After talking for a while, the two sides grew familiar with each other and left the estate together.
The best way to quickly get used to one another was to train hard together and fight battles to the death.
Aside from the one or two friends each of them already knew, they weren't very familiar with the rest of the team.
So Lin Chuan set the group two months of brutal training.
Xie Yue, Yan, and the others naturally joined in, and the seven trained together, carrying out the tasks Lin Chuan assigned.
With specially made iron weights strapped to their bodies, they ran outside a large village near Spirit City.
Five laps in the morning, three in the afternoon.
Each iron weight was ten jin. They strapped three to each leg and five across their bodies.
The weight came to more than a hundred jin in total, but it was spread out. It weighed them down, but wasn't enough to keep them from moving.
The two women, Hu Liena and Bai He, had their loads lightened a little. They strapped two weights to each leg and four to their bodies.
They had no complaints and trained hard.
They only started applying themselves after seeing Lin Chuan's insane training regimen.
Under the clear skies, the seven, led by Xie Yue, ran around the outskirts of the large village.
They couldn't use Soul Power; they could only train their bodies.
After finishing their three afternoon laps, they began training in the medicinal baths that had been prepared for them.
Elder Chrysanthemum had concocted the medicinal baths himself. He was a master of studying flowers and herbs.
He didn't object to Lin Chuan using such primitive training methods.
After all, they were making progress.
It also gave him a chance to put his skills to use. The medicinal baths he prepared were effective, and together with the training, they could subtly strengthen the body.
Lin Chuan occasionally ran, too, training his explosive speed.
Most of the time, he stood at the edge of a nearby cliff, holding a horse stance.
He held a hundred and fifty jin in each hand, with another fifty jin strapped to each leg.
Even when his arms grew numb and sore, trembling uncontrollably, and his legs shook like sieves, he didn't stop.
His expression never changed. It was cold and unyielding.
A cool breeze rose from the bottom of the cliff, carrying a chill that sent a shiver down the spine. It slipped through his clothes and swept over his sweat-soaked body, bringing wave after wave of cold.
From this spot, he could see Xie Yue and the others running around the village.
That way, he could keep track of them and make sure they were safe.
With all that repetitive training, the group quickly grew closer.
Sometimes, they were so exhausted that they had to prop one another up. When they were too tired to walk, they simply laughed and collapsed on the ground.
They didn't care if they got dirty. After resting on the ground for a while, they went back to soak in Elder Chrysanthemum's medicinal baths, washed up, and began their Calm Mind cultivation for the night.
The group endured training that ordinary people would struggle to bear, their days almost completely packed.
They had reasons they couldn't give up!
They had already endured the usual, numbingly dull cultivation.
If they had made it through that, why couldn't they persevere through this grueling, painful training?
Day after day, sunrise and sunset.
Before they knew it, two months had passed.
After finishing the final day of brutal training with the group, they each returned to their lodgings, exhausted.
Once everyone had gone inside, Lin Chuan lightly tapped the ground with his toes and used Soul Power to compress the distance, appearing on the roof in an instant.
"Would you be willing to come out and talk, senior?"
The two months were up.
He felt that he and the others had worked together fairly well.
He hadn't forgotten his goal, but he really had no way to deal with the powerful expert lurking in the shadows.
She never stayed hidden all the time. Her occasional words seemed meant to remind him that she was still watching from the shadows.
Under normal circumstances, Lin Chuan had no way to talk to her.
This was a barefaced taunt!
But if he said something or tried to test her with an attack, it would be like making a guilty show of innocence.
The evening breeze swept in, stirring his robes.
After waiting a while without getting an answer, Lin Chuan had grown used to it.
She wouldn't come out. Over the past two months, he had tried to block out her presence in his mind.
Otherwise, whenever he did anything, the thought of a pair of eyes watching him from behind would send a chill down his back.
He glanced at the fading sunset, then lightly pushed off with his feet and headed out.
At a remote farm track between the fields.
Lin Chuan sat on a large rock, and Giratina appeared behind him to his right.
It poked its head out and watched as he took the Evil God Bead out of his Storage Soul Tool again.
Two months had passed. Last time, an unexpected incident had interrupted him.
This time, he was prepared. He was almost certain the absorption would go smoothly.
The bead contained the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger's soul and energy. The soul origin and energy origin within it could give his spiritual power and Soul Power a qualitative leap once absorbed.
"With this great one here, you can absorb it without worry."
"I'll block the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger's soul attack. You just focus on absorbing the energy inside you."
That was the benefit of having an expert on hand.
Lin Chuan handed Giratina the fist-sized bead, and Giratina opened its mouth and swallowed it.
Giratina was basically a decomposition accelerator. The moment it swallowed the bead, energy began to spill out.
Lin Chuan felt it too. In that instant, it was as if he had been plunged into icy water. A bone-deep chill seized his entire body, leaving him frozen in place.
"Sit cross-legged and start absorbing it."
Only when Giratina reminded him did he snap out of it.
He forced down his body's shuddering chills, sat cross-legged with his palms facing upward, and circulated Soul Power through his meridians to dispel the cold inside him.
The Evil God Bead wasn't as difficult as he'd imagined.
Just before the bead disintegrated, it released a powerful force of evil, accompanied by spatial energy, and tried to break through the space inside Giratina's stomach.
Even without its former full strength, Giratina's innate abilities were beyond those of an ordinary bead containing the Evil God's power.
The force of evil was suppressed, and the spatial energy was imprisoned.
That energy was being eroded and absorbed little by little.
The Dark Demon Evil God Tiger's soul origin trembled in the innermost layer of the Evil God Bead, inside the space that hadn't yet dissolved.
Giratina's scarlet eyes appeared in that space, allowing it to see within.
It watched the innermost layer of the Evil God Bead before it melted away, inspecting the glass bead that had been shed from it.
Its eyes drew close, then moved away.
The Dark Demon Evil God Tiger trembled with fear. It couldn't even summon the will to resist.
Then, in the next instant, that overwhelming fear vanished without a trace.
The Evil God Bead completely disintegrated, and the Dark Demon Evil God Tiger's soul origin was refined in the blink of an eye.
Outside, the moon shone bright and the stars were sparse beneath a cloudless night sky.
Lin Chuan remained seated in meditation, vapor rising from his body.
It was the result of his body heat colliding with the cold within him.
His black robe was soaked through and clung to his body, still chilled from the cold, while the fabric over his heart gradually dried.
His heart pounded fiercely, pumping hot blood through him and quickly restoring his body's warmth.
At some point, Lin Chuan's consciousness had arrived in his Sea of Consciousness.
A gray mist hung over the place, but its contents were still visible to the naked eye. His Sea of Consciousness was like a new spring after the birth of chaos.
Tiny, yet vast.
At that moment, Lin Chuan's Sea of Consciousness was calm and still.
But in the next instant, a drop of pure, ink-black soul energy fell into it. Like a boulder crashing down, it sent a vast spray of water into the air.