Chapter 6: Chapter 6 — Rapid Progress

“Master? Master?”

Seeing Bai Haichan collapse onto the ground, Fang Han called out several times, but there was no response at all. He hadn’t expected this “temporary master” to die just like that—coming fast, going even faster.

Though the two of them had been together for less than an hour, Bai Haichan had taught him many things, and more importantly, had opened his eyes—letting him see how vast and wondrous the world beyond really was.

The supreme “Ten Thousand Years” in his heart—a single emperor, a single dynasty, hundreds of millions of subjects—turned out to be nothing more than a toy in the hands of the immortal sects.

Because Bai Haichan had shown him this truth, Fang Han still felt a faint sense of attachment to this master of less than an hour.

But what Bai Haichan wanted him to do was incredibly difficult: infiltrate the Yuhua Sect and steal the Feathered Ascension Sutra, present it to the Myriad Stars Sect’s Sect Master, earn monumental merit, and then have the Sect Master resurrect him.

The Sect Masters of the Ten Great Immortal Sects shook the universe with a thought, could twist the fate of dynasties; any one of them possessed the power to wipe out a nation or a dynasty at the flick of a finger. To steal from such beings—how absurd was that? Any one of their true-transmission disciples could smash Fang Han into dust.

“No matter what, I should bury Master first. If the Fang clan discovers his corpse here and it’s traced to me, I’ll be finished. Fortunately, his flesh was trained to the Tenth Stage—Divine Transformation. His body is like steel; even buried, it won’t rot. I don’t need to worry about the corpse being damaged.”

Fang Han hid Bai Haichan’s corpse, then went to find a hoe. He secretly dug a large pit by the riverside and buried him there.

The dark-gold robe on Bai Haichan’s body was a treasure garment woven from “gold silkworm thread.” Blades and arrows could not pierce it, water and fire could not harm it. It wrapped Bai Haichan’s entire corpse, protecting it from the elements.

When everything was done, Fang Han finally let out a long breath.

In the Fang household, he was only a lowly horse boy. His status was low, and feeding horses at night was hard work, but during the day he still had some spare time to rest. As long as nothing urgent came from the Second Young Miss Fang Qingwei, like needing a horse prepared at once, being absent for a while didn’t matter too much.

By the time he finished, the sun was already high overhead—late morning, close to noon.

In just one morning, Fang Han’s understanding of the world—and his own body—had undergone earthshaking changes. If not for the constant warm surges from the area near his heart and the Dragon Lurking in the Yellow Springs Map in his hand serving as proof, he really would have thought it all a dream.

The Dragon Lurking in the Yellow Springs Map was a relic of the demonic Huangquan Emperor—an extraordinary magic treasure. For now, however, Fang Han had no idea how to use it. Even Bai Haichan hadn’t discovered its mysteries, so he could only keep it carefully stored away.

---

Late at night, when everything was quiet and still—

“Up!”

Fang Han lifted a thirty-jin green boulder with both hands, then repeatedly squatted down to the limit and sprang back up, leaping like a frog.

This was one of the Fang clan’s strength-training methods, “Golden Toad Diving into Water.” It could greatly increase physical power, but consumed immense stamina and very easily strained tendons or caused crippling injuries. Anyone whose body was not extremely well-nourished simply could not practice this method.

Originally, Fang Han wouldn’t have dared try such harsh training. But after his rebirth, with the Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir constantly being washed by his heart’s blood, he no longer feared any kind of high-intensity exercise.

With the elixir embedded near his heart, every time he exerted himself he could feel the medicinal energy and his body’s heat blend together. His injuries felt as if they were soaking in warm water; his mouth and nose were filled with fragrance.

Once. Twice. Three times. Four times…

Fang Han jumped again and again. Whenever he felt exhausted to the point of collapse, the Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir near his heart would release a surge of heat, nourishing every inch of his muscles and flesh.

After hundreds of jumps, Fang Han, gritting his teeth, refused to rest. He began a frenzied round of punching solid rock.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

His fists hammered a boulder again and again, like a maddened bull—flesh splitting, blood flying, bones protesting with sharp cracks, as if they might shatter at any moment. The pain was so intense it nearly knocked him out, but he forced himself to endure.

When his hands had become a mess of blood and raw flesh, he began to kick.

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

His legs struck the stone, swelling, bruising, skin breaking, blood oozing.

After that he rammed it with his body—back, shoulders, waist, abdomen, chest, even his neck, slamming into the rock until he was bruised from head to toe.

Splash!

When he finished this brutal training, he ignored his injuries and dove into the pitch-black river, swimming fiercely, battling the whirlpools in the middle of the current.

He used every method he could think of—extreme, high-intensity training—to grind his body down.

This was absolutely demonic training. Even those Fang clan disciples who ate ginseng, bird’s nest, and deer antler every day could not withstand such torture. Their bodies would fail, and more importantly, their wills would collapse.

Who could endure this kind of daily, life-and-death pain?

Fang Han did.

The Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir near his heart constantly supplied him with vitality. No matter how badly he injured himself—strained tendons, cracked bones—he would recover completely after a single night’s sleep.

He also realized that the more severely he was injured, the more fully the Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir’s medicinal power was stirred.

As his training intensity increased, the day would come when the elixir fully dissolved. By then, his body would reach a level of strength unimaginable to ordinary people.

