"Squat lower! I can't kick you!"
On the training ground, Shen Can angrily kicked the burly man in front of him.
Sure enough, with more clansmen came every strange sort imaginable.
His method was simple: he would screen every clansman in batches. After they had eaten their fill, they would practice the Kui Ox Fist before him.
Meanwhile, he would guide them one by one, taking the chance to teach them the essentials of the Superior Kui Ox Fist.
In the end, he would select a group of clansmen with the greatest talent for martial arts.
"Temple Heir, your foot doesn't hurt, does it?"
Huo Xiong, who had been kicked, rubbed the back of his head with a silly grin.
"My head hurts," Shen Can replied irritably.
"You kicked me with your foot. Why would your head hurt?"
Huo Xiong could not understand.
"Practice the Kui Ox Fist another ten times. If you make another mistake, then do it a hundred times."
He had thought he could quickly put the clansmen through the screening, but a small problem arose with the very first batch of three hundred.
Things like moving their right arm and right leg together—when many clansmen had practiced the already inferior Kui Ox Fist since childhood, they had developed their own unique bad habits.
They wanted to correct themselves in a short time, but habits were habits. Their arms simply would not listen to their brains.
Shen Can corrected their stances again and again, yet still could not pull them back onto the right path.
Compared to those minor issues, not a single clansman questioned how he, a frail shaman, could guide everyone in practicing the Kui Ox Fist.
Changing habits built up over long years of training was no easy matter for most people.
In the end, Shen Can chose to persuade them with reason and move them with a stick.
It was a teaching rod over a meter long and as thick as an arm—smooth from afar, but covered in knobby burl growths up close.
Talking was utterly useless. Wherever they went wrong, he struck there. His head no longer hurt at all.
Thus, four days had passed by the time the first batch was finished. He had yet to see any clansmen truly gifted in martial arts, but more than half had already been screened out.
Then came the second batch.
In any case, aside from the children, everyone else had to pass before him once. The women of the clan were no exception.
The clan's instruction in martial arts for children was not particularly good, but both boys and girls were taught during their youth.
It was merely that, as they grew older, men and women focused on different things. Thus, there were only a handful of Stone Splitter Realm martial artists among the women.
Shen Can carefully instructed every clansman.
Even those who were screened out could continue cultivating if they followed his teachings. Under the clan's current food supply system, they could still keep training.
In truth, aside from the Kui Ox Fist, the clan had gathered quite a few tribal legacies recently and found several body-tempering methods.
Shen Can intended to take some time in the future, once the tribe grew larger and he had accumulated enough desolate beast lifespans, to deduce them all together and enrich the clan's Martial Arts Legacy.
Not now. He did not have enough energy.
In this way, Shen Can busied himself for over half a month before finally completing the first round of screening. He selected nine hundred clansmen.
Of them, two hundred and seventy-seven were women.
They included Stone Splitter Realm and Mountain Opener realm martial artists.
On the tiered training ground, Mountain Opening Realm martial artists stood at the highest level, Stone Splitter Realm martial artists in the middle, and ordinary martial artists at the bottom.
However, there were only three Mountain Opening Realm martial artists. The rest of the Mountain Opening Realm clansmen and the Stone Splitter Realm martial artists all had duties.
Some patrolled the tribe, while others went out with Huo Shan to transport supplies.
With so many people accounting for more than a third of the tribe, it was unrealistic for all of them to abandon their ordinary duties and focus on martial arts.
Therefore, Shen Can planned to spend another half month conducting further screening. He expected that keeping three hundred people would be enough.
Those three hundred would form the tribe's standing martial force.
It was quite difficult for over two thousand people to support three hundred, but the plague had wiped out the other tribes, leaving the clan with ample meat instead.
That did not mean the screened-out clansmen would stop cultivating. Having trained along with them for so long, they would grasp the cultivation essence of the Superior Kui Ox Fist better than those eliminated in the first round.
So long as their cultivation resources kept up, they could still make great progress in martial arts.
After the tribe's upcoming reforms, this group would also become the backbone supporting all of the tribe's various tasks.
"You've eaten so much meat, and you still dare slack off? I'll beat you to death, you turtle grandson!"
"I think you've had meat to eat and forgotten what it was like to go hungry. Have you forgotten how you cried when you couldn't advance to become a martial artist?"
Elder Huo Yu carried an imperial whip as he walked through the formations of training clansmen. Whenever he saw someone slacking, he went over and gave them a vicious beating.
It was not just Huo Yu. Shen Can had summoned all the other elders of the older generation as well, giving each of them a small stick.
He was responsible for correcting the clansmen's Kui Ox Fist techniques, while the elders handled any slacking during training.
The elders were delighted to have a chance to shine in their twilight years.
The sight of clansmen wolfing down meat and howling with excitement was gone.
At the beginning, once they had been taught the essence of the Superior Kui Ox Fist and had enough meat to replenish themselves, they could feel their force increasing rapidly every day.
For several days straight, apart from sleeping and relieving themselves, they did nothing but gorge themselves and practice their fists fiercely.
Now, the huge pot of stewed meat sat right beside them. The scent of meat flooded their nostrils, yet they had no desire to eat at all.
"A-Can is a shaman! His body is so frail, yet he practices the Kui Ox Fist with you every single day without fail, and you still dare slack off like this?"
