First Smelting

The moonlight was swallowed by thick clouds, plunging Class A Courtyard Number One into ink-black darkness, with only a faint, flickering oil lamp glow leaking through the window crack of the East Wing Meditation Room.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged on the cold, blue-gray brick floor, his upper body bare. The oil lamp light cast sharp contrasts across his taut back, sweat trickling down the grooves of his muscles and splattering onto the ground, forming a small dark puddle. His eyes were shut, brows twisted into a tight knot, his breathing heavy and rapid like a broken bellows.

The words and diagrams he had memorized in the Scripture Repository that afternoon now rampaged through his mind like wild horses. Iron Cloth Shirt demanded qi and blood flow like silk threads, densely wrapping the skin and flesh; Stone Armor Technique required qi and blood to congeal into solid lumps, firmly packed between the muscle fibers; while Savage Ox Strength was even more brutal, surging qi and blood toward the limbs in violent thrusts, as if eager to explode.

He tried to separate these techniques like flipping through a book, using them one by one. But qi and blood weren't pages—they were alive, and the moment he stirred them, everything tangled together.

First, his skin tightened, as if wrapped head to toe in three layers of wet cowhide, suffocatingly stifling. Then, the flesh beneath began to twitch on its own, twisting and writhing in erratic bursts, with needle-like pain sprouting densely. Before that pain could ease, a sour ache started deep in his bones, as if someone were prying them apart with a dull chisel from the inside.

"Ugh..." A suppressed groan of pain squeezed through his clenched teeth.

Li Yuan's eyes snapped open, pupils shot through with bloodshot veins. He looked down at his arm; beneath the skin, it seemed invisible rats had burrowed in, bulging here and sinking there, muscle fibers wrestling and tearing against each other. He could even hear a faint, taut "snap-snap" sound, like wet hemp rope being violently snapped.

No good! If this continued, he'd cripple himself without anyone else laying a hand on him!

A low growl rumbled from his throat, like a dying beast's last struggle. With all his willpower, he hurled his nearly scattered consciousness deep into the Sea of Qi, straight at the silent "Crimson Sun" suspended there.

—Melt them!

At first, there was no response. The Crimson Sun hung there, cold as a stone. The internal conflict grew fiercer—the left half of his body wanted to swell outward, the right half to shrink inward, while his chest was choked with a rampaging brute force with nowhere to go. He felt his body become a battlefield, several armies slaughtering each other into chaos, and he was the land being trampled over and over.

On his skin's surface, fine beads of blood burst eagerly from his pores—not flowing, but spraying. In an instant, he was dyed a bloody mess, the thick metallic stench filling the entire meditation room.

Just as he felt he was about to be torn apart completely, his consciousness sinking into darkness...

"Hum..."

A deep, low vibration, as if from an ancient, primordial era, rumbled from the depths of the Sea of Qi.

The Crimson Sun, which had been indifferent all along, suddenly flared! Not with light, but with an awakening of "heat."

A scorching current—fierce, domineering, carrying an air of absolute authority—exploded from the Sea of Qi, surging through his limbs and bones in an instant! Wherever it passed, the chaotic qi and blood that had been warring and tearing at each other melted like snow before fire, unable even to struggle before being devoured and swept away by this higher, purer force!

Pain! Even fiercer pain! As if molten iron had been poured directly into his meridians and drenched onto his bones!

Li Yuan's entire body's muscles instantly tensed like iron blocks, thick tendons bulging beneath his skin, trembling violently. He arched upward involuntarily, neck straining backward, emitting a hoarse "hah-hah" of leaking air, unable to form a single complete word.

His body began to change at a visible rate. The muscles of his shoulders, back, arms, chest, and abdomen swelled unnaturally, as if inflated, stacking and bulging, stretching his frame a full size larger—terrifyingly burly, and terrifyingly deformed. His skin was stretched taut and shiny, with crimson qi and blood racing wildly beneath, making him look like a demon just hauled out of a blood pool.

Sweat had long since dried up; only blood and oil mixed together, coating his twisted body in a dark red glaze.

Time lost all meaning in this moment. Every breath stretched as long as a year.

After who knows how long, the bone-melting, body-incinerating agony began to recede like a tide.

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

The qi and blood that had been fighting each other were gone. No, not gone—they had been forcibly "kneaded" together by that scorching current. A heavy, viscous, yet astonishingly vibrant new qi and blood began to flow slowly and steadily through his now much wider meridians.

This qi and blood no longer distinguished between separate parts. It possessed the unbreakable toughness of Iron Cloth Shirt, the unbreakable hardness of Stone Armor Technique, and even carried a trace of Savage Ox Strength's explosive violence.

Li Yuan lay like a dehydrated fish, sprawled on the cold ground, gasping heavily, each breath carrying a hot, metallic taste. He tried to move his fingers, and a sense of power far exceeding before spread from his fingertips all the way to his shoulders.

He struggled to prop up a body that no longer felt like his own, staggering to his feet. Dried blood scabs fell off in flakes with every movement, revealing the newborn skin beneath. That skin was no longer a normal color; it faintly shimmered with a dark red metallic luster, as if slightly heated. Touching it, it felt neither like skin nor stone, but like some kind of living, incredibly dense exotic leather.

He walked to the wall, where an iron-wrapped wooden blade for training lay. Before, he needed seven-tenths of his strength to leave a deep mark on a wooden post.

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

"Clang!"

A short, crisp metallic ring!

The wooden blade bounced away violently, and on the thin iron wrapping, a clear dent appeared! On the back of his hand, only a faint white mark remained, vanishing within a few breaths.

Li Yuan lowered his head, looking at his hand, then raised his eyes to the blurry bronze mirror on the meditation room wall. The mirror reflected a figure with a drastically changed silhouette, exuding a fierce, brutal aura.

He grinned, a silent laugh. Blood still clung to his teeth, making the smile look especially savage.

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

Smelting ten thousand techniques, using the body as a furnace.

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