[Boulder Art: beginner (230/500)]
Even in the little gaps between washing dishes and sweeping floors, the blood and Qi in his body flowed like a trickling stream, ceaselessly washing through his meridians. Every half an hour or so, the numbers in his mind steadily ticked up a few points.
He kept working until a quarter to eight in the evening.
"Clang-! Lock all courtyards! All menial servants are to return to their rooms and put out their lights immediately! Violators will receive twenty strokes-!"
The bronze gong of the steward making his night rounds rang out in the rear courtyard.
The head cook drove Chen Xuan out of the kitchen with a string of curses. "Out, out, out! You're done working, so hurry back to your stable! Don't hang around here. If so much as a radish goes missing, I'm blaming you!"
"Yes, yes, sir! Get some rest. This lowly servant will get out right away!"
Chen Xuan backed out with his waist bent. Rather than returning straight to the stable, he deliberately took a detour and lingered outside the abandoned woodshed and the servants' communal sleeping quarters for nearly half an hour.
Only after snores rose and fell throughout the sleeping quarters, and even the menial slaves who had gotten up to piss had crawled back under their covers, did Chen Xuan crouch low and slip silently back to the stable like a night owl skimming the ground.
Click.
He firmly secured the bolt on the wooden gate from inside, then hauled over a rotten wooden trough half a person's height and braced it against the door.
Pallid moonlight leaked through the gaps in the broken roof tiles, slicing thin silver-white lines across the chaff-strewn floor.
The chestnut horse had long since grown accustomed to his late-night activity. It merely raised its head to glance at him, snorted softly, then lowered its head again and continued leisurely chewing its nighttime fodder.
Chen Xuan walked behind the haystack in the deepest corner, plopped down cross-legged, and gently rubbed his slightly itchy palms together.
"All right, the day shift's over. Now it's time for my all-night grinding session! If I don't smash through those remaining two hundred and seventy proficiency points tonight, my surname isn't Chen!"
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and drove the Boulder Art at full power once more!
This time, no miscellaneous chores interrupted him.
The entire Marquis of Zhenbei's Residence, spanning a hundred mu, sank completely into the deathly stillness of night.
Only the occasional clack of the night watchman's clapper sounded from beyond the distant high walls.
"Dong-! The air is dry, beware of fire! First watch-!"
[Boulder Art: beginner (250/500)]
Chen Xuan sat in the shadows, his breathing long and fine. As his proficiency crossed the two-hundred-and-fifty-point mark, the circulation of his blood and Qi clearly rose to another level, each circuit smoother and more fluid than the last.
Crack, crack-crack...
In the silent corner, a series of faint grinding sounds suddenly came from Chen Xuan's shoulder blades and spine, like rusty iron chains coated in hot oil being straightened and pulled taut inch by inch.
The mass of heat in his lower abdomen traveled down from the roots of his thighs toward the soles of his feet. With every pass, it felt as though dozens of little wire brushes were scraping rust from between his bones, leaving them sore and numb. His muscles tightened inward little by little with each breath, becoming far denser than they had been yesterday.
Chen Xuan bit the tip of his tongue and, between breaths, exhaled a plume of white mist about a foot long. Keeping his voice down, he urged himself on inwardly. Your bones are aching at just two hundred and fifty points? Back in your previous life, you revised a proposal eight times for those client bastards until four in the morning without a single groan! This is nothing yet! Keep circulating!
He emptied his mind of all stray thoughts. His heartbeat was as steady as an ancient bell, and his whole body seemed to merge with the moldy haystack beneath him.
"Dong! Dong-! Second watch! Shut your doors and slide the bolts-!"
[Boulder Art: beginner (300/500)]
Sticky sweat streamed down Chen Xuan's spine, soaking the hay beneath him and filling the enclosed corner with a thick, sour stench.
Yet Chen Xuan did not so much as twitch an eyebrow.
The warm current inside him had now grown from its original hair-thin trickle into a scalding brook, roaring through and scouring meridians that had widened a full measure!
With every completed greater celestial circuit, the pores all over his body opened once, and a layer of grayish-black, sticky filth was forcibly squeezed out from beneath his skin, gradually congealing into a thin black crust on its surface.
Huh? That foul, fishy stench... why is this exactly like the marrow cleansing and impurity purging described in the novels from my previous life?
Examining the changes inside his body, Chen Xuan could not help marveling inwardly. That's not right. According to what the guards said while bragging in the original owner's memories, the Boulder Art is just the crudest external body-hardening art. Mastering it would, at most, give you tougher skin and flesh that can take a beating. How could it produce a marrow-cleansing effect that forces congenital toxins and impurities out of the body?
Just as his thoughts reached that point, the golden light of the fate trait in his mind, [Heaven rewards diligence; achievement is assured], flickered gently.
Understanding instantly dawned on Chen Xuan, and the corners of his mouth spread into a silent grin in the darkness.
I get it! It's not that this trashy Boulder Art is so miraculous. It's that my [Heaven Rewards Diligence] cheat is too domineering! Not only does it let me grind proficiency like crazy without bottlenecks, it can also wring a hundred and twenty percent of an art's underlying potential out of it! We're all practicing the Boulder Art, but what Liu San and those guards in the front courtyard produce is, at best, a lump of stubborn rock. What I produce is refined iron, tempered into steel a hundred times over!
Good stuff. What a goddamn divine fate trait!
Chen Xuan's heart burned. Far from feeling the slightest fatigue, he drove his blood and Qi as though injected with chicken blood. At this rate, once I break through to early-stage Bright Force tonight, my actual combat strength will absolutely crush ordinary guards at the same level! Even though an early-stage Bright Force practitioner is still an ant that some big shot could crush at any moment in this residence, where experts gather like clouds and even Hua Jin and Gang Jin practitioners exist, at least-I've finally got my hands on the first stepping stone to climb higher!
"Dong! Dong! Dong-! Third watch, the dead of night! Beware of thieves and burglars-!"
[Boulder Art: beginner (350/500)] [Boulder Art: beginner (370/500)] [Boulder Art: beginner (390/500)]
As the stream of blood and Qi fully opened all twelve primary meridians throughout his body, the rate at which his proficiency ticked upward began multiplying!
With every change in the numbers, Chen Xuan could clearly feel his body undergoing an earth-shaking transformation. His bones grew heavy as lead, his muscle fibers became like tightly twisted ox sinews, and even his ears and nose grew terrifyingly keen under the nourishment of his blood and Qi!
From thirty paces away, through a thick rammed-earth wall, every single word whispered by two lantern-carrying guards passing through the passageway actually reached Chen Xuan's ears.
"Hey, Old Li, the young lord just smashed another two vases in the front courtyard!"
"Shh, keep your voice down. Come on, let's play a couple of hands in the gatehouse up front!"
The footsteps gradually faded into the distance.