Martial Dao Realms

A single command was given, and tens of thousands of recruits began to imitate.

Jiang Yue sank his mind, replaying every subtle point of force application from the instructor's demonstration in his mind.

Following the requirements of the first form, he slowly closed his arms, trying to find that sensation of skin membrane vibration.

But it was difficult.

Extremely difficult.

His movements were stiff and awkward, his bone joints constantly emitting creaking sounds of strain.

The warm qi and blood stored within his body was now like a stubborn donkey that refused to obey, completely unable to follow the predetermined path to impact his epidermis.

At the edge of his retina, the panel lit up again.

Code
[Action: Body Forging]
[Status: Recording...]
[Current Progress: Accumulating...]
[Evaluation: Many posture deviations, qi and blood conduction blocked, has not yet touched the true essence of skin membrane.]

Jiang Yue was not discouraged.

He adjusted his breathing over and over, using the [Smooth Breath] entry to forcibly suppress the soreness in his muscles and tendons, repeatedly stuffing himself into that twisted posture.

The one-eyed instructor stood on the high platform with his hands behind his back.

His single eye was like a cold scanner, rapidly sweeping across the formation.

He was searching for those with natural talent.

In martial arts training, willpower was certainly important, but comprehension often determined how far one could go within those three months.

Not far away, a well-proportioned youth caught his attention.

After just a few attempts, the youth's skin membrane had already faintly taken on a layer of red light, his movements fluid and smooth—clearly extremely compatible with this technique.

The instructor nodded slightly, noting the youth's number.

Then, his gaze swept to Jiang Yue.

In the twenty-kilometer forced march earlier, Jiang Yue had performed reasonably well.

But at this moment, the instructor's brow furrowed slightly.

In his eyes, Jiang Yue's movements were far too "stiff."

Because he was too focused on pursuing precision, his actions came across as rigid, lacking that lively flow of qi and blood.

Especially his thin frame—when executing those expansive, forceful body forging movements, it seemed somewhat inadequate.

After watching for three seconds, the instructor withdrew his gaze. The trace of expectation in his eyes vanished, replaced by a kind of predictable indifference.

"His will is passable, but his bone structure is mediocre, and his comprehension... is merely average."

He reached this conclusion in his mind.

In this massive war machine, there were too many mortals with willpower, but those who ultimately survived were often the monsters who possessed both will and talent.

Jiang Yue did not notice the instructor's disappointment, or rather, even if he did, he didn't care.

He was repeating.

Dull, mechanical repetition.

Whenever his posture deviated by even a fraction, the afterimage of the instructor's earlier demonstration would faintly appear on his retina.

He was using this most clumsy method to forcibly calibrate every inch of his flesh and blood.

The sky gradually darkened.

The array of lights above the Floating Land lit up, casting pale white light onto every sweat-covered face.

"Everyone, dismissed."

The instructor's voice rang out with mechanical precision at the last second of training.

"Go back to your dog kennels. Tomorrow at the Hour of the Rabbit, anyone who is late will have half their monthly points deducted directly."

The crowd dispersed, dragging their mountain-heavy bodies.

Jiang Yue returned to the camp area and entered his "capsule pod."

The space inside the pod was extremely small, barely enough for one person to lie flat. The moment the hatch closed, the surrounding noise was sealed off, leaving only the faint hiss from the ventilation vent.

The skin membrane all over his body burned with a fiery pain—the aftereffect of being forcibly scoured by qi and blood.

Jiang Yue lay in the darkness, staring at the metal ceiling panel just a few centimeters above his face.

During the day, his training could be said to have not even begun.

"Once [Body Forging] unlocks its entry, it should be much better."

"Perhaps... it might bring a boost to comprehension?"

"Regardless, if I want to improve my efficiency at doing something, the most crucial thing is to practice the thing itself."

Thus, Jiang Yue did not sleep. Instead, he rose and began training once more.

The cabin was cramped, shaped like a coffin.

It measured two meters long, one meter wide, and no more than three feet high.

All four walls were thick alloy plates, with only the faint sound of air exchange piercing the dead silence.

Jiang Yue sat cross-legged within.

