Iron arms and bronze flesh defy the nine heavens, divine needles and medicinal brews work unseen

Though suffering wouldn't make you rise above others-devouring others would-Chen Ping wasn't asking for much right now. Being treated like a person would do.

With Innate Level 2 soul power, being treated like a person on the Douluo Continent was possible, but if he successfully enrolled at Shrek, that was rather unlikely.

After all, not everyone was Huo Gua. That guy started with a Million-Year Soul Ring. What the hell did Chen Ping have?

"Boss, how could we not make full use of bath and medicinal-meal time to study? What would you like to learn today: soul beast characteristics, martial soul fundamentals, or an introduction to soul tools?"

Just as the torture administered both internally and externally sent every muscle in Chen Ping's body into spasms, with faint traces of foam even forming at his mouth, the system's voice rang out once more in his Sea of Consciousness.

Watching the scholar points in the upper-right corner of the system panel steadily climb, Chen Ping shuddered and forced the pill down into his stomach. It turned to sticky mush as he chewed, like a piece of tacky candy that had spoiled and gone sour.

"Today... review advanced calculus... Tang San came from a sect in a martial arts world, with martial arts secrets already in hand. This little bit of knowledge is all I could bring with me. If I forget it all, I'll truly have nothing left."

Gritting his teeth and trembling, Chen Ping looked toward the upper-right corner of the system screen. Ten points were instantly deducted from his steadily rising scholar points, and a string of randomly generated problems appeared before him.

As Chen Ping endured the triple torment of medicinal baths, pills, and advanced calculus, his Academic Genius Points began to soar, jumping upward roughly every few minutes.

[Focused on body tempering with the cheap but not inferior Odd-Flavored Body-Tempering Soup. Academic Genius Points +2]

[Focused on refining the cheap but clearly effective Pungent Might Pill. Academic Genius Points +2]

[Reviewed advanced mathematics without much focus, studying with a troubled expression. Academic Genius Points +1]

[Focused on body tempering...]

[Focused on refining...]

As the saying went, "Enter a room filled with orchids, and in time you cease to notice their fragrance; enter a shop selling salted fish, and in time you cease to smell its stench."

Both the strange taste of the Might Pill and the needle-pricking, fire-scorched pain the Body Tempering Soup inflicted on his skin were hard to bear.

But when he soaked for an entire afternoon, that suffering gradually became tolerable with the passage of time.

After all, these medicines really were cheap. Aside from tasting so disgusting they made him want to die and causing excruciating bodily pain... they didn't have any particularly serious side effects.

Chen Ping had once wanted his system to analyze the formula for the Mystic Water Pill.

But since he had never seen a Mystic Water Pill, analyzing its formula directly—retrieving the formula remotely—would require an astronomical number of Academic Genius Points.

Besides, given the Mystic Water Pill's high price, low yield, and fixed annual production, Chen Ping knew perfectly well that even with the formula, producing one would be no ordinary challenge.

Whether he could scrape together the money for the medicinal ingredients, whether he could gather those ingredients even if he had the money, and whether he could make a Mystic Water Pill even if he gathered them were three separate matters.

By comparison, the Odd-Flavored Body-Tempering Soup, which cost only a few Gold Soul Coins to brew a whole pot, and the Pungent Might Pill, which increased physical strength, offered incredible value for money.

If he couldn't stomach the bitterness of pills, he would have to stomach the bitterness of life. Every afternoon, after finishing his practice problems in the bathtub, Chen Ping would grit his teeth against the aching stiffness that made every limb and bone creak, then put himself through another four hours of physical training to exhaustion.

Squats, deadlifts, clean and jerks, flyes-he performed every exercise that could help him absorb the medicine, all to refine every trace of medicinal power left over after his bath and pills.

Only after pushing his stamina to its limit, until he couldn't squeeze out even a shred of strength, would Chen Ping drain the lightly salted water he had prepared in his flask that morning.

He climbed into bed with exhaustion written across his face, feeling the aching soreness of muscles continually growing after being torn apart. Only then did Chen Ping begin meditating.

Reality wasn't a fairy tale. Even if Chen Ping had Laozi's "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao" in his head.

Even if he had Patriarch Bodhi's "Gather the five elements and reverse their course; when the work is complete, become a Buddha or immortal."

Even if he had the Emperor of Myriad Longevity's "Train the body into the shape of a crane; beneath a thousand pines lie two cases of scriptures."

Not knowing the circulation pathways of a cultivation method still meant not knowing them.

These cultivation verses were probably only useful in an immortal-cultivation universe. Their level was too high, leaving them utterly useless on the Douluo Continent.

It was like throwing a hard drive containing humanity's general scientific and technological knowledge fifty thousand years into the past.

Though priceless, given that the Upper Cave people had generally only just progressed from Acheulean and Mousterian stone-tool technologies to knapping microliths, that hard drive would amount to nothing more than an exquisitely crafted ritual offering.

If he had no cultivation verses, so be it. If his innate soul power was low, so be it. If his cultivation was slow, so be it. As long as he kept popping pills, everything would get better.

Medicinal baths plus pills plus exercise: Chen Ping's muscles now ached and tingled all over, his blood surged, and abundant medicinal power churned inside his body.

Even with only Innate Level 2 soul power, Chen Ping's cultivation speed while meditating was now no slower than that of an ordinary soul master with level-four or level-five innate soul power.

That was how cultivation worked: three parts training, seven parts eating, and the remaining ninety parts left to pills and supplements.

With Chen Ping's current cultivation regimen, calling him a practitioner of the crooked path on the Douluo Continent wouldn't have been an exaggeration.

Compared with him, even the Sun Moon Empire's soul engineers who had popped pills all the way up could count as natural cultivators.

Personally, Chen Ping greatly admired the Sun Moon Empire's approach to cultivation.

What did they mean, "popping pills to squeeze out your potential"?

This was called "the visible hand actively regulating cultivation across different age brackets, bringing future cultivation forward for present use."

Take Jing Hongchen's grandson Xiao Hongchen, for example. He had taken pills for his second appearance at the Continental Advanced Soul Master Tournament and reached Soul Saint at twenty. So what if he barely improved over the next five years?

According to the system, Chen Ping wasn't yet fifteen, and his body was still under beginner protection. Even if he squeezed out ten units of potential, he would basically only have to repay the principal later.

If Chen Ping played this way after reaching his twenties or thirties, cashing out ten units of potential as cultivation might mean having to repay twenty units later, principal and interest included.

Cashing out five years of cultivation could leave him unable to advance even an inch for the next ten.

That was why Chen Ping dared to use these supplements without restraint. They were cheap, and their effects were potent.

If their only side effects were a foul smell during use and pain that felt like his entire body was being ripped apart, who could resist using them?

Medicine had to be taken early. Though many soul engineers in the Sun Moon Empire were habitual pill users, even they didn't dare follow Chen Ping's example and start dosing themselves hard at eleven.

Waiting until their twenties or thirties, when cultivation grew slower and slower, before remembering to take pills was already too late.

As the saying went:

Iron arms and bronze flesh defy the nine heavens, divine needles and medicinal brews work unseen.

With the Mighty Tonic swallowed down, my fate is mine, not heaven's, to command.