With that, the affair blew up.
All those big wolfdogs had been knocked out, and no amount of calling could wake them. Anyone with eyes could tell someone had played a trick on them. The Wu Household kept those dogs to guard its property. What could it mean when its watchdogs were drugged unconscious? Could someone be plotting against the Wu Ironworks?
And so, with the collapse of those dogs, the entire Wu Ironworks went on high alert, hearing enemies in every gust of wind and crane's cry, seeing soldiers in every bush and tree.
They investigated what had caused the wolfdogs to lose consciousness. The large water jar the dogs drank from was examined repeatedly, but half a month passed without the slightest clue turning up. During the investigation, the Wu Household naturally discovered that Little Leopard had bought medicinal ingredients outside. But they subsequently found that everything he had bought was perfectly ordinary. Nobody believed those ingredients could have caused such an outcome, so he was cleared of suspicion.
The investigation lasted half a month, and the wolfdogs slept for half a month, until every last one died in its sleep. It was not that the Soul-Dazing Pill was poisonous; rather, no creature could endure half a month without food or water. In the end, they died of thirst.
The drug's potency went far beyond Little Leopard's expectations.
The wolfdogs were dead, half a month of investigation had yielded nothing, and nothing appeared to have been stolen. Gradually, calm returned to the Wu Ironworks. Nothing had gone missing, after all. Though the affair was deeply bizarre, there was nothing left to investigate, and it died down. After the dogs' deaths, however, the Wu Ironworks brought in more than a dozen new wolfdogs, even bigger and fiercer than the ones that had died.
Little Leopard, the instigator of the whole affair and also its greatest beneficiary, was in extraordinarily high spirits over the next month or two. Even his work grew much more practiced, and he produced several fine weapons that earned him considerable praise.
Little Leopard merely smiled at the praise. His mind was no longer on such things at all.
The Soul-Dazing Pill dissolves the instant it touches water, leaving no color or smell. Even ground into powder, it has no scent. What a wonderful thing for getting someone in secret!
After grinding the remaining thirty-odd Soul-Dazing Pills into powder and putting it into a small porcelain bottle, Little Leopard never let that bottle leave his person again.
Life became peaceful once more. The fate of those big wolfdogs had become a strange tale throughout Green Ram Market, but beyond giving people something to talk about over tea or after meals, it had no further significance.
Little Leopard's life also returned to its usual course. Each day consisted of forging iron and practicing martial arts, and he lived fairly comfortably. Every month, he managed to turn in pieces that satisfied Qin Xuanlong, putting the man increasingly at ease. At the same time, however, Qin Xuanlong became even stricter about urging him to train. Like Old Xing, he hoped Little Leopard would attend the Wu Household's Selection Assembly after turning ten. If selected, he would be like a carp leaping through the Dragon Gate, his status utterly transformed. Especially with Little Leopard's aptitude, Qin Xuanlong believed he would surely attract the attention of the Wu Household's higher ranks. He might even be accepted as an elder's personal disciple and enter the household's upper echelon.
As a result, Qin Xuanlong paid less attention to Little Leopard's monthly assignments. Instead, he became increasingly concerned with his martial progress, particularly his cultivation of the Nine-Dragon Divine Fire Art and his practice of the Nine-Form Wild-Wind Technique.
Even while Little Leopard was forging, Qin Xuanlong would stand beside him, repeatedly emphasizing that he should put his heart into grasping the essence of the Nine-Form Hammer Technique as he struck.
Having experienced enlightenment once and already incorporated the hammer technique into Tai Chi Fist, Little Leopard naturally needed little effort to accomplish this. Watching from the side, Qin Xuanlong could only feel somewhat frustrated. The boy's comprehension was simply too good, far beyond anything he had expected.
And so, half a year passed. Half a year was neither particularly long nor particularly short. Life at the Wu Ironworks gradually settled into a steady rhythm, and as his strength and skill improved,
the quality of the things he forged grew higher and higher.
"Your skill is already enough to rival an ordinary Master Artisan's!"
