Effort

A huge bucket of cold water was poured over Luo Zheng, and milky-white impurities flowed all over the ground with the water.

After entering the Bone Refining Realm, his fleshly body no longer contained any impurities. What was now being forced out were the milky-white impurities within his bones.

Once all the impurities had been washed away, Luo Zheng felt refreshed from head to toe.

These days, Steward Fang no longer dared to trouble him, giving Luo Zheng much more room to maneuver.

At night, Luo Zheng propped the iron bed upright against the stone wall of the cellar, then wrapped the bedframe layer by layer with cotton batting, turning it into a crude wooden training dummy.

Because the bedframe pressed tightly against the cellar wall, most of the force was absorbed by the solid stone, so the iron bed would not be smashed apart by a few of Luo Zheng's punches. And with the cotton batting wrapped around it, the sound of every punch was reduced to a minimum. Since he was in the cellar to begin with, no one outside could possibly know he was secretly training.

The Rosewood Fist he practiced had been passed down through the Luo Family for several hundred years. It was a supreme art never taught outside the family, and even collateral disciples were not readily taught it.

After stepping into the Bone Refining Realm, the moves within the Rosewood Fist that he had once been unable to practice now came as easily as picking up a twig.

"Rosewood Inch Strength!"

"Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!"

Seven dull booms burst from the stone wall.

Rosewood Inch Strength was the most profound move in the Rosewood Fist. A single burst of inch strength could inflict multiple layers of damage, and the number of times it struck revealed one's mastery of the technique.

Seven dull booms meant seven instances of destruction. Luo Zheng was not particularly satisfied with that result.

His father had once told Luo Zheng that, while in the Bone Refining Realm, he could strike eight layers of damage. Yet Luo Zheng, also in the Bone Refining Realm, could only produce seven. His understanding of Rosewood Inch Strength was still not deep enough. It seemed he had to press on with redoubled effort!

Punch after punch struck the cotton batting, producing dull thuds one after another.

After entering the Bone Refining Realm, Luo Zheng's strength had also surged wildly.

Luo Peiran had already reached the peak of the Bone Refining Realm, and every punch of his carried more than a thousand jin of force.

Luo Zheng had only just entered the Bone Refining Realm. He estimated that his punching force was around seven to eight hundred jin.

That level of strength was still not enough to catch anyone's eye.

The most crucial issue was that Luo Zheng wanted to enter the Azure Cloud Sect.

Whenever he thought of his younger sister facing the wall at Purgatory Mountain, it felt as though a stone were lodged in his heart.

Luo Yan had always been obedient. She could not possibly have stirred up trouble, so she must have been harmed by treacherous people. He had to enter the Azure Cloud Sect as soon as possible. Only then could he protect Luo Yan.

"Bang bang bang bang!" The force behind each of his punches increased by several degrees.

The Azure Cloud Sect was the greatest sect in the Imperial Capital, recruiting disciples across the entire empire every year.

All the young people of the Imperial Capital regarded the Azure Cloud Sect as their greatest goal. It gathered the Imperial Capital's finest cultivation resources and had the strongest experts to offer guidance.

But the conditions for entering the Azure Cloud Sect were also extremely harsh.

Either one possessed extraordinary talent, like his sister Luo Yan, and was admitted as an exception.

Or one had overwhelming strength and stood out among countless young people. The strength of the Bone Refining Realm alone was probably still not enough.

My body is being tempered by others now, and my progress is changing with each passing day. But if I want to improve rapidly in a short time, I still need to train bitterly!

With that thought, he smashed his fist into the stone wall again.

Luo Zheng had always possessed a heart that pursued the ultimate of martial arts. In the past, he had worked with meticulous care, advancing step by step. Even his father had greatly praised his son's remarkable perseverance.

But after his father died, he had been reduced to a Family Slave. His state of mind suffered a tremendous blow, and that was why his martial path had stagnated.

But Luo Zheng had now regained that confidence. For the sake of his goal, he rose in pursuit with all his strength.

That night, he scarcely slept at all.

He did not know how many punches he threw. Under the pounding of Luo Zheng's fists, the cotton batting had been pressed tightly against the wall. He had no choice but to tear it down and gently pull it apart by hand before it could return to its original shape.

By day, it was still endless fists, endless tempering.

To cultivate faster, even being beaten had become something Luo Zheng actively pursued.

He voluntarily asked the Luo Family Disciples to hit him, even though there was a risk that someone might notice.

After all, after being beaten so many times, having not a single injury anywhere on his body would easily arouse suspicion.

But Luo Zheng could not concern himself with so much. Only by getting beaten as much as possible could he temper himself sooner and raise his strength sooner.

Some Luo Family Disciples did indeed find it strange. Luo Zheng had been beaten more and more often recently, yet his spirits only seemed to improve. How did he look like someone being beaten? He looked more like the one doing the beating!

But when they remembered that Luo Zheng had served as a Meat Target for two years and was still alive and vigorous, they could only describe him as tenaciously alive. These Luo Family Disciples had no interest in probing the secrets of a Meat Target. After all, they cultivated in order to beat people, not to be beaten. Even if Luo Zheng had some special defensive technique, they could not be bothered to learn about it.

