"..."
Early the next morning.
Dawn had barely broken when the Eternal Life Martial Sect launched into a brutal bout of construction.
The backyard had originally been a stretch of ruins piled with rubble, rotten timber, and household rubbish.
Untended for years, the soil had hardened until it was almost as solid as rock.
Gu Qinghe changed into coarse hemp clothes and stood at the edge of the ruins.
Before him, Han Yu and Lu Chang'an were serving as a pair of human draft oxen.
"Push that broken wall over and smash it," Gu Qinghe ordered in a cold, hard voice, pointing at a half-collapsed earthen wall to the right.
Lu Chang'an gritted his teeth but did not argue.
His master had given an absolute order: when it came to clearing the backyard, he had to follow this immortal cultivator's directions.
He strode up to the earthen wall, and the muscles around his waist abruptly tensed.
A martial artist's terrifying qi and blood roared through his body as he drove both hands straight into the hard earthen wall.
"Up!"
Lu Chang'an let out a furious roar.
With a series of dull cracks, he wrenched the broken wall, weighing a thousand jin, clean out of its foundations. Then he flung his arms outward, and the wall shattered in midair, crashing down into rubble scattered across the ground.
"Clear the rubble out and dig three feet down," Gu Qinghe continued.
Han Yu came over carrying the heavy Unedged Greatsword.
She used no digging tools, plunging the greatsword point-first into the ground instead.
Her peak Second Realm qi and blood poured through her arms into the blade as she used the greatsword like an iron plow.
Driving her legs against the ground, Han Yu forcibly pushed the greatsword forward through the hardened ruins.