One day. Two days. Three days…

Every night, for most of the night, Fang Han used this hellish regimen to batter his body, forcing his life force to surge and drawing out every last drop of the elixir’s power.

Gradually, his body grew stronger. The thin, wiry muscles he once had filled out, becoming dense and solid. His limbs grew supple yet powerful.

From the outside he just looked sturdier than before, but he himself knew that the compactness of his muscles and bones had increased greatly, and his weight had gone up by twenty or thirty jin.

After ten days, when he practiced Golden Toad Diving into Water, he gradually progressed from jumping with fifty jin to eighty jin of stone on his back.

The Second Stage of the Flesh Realm, Training Strength, was the most fundamental yet crucial part of cultivation. It determined one’s martial achievement.

The purer one’s strength, the greater one’s future potential.

“One hundred jin!”

After a month, Fang Han could jump with a hundred-jin boulder strapped to his back. He hopped around as easily as a frog, each leap covering four or five steps, bounding thirty-six times in a row without reddening his face or losing his breath.

Deep, heavy footprints covered the sand.

“Hah!”

He tossed the hundred-jin stone into the air—two or three times the height of a man. As it whistled back down, he raised his arms, his bones creaking like a bow being drawn, and caught the stone squarely.

“Break!”

With a low shout, Fang Han held the stone in one hand and slammed his other fist into the trunk of a sapling as thick as a bowl. The wood snapped with a crunch, splitting apart under the blow.

Bang.

He threw the hundred-jin rock aside and stood tall. His bearing was suddenly imposing—no longer the hunched, lowly posture of a house slave.

At this moment, he had finally completed his strength training. Every inch of his limbs and torso had been fully tempered.

“I’ve reached the limit of the Training Strength stage. That means I’ve stepped into the Third Stage of the Flesh Realm—Mastering Techniques. I can start practicing the Pine-Crane Longevity Fist I stole, and the various patterns of the Seven-Star Fist. My physical quality is now at least twice that of the Fang clan’s core disciples! My strength is far greater than theirs. Once I practice techniques, the power I can unleash will be much stronger than theirs as well.”

Fang Han clenched his fists; his knuckles crackled like firecrackers. Confidence filled the sound.

A Fang core disciple who had also finished the strength stage still couldn’t compare to the present Fang Han. Their nourishment came from ginseng and bird’s nest—his came from the Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir.

In a test of arm strength, Fang Han could raise a hundred-jin stone with one hand and move it freely. Those core disciples could not.

Next, he would cultivate techniques—linking all the strength in his body into one, and who knew how terrifying his strikes would become?

Right now the muscles all over his body were like a pack of powerful tigers and wolves—still scattered, uncoordinated. With technique training, these beasts would become a disciplined, tightly coordinated army—far more ferocious.

Raising his head to the stars, Fang Han sat cross-legged, gazing at the sky, watching the motion of the constellations and pondering the forms of the Seven-Star Fist that Bai Haichan had described.

His cultivation of the flesh advanced by leaps and bounds. The Nine-Orifice Golden Elixir at his heart was slowly revolving, washed by his blood, releasing more and more of its medicine.

---

At the same time—

In the vast and luxurious inner compound of the Fang residence, spread across a thousand acres, the Fang family’s eldest miss, Fang Qingxue—the one who, like a dragon palace princess or a fairy from the moon, had slain Bai Haichan with a single Violet-Lightning Yin-Thunder Blade—was sitting quietly.

Beside her sat a middle-aged man radiating immense authority, with pale-green eyes and a broad, powerful frame.

This man was the head of the Fang family, the current Governor of Longyuan Province—Fang Zetao—and Fang Qingxue’s father. His flesh had been cultivated to the Tenth Stage—Divine Transformation.

But he was no longer young. His body had begun its slow decline and would only worsen from here. Unless he obtained some peerless medicine, there would be no further advancement—only regression.

At this moment, even as her father, he could not maintain much of a patriarch’s dignity before Fang Qingxue. After all, his daughter was now a peerless expert of the Divine Ability Realm.

“Father, I’ve already become a true-transmission disciple of the Yuhua Sect. The Sect Master has bestowed upon me an independent palace on one of the peaks of Yuhua Immortal Mountain. I need to bring a group of loyal house servants to clean the palace, tend the fires for alchemy, care for the gardens, and feed the spirit beasts,”
Fang Qingxue said.

“Qingxue, you’ve truly become a true-transmission disciple of the Yuhua Sect? Wonderful, wonderful! Our Fang family’s position is secure now. Even the Emperor will have to do everything he can to win you over. As for taking loyal servants—choose whomever you like,”
Fang Zetao exclaimed in delight. He knew exactly what it meant to be a true-transmission disciple.

Even their Fang ancestor had never been more than an outer disciple of the Yuhua Sect.

“Also, because I became a true-transmission disciple, the sect’s Heavenly Punishment Elder granted me several outer-disciple quotas. It’s a rare opportunity. I’ll select some core family juniors to go,”
Fang Qingxue added.

“Outer-disciple quotas!”
Fang Zetao sucked in a deep breath.

“Governor, Eldest Miss—the imperial decree bestowing the title of Princess upon Eldest Miss has arrived! It’s at the gate!”
A voice called from outside just then.

“I know. Let the decree wait. I have matters to attend to,”
Fang Qingxue said with a wave of her hand.