Iron Arms Bronze Body Proud Nine Heavens, Divine Needle Medicine Secretly Mixed

Though enduring hardship would not make one superior to others—only eating people would—but Chen Ping was not asking for much right now. Being able to count as a person was enough.

With Innate Level Two Soul Power, he might count as someone on Douluo Continent. But if he successfully enrolled at Shrek, then counting as someone with Innate Level Two Soul Power was probably impossible.

After all, not everyone was Huo Yuhao. He started with a million-year soul ring; Chen Ping had jack shit.

"Boss, how could we not make full use of Medicinal Cuisine bath time to study? What do you want to learn today, Boss? Soul Beast traits, Martial Soul basics, or an introduction to Soul Tools?"

Just as Chen Ping was being tortured by the internally consumed and externally applied medicines until every muscle in his body spasmed, foam nearly forming at his lips, the system's voice rang out once more within his Sea of Consciousness.

Watching the Scholar Points in the upper-right corner of the system panel steadily rise, Chen Ping trembled as he forced the pill—sticky and mushy from chewing, like sour, spoiled taffy that clung to his teeth—down his throat.

"Today... I'll review Advanced Mathematics. Tang San came from a sect in a martial arts world, so he had martial arts secrets built in. This little bit is all I can bring with me. If I forget it all too, then I'll truly have nothing left."

Gritting his teeth and shivering, Chen Ping looked toward the upper-right corner of the system's light screen. The steadily increasing Scholar Points instantly had ten deducted, and a string of randomly generated questions appeared before him.

As Chen Ping endured the triple torment of the medicinal bath, pills, and Advanced Mathematics, his Scholar Points began to surge as well, jumping upward every few minutes or so.

Focusing on body tempering with cheap but decent-quality Body Tempering Odd-Flavored Soup, Scholar Points +2

Focusing on refining cheap but noticeably effective Pungent Great Strength Pills, Scholar Points +2

Reviewing Advanced Mathematics knowledge without much focus, studying with a troubled expression, Scholar Points +1

Focusing on...

Focusing on refining...

As the saying went, "Enter a room filled with orchids, and after a long time you no longer notice their fragrance; enter a fishmonger's shop, and after a long time you no longer notice its stench."

Whether it was the bizarre taste of the Great Strength Pills or the needle-prickling, fire-searing pain the Body Tempering Soup inflicted on his skin, both were hard to bear.

But when he soaked for an entire afternoon at a time, the pain gradually became more tolerable as time passed.

After all, these medicines were genuinely cheap. Other than smelling so disgusting they made people want to die and causing intense pain throughout the body, they did not have any major side effects.

Chen Ping had once wanted the system to analyze the formula for the Profound Water Pill.

But since he had never even seen a Profound Water Pill, directly analyzing its formula through a remote search would require an astronomical number of Scholar Points.

Moreover, given the Profound Water Pill's high unit price, low yield, and fixed annual production, Chen Ping knew perfectly well that even if he obtained the formula, producing Profound Water Pills would be anything but easy.

Whether he could scrape together the money for the ingredients, whether he could gather the medicinal materials even if he had the money, and whether he could make Profound Water Pills even after gathering the materials—those were three separate matters.

Compared to that, the Body Tempering Odd-Flavored Soup, which could fill a huge pot for just a few Gold Soul Coins, and the Pungent Great Strength Pills, which could increase one's strength, were unbelievably cost-effective.

If he could not endure the hardship of taking pills, then he would have to endure the hardship of life. Every afternoon, after finishing his problems in the bathing barrel, Chen Ping would suppress the aching sensation in his limbs and bones, which creaked and popped nonstop, and undergo two more hours of the Exhaustion Physical Fitness Package.

Squats, deadlifts, clean and jerks, flyes—he did every exercise that could help absorb the medicine's effects, all to refine every last trace of residual medicinal power after bathing and taking pills.

Only after pushing his physical strength to its limit, until he could not squeeze out even a shred of strength, would Chen Ping drain the lightly salted water he had prepared in his flask that morning.

He climbed into bed with a weary face. Only then, feeling the soreness of his torn muscles constantly regrowing throughout his body, would Chen Ping enter meditation.

Reality was no fairy tale. Even though Chen Ping had Laozi's "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao,"

Bodhi Patriarch's "Gather and combine the Five Elements, use them in reverse; when the work is complete, become Buddha or immortal,"

and Myriad Longevity Emperor Lord's "Refine your form until it resembles a crane's; beneath a thousand pines, read two boxes of scriptures,"

not understanding the circulation routes of cultivation techniques meant he simply did not understand them.

Those mental cultivation formulas were probably meant for a cultivation universe. Their level was too high, making them utterly useless on Douluo Continent instead.

It was like throwing a hard drive containing humanity's universal science and technology into the world fifty thousand years ago.

Though priceless, given that the Upper Cave Men had generally only progressed from Acheulean Stone Tools and Mousterian Stone Tools to microlithic toolmaking, that hard drive would at most count as an exquisitely crafted ritual object.

No mental cultivation formula? Fine. Low Innate Soul Power? Fine. Slow Cultivation Speed? Fine. As long as he kept swallowing medicine, everything would get better.

Medicinal baths, pills, and exercise—Chen Ping's muscles were numb and sore, his blood and vital energy roiled, and abundant medicinal power churned through his body.

Even with only Innate Level Two Soul Power, Chen Ping's Meditative Cultivation speed at this moment was in no way inferior to that of an ordinary Soul Master with Innate Soul Power at Level Four or Five.

Cultivation was just like that: thirty percent training, seventy percent eating, and the remaining nine hundred percent left to pills and supplements.

With Chen Ping's current cultivation method, calling him a practitioner of Douluo Continent's demonic path would not be an exaggeration at all.

Compared to him, even those Soul Engineers of the Sun Moon Empire who had cultivated their way up by swallowing pills could be considered natural cultivation purists.

Chen Ping personally greatly approved of the Sun Moon Empire Soul Masters' cultivation methods.

What did "using pills to squeeze out potential" mean?

It meant "the visible hand proactively regulating cultivation levels across all age groups, bringing future cultivation forward for present use."

Take Jing Hongchen's grandson, Xiao Hongchen, for example. During his second All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Tournament, he took pills and reached Soul Saint at just twenty. So what if he saw little improvement over the next five years?

According to the system, Chen Ping was not yet fifteen and his body was still within the Newbie Protection Period. Even if he squeezed out ten points of potential, he would basically only need to repay the principal later.

If Chen Ping kept doing this after reaching his twenties or thirties, then cashing in ten points of potential for cultivation might require him to repay twenty points of potential, principal and interest included, later on.

If he withdrew five years' worth of cultivation now, then he might fail to make any progress at all for the next ten years.

That was why Chen Ping dared to use these supplements without restraint. They were cheap, and their effects were powerful.

If their only side effects were a terrible smell and tearing pain throughout the body during use, then who could resist using them?

Medicine had to be taken early. Though many Soul Engineers in the Sun Moon Empire had become addicted to using medicine, they still did not dare imitate Chen Ping and start using potions so aggressively at eleven.

By the time they reached their twenties or thirties, when cultivation grew slower and slower, it would already be too late to think of swallowing pills.

As the saying went:

Iron arms and a bronze body, proud beneath the nine heavens; divine needles and medicinal liquids secretly fine-tuned.

Swallow invigorating supplements, and my fate is mine, not Heaven's.