"Wei Leyang needs to start looking too!"
Li Jianguo nodded in agreement.
"Uh... well... I'll do my best!" Wei Leyang's mouth hung slightly open. After a moment's hesitation, he silently nodded his assent.
Han Ling could not help laughing. "Haha... that's not what you said before. You were even going on about the three-dimensional world..."
"Shut up!" Wei Leyang shouted in exasperation.
"Hahaha..." Han Ling rocked back and forth with laughter.
Li Jianguo turned toward the laughing Han Ling and offered her an earnest reminder as well.
"And you, Little Ling. You're not getting any younger either. You need to hurry up and find someone!"
"Cough, cough..." Han Ling choked on her saliva twice, instinctively glanced at Wang Hai, and mumbled, "We'll see, we'll see!"
How strange. How did this suddenly turn into a matchmaking intervention?
Puzzled, Shen Heng turned to look around. The moment his eyes met Old Li's, Li Jianguo spoke again.
"Little Shen, you need to start looking too. There aren't many girls these days. You need to find someone soon, or it'll be harder later!"
"..."
Never in his wildest dreams had Shen Heng expected that even a high school student like him would be pressed to find a partner... He nodded silently, then turned to Wang Hai.
"By the way, Captain, after I reached first tier, why did my body start shaking when I practiced the Five Animal Fist to guide Origin Power into tempering my body?"
The moment he said that, the table fell silent.
Everyone stared at Shen Heng with wide eyes and expressions of disbelief. Only Wang Hai, who had been sparring with Shen Heng throughout this period, looked a little calmer.
"Wait, you... what... you've already broken through to first tier?" Han Ling stared at Shen Heng in shock.
"Yes. I just broke through last night!" Shen Heng nodded.
"Wait, how long has it even been?" Wu Cheng said, his mouth open.
"From when Shen Heng joined to today, about twenty-two days!" Zheng Anlin did a quick mental calculation.
"Twenty-two days to first tier? What the hell? I trained for over a year!" Wu Cheng found it a little hard to accept.
"There's far more Origin Power in the air now than before. If you'd only started cultivating now, it wouldn't have taken you that long either!" Wang Hai said.
"But that still shouldn't mean breaking through to first tier in a month! Didn't Gu Nan take over three months, almost four, to break through to first tier last year?" Han Ling said.
"If your cultivation was as efficient as Shen Heng's, and you kept at it as persistently, you could do it too!" Wang Hai said.
At that, everyone was struck speechless.
They had all seen how Shen Heng cultivated during this time. In his place, they would never have had that kind of perseverance.
Especially after that trip into the sewers-when Wei Leyang returned, he had actually said Shen Heng had even practiced breathing exercises between parts of the mission!
They could not understand it, so all they could do was respect it.
With Shen Heng joining them this month, they had unconsciously begun spending a little more time cultivating than before, but they were still far behind him.
"Looking at it that way, won't Shen Heng catch up to us next year?" Han Ling pursed her lips.
"If you don't break through to tier 3 this year, he might catch up this year!" Wang Hai said.
"Hiss..." Wei Leyang drew in a small breath of cold air. "This child is terrifying indeed!"
Wu Cheng nodded in heartfelt agreement.
Wang Hai turned to Shen Heng and began answering his earlier question.
"As I told you before, the process of going from tier 0 to tier 1 can be described as constantly approaching the limits of the human body, then surpassing them. When you break through to first tier, your body truly surpasses normal human limits! To keep improving at that point, your body needs to be able to withstand it!"
"My body needs to be able to withstand it?" Shen Heng frowned slightly.
"Yes, exactly!"
Wang Hai nodded.
"The Five Animal Fist only guides Origin Power into tempering the body's flesh and blood. It doesn't temper anything else!"
"So, in your current body, only your flesh and blood have surpassed human limits. Nothing else has!"
"At this point, if you keep practicing the Five Animal Fist and guiding Origin Power into tempering your flesh and blood, the bones supporting that flesh and blood will be the first to buckle under the strain. That's also why your body shakes when you cultivate!"
"So that's how it works!" Shen Heng nodded thoughtfully. "That means the next step is tempering my bones, right?"
Wang Hai nodded. "Yes, exactly. This is what you need to add to your cultivation as you advance from first tier to second tier!"
"We also call it..."
"Bone tempering!"
Inside the spacious training room.
Shen Heng and Wang Hai stood facing each other as Wang Hai explained the details of bone tempering to him.
Wang Hai said, "To temper your bones, you first need to understand the structure of the human skeleton!"
"The human body has a total of 206 bones: 29 in the skull, 51 in the torso, 64 in the upper limbs, and 62 in the lower limbs."
"When you first start bone tempering, you won't have enough Origin Power in your body to temper your entire skeleton at once. You can only choose one section to temper first."
"Once you've finished tempering that section, use the Five Animal Fist to guide Origin Power into tempering its flesh and blood, increasing the total amount of Origin Power you can absorb. Then use that greater amount of Origin Power to temper the next section!"
"By repeatedly tempering your bones and flesh like this, you'll eventually be able to break through to tier 2!"
Shen Heng asked, "So I temper one section of bones first. Once that's done, their capacity to support flesh and blood increases, and I temper the flesh and blood corresponding to those bones to increase my total Origin Power. Then I use that greater total Origin Power to temper the next section of bones, forming a positive cycle?"
"Yes, exactly!" Wang Hai nodded. "So, which section of bones do you want to temper first?"
"What difference does it make which section I temper first?" Shen Heng asked.
Wang Hai explained.
"Tempering your skull doesn't make much difference. It just makes your head a little harder and improves its defense!"
"The upper limbs are the limbs people normally favor. Tempering those bones first will make your attacks more powerful!"
"The lower limbs control movement. Tempering them first will make it easier for you to run away!"
"The torso bones sit where the limbs and head connect. This section has the most flesh and blood, so tempering it first is the most effective way to increase your total Origin Power. Other than that, it's like the skull: it makes your torso's defenses a little stronger, but doesn't do much else!"
Shen Heng nodded thoughtfully and lowered his head in contemplation.
Wang Hai suggested, "The skull isn't very useful, so I'd recommend tempering it last. Your ability isn't offensive, so I'd suggest tempering your upper limbs just before your skull. Your lower limbs can improve your ability to escape, while your torso bones can increase your total Origin Power. You can choose one of those two to temper first!"
Shen Heng nodded. That was what he thought too: choose either the lower-limb bones or the torso bones to temper first.
The lower-limb bones focused on improving his ability to escape. His ability was Hearing Enhancement, so if he really needed to run, he could start early. Besides, they generally went into action together on missions. If they really encountered something they needed to flee from, bones tempered at first tier probably would not be much use.
The torso bones, on the other hand, could increase his total Origin Power and speed up the subsequent tempering of bones in other areas. That would be more useful to Shen Heng.
At that thought, Shen Heng made his decision.
He looked up at Wang Hai.
"I'm going to temper my torso bones first!"