Any other menial slave doing this stinking, exhausting labor would long since have started cursing inwardly and slacking off.
But Chen Xuan worked with relish, unwilling to waste even a moment!
As he bent to shovel up a thirty-jin lump of wet horse dung, Chen Xuan's eyes shifted, and he began pondering inwardly:
After I broke through to early-stage Bright Force last night, my meridians expanded to more than twice their previous width, and my blood and Qi flowed as steadily as a little stream. Since circulating the Boulder Art alone puts me under no strain now... what would happen if I circulated the Boulder Art while working and secretly activated the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang in my dantian-the art I freeloaded off the heir yesterday?!
He acted on the idea at once! Wasn't processing multiple tasks in parallel a corporate slave's core competitive advantage?!
Chen Xuan tightened his grip on the shovel's wooden handle and planted both feet firmly in the mud. Mechanically swinging the shovel, he split his attention into two threads within his body-
One thread guided the Boulder Art's dense, warm blood and Qi through the skin, membranes, sinews, and bones along the outside of his limbs in broad, sweeping currents; the other carefully stirred the crimson thread of fire formed by those 11 points of Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang deep in his dantian, sending it traveling silently through hidden acupoints deep within his internal organs!
For the first three breaths, the two arts' Qi forces kept to their own paths in his meridians, well water never encroaching on river water.
But the instant Chen Xuan swung his shovel with force, and the two currents simultaneously passed through the two crucial junctions-the Shanzhong acupoint in his chest and the Mingmen acupoint in his back-
Boom!!
A sudden change erupted!
The Boulder Art's pure Yang blood and Qi, heavy as a mountain, and the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang's fierce, blazing fire-attribute Gang Qi were like two utterly different torrents crashing into the same narrow riverbed!
There was no clash in his meridians that sent him into Qi deviation!
Quite the opposite! The tough flesh and dense blood and Qi tempered by the Boulder Art instantly became the finest "firewood," feeding endlessly into the furnace of the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang; in turn, the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang's incomparably domineering, scorching Qi force acted like a red-hot, hundredfold-forged iron hammer, forcing the Boulder Art's blood and Qi to compress and refine at three, then five times their normal speed!
Hum! Hum! Hum!
Deep within Chen Xuan's mind, the golden fate panel began flashing and jumping at an unprecedented, terrifying rate, as though someone had stomped the accelerator through the floor:
[Boulder Art: Minor accomplishment (1/1000)... (15/1000)... (40/1000)!] [Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang: Initiate (12/500)... (35/500)... (68/500)!]
Holy shit?!!
The half-shovelful of horse dung in Chen Xuan's hands abruptly froze in midair. He felt as though an enormous lottery jackpot had fallen from the sky and struck him square in the forehead, his heart pounding wildly!
He could clearly feel that, with just a dozen or so shovelfuls of horse dung and fewer than five circulation cycles, the surge in proficiency for both arts actually matched half a double-hour of miserable, grueling cultivation in the haystack last night!
This isn't simple addition... this is fucking multiplication! They're catalyzing each other in geometric multiples!
Chen Xuan's fingers trembled slightly around the shovel in his extreme excitement, and even his breathing grew scorching hot. My whole approach was wrong! I'd honestly planned to grind the Boulder Art alone all the way to the top before slowly working on the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang. Now it looks like, under the rule of the [Heaven Rewards Diligence] fate, the external art tempers my blood, Qi, and flesh, while the internal Gang feeds back into my meridians and acupoints. These two arts are a match made in heaven!
Train them together! I have to grind both of them like my life depends on it! And if I follow that logic, the more arts I secretly learn and collect in the future, the larger the blood-and-Qi circulation network inside me will become, and their mutually catalyzing cultivation efficiency will skyrocket tenfold, a hundredfold!
At that thought, the look in Chen Xuan's eyes instantly changed as he surveyed the horse dung still littering the stables and the dozen-plus buckets of well water he had yet to carry-
How was any of that backbreaking labor? Those were clearly mountains of gold and silver piled high with experience points!
Work! Keep working! Nobody's stopping me from loving my job!
For the entire morning that followed, Chen Xuan became the most tireless perpetual-motion machine in the stables.
When shoveling dung, he exerted both arms to activate the Yang Gang; when brushing the horses, he twisted his waist and hips to circulate the Boulder Art's blood and Qi; even while hurrying back and forth carrying two hundred jin of well water, every breath he drew and released was locked precisely to the point where the two arts intersected and resonated!
Sweat soaked through his ragged clothes, only to be dried by the heat rising from the Yang Gang inside him.
Xiao Liuzi, who had been watching from a distant corner by the wall, observed him for a good while before giving a huge, bored yawn and muttering to his companion, "Steward Zhao really worries too much. Look at that brat Chen Xuan. Even after five lashes, he's still shoveling shit with his head down like an old ox. He doesn't dare let out so much as a fart. What could he possibly be hiding? Come on, let's go catch a nap under the trees up front."
By the time the sun reached its noonday peak, the stables had been cleaned inside and out until not even a stray weed remained in sight.
Only then did Chen Xuan exhale a three-foot stream of scorching white breath and prop his shovel securely against the base of the rammed-earth wall.
With a thought, he glanced at the two lines of numbers shining with brilliant golden light in his mind:
[Boulder Art: Minor accomplishment (100/1000)] [Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang: Initiate (125/500)]
In nothing more than the gaps between a single morning's chores, without medicinal pills or secluded cultivation in a secret chamber, the Boulder Art had shot straight from 0 points at minor accomplishment to 100. Meanwhile, the marquis's household's supreme art, the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang, which had originally stood at just 11 points, had blasted upward like a rocket to reach 125 points, crossing the quarter-way mark toward the five hundred points needed to perfect the initiate stage!
Chen Xuan raised his rough palm, lightly brushed the bits of grass from his clothes, and looked up at the dazzling midday sun.
The corners of his mouth tugged upward slightly-he did not laugh aloud, but deep within those eyes that had always remained lowered and submissive, a fire of ambition had fully ignited, fierce enough to burn the entire marquis's estate to ashes:
At this double-catalysis rate, two more days of grinding at most, and I'll even have the Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang at perfected initiate! Liu San, Xiao Yuxuan... this afternoon, at the martial training grounds, let the show begin!