Breakthrough

More than a month had passed since they'd lured the Winter Wolf into an ambush, and William had fully recovered from his injuries. Aside from a few foolish beasts that had wandered around nearby, their days had been peaceful and uneventful.

For Mishaer, sunny winter days without monsters were the happiest. She could play with her brothers in the village clearing, build snowmen, have snowball fights, and play knights and princesses. She could also sit nearby, fascinated, watching her eldest brother William strike strange poses and make odd movements over and over. Sometimes steam rose from his body, or flames over a foot long spurted from his palm. At other times, her second brother Alos would show off his own special skills, lighting a thumb-thick flame at his fingertip or conjuring a bright ball of light at night.

There was only one thing she hated: every morning, her eldest brother made her drink a little warm deer's blood. It did make her feel warm all over, but it tasted so strong—so rank and salty—that she always ended up with tears in her eyes, looking as if to say, "You're all picking on me." She thought it would be nice if they gave all of it to Alos to drink instead.

Mishaer propped her chin on her hand as she sat on a tree stump. After several months of nourishing food, her rosy little cheeks had begun to fill out. Her big eyes gazed dreamily at William practicing in the clearing. The sparkling Horn of Kor sat atop her fiery red curls, and her little head bobbed as she murmured to herself, though in her heart she was wondering how she could avoid the "punishment" of drinking deer's blood tomorrow.

William, busy practicing, didn't notice the little one's thoughts. He was trying to control the blood and energy in his body, which was on the verge of running wild. Since arriving in this world, nearly three months of training had made the heat coursing through his blood grow stronger and stronger. With every cycle, it tempered his body while gradually growing stronger itself. William could now unleash Palm Flame ten times in a row, and even after using it four times, he could control the heat more smoothly. If his body didn't lack the so-called "qi gathering in the dantian and flowing through the eight extraordinary meridians," he would almost have thought he was cultivating the inner energy of a martial arts novel.

Whenever a person exerted force, the intention came first, followed by the abdominal muscles engaging and the limbs completing the movement. That was why people believed martial arts techniques drew power from the dantian and circulated it through the whole body. They had even identified three sources of power: the upper, middle, and lower dantians. In reality, these so-called three dantians referred to the body's three vital points, its most vulnerable areas: the brain, the chest, and the abdomen. These were the body's most important parts, and damage to any one of them could cause the entire body's functions to collapse and lead to death. Yet they were also its most delicate areas.

Over the course of human evolution, the brain had been protected by the hard skull, and the chest by the broad breastbone and encircling ribs. Only the abdominal organs, though somewhat sturdier than the other two, were protected by soft skin and muscle. Whenever a person exerted themselves, the abdominal muscles had to respond first, shielding the vulnerable organs from injury during strenuous movement. This was the body's own protective instinct.

If someone who rarely exercised suddenly broke into a hard run, they would inevitably get a stomachache—children especially so. That was because their abdominal muscles couldn't immediately protect their organs well enough.

Martial cultivation was the process of improving the three vital areas' ability to withstand movement and adapting them to increasingly vigorous physical activity. What was qi and blood? They were the energy that powered the body's movements. Everyone knew that changing the state of motion meant doing work, and work required energy. The body's movements drew on the energy produced by chemical reactions in muscle cells. The so-called "circulation of qi and blood" meant learning to control the use of this chemical energy, progressing from crude to refined and from large-scale to minute. Tendon transformation, bone forging, and marrow cleansing improved the strength of the protective layers around these three areas as they increased the body's strength. Organ training and blood exchange, meanwhile, strengthened the three areas themselves. This was the greatest secret of martial cultivation, and the evolutionary path beyond the limits of the human body, passed down and refined by countless generations of predecessors.

The heat within William, however, didn't follow the body's natural movements. It was a special energy-based ability produced at the genetic level. It didn't improve his physical constitution on its own, nor could it enhance his explosive power the way the circulation of qi and blood did.

Yet as a form of energy, it could replace qi and blood and greatly speed up the tempering of William's body, raising its basic strength and resilience. Controlling it also gave him excellent practice in controlling his own qi and blood. That was why his strength had grown so quickly in just a few months of training. But this energy was elemental in nature, and some of it inevitably remained in William's body after each cycle. Its fierce, searing nature was even constantly affecting his mind.

Fortunately, William had met Phinia. As a half-giant of a cold-based subspecies, she had cold energy that was the opposite of his. When it entered his body during their lovemaking, it gradually neutralized the lingering heat-poison within him.

That was William's good fortune.

The secret to training in martial arts lay first and foremost in weapons. The spear had its art of shaking the great spear, while the saber had its blade-twirling method. Both trained the body's explosive power and familiarized the practitioner with the nature of the weapon. At a deeper level, they could also develop the ability to "listen to force," a kind of sensitivity that let a person sense changes in an opponent's strength and balance at the moment of contact. The best way to practice this was against a human training partner.

William had focused mainly on saber training, with some occasional practice with the great spear. But saber training had one problem: to reach a high level, he needed a specially made, excellent blade.

