An Unexpected Change

"It feels a little light. I should be able to lift something heavier."

Shi Mu muttered to himself, then raised his hand again. With a boom, he tossed the stone lock onto the nearby ground.

The entire square trembled slightly.

Only then did Shi Mu raise both hands and examine them closely.

His palms were long and sturdy, but no matter how he looked at them, they didn't seem like the sort of flesh-and-blood hands that could unleash a thousand jin of force.

After a moment's thought, he walked over to the wooden rack and took down the long saber again.

A moment later, saber shadows burst across the square, as if flying sand and rolling stones, like a flood dragon surging out of the sea.

With a whoosh, a white streak swept out and engulfed a nearby wooden post.

After several sharp cracks, the post was instantly cut into seven pieces that scattered across the ground.

Six Slashes in One Breath!

His saber was so fast that it was already no slower than Li Canghai's earlier demonstration.

The saber shadows vanished. Shi Mu stood where he was, holding the long saber with its blade pointing down, gazing at the wooden post with a thoughtful look on his face.

At dusk.

Inside a sparsely furnished hall, the heavy wooden door had been locked from within.

Shi Mu lay with his eyes closed on the large bed in the middle of the room.

His skin was flushed, and sweat poured from his body. He was curled up into a ball, groaning fitfully, his limbs twitching without pause. He was barely conscious.

After an unknown amount of time, his groans gradually subsided, and his limbs slowly stretched out. His skin returned to its normal color, and he opened his weary eyes.

Shi Mu took several deep breaths, climbed out of bed, and moved his limbs around. Then he shifted his arm and grabbed the edge of the bed, tightening his fingers around it.

Crack!

The sturdy-looking solid-wood bedframe splintered apart.

"My strength has increased a little again, but nothing like those first few times. It's been a month since the last episode, and this one only lasted a quarter of an hour. It seems unlikely that I'll get much stronger from now on," Shi Mu murmured.

The astonishing changes he had just experienced had begun after he moved into this manor. They had happened more than once, and they were the reason for the incredible strength and exceptional saber skills he'd displayed earlier that day.

The first episode had come during his first month in the manor, and it had tormented him for an entire night.

But after he returned to normal the next day, he discovered that his strength and physical reflexes had both increased tremendously.

Two nights later, the second episode began.

Over the past few months, he had experienced this transformation more than ten times, and each episode had brought astonishing benefits to his body.

However, as the episodes grew shorter and the intervals between them grew longer, the increases in his strength and reflexes had gradually become less pronounced.

This latest episode had only increased his strength a little, nowhere near as much as the first few.

Even so, Shi Mu's strength now exceeded a thousand jin, and his reflexes were several times faster than an ordinary person's.

Even someone as slow on the uptake as Shi Mu could guess that these changes were probably connected to the giant clam he had rescued from the seabed that day.

After all, the entire process felt much like the sensation of his blood boiling when he woke up by the sea, except the pain was more than ten times worse.

He had heard plenty of stories about such extraordinary encounters in biographies of powerful figures told by storytellers, and had often envied them.

Now that such an opportunity had come his way, he was naturally overjoyed. It had also given him much more confidence about passing the Kaiyuan Martial Academy's test in six months or so.

Li Canghai had also confirmed that even if one understood qi sense and met the age requirement, getting into the Martial Academy still involved fierce competition.

After all, the Kaiyuan Martial Academy had limited resources and could only admit a fixed number of students. Past experience showed that applicants from all over Kaiyuan Prefecture often outnumbered those places several times over.

Shi Mu knew very well that his talent was mediocre. Even after taking a Spirit Qi Pill, he was no more likely than an ordinary person to understand qi sense.

According to Master Li, once someone passed the ninth layer of the Body Tempering Technique, every further increase in level greatly improved their chances of understanding qi sense. If they could train to the tenth layer, even someone with ordinary aptitude would have a chance of more than one in three. If they completed the thirteenth layer and reached Body Tempering perfection, their chance of failure would be less than half.

That was why some Martial Disciples with poor aptitude could still become Houtian Martial Artists after the age of thirty or forty: they could reach Body Tempering perfection and take Spirit Qi Pills several times. But the time and money required were beyond what an ordinary Martial Disciple could afford.

Of course, understanding qi sense at such an advanced age meant that a martial artist's golden years for training had been completely wasted. It was easy to imagine how difficult it would be to make further progress. Even reaching the Houtian Mid-Stage would become extremely difficult, and the chance of advancing further would be almost nonexistent.

Some scions of truly powerful families, however, could collect rare supplementary pills to increase their chances of understanding qi sense. But the cost was several times greater than buying Spirit Qi Pills.

