his body still ached as though torn apart. His body continued to tremble faintly, and his strength was nearly exhausted.

"By rights, drawing spiritual energy into the body should nourish it. One should feel comfortable and light, so why did my meridians feel injured, as though ruptured? Could I have cultivated it incorrectly?" Through cultivating the Mahākāla Secret Method and reading Shushan's texts on self-cultivation and nurturing qi over the previous days, Luo Bei had already come to understand some principles. He vaguely sensed something was wrong and thought he might have cultivated incorrectly.

Yet over the next two or three days, every time he cultivated according to the methods of the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion and completed ten circulations, every meridian throughout his body would ache as though torn apart. Sometimes, the pain would not fade for an entire night, as if he were enduring cruel torture.

After cultivating continuously for two or three days, Luo Bei focused and examined himself, only to discover that in his Sea of Consciousness, the spiritual energy drawn into his body amounted to little more than a few faint threads, seemingly not much different from before he began cultivating. It was nothing like cultivating the Mahākāla Secret Method, where he could clearly sense spiritual energy condensing and taking form. Only his strength seemed slightly greater than usual these past few days, while his appetite had increased greatly. Two bowls of rice had once been enough to fill him, but now after three bowls, with even the vegetables completely eaten, he would still wake in the middle of the night ravenously hungry.

In truth, although Luofu's founding ancestor had been astonishingly gifted and created the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion, he had been like certain people who attained enlightenment through meditation, comprehended the mysteries of Heaven and Earth, and created peerless cultivation arts. Though they grasped the principles and created the arts, they did not necessarily cultivate them to their highest pinnacle.

Cultivation was like traveling a road. Even if one could already see what lay at its end, one still had to walk it step by step.

And Luofu's founding ancestor deeply understood the nine deaths and one life involved in cultivating this art. Several successive generations of disciples had failed in their cultivation and suffered the destruction of body and soul, which was why he later created the Empty Life Extinguishing Sea Glazed Art.

In fact, Yuan Tianyi's Empty Life Extinguishing Sea Glazed Art had been a simplified cultivation art, relatively safe and easy to cultivate, separated from the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion by several generations of Luofu's astonishingly gifted Ancestor Masters.

It was like the difference between Qingcheng's Great Capital Heavenly Technique and Lesser Capital Heavenly Technique.

Over more than a dozen generations, Luofu only came to possess a place for transmitting scriptures and teaching the Dao in the era of the Ancestor Master who built that vast scripture hall within the mountain's belly. Only then did its inherited cultivation arts accumulate in ever greater numbers, and only then did it acquire the art of transmitting scriptures through empowerment. By Yuan Tianyi's generation, Yuan Tianyi had come to know all things, as if there were nothing he did not know. Yet by the generation of the Ancestor Master who built the great hall, no one had cultivated the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion anymore.

For even the Empty Life Extinguishing Sea Glazed Art was not something ordinary people could successfully cultivate. Among those dozen or more generations of Ancestor Masters, some had not passed down the Empty Life Extinguishing Sea Glazed Art to disciples according to their aptitudes.

Therefore, although the knowledge Yuan Tianyi had imparted to Luo Bei through empowerment broadly told him that cultivating the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion required enduring boundless suffering as the body was forged, assaults from all sorts of illusory demons and true realms, and nine great trials of life and death, Luo Bei could still find no specific details in his mind.

In truth, the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion and the Empty Life Extinguishing Sea Glazed Art were both arts for Body Attainment of Sainthood. In the several initial stages of cultivation, after Qi Introduction, they were all used for Body Tempering!

Of ten parts of qi, nine were for tempering and one for nourishment. Of the ten parts of spiritual energy drawn into the body, nine were used to temper the meridians. Tempering the meridians was like refining steel a hundred times over—smelting it in a furnace, hammering it without cease. As the meridians were tempered, fused, and strengthened by spiritual energy, they inevitably suffered damage before recovering; the process was naturally agonizing beyond measure. The sole remaining part of spiritual energy also had to be used to repair the injured portions within the meridians. Naturally, there would not be much spiritual energy left in the Sea of Consciousness.

Only upon reaching the third realm of the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion, when the meridians inside and outside the body had been tempered to a certain degree, would cultivation of the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion naturally advance into five parts tempering and five parts nourishment.

At that time, after the remaining spiritual energy had repaired the body and there was a considerable surplus, it would circulate within the body after cultivation ended, allowing the cultivator to unleash art formulas.

Once any Body Attainment of Sainthood art was cultivated to its end and the Indestructible Golden Body was achieved, the entire body would be forged from Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy. Even if one were cut off from Heaven and Earth, the vital energy contained within the body would still far exceed that of cultivators of other arts. Thus, even after Huang Wushen used peerless divine power to sever Yuan Tianyi's connection to Heaven and Earth, and Yuan Tianyi was struck for a time by the god-slaying, immortal-extinguishing Three Corpses Exterminating God Arrow, he could still release a formula that even Jiuba could not withstand.

Thus, at the end of cultivation, one's entire body truly became the strongest magical treasure in the world. Any spell that consumed vast amounts of magical power could be used as casually as plucking a flower. Yet the progress of such cultivation was clearly much slower than other Dao arts, where nine parts of every ten parts of qi were stored away.

Luo Bei did not understand these subtle principles, but he had never doubted Yuan Tianyi's words. He only thought his sudden increase in appetite was because each night's cultivation left him utterly drained from resisting the pain and required enormous physical exertion. He did not know that tempering and repairing the meridians throughout his body also required a great deal of nourishment from food, and that the torrents of sweat pouring from him every night also carried impurities expelled from his flesh and meridians by the cultivation art.

"Kan was one, Li was two; from yin, return to yang. Fire was one, water was two; from yang, return to yin. Water was two, fire was one..." Luo Bei opened the scripture scroll on the table once more. Every day now, from daylight until dusk, Luo Bei diligently learned to read and recognize characters and recited scripture scrolls. At night, when no one was around, he cultivated without distracting thoughts the sole Luofu Art Yuan Tianyi had passed down to him: the Eternal Life Sutra of Delusion.