Hebei Province, Southern Lin County, inside a somewhat desolate mountain beyond the city.
At this time, under the Heavenly Cold and Earthly Freeze, several thousand men wore padded armor and gripped spears and blades, drilling without cease amid thunderous shouts. Dense Killing Intent and Blood Qi shot straight into the heavens. The army's fierce, blazing vitality drove away winter's chill, turning the mountain into a roaring furnace.
It not only dispelled every trace of cold from their bodies, but also set their hearts ablaze and sent their hot blood boiling.
This was the sight of an army with morale to spare and spirit soaring like a rainbow.
Meng Zhao, clad in azure robes and draped in a white fox-fur cloak, stood atop the mountain peak. Amid the swirling clouds and mist, he looked down at the soldiers drilling within the mountain, satisfaction filling his heart.
Of these four thousand men, the great majority did not practice Internal Martial Arts. They were merely ordinary people who tempered their bodies through fist techniques and weapons. Yet more than two hundred within the army possessed Internal Martial Arts cultivation. Regardless of how profound their attainments were, they were talents who could be put to use.
Moreover, the fist techniques practiced by the ordinary soldiers had been painstakingly created by Meng Zhao himself. They were intended to use moving exercises to stretch the sinews and bones, temper flesh and skin, and forge a secondary hard-body physique. They were still exceptionally fine—even elite—soldiers.
This so-called secondary hard-body physique was a lower-tier substitute Meng Zhao had devised based on the hard-body martial arts methods of Tian Yuan Dynasty Secret Medicine Martial Arts.
Hard-body martial arts were exceedingly domineering. Once mastered, they truly possessed boundless might and exceptional combat power, but the resources they consumed were equally