After receiving the meditation method from his father, Xu Zhengyang immediately returned to his room to begin meditating, while his mother, Yang Miaoyun, still wore a worried expression.
Following the circulation route described in the meditation method, Xu Zhengyang absorbed Soul Power from the surrounding space and began circulating it through his body.
Xu Zhengyang's Innate Soul Power was currently only half a rank, meaning he could only count as a half-rank Soul Master. The Soul Power within him was pitifully scant, no more than a faint thread.
Yet even so, when Xu Zhengyang followed the meditation method to control the circulation of Soul Power within him, the entire process felt extremely awkward and proceeded very slowly. It was as though his body contained all manner of shackles, and his meridians in particular seemed exceptionally clogged.
At this meditation speed, he might not even advance two ranks in a year. He was practically trash among trash. Cultivation was fastest before becoming a Soul Master; the higher a Soul Master's level, the slower cultivation became. Even ordinary children with average talent could raise their Soul Power by one or two ranks a year, and most would be Soul Masters by twelve. Only children with better talent and higher Innate Soul Power could reach rank twenty before twelve, and they could even advance three ranks a year.
However, Xu Zhengyang had advantages of his own. In his previous life, he had, after all, been a top student at a college of traditional Chinese medicine. He had a natural sensitivity to medicinal ingredients and understood some of the principles behind combining them. Not to mention that, over the past few years, besides books about Soul Masters, he had also read some books on medicinal ingredients, and his clan even possessed a few medicinal bath formulas.
As long as he could combine some medicinal ingredients that strengthened the body and bones, he could brew a medicinal decoction to nourish his body. Perhaps it would benefit his cultivation.
He acted on the idea at once. Early the next morning, Xu Zhengyang took a hundred gold soul coins from his mother, intending to go out and buy some things he needed for cultivation.
His first stop was a medicinal herb shop, where Xu Zhengyang bought a large bundle of ingredients, including ginseng, white atractylodes, Chinese yam, deer antler velvet, curculigo, eucommia bark, flatstem milkvetch seeds, and Solomon's seal. Using the existing medicinal bath formula as his foundation, he reduced the quantities to a minimum, adjusting them to amounts suitable for a six-year-old child.
Next, he visited a blacksmith's shop and ordered a large batch of training equipment made to his specifications. Among them was a spear over three meters long and weighing more than two hundred jin. This spear somewhat resembled the Tiger-Head Zhan Gold Spear in Xu Zhengyang's memories.
He even commissioned wrist and ankle weights, along with dumbbells and barbells of various sizes, all fitness equipment from his previous life.
Xu Zhengyang understood perfectly well that, at his current age of six, his bones had yet to fully develop, making him completely unsuited to wearing weights. However, he could begin tempering and training his body, as well as practicing spear techniques.
The foundation of a Soul Master's cultivation was not the Martial Soul but the body. Only a powerful physique could cope with extreme environments, and meditation became much more effective when physical training pushed the body to its limits.
Once all his purchases were complete, Xu Zhengyang hired people to set things up in the small grove in his family's backyard, creating a training ground fifty meters long and roughly thirty meters wide.
The hundred gold soul coins he had taken from his mother, Yang Miaoyun, were no small sum. One gold soul coin could support a family of three for three months, though that meant living on coarse tea and plain meals. His mother, Yang Miaoyun, had nevertheless given Xu Zhengyang the money without any hesitation.
Over the next few days, the training ground was quickly completed, and the various pieces of exercise equipment were forged one after another. Even the Tiger-Head Zhan Gold Spear, weighing more than two hundred jin, was exactly as Xu Zhengyang had envisioned.
Only when Xu Zhengyang actually received the Tiger-Head Zhan Gold Spear did he understand the difference between a spear and his iron rod Martial Soul.
As his Martial Soul, the large iron rod could be summoned at will. It was like a part of his body, and he barely needed any strength to swing it.
But for a six-year-old child, even one who had already reached a height of 1.4 meters, a two-hundred-jin spear was still extremely heavy and difficult to swing. And that was with Xu Zhengyang's physical condition far surpassing that of his peers.
However, when Xu Zhengyang took hold of the Tiger-Head Zhan Gold Spear, his entire presence changed. The spear truly deserved its title as the king of all weapons, worthy of being called a heavy weapon for battlefield slaughter. With a spear in hand, his presence soared like a rainbow.
As the rulers of Dongyang City, the Xu Clan possessed a collection of books its disciples could consult, including some books on the use of spear techniques.
Through these books on spear techniques and his memories of spears from his previous life, Xu Zhengyang had already begun learning how to wield a spear.
Early every morning, Xu Zhengyang took up the two-hundred-jin Tiger-Head Zhan Gold Spear and began the most basic spear training. Holding the spear, he thrust straight at the dummy in front of him a hundred times, and he had to hit a specific spot without the slightest deviation. If he missed, he started over.
Xu Zhengyang's basic knowledge of spear techniques was currently almost nonexistent. He mainly practiced straight thrusts and angled thrusts, though there was a certain difference between the two.
A straight thrust involved holding the spear and thrusting directly forward in a straight line, channeling all one's strength into the spear tip. An angled thrust was somewhat similar, but its angles were more flexible and varied, divided into level thrusts, diagonally upward thrusts, and diagonally downward thrusts.
He practiced nothing but straight thrusts and angled thrusts a hundred times every morning. Afterward, Xu Zhengyang felt as though his entire arms were about to snap and his whole body had been hollowed out.
That was only his early-morning training. Since he had already exhausted his strength, Xu Zhengyang went to the library to read later in the morning. The Xu Clan's book collection was quite extensive.
In the afternoon, Xu Zhengyang began training his body with the various pieces of fitness equipment, with dumbbell and barbell exercises being essential. At dusk, he ran along the small grove behind his home, trying to train his body to the point of utter exhaustion.
Once he was completely exhausted, Xu Zhengyang placed the medicinal ingredients he had bought into an iron tub prepared in advance, added water and brought it to a boil, then immersed his body in the tub to rest and recover. This allowed him to enter a special state of empty clarity.
After dinner, Xu Zhengyang meditated in his room, trying every possible way to increase his meditation speed.
This was essentially Xu Zhengyang's daily training routine. He was only six now and was not particularly suited to going out, so he mostly stayed at home.
As for attending the junior Soul Master academy, he merely went to register when the term began, then returned straight home. His father had already discussed this with the academy's teachers.
Through this repeated cycle of training, Xu Zhengyang could clearly feel that his cultivation seemed to have become a little faster. In particular, when he was utterly exhausted and had soaked in the medicinal bath for a while, his body seemed extremely relaxed, the sense of a bottleneck in his cultivation weakened slightly, and his Soul Power circulated a little faster.