That water vat weighed at least two hundred jin! No matter how much Lu Yang had loved playing in the mountains since he was little—climbing trees, swimming in rivers, shooting birds, and catching fish—he still couldn't lift a water vat that heavy.
Yun Zhi casually drew a talisman on the vat. Its weight plummeted until Lu Yang could just manage to lift it with one hand.
She brought out a puppet to supervise Lu Yang.
"Try lifting it for a day and see how it goes."
After leaving behind those offhand words, Yun Zhi vanished into the clouds. Lu Yang and the puppet stared at each other, then sighed. He tied his shirt around his waist and began his miserable life of lifting vats.
The puppet stood by and kept watch. Whenever Lu Yang rested for a moment, it immediately made him resume lifting, wringing every last bit of strength from him.
When his arms were completely spent, the puppet fed him two Great Tonic Pills. When his arms were so sore he couldn't move them, it fed him two Great Tonic Pills. When Lu Yang was so sleepy he wanted to go to bed, it fed him two Great Tonic Pills...
By the end of the day, Lu Yang's legs were trembling and his arms hung limp. He couldn't feel them at all. When his body swayed left, his left arm swung like a pendulum; when he swayed right, his right arm swung too. Then he collapsed to the ground with a thud.
As usual, the puppet poured two Great Tonic Pills down his throat. Seeing that Lu Yang barely reacted, it had no choice but to end the day's training. It found a small cart, pushed Lu Yang back on it, and even covered him with a straw mat.
At the smell of food, Lu Yang's body reacted by drooling, and his consciousness gradually returned.
He could finally eat. Lu Yang breathed a sigh of relief. If he hadn't been able to eat, he would have thought he hadn't joined an immortal sect at all, but had committed some heinous crime and been locked in a water dungeon to be tortured.
As a disciple under the Sect Master, he didn't need to worry about food. He didn't have to take fasting pills every day; instead, rare ingredients he'd never seen before were made into delicious dishes that quietly improved his body.
Lu Yang still couldn't lift his arms, so the puppet fed him the entire meal.
After the meal, Yun Zhi boiled up a huge pot of body-tempering medicine and had Lu Yang bathe in it. The scent of spirit herbs filling the air nearly made him keel over.
"Take this." Yun Zhi handed Lu Yang a hollow reed.
"What's this for?"
"When you soak in the body-tempering medicine, your whole body has to be immersed. Your head will be sticking out of the water while you bathe. Bite down on the reed later, put your head under, and breathe through it."
Lu Yang thought, As expected of Senior Sister. She's thought of everything. Even if she was torturing him, it was for his own good.
After Yun Zhi left, Lu Yang stripped naked, bit down on the reed, and jumped into the wooden tub with a splash. A bloodcurdling squeal followed.
"Senior Sister, are you making me bathe in boiling water?!"
Yun Zhi returned to the small courtyard. A breeze passed through, dispersing the medicinal-bath scent clinging to her, and she began thinking about what else she might have overlooked.
She had grown up in an immortal grotto-heaven, surrounded by cultivators. Later, she had joined Ask Dao Sect and devoted herself to cultivation, rarely involving herself in the mortal world. She knew little about ordinary people.
To teach Lu Yang, she had specially found many books about mortals. While Lu Yang studied the basics of cultivation, she was studying the basics of mortal life.
But clearly, those books about mortals hadn't mentioned the temperature of a mortal's bathwater.
Hearing Lu Yang's hoarse cries, Yun Zhi thought it over. It was too late to cool the water now. In that case, she could only...
Yun Zhi took a bottle of burn ointment from her sleeve, left it by the door, and knocked.
"Junior Brother, I left the burn ointment by the door. Remember to use it."
Some time passed. With the threefold help of being forced to train without rest, spirit-beast meat, and specially prepared medicinal baths, Lu Yang finally went from an utterly ordinary mortal—burned and peeling—to an outstanding folk performer skilled at juggling vats.
Three two-hundred-jin water vats flew around like sandbags, tracing arcs through the air.
At the same time, Lu Yang could step along the rims of the vats and circle around in the Eight Trigrams steps as if walking on level ground.
He could even lay a vat on its side and stand steadily atop it as it rolled, with enough strength left over to juggle three more vats!
That trick alone would draw waves of applause on the street!
"Not bad. Your body-tempering progress is even faster than I expected." Yun Zhi gave a light round of applause, filling Lu Yang with confidence.
Though Yun Zhi rarely showed herself, she had been keeping an eye on Lu Yang's progress all along.
"Can I cultivate immortality now?" Lu Yang set down the vat and asked eagerly. He waited quietly for the answer, not even daring to breathe.
During his body-tempering training, Meng Jingzhou had come to see him. They hadn't said more than a few words before the puppet chased him away.
Lu Yang had heard that Meng Jingzhou, Man Gu, and the others who had joined the sect around the same time had already drawn qi into their bodies and become true cultivators. They meditated and cultivated every day, detached from the mundane world, while he alone was still suffering through body-tempering. It left him somewhat anxious, feeling far behind and painfully out of step with them.
Yun Zhi didn't answer. She took a piece of tofu from her storage space. It was so soft that it trembled in her fair palm like a water-filled balloon.
"Hold it with your palm facing down."
Lu Yang didn't think it would be difficult and obediently did as she said. But when he gripped the tofu, his fingers moved ever so slightly, and it crumbled in his hand, falling to the ground.
Yun Zhi handed Lu Yang another piece of tofu and gestured for him to try again.
Lu Yang refused to believe it. He thought the first time had been an accident and the second attempt would surely go fine.
The tofu crumbled again. He couldn't hold it at all.
After failing a third time, Lu Yang understood the problem. His hands were now far too strong, and he had trouble controlling them. The only reason he wasn't breaking everything around him was that the things near him were all made for cultivators. If they were ordinary objects, he'd have to eat with great care, lest he snap his chopsticks or crush his bowl by accident.
Besides, his strength had grown too quickly. His mind hadn't caught up with his body, which was why his fingers kept twitching.
Under those circumstances, how could he possibly hold a piece of tofu as soft as water?
Yun Zhi stopped handing Lu Yang tofu. She held a piece in one hand, palm down, and shook it casually. The tofu wobbled, but didn't fall apart.
Suddenly, Yun Zhi let go. The tofu dropped, and she snatched it up again at incredible speed!
Lu Yang's eyes widened. Catching the falling tofu—how could that be easy?
Under Senior Sister's grip, soft tofu was no different from a piece of iron, and she could toy with it as she pleased.
"You've already mastered lifting the heavy as though it were light. You still have a long way to go before you can lift the light as though it were heavy."
Lu Yang fell silent. He knew he was still far from finishing his body-tempering. Cultivation couldn't be rushed. Meng Jingzhou and the others had been trained by their lineages since childhood, which was why they could go straight into cultivation.
Catching up to them was easier said than done.
No one had guided him when he was young. Now he had Senior Sister's personal instruction and the help of heavenly treasures. His growth was already astonishingly fast. What reason did he have to be dissatisfied?
Lu Yang also remembered something Senior Sister had said. Cultivation was a lifelong pursuit; temporary gains or setbacks didn't matter. What mattered was who would have the last laugh.
Lu Yang took two deep breaths and realized his mindset had been wrong. He adjusted it in time and stopped fixating on his cultivation progress.
Then he saw Senior Sister have the puppet push over a cart piled high with tofu.
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