Master Li himself had trained the Body Tempering Technique to the twelfth layer. He had only managed to reach the Houtian stage after taking a Spirit Qi Pill for the second time, when he was already in his twenties. Whenever he spoke of it, the Houtian Mid-Stage martial artist still sounded deeply regretful.

With his modest means, Shi Mu couldn't even consider buying supplementary pills. His only option was to raise his Body Tempering level.

But once someone passed the ninth layer of the Body Tempering Technique, advancing any further took far longer than most people could imagine. Only a truly monstrous genius could reach the twelfth layer and attain perfection before the age of fifteen. In the entire history of the Great Qi Kingdom, only a handful of people had managed it.

Thanks to the transformations he had undergone over the past few months, Shi Mu had already pushed his Body Tempering Technique straight to the ninth layer, and was even close to the tenth.

By any normal reckoning, he should have no problem reaching the tenth layer in the next six months or so. But reaching the eleventh still seemed a distant dream. And a one-in-three chance of understanding qi sense wasn't enough to put Shi Mu at ease.

If he wanted to make any further progress in the Body Tempering Technique, it seemed he had no choice but to use the extreme training method Master Li had mentioned.

According to Master Li, he had obtained this Body Tempering method by chance from an expert. It was simple and brutal, yet astonishingly effective. But the process was so dangerous and painful that there was a significant chance of dying during training, which was why he rarely taught it to his other students. If Shi Mu was willing to pay a large sum, however, Master Li was happy to teach him everything he knew.

Dangerous? Ever since he had sworn at his mother's grave to become a powerful figure, Shi Mu had known he was destined for a hard road strewn with brambles. How could he fear danger?

But for now, he had to master the Crushing Stone Fist first. Only then could he devote himself fully to training in the Body Tempering Technique.

Shi Mu considered this coolly, and soon made up his mind.

Seven days later, a three-foot-tall blue vat stood in the center of the manor's square, packed to the brim with yellow soybeans.

"Ha!" "Ha!"

Shi Mu stood in front of the vat, bare-chested and wearing only a pair of loose black pants. Thick silver-colored gloves covered both his hands as he clenched his fists and pounded away at the soybeans inside.

"Listen carefully. The power of the Crushing Stone Fist is directly related to your strength, but the toughness of your fists is even more crucial if you want to unleash its full power. Otherwise, no matter how strong you are, your flesh and blood will fly everywhere when you punch a rock, leaving your hands badly injured. You're only a beginner. Although you've completed the Body Tempering Technique, your fists are strong enough to strike wood at most. I've had you put on several layers of fish-skin gloves to pound these soybeans. This will gradually strengthen the bones, tendons, and flesh in your hands without inflicting too much damage at the beginning, and it will quickly increase the strength of your hands. Once you can punch straight through the entire vat, I'll replace the soybeans with larger pieces of gravel and remove one layer of the fish-skin gloves. When you can punch all the way through the gravel, I'll switch it to real iron sand. Only after you can punch through that will you practice with large rocks... Pay attention, your left arm's swinging too far!" Li Canghai stood beside him with his arms crossed, explaining without expression.

"Yes."

Shi Mu answered as his arms swung without pause. Every punch sank more than half a foot into the vat. Sweat drenched his upper body, and each muscle bulged and flexed like a mouse beneath his skin. An unusual fervor enveloped him.

After a quarter of an hour, Shi Mu suddenly let out a loud shout and drove his fist forward. It plunged more than a foot into the vat, burying nearly half his arm in the soybeans.

"Stop! Didn't I tell you not to use too much force at the start? Let me see if you've hurt your hand!" Li Canghai's face changed as he watched. He shouted sharply and quickly pulled a medicine bottle from his robes.

"Master Li, I'm fine." Shi Mu grinned and pulled his arm out of the soybeans.

"Hmph, I'm the one who decides whether you're fine. Take off the gloves!" Li Canghai snorted and ordered without hesitation.

Shi Mu had no choice but to shake his arm once before peeling off the layers of glove from that fist. He casually flexed his exposed fingers, which were only slightly red, in front of Li Canghai.

"Oh? You really do seem fine. Strange. In all my years of teaching, I'd have expected you to have blood streaming from all five fingers after using that much force. Come over and punch this post with your bare fist. Use all your strength this time!" Li Canghai examined Shi Mu's hand closely, looking surprised. After a moment, he pointed to a thick wooden post nearby.

"Yes." Shi Mu took a deep breath, walked over to the post, and slowly circled around it.

Boom!

Shi Mu rolled his shoulder and suddenly drove his fist forward. His punch snapped the thick, bowl-sized post clean in half. The upper section shot through the air and flew out of the square, smashing hard into the outer wall of a nearby building and making the whole structure tremble.

When he pulled his fist back, it was completely unharmed.