If it were an ordinary person, having endured the torment of the day's twenty-kilometer gravity sprint, coupled with the excruciating pain of qi and blood forcibly scouring the skin membrane, they would now be utterly exhausted in spirit and sunk in slumber.

Yet Jiang Yue's eyes were deep and dark.

He knew well that what common folk called "comprehension" was a matter of heavenly fate, not something to be forced.

"Only practice itself can break the shackles of destiny."

Jiang Yue's mind focused as one.

Due to the cramped space, he could not perform wide, sweeping martial stances, so he transformed the eighteen forms of the [Skin Refining Chapter] into internal postures and instantaneous strikes.

[Action: Body Forging]

[Status: Recording...]

[Progress: Slowly accumulating...]

Jiang Yue began attempting the first form, Bell Striking.

When the instructor demonstrated, this form required a vibration like an ancient bell, with the skin membrane resonating in harmony.

Now, Jiang Yue crossed his arms, not truly exerting force to strike the alloy cabin wall, but instead adopting a method of static tempering.

His entire body's muscles tensed, and under the impetus of the [Food Digestion] entry, qi and blood surged endlessly from his stomach.

Pain.

The originally burning skin membrane, now squeezed by internal force, felt as if thousands of steel needles were stabbing into it all at once.

Jiang Yue's face twisted slightly from the intense pain, and cold sweat instantly soaked his gray training uniform.

At the edge of his retina, the afterimage of the instructor's demonstration quietly emerged.

It was a dark cyan phantom, vibrating within Jiang Yue's consciousness in the most perfect posture.

Every time Jiang Yue's point of force application deviated by a fraction, the afterimage would emit a faint red light, forcibly guiding his spirit to calibrate the muscles of his entire body.

"Lower the left elbow by half a fraction, arch the spine slightly."

Jiang Yue adjusted his posture in the darkness.

Click.

A soft sound.

The moment his posture perfectly overlapped with the afterimage, the previously stagnant qi and blood actually flowed smoothly for an instant.

That thread of qi and blood, like scorching magma, precisely struck the skin membrane on his chest.

[Evaluation: Posture calibrating, qi and blood conduction efficiency increased.]

Jiang Yue's heart surged.

This was not a burst of comprehension, but extreme "micro-carving."

Ordinary geniuses relied on their senses to capture the true intent, while Jiang Yue, under the forced assistance of the panel, used his physical body to stubbornly grind against every geometrically perfect coordinate.

Jiang Yue, within the cramped single-soldier cabin, repeatedly honed himself.

At this moment, waves of heat flowed from his abdomen.

It was the nutrient paste he had swallowed during the day.

Under the blessing of the [Food Digestion] entry, these coarse rations were thoroughly squeezed.

The impurities, originally regarded as waste, were expelled, and the pure energy was converted into strands of faint essence, traveling along the meridians before finally gathering beneath the skin membrane.

[Action: Eating] Progress slowly moving.

[Action: Breathing] Rhythm always steady.

Two quarters of an hour.

One hour.

Two hours.

Jiang Yue's skin had turned an eerie dark red.

It was an anomaly caused by the highly concentrated qi and blood repeatedly rubbing against the skin membrane.

If an ordinary person manipulated themselves in this way, their skin membrane would have long since ruptured, turning them into a blood-soaked figure.

Yet every impact of Jiang Yue's qi and blood precisely landed on the coordinate points marked by the afterimage.

This was walking a tightrope.

[Action: Body Forging]

[Progress: ++]

Jiang Yue felt a parched, desiccated sensation deep within his soul.

Hours of relentless, high-intensity grinding had drained his mental energy far beyond what he had anticipated.

Yet he did not stop.

He was waiting for that critical threshold.

The [Skin Tempering] checkpoint required three layers: the first was "Seeing Red," where blood and qi surged upward; the second was "Forming Calluses," where the dermal layer thickened; the third was "Like Iron," where the dermal layer emitted a sheen.

As for Jiang Yue, the deep red that had covered his body was now fading, revealing a sickly pallor.

This was a sign that his blood and qi had been squeezed to their absolute limit in an extremely short time, all of it seeping deep into his dermal layer.

If I keep practicing like this every day, I should be able to unlock the trait soon...