"Can you face A-Can? Can you face your ancestors?!"
At the highest point of the training ground, Shen Can withdrew his fist. Hearing the elder bring up his frail body again left him rather speechless.
He was nearly one meter ninety tall. How was he frail?
Every inch of him was prime meat.
Sacrificial Host: Shen Can Sacrificial Vessel: Sacrificial Cauldron Martial Arts Realm: Mountain Opening (twenty Desolate Power)
During the first two months, he had been busy treating the plague, then busy explaining the essentials of cultivation, which had affected his own training.
However, as the great pots of stewed meat continued to make up for it, the strength within his body began increasing once more.
After withdrawing his fist, Shen Can clasped his hands behind his back and headed toward the clan storehouse.
The tribe had always measured a martial artist's force in an extremely crude manner.
Whether vigorous adults advanced to Stone Splitter, or Stone Splitter martial artists advanced to Mountain Opening, all of it relied on feeling and experience.
Yet martial arts were, after all, something precise. Cultivating by feel naturally yielded results based on feel.
The clansmen had no way to measure it, but Shen Can could clearly sense every increase in his Desolate Power.
Thus, after pondering it for several days, he came up with a method.
He would use the tribe's Wooden Bows as standard tools for measuring strength.
Inside the clan storehouse, piles of Wooden Bows were either hung up or laid down. They had just been collected from the clan's martial artists; even the bows held by ordinary clansmen and children had been gathered.
He began selecting from the small bows. With a light pull, he drew one into the shape of a full moon.
He casually tossed it aside and picked up another.
Huo Yu watched from the side, somewhat baffled.
After Shen Can tested every bow one by one,
he selected three Wooden Bows from among them.
The one Desolate Bow, the Nine Desolate Power Bow, and the Eighteen Desolate Power Bow.
If the one Desolate Bow could be drawn into the shape of a full moon, it represented that one's force had entered one Desolate Power and that one had become a Stone Splitter Realm martial artist.
If the Nine Desolate Power Bow could be drawn into a full moon, it meant one was qualified to advance into the Mountain Opening Realm.
As for the Eighteen Desolate Power Bow, Shen Can had chosen it because he could currently draw it open, and its force was double that of the Nine Desolate Power Bow.
Although he did not know how many Desolate Powers were needed for the Mountain Opening Realm to advance to Heavenly Vein, he suspected that force might be related to multiples of nine.
Once his force continued to increase, he would add a Twenty-Seven Desolate Power Bow and a Thirty-Six Desolate Power Bow.
Compared to measuring strength with Black Yuan Stones, having these bows as measuring tools made things much clearer.
Of course, they could also use one bow for every Desolate Power.
But the clan's current bows could not be made with such precision. They would have to wait until after the tribal reforms to produce them separately.
That way, from childhood onward, every step until advancing to Mountain Opening would have a clearer measurement standard.
Shen Can understood very well how much it helped cultivation to clearly see one's own force increasing—the sense of achievement it brought was immense.
He tossed the selected bows to A'Yu to hold, then walked away with his hands behind his back.
He had no idea where Clan Chief Huo Tang had wandered off to. It had been so long, yet he still had not found a desolate beast. It seemed the surrounding wilderness had truly been scoured clean by the plague insects.
Returning to the training ground, Shen Can continued leading the clansmen in martial arts practice.
"What? You can't eat anymore? Aren't you the one who loves meat most?"
"Practice the entire Kui Ox Fist. For every mistake, add ten more rounds."
Holding the small teaching rod, Shen Can stood atop a specially built stone platform and conducted spot checks on the clansmen.
"Come, reward him with a bowl piled high with fatty meat."
"A-Can?"
Huo Yu's face twisted in misery. He could not eat anymore. He truly could not eat another bite.
"Call me Temple Heir."
Shen Can's expression darkened. "You can't even draw the Eighteen Desolate Power Bow. How do you have the nerve to call yourself a Mountain Opening Realm martial artist?"
"Elder, switch him to a basin."
When the nine hundred had dwindled to four hundred and thirty, Huo Tang finally returned from outside the tribe.
Huo Shan and a group of other clansmen returned with him, bringing supplies back.
Inside the ancestral temple.
"Eight hundred li east of the tribe, a thousand li south, and over seven hundred li west—there are no tribes anywhere, only a few scattered survivors."
Huo Tang brought back the news.
To put it somewhat exaggeratedly, within a thousand li around Blazing Flame, they were the only tribe left.
The worse news was that not only were there no people, even beasts were rare.
"In a valley deep within the Northern Mountains, there is a naturally formed marsh. There should be a desolate beast inside. I watched it for several days, but the marsh was too large, and I had no way to begin."
"A marsh."
Shen Can's eyes lit up after hearing that. He was rather skilled in water arts.
"Clan Chief, is it far?"
"The clansmen have trained in martial arts for so long. This can serve as a test. Now that we've selected three hundred people, it's time for them to bring something to eat for the ancestors."
"I'll prepare some neutralizing shaman medicine as well. Once the clansmen return from the mountains, perhaps they will undergo Rebirth and Transformation."
Please follow and read. The reading data for today and tomorrow is very important—it concerns which of the more than one hundred fantasy novels in this batch can advance to the next round of recommendations. Please follow and read.
Before you continue