When Uncle Mo had first heard Tang Yan's words, he had merely thought they made sense. Now, pondering them more deeply, he felt utterly shaken!
"In six months..." Uncle Mo said slowly, "the Tang Family may well rise from its position at the bottom of Cloud City's four great lineages."
"First, he angered everyone, successfully focusing all their attention on himself. Then he led by example and won them over with his character. Next, he offered benefits to fire up their enthusiasm. Finally, he established rules and smoothly took control of these guards." Old Master Tang paced back and forth, analyzing Tang Yan's actions step by step. By this point, even he was startled by his monstrous prodigy of a grandson.
With training like this, how could the troops fail to grow strong? Had they done this sooner, how could the other lineages have eyed the Tang Family like tigers watching their prey?
Of course, what surprised Tang Ling most was still the change in his grandson.
How had this ignorant, good-for-nothing brat suddenly... matured?
Tang Yan had no idea that his grandfather and Uncle Mo had witnessed his every move. At that moment, he was on the Drill Grounds, pushing himself beyond his limits.
With a hundred-jin sandbag weighing down his back, he struggled through push-ups.
This time, Tang Yan used his true qi. A person's true qi regenerated in a continuous cycle; once exhausted, it would replenish itself. After each bout of exercise beyond his limits, the next cycle would inevitably produce more true qi than before. Establishing this beneficial cycle would allow him to progress faster.
Of course, there was a drawback. Prolonged cultivation and constant exercise beyond the body's limits would naturally damage its meridians. Tang Yan did not mind, however. The pills he refined could fully remedy any problems with his meridians.
The Tang Family guards had initially assumed that Tang Yan was simply acting on a whim. But when he truly began training, their jaws dropped all over again.
Their young master was far too ferocious. Starting that morning, he had done push-ups with a hundred-jin weight on his back for two solid hours!
After just over an hour of regulating his breathing, he began a second round of training.
Was this something a fucking wastrel with a ruined dantian could do? Even with their current strength at ninth-grade Origin Tier, doing push-ups for two hours under a hundred-jin weight would leave them half-dead with exhaustion, wouldn't it?
Tang Yan's frenzy fully roused the fighting spirit in the Tang Family guards. If someone with a destroyed dantian could do it, how could they, proud ninth-grade Origin Tier warriors, fail to persevere?
For a time, enthusiasm on the Tang Family's Drill Grounds soared to unprecedented heights!
At the end of the day, Tang Yan dragged his exhausted body back to his room. Rather than rushing to cultivate, he sent Xiao Cui to the Tang Family's medicinal storehouse to fetch several sets of ingredients.
Fortunately, the Tang Family had substantial holdings and kept a considerable stock of assorted medicinal ingredients. This time, Tang Yan needed to refine a medicine-Meridian Tempering Powder.
Once Xiao Cui brought the ingredients, Tang Yan entered his makeshift Pill Room. He expertly sorted and purified them, then began refining the medicine.
Meridian Tempering Powder was a low-grade first-rank medicine. Though its rank was low, medicines specifically intended to repair and temper meridians seemed scarce in this world.
About two hours later, Tang Yan opened the pill furnace. Seeing the pile of powder inside, he found a large porcelain bottle and poured all the medicinal powder into it.
Normally, Tang Yan would certainly have refined a higher-ranked medicine. But after putting himself through an entire day of exertion, he had already depleted most of his true qi. He could only settle for the next best thing and refine Meridian Tempering Powder.
When he returned to his room, Xiao Cui had already heated a large tub of water as instructed. Looking at the bubbling, boiling water, Tang Yan poured in more than half the Meridian Tempering Powder. After a brief hesitation, he leaped into the tub.
"Hiss-!" As the scalding heat struck him, even Tang Yan's astonishing willpower could not keep him from crying out in pain. Only after a long while did he adjust to the water's temperature. Then he closed his eyes, took out an Initial Spirit Pill, and swallowed it.
This time, a strange expression crossed Tang Yan's face. He had expected the Heaven-Earth Creation Cauldron to swallow the pill as before, but it dissolved the moment it entered his mouth, transforming directly into spiritual energy.
Without time to consider it, Tang Yan sat cross-legged and calmly circulated his cultivation method.
Over the following days, Tang Yan truly astounded the Tang Family guards.
Everyone had assumed that Tang Yan was merely acting on a whim. Who could have guessed that Young Master Tang would actually persevere, and that his training load would increase with every passing day!
A month passed, and Tang Yan's strength finally broke through to eighth-grade Origin Tier.
What excited Tang Yan even more was that most of the Tang Family guards under his command had reached a bottleneck. Given the right opportunity, they stood an excellent chance of breaking through their current barrier and entering the Yellow Tier.
If the Tang Family gained another hundred and twenty Yellow Tier guards, its overall strength would certainly no longer rank last.
Of course, it would not become the strongest, either. On the martial path, the gap between grades was like a mountain between them. Within the Origin Tier, a fourth-grade warrior had a very real chance of defeating a fifth-grade warrior.
But for a first-grade Yellow Tier warrior to defeat a second-grade Yellow Tier warrior was as difficult as ascending to heaven. The higher one's strength, the more a tiny difference became a gulf of countless miles.
The other lineages probably had somewhat more Yellow Tier experts than the Tang Family. This was not because the Tang Family treated its warriors poorly. On the contrary, it offered them even better terms.
But many warriors believed that the Tang Family was being tossed about by wind and rain, and that joining forces such as the Liu Family would be safer.
To help all these men seize their opportunity to advance, Tang Yan's first thought was pills.
Initial Spirit Pills were perfectly suited to their cultivation.
But more than a hundred pills would require at least ten batches. Though Grand Alchemist Tang's refining skills gave him complete confidence in a hundred-percent success rate, the ingredients for ten batches would still cost a considerable sum. By his rough estimate, he would need over ten thousand taels of silver at the very least. This was his greatest problem at present.
He refrained from asking his grandfather for money because he had changed far too much lately. If his grandfather questioned him, he would not be able to explain himself clearly.
"I'll go out again and try my luck." After pondering for a long time without finding a solution, Tang Yan decided to head out.
He called for Xiao Cui. Dressed in white robes and carrying a folding fan, Tang Yan headed outside with his maid.
"Master, the young master has gone out." Not long after Tang Yan left, Uncle Mo came to Tang Ling's study to report.
"Come, let's follow him and take a look." Tang Ling rose. "Hurry and put on a disguise."
In less than half a quarter of an hour, two plainly dressed old men slipped out through the Tang Family's rear courtyard. Without a careful look, anyone would have mistaken them for a pair of petty merchants.
"Master, you're following him yourself this time?" Uncle Mo asked in a low voice.
"Hmph. Those bastards from the Liu Family have kept people watching our estate. It doesn't take a guess to know that brat Liu Yuan wants revenge for last time. But from now on, if anyone fucking dares lay a finger on my grandson, I'll wipe out their entire household!"
Hearing Old Master Tang's murderous words, Uncle Mo understood. For more than ten years, Tang Yan had been ignorant and useless, a wastrel through and through. His master had already given up on the boy.
Who could have known that the boy would suddenly change his ways, looking very much like a prodigal's return worth more than gold? This transformation had filled Old Master Tang with delight, making him feel that he finally had a worthy successor.
If anyone truly harmed Tang Yan now, his master would certainly be unable to bear the blow. From what Uncle Mo knew of Tang Ling, even if jade and stone had to burn together, he would muster the entire Tang Family's strength to avenge his grandson.
This time, he could only hope that no one would be blind enough to provoke Tang Yan again.
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