Holding the longsword Little Leopard had just forged, Qin Xuanlong swung it down. Sword light flashed, and with a clang, an iron bar as thick as the mouth of a bowl was severed in two. He brought the sword before his eyes and saw a rice-grain-sized notch in its edge. His brows rose slightly. "This is probably the limit of what you can achieve at your age. You still have a year and a half. Practice the Nine-Dragon Divine Fire Art diligently. Ideally, you should reach the peak of perfection as a First-Rank Martial Artist by the time you turn ten, or even brush against the threshold of a Second-Rank Martial Artist. If you do, an elder is certain to take notice of you!"
An elder taking notice of me?!
Though those words sounded somewhat ambiguous, they were extremely enticing.
The Wu Household was an Aristocratic Clan of smiths. Though it sounded like a Lineage, it was actually structured much like a martial sect. The only difference was that the head of each generation bore the surname Wu. Apart from the main Wu family, the household also included many people with other surnames. They had been there from the beginning: the three disciples of the ancestor who founded the Wu Household's enterprise, whose descendants became the Ma, Lin, and Xu households. After centuries of change, the Ma Household had vanished, and the Lin Household had gradually declined, while the Xu Household had steadily grown stronger. Of course, successive generations of household heads and elders could hardly spend their entire lives taking only their own descendants as disciples. Among generation after generation of people with other surnames, surely one or two outstanding talents would emerge?
These powerful experts who bore other surnames but served the Wu Household were its elders.
Becoming an elder of the Wu Household was not simple, but neither was it particularly difficult. As long as one's martial cultivation reached the fourth rank, one possessed the basic qualifications to become an elder.
The fourth rank meant breaking through the realm of Skin Training and reaching the realm of Bone Tempering.
The Bone-Tempering Realm, one of the three realms!
It did not sound difficult. Yet among the countless cultivators in the martial world, fewer than one in a hundred could truly break through the Skin-Training Realm and reach the Bone-Tempering Realm. One reason was the difficulty of obtaining cultivation arts, but an even greater obstacle was the scarcity of spirit medicines.
Only the legendary, highest-tier cultivation arts could produce internal energy with such powerful nourishing effects on the body that, combined with Bone Tempering fist techniques, it could complete the process through internal energy alone, without medicinal decoctions. But how could an ordinary person ever have the chance to practice such a heaven-defying art?
Thus, for the vast majority of martial artists in this world, reaching the Bone-Tempering Realm required not only their own efforts but also the accumulated effects of countless spirit medicines. Otherwise, practicing Bone Tempering fist techniques alone would take at least fifty years to break through the Skin-Training Realm. Fifty years-in that time, seas could become mulberry fields. Heaven knew whether their bodies would still be able to move once they finally reached the Bone-Tempering Realm.
But where would an ordinary cultivator find the money and means to gather so many spirit medicines? Take Wang Tianlei, for instance. He, too, was highly talented. Relying on the common, widely taught martial arts he had learned in the army, he had reached the level of a First-Rank Martial Artist. Given several more decades, reaching the second or even the third rank would not be impossible for him. But advancing beyond that was utterly out of the question!
An immensely deep gulf separated a Third-Rank Martial Artist from a Fourth-Rank Martial Artist. This was the first hurdle every martial artist had to face. Precisely because of that gulf, although the third and fourth ranks were only one rank apart, their strength differed as greatly as heaven and earth. Even someone who had only just entered the Bone-Tempering Realm possessed bones more than ten times as strong and resilient as those of someone in the Skin-Training Realm. As a result, even without using internal energy, their blows were stronger than those a Skin-Training martial artist delivered with internal energy. Once they used internal energy, the destructive power of the Bone-Tempering Realm, amplified by that energy, was beyond anything a Third-Rank Martial Artist could imagine. Thus, even a peak Third-Rank Martial Artist who had perfected the Skin-Training Realm could not withstand a single punch from a martial artist who had just reached the Bone-Tempering Realm.
One punch, and they would crumble to ash and scatter like smoke.
Before you continue