During this period, more and more impurities were washed from Luo Zheng's bones. Whenever he bathed, the clear water flowing across the floor would immediately turn into a broad expanse of milky white, as thick and rich as milk.

The impurities tempered out by the Warm Current in a single day were nearly equal to the impurities others refined out over several months. One day of being beaten was equivalent to several months of others' cultivation. This cultivation speed was like a miracle!

Beaten by day, practicing fists by night, he trained diligently without pause, not daring to stop for even an instant.

During this time, his total sleep had probably not amounted to ten hours. Yet he did not feel the slightest weariness, and his eyes remained as clear and bright as ever.

The reason his spirit was so full was likely related to the mysterious "Nine Dragons Furnace" in his mind. That day, his soul had been refined once by the Nine Dragons Furnace. It had shattered hundreds and thousands of times, and every shattering had made him wish he were dead.

But after enduring that agony, his spirits had remained exceptionally good. His soul must have been tempered as well!

Within the human body, the most difficult thing to cultivate was the soul. Anyone could temper the body; even those who did not practice martial arts could exercise their bodies.

But the soul lay hidden within the body's secret realm, unseen and untouchable, like those illusory distant shores in Buddhist verses. Ordinary people simply found it impossible to temper.

It was said that within the Azure Cloud Sect, only certain higher-level secret manuals could affect a person's soul, texts such as the Soul Refining Art.

Those mysterious realms were beyond Luo Zheng's reach, and he did not dwell on them. Since he did not need sleep, he could use that time to cultivate.

In the blink of an eye, more than twenty days passed.

"Boom!"

This punch of Luo Zheng's cracked the thick stone wall of the cellar.

He had used only seventy percent of his strength in that punch, yet its power was already terrifying. If he had not held back, he feared he would have brought down the entire cellar with one strike.

More than half a month of tempering had brought another advancement in Luo Zheng's strength.

He had leaped from the middle stage of the Bone Refining Realm to its peak. The strength of one hand could reach a thousand jin. A thousand jin was One Cauldron Force.

For martial artists, One Cauldron Force was a dividing line. Only after reaching One Cauldron Force could one be considered to have entered the hall and crossed the threshold, formally stepping onto the path of martial arts.

In less than a month, he had gone from the peak of the Flesh Refining Realm to the peak of the Bone Refining Realm, crossing an entire major level. Not only had such cultivation speed never appeared in the Luo Family, there was likely no second person like him in the entire empire.

After all, refining impurities through bodily cultivation relied on perseverance and persistence, on training day after day for decades. The impurities one could refine each day were pitifully few.

But using tempering to "hammer" the impurities out of one's fleshly body was more than a hundred or even a thousand times faster...

Yet while being beaten today, he sensed that his body seemed to have undergone some change.

The punches and kicks he usually endured did not cause him pain, but he could still feel their weight. Today, he discovered that the fists of these Luo Family Disciples seemed to have grown lighter.

Luo Zheng secretly observed them. The Luo Family Disciples beating him were not holding back, so why did he feel this way?

Not only that, the Warm Current produced whenever a punch landed on his body had diminished greatly.

If one punch had previously produced a Warm Current the size of a thumb, then now a punch could only produce one the size of a little finger. With less Warm Current, the efficiency of washing his fleshly body naturally declined.

That evening, after returning to the cellar and bathing, he found that the impurities forced from his body had clearly decreased by about half.

These changes stirred a trace of worry in Luo Zheng's heart. Where exactly had the problem arisen?

Could it be that his body had become harder?

According to the records of that mysterious artifact-refining cultivation method, the strength of his fleshly body was now comparable to a low-grade Mysterious Artifact.

When a Mysterious Artifact was continuously tempered, its strength would gradually increase. Once it reached a certain level of toughness, ordinary force would no longer have much tempering effect.

Most of the Luo Family Disciples in the Martial Arts Practice Hall were in the Skin Refining Realm. Even Luo Dalong was in the Skin Refining Realm, though he had been born with divine strength, making his power comparable to that of the Flesh Refining Realm.

Now, several hundred jin of force striking Luo Zheng's body no longer had much effect. It seemed he could only find stronger people to temper him if he wanted results.

But where could Luo Zheng find them? He could not exactly ask the Luo Family elders to do it...

In a few days, it will be Clan Training Day. On Clan Training Day, the Luo Family Disciples will all give their all, so the force used to beat me should increase considerably. More importantly, if I can defeat my opponent in a Death Duel that day, I can rightfully cast off the identity of Family Slave and leave the Luo Family openly and honorably.

With Luo Zheng's current physical strength, those Luo Family Disciples could not shake him in the slightest. So what if he let them beat him for a day and a night?

In the cellar, Luo Zheng's bright eyes blinked. Under the candlelight, his face revealed an unyielding resolve.

He had not forgotten the hatred of his father's murder for even a moment. He had once endured humiliation and survived in secret only because his strength had been too weak. But now, by fortune, he possessed that miraculous artifact-refining cultivation method, which had created his special physique and allowed his strength to advance by leaps and bounds. He had to seize this opportunity...