The training ground was… a sight to behold, Kou actually never had made her way down here - next to stands with hundreds of different kinds of training weapons, there were also a lot of …apparatie - that Kou could only describe as torture devices.
But that was not all in the middle of the training ground barechested - was a mountain of a man. Easily 3 times as large as Kou herself was if not more - each part of his body seemed to be a muscle, even his muscles seemed to have muscles. Long brown hair bound to a tight ponytail was swaying back and forth behind him as strict green eyes went over the people. “My name is Elder Gue” his voice was booming to the extreme - her instinctual reaction to this - was to hide - which she promptly did - behind a stand with spears.
She was luckily not alone with this many of the commoners - much to the dismissive chuckle of other children were shocked or outright frightened by that loud voice, it felt as if their bones were shaking after all!
The man himself seemed to be quite happy about the reaction as well - letting loose a booming laugh! “Good Good Good! We start with a run, all of you follow after me if you can’t take it anymore leave for the day.”
While the man sounded quite friendly, Kou immediately understood that this “run” was going to be horrible, she had quite the confidence in her speed - but endurance was something else entirely! She had to run at her top speed to barely keep up with the instructor, with a little satisfaction she noticed that not many children at all could even keep up with the man at all.
Even the man himself did cast a somewhat curious glance her way - he had probably expected the noble children to keep up - but not someone like her. Still, after 20 minutes of running at this speed, Kou could hear her heart pumping - her head felt numb, she had trouble breathing at all while she moved her legs like a robot. The instructor was slowly pulling away leaving almost everyone behind. But Kou simply continued running, running was her only strength, after all, running was the sole reason she had made it out alive out of the streets. This actually was a pride thing and so she forced her body to continue, forced her spiritual energy to rotate even faster in her body to heal the fatigued muscles.
About 10 minutes later she was … literally on her last breath.. but she had finally caught up to the instructor that had stopped at some point - eying the slowly incoming disciples. Kou was by far not the first but also not the last.
“Good, you lot - sit for half an hour, Meditate and take in energy, mend your muscles.” Everyone listened - nobody had any energy to even say anything, of the few hundreds, had started the run there were just about 40 children left by now, with the instructor sending back anyone that made the run but not fast enough.
Kou quickly found that strengthening her body was fairly easy right now - her muscles were torn, but that made it so much easier for spiritual energy to fuse into them, healing and strengthening in the process, while this did nothing to reduce the fatigue she felt - it did get rid of the pain.
After the half hour of rest, she felt slightly better but her face was still pale and she felt like vomiting - a look around showed that most of the other children were in the same state, nobody even had the energy to shiver at the instructors booming voice.
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“You lot did well today! We will do this run every day from now on!” These words brought horror to most children's faces but the man quickly continued while waving his left arm. “These are your price for today.” A small table with small bottles appeared - each bottle held a brownish liquid.
“This here potion will enhance your endurance and make your body more respective for Qi.” Handing each of the children a bottle he grinned “It does taste like shit! But you will see the benefits if you continue to make it to the goal every day.”
His eyes darted over the people around - Kou without question was the one with the lowest cultivation, everyone else was in the middle or peak of the first realm. “Drink now after that we will climb over the mountain bringing us back to the outer sect, this time it's your arms that are going to hurt.” He sounded ..creepily cheerful with that.
The climb over the mountain was unlike anything Kou ever did, Miss Hei did gave her a super watered down copy of this training before and she continued doing this each day. Still climbing a near vertical stone wall was hard and scary, quite quickly she could feel her arms go numb, her fingers were scrapped and her nails dirty.
2 Hours later Kou… practically fell down the moment she stepped inside her house - it was barely evening and she did not feel her body at all anymore, she could do little more than crawl to one of the chairs.. immediately passing out the moment she sat.
She had not even noticed her roommate sitting nearby - not noticed the amused glint in the girls firey red eyes, Xiu Shihong had not taken the run to seriously and stopped at some point to turn around, as had Hei Tian.
It was not that they did not have the energy or willpower to do this, It was more a case that both of them simply found the time better spent practicing spiritual cultivation! Neither of them would’ve guessed the girl would be as stubborn as this.
Around 2 hours later she had woken Kou up and shooed her into the bathroom. “I’ve given you enough rest and if you keep sitting around you are going to get even stinkier.” Which was true, Kou was muddy and sweaty, there were even a few tears in her gown.
And so Kou, her legs shaky made her way into the bathroom, throwing off the dirty robes and almost fell into the bathtub. The hot water made her muscles relax and she had trouble keeping her eyes open. A deep sigh unfit for a child her age left her lips “How am I gonna go to the archive If I’m barely able to stay awake..”
From tomorrow onwards she would stop doing some of her morning training until she was able to probably keep up - she would use the leftover time for more cultivation, and probably visit the archive in the morning.
She spent almost an hour in the tub - soaking her tired body until it was all shriveled up, she felt sooo tried after leaving the tub. But she still went and thanked her roommate for waking her up before she fell into bed - falling asleep in a matter of seconds.
As for visiting the archive in the morning? That did not happen, while she did sleep a lot more then usual her whole body was sore all over, moving like some old granny she made her way to the cultivation room and spend all of her free time in there.
She could feel how her Qi was sinking in - in each rotation her body took in more and more energy, the breathing technique in its self was not enough to sustain it and so Kou quickly took one of her spirit stones out, absorbing the pure energy from the stone.
While a large part of the energy of the stone remained in her datain - furthering her spiritual cultivation, the rest was circulated in her body - seeping into her muscles, tendons into her bones and marrows. Much more intense then it would in normal training. Kou could feel how her fatigue was sweept away, her sore muscles felt refreshed and her whole body felt lighter, she had made a small breakthrough! While not quite reaching the middle of the first realm in body cultivation, she had made a step in that direction!
This really was needed without this she would probably not be able to follow the elder today at all! Today she might even not almost die at the end! Bubbling with energy and determination - Kou left the cultivation room and left her house - making her way to today's lessons.