First Smelting

The moon was swallowed by thick clouds, and Class A Courtyard Number One sank into ink-black night. Only a faint, wavering halo from an oil lamp seeped through the window of the East Wing Meditation Room.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged on the cold blue-brick floor, bare from the waist up. The lamplight carved sharp contrasts across his taut back as sweat trickled down the grooves of his muscles and struck the ground, gathering into a small dark patch. His eyes were closed, his brows knotted into a tight frown. His breathing was heavy and ragged, like a bellows torn open.

The words and diagrams he had memorized that afternoon in the Scripture Repository had become wild horses stampeding through his mind. Iron Cloth Shirt required qi and blood to flow like threads, winding densely around skin and flesh; Stone Armor Technique demanded that qi and blood condense into clumps, pounding firmly into the spaces between his muscles; while Savage Ox Strength was even more brutal, driving qi and blood to surge violently into his limbs, as if eager to burst them apart.

He tried to use the techniques one by one, as if turning pages in a book. But qi and blood were no pages. They were alive, and the moment he stirred them, they all churned together.

First, his skin tightened, as if three layers of wet oxhide had been wrapped around him from head to toe, leaving him unable to breathe. Then the flesh beneath his skin began to twitch on its own, twisting this way and that. A dense, needle-prickling pain erupted everywhere. Before it could fade, an ache began to spread through the gaps between his bones, as if someone were slowly prying them apart with a dull chisel.

"Ugh..." A pained groan forced its way through his clenched teeth.

Li Yuan's eyes flew open, bloodshot from corner to corner. He lowered his gaze to his arms. It was as if several invisible rats had burrowed beneath his skin, raising a lump here and hollowing out a patch there as his muscle fibers strained and tore against one another. He could even hear a faint series of snaps, like wet hemp rope being stretched until it broke.

This wasn't working! If he kept going, he'd cripple himself before anyone else had the chance!

A low growl rumbled in his throat, the desperate struggle of a dying beast. With every last ounce of will, he hurled his nearly scattered consciousness toward the silent "Crimson Sun" deep in his qi sea!

—Smelt them!

At first, nothing happened. The Crimson Sun hung there, as indifferent as a stone. The conflict inside him grew even more violent. His left side tried to swell outward while his right side tried to contract inward. A wild, rampaging force was trapped in his chest with nowhere to vent. His body had become a battlefield, armies clashing until heaven and earth grew dark, while he was the land trampled beneath their feet.

Fine beads of blood burst from his pores, spraying rather than flowing. In the blink of an eye, they stained him crimson, and the thick stench of blood filled the entire meditation room.

Just as he felt himself about to be torn apart, his consciousness on the verge of sinking into darkness—

"Vmmm..."

A deep vibration, as if from some primordial wilderness, sounded from the depths of his qi sea.

The Crimson Sun, which had ignored him until now, suddenly flashed! It wasn't light. It was the awakening of heat.

A scorching current burst from his qi sea, fierce and domineering, its will impossible to defy. It surged through his limbs and bones in an instant! Wherever it passed, the chaotic qi and blood that had been tearing at one another were swallowed and swept away by this higher, purer power, like snow lions caught in a blaze, with no time to struggle.

Pain! A fiercer pain! It was like molten iron poured straight into his meridians and splashed across his bones!

Every muscle in Li Yuan's body instantly tightened like iron. Thick cords of tendon bulged beneath his skin and trembled violently. His body arched upward against his will, his neck bending sharply back. A leaking, wheezing sound spilled from his throat, but he couldn't force out a single whole word.

His body changed at a speed visible to the naked eye. The muscles across his shoulders, back, arms, chest, and abdomen swelled as if pumped full of air, bulging unnaturally and piling atop one another until they forced his frame a full size larger. He looked terrifyingly burly—and terrifyingly misshapen. His skin stretched taut and gleamed, while crimson qi and blood surged wildly beneath it, making him look like a demon dragged from the Blood Pool.

His sweat had long since run dry. Only blood and oil remained, coating his twisted body in a layer of dark-red glaze.

Time lost all meaning. Every breath lasted as long as a year.

After who knew how long, the agony of his body burning and his bones melting began to recede like a tide.

A wholly new sensation slowly emerged from the deepest part of his body.

The qi and blood that had been fighting one another had vanished. No—not vanished. The scorching current had forcibly kneaded them together. A new kind of qi and blood, heavy and viscous yet brimming with astonishing vitality, began to flow slowly and steadily through his now-widened meridians.

This qi and blood was no longer divided. It had the unbreakable resilience of Iron Cloth Shirt and the uncrushable hardness of Stone Armor Technique, while even carrying a trace of Savage Ox Strength's explosive force.

Like a fish pulled from water, Li Yuan sprawled on the cold floor, gasping for breath. Every inhale tasted of hot iron and rust. He tried moving his fingers, and a sensation of strength far beyond anything he'd known spread from his fingertips all the way to his shoulder.

He struggled to prop up a body that no longer seemed his own and staggered to his feet. Scabs of dried blood flaked off with a rustle, revealing new skin beneath. It was no longer an ordinary color; it glimmered faintly with the dark-red sheen of metal warmed just a little. To the touch, it felt neither like skin nor stone, but like some living, incomparably dense hide.

He walked to the wall, where an iron-wrapped wooden blade used for training rested. Before, he had needed to use seven-tenths of his strength just to leave a deep mark in a wooden post.

Now, he casually and lightly tapped the iron-wrapped edge with the back of his hand.

"Clang!"

A short, crisp ring of metal on metal!

The wooden blade sprang away. A clear dent had appeared in its thin iron wrapping! On the back of his hand, only a faint white mark remained, and it vanished within a few breaths.

Li Yuan lowered his head to look at his hand, then raised his eyes toward the blurry bronze mirror on the meditation room wall. Reflected in it was a figure whose outline had changed dramatically, radiating a fierce, savage aura.

He bared his teeth and laughed without a sound. Blood still stained them, making his smile look especially ferocious.

This blood-soaked path—he had taken the first step.

Smelt ten thousand arts, and make the body the furnace.

Tonight, the foundation of this "Crimson Sun Battle Body" had been laid—a first bloodstained brick.