"Ten years for the staff, a year for the saber, a lifetime for the spear." Great spear shafts were usually made from fine white wax wood, which was supple and hard to break. Even if one broke, replacing it with another piece of similar wood made little difference. Sabers were another matter. Like swordsmanship, saber training sought unity between blade and wielder. Sabers relied on heavy chops and sweeping cuts, making them easy to damage in a fight. Yet improving one's saber skills required real combat, and changing blades could easily throw off one's performance.

Fine blades were forged through countless hammer strikes. No two could ever be exactly alike. So once saber practitioners reached a certain level, their blades would often break and need replacing, making further progress difficult. As a result, most saber practitioners reached a plateau after a few years of training.

Unfortunately, William lacked the means to train that way. He could only make do with what he had and choose the great spear, which placed greater emphasis on long-term practice.

There was a kind of pine in the Hidden Forest that grew no taller than three zhang. Its trunk was as thick as a thigh, black and straight, with astonishing flexibility. William had chanced upon it during a hunt half a month earlier. He'd originally wanted to break it off to make a sled, but even bending it double hadn't damaged it in the slightest. Delighted with his find, William cut it down, stripped off the crown, and made himself a super-sized spear shaft.

The super-sized spear was as thick as a thigh, seven or eight meters long, and weighed more than four hundred pounds. To an ordinary person, it was a monstrous object, but to William, whose strength was astonishing, it was nothing.

After shaking the great spear for half a month, William felt his muscles could generate force faster and more compactly. His whole body felt smooth and free, and he seemed to have entered a state similar to the higher levels of Ming Jin from his previous life. The comparison was only approximate, since William's physical gifts were extraordinary. He'd already been able to produce the effects of Ming Jin through sheer brute force a month earlier.

With his skills greatly improved, William excitedly launched into a Xingyi Fist routine. Each move was distinct and well-defined, and his hands and feet cracked through the air with every motion. The little girl beside him watched curiously, looking this way and that. At the peak of the routine, caught up in the moment, William suddenly let out a bellow like an ox—"Moo!"—and performed Wild Ox Force. Disaster struck. Energy raced wildly through his body, his qi and blood ran amok, and fear jolted through him until his whole body tingled.

Knowing that if he didn't quickly calm the chaos in his blood and energy, he'd surely suffer severe internal damage, or even collapse and die, William fought to keep it in check and began unleashing Palm Flame one strike at a time. Flames shot out more than two feet, and the crack of his fists splitting the air mingled with the hiss of water sizzling in the intense heat. The surrounding snow steamed, and waves of heat rolled outward.

By the time he'd used up all the energy in his Palm Flame, the snow within several yards had melted into water. Mishaer stared, dumbfounded.

Once William had spent the energy in his blood, his qi and blood were easier to control. He gradually slowed his punches, moving through each technique at a measured pace, slowly gathering and calming the energy running wild within him. When his qi and blood had settled and the inner heat had condensed, William suddenly punched. Crack! He felt the energy in his body drain away, and his fist was slick with sweat. Somehow, he'd produced the effect of Dark Jin.

Now that he was out of danger, William could no longer keep his pores sealed. Sweating all over and utterly exhausted, he sat down in the mud and looked at his fist, smiling bitterly without a word. Skill was forged on the brink of death; fortune was found through danger. Truly, one step could lead to hell, the next to heaven.

When Mishaer saw William stop practicing and sit there in a daze, the little girl, who'd been watching in terror, scampered over and threw herself into his arms. Her big eyes were full of curiosity as she stared at him.

"William is so amazing! Those flames were so cool! And you kept going smack, smack!" Mishaer waved her little hands and imitated the sound of William's punches cutting through the air. "I want to learn too! I want to learn! Smack, smack, smack!"

William pinched her little nose and laughed. "This is really hard work, you know! Maybe you shouldn't learn it, Mishaer. What do you think?"

Mishaer shook her head, freeing her nose from the mischievous hand, then wrapped her little arms around William's neck and gave him a shake. "I want to learn! I want to learn! Please? Pretty please!"

"All right, all right! You win! I'll teach you! I'll teach you! It's already late today, so we'll start tomorrow!" William gave in, his head spinning from all the shaking.

"Yay! Yay! I'm starting tomorrow! Big brother's going to teach me smack, smack tomorrow!" Sitting in her brother's arms, the little girl swung her tiny fists back and forth.

William stood up and carried the little girl toward the cellar, already making plans for what to teach her tomorrow.

Alos had gone into the forest with Phinia. With the giantess there, William wasn't worried about their safety, and it wasn't the first time the two of them had gone together. As William's skills improved, his appetite had grown, and with Phinia, another bottomless pit, helping him eat, he figured their food stores would barely last until next year. He and Phinia had been taking turns going hunting every day, and Alos, who was naturally lively and restless, didn't want to stay in the village all the time, so he often went with them.

As the sky grew dark, William began preparing dinner. He'd rendered some fat from the deer meat and stored it in a small wooden jar. He added a little to every meal, making the food much tastier than before. William used a dagger to cut the washed venison into pieces and drop them into the pot. The sizzling hot fat crackled as it fried the meat, and a rich, savory aroma filled the cellar.

The little girl watched the pot eagerly, a finger in her mouth. William smiled and handed her a piece of leftover cooked meat from the morning. Mishaer took it with a delighted grin and chewed happily, her little mouth puckering adorably.