This had much to do with the Great Patience Divine Skill Ning Ke cultivated. Or rather, it was precisely a mark of achievement in cultivating the Great Patience Divine Skill: the thicker the calluses on one's palms, the higher one's realm.
What was patience? To give an example, when pain was inflicted upon one's body and one endured it without making a sound, that was patience. To allow calluses to spread across one's palms was, for a woman who loved beauty, an intolerable thing. Being able to endure it without changing was also patience.
To truly remove the calluses and attain hands bright and beautiful, one had to cultivate the Great Patience Divine Skill to the Break-Fate Realm, where one could endure no longer and need endure no more. This level of cultivation could also be called attaining the Dao.
Once one reached this step, when patience could no longer be endured, what followed would be an eruption like mountain floods and tsunamis, like a volcano spewing forth—raising monstrous waves and standing above all others with an invincible, fearless, unflinching bearing.
"Not bad. I am Xiang. Are you Ning Ke, the foremost female constable under heaven? Fine martial arts, fine cultivation."
Xiang Yang rose from the stone bench, straightened his slightly wrinkled clothes, then took two steps forward and stood facing Ning Ke.
The corners of his lips curled up. His eyes were filled with appreciation as he looked at her, even stronger than the appreciation he had shown Qi Hanjang and the other two—as though he were looking at one of his own kind.
Was Ning Ke's martial arts truly that formidable? They were indeed. In Xiang Yang's perception and judgment, even Qi Hanjang had not brought him the same stirring shock as this woman. Her overflowing vitality and