“Red Dragon Inn, Dream Inn, Joyous Inn, and lastly the Phoenix Inn. We finally covered all of them. It has been a long time since this old man ate so much food. I don’t think I can eat anything for a day or two.” Old Man Ji spoke while patting his slightly protruding stomach.

Zhi Fen clicked his tongue, “Tsk. I told you to just eat a little bit to get the taste of the food. You were the one who insisted that we eat all of the dishes.”

“And waste all that expensive food? We aren’t rich enough to be throwing all that precious food away. I get angry just thinking about how much we spent on food today. We could run our inn for a whole week with that money.” Old Man Ji glared back at the Phoenix Inn they had just come out of.

It wasn’t that Old Man Ji hadn’t patronized expensive inns before. He had been to several of them during his time as an active martial artist. But those were all for big occasions where someone else was hosting an event or party at such places. He had never been the one who had to pay the bills himself at such places.

He was beginning to understand why it was always the scions of prestigious sects and families who would host drinking parties in such places. Ordinary martial artists would always find an affordable place with good food for their gatherings.

“Even with such ridiculous prices, all of them were busy with lines of customers while our inn is almost empty even with such affordable prices.”

Zhi Fen shook his head, “Just lowering the price doesn’t mean you will have guests. Even though it looks very shabby now, just the size and location of our inn are intimidating to most people. As the saying goes, ‘a tiger, even when it grows old, is still a tiger.’

Most people wouldn’t even think about going into the Eclipse Inn since they have the preconceived idea in their minds that they can’t afford such a place. And for those who can afford it, our inn is too shabby for their tastes.”

It was a conundrum. They were too intimidating for the middle class and the poor but they were too shabby and rundown for the tastes of the rich. So they were unable to target any customer base.

“You’ve been going round and round since earlier but what you want to say is that we should renovate the inn, right? After visiting the other inns, I can also see that the Eclipse Inn looks like a dump compared to those places. I guess I will have to use up my emergency funds this time.”

Old Man Ji was aware that his inn was lacking compared to other places. But he had never done a direct comparison with his competitors until then. Only after visiting the other inns and carefully observing them did he realize just how much his inn lacked. It wasn’t even enough to use the word lacking.

Although he was torn at the thought of having to empty his pockets up to the final ball of lint, he decided to go for broke and completely renovate the inn this time. That said, he kept sighing about the money that had to be spent on the renovation.

“Don’t worry, owner. Even if it doesn’t work out, a newly renovated inn would sell for a much better price than the current inn that could be mistaken for a haunted house.” Zhi Fen teased his master in a comforting tone.

“This brat! Are you trying to curse the inn before the renovation even begins? What inauspicious words is this guy speaking? We should begin your training from tomorrow.” Old Man Ji hit his disciple on the back of his head with an annoyed expression.

‘Why is he talking about training as if it is a punishment? Is he trying to use training as a punishment?’

Zhi Fen had an ominous thought while he looked at the back of his master walking away in a huff. And he was able to find the answer to the question early next morning.

……

Splash!

Old Man Ji poured a bucket of cold water over Zhi Fen, who was sleeping comfortably with drool leaking from the corner of his lips. “Aargh fuck! It’s cold.” Zhi Fen sat up in a panicked and shivering. He looked around the room while shouting.

When he came to his senses, he met the gaze of his master. The old man was standing over him with a stern gaze aimed at him. “What kind of language is that in front of your master? We will have to add to your training. Now get up, if you get up this late from tomorrow, I will wake you up just like today.”

It took a moment to process what Old Man Ji was saying to him. When Zhi Fen understood the words, he looked at the old man and then looked out the open window where the cold breeze was coming through. It was pitch black outside and he could see the stars in the sky.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Master, aren’t you mistaken? It is still night outside.” Zhi Fen asked innocently.

The expression on Old Man Ji’s face crumpled instantly. “Night? Night, you say?” He began slapping Zhi Fen on the back, “It is early morning you brat! A martial artist needs to utilize every moment of the day to practice. Especially for you who is starting much later than other kids, you need to squeeze every second of the day if you want to catch up with the others.”

While enduring the nagging and the slaps, Zhi Fen got out of bed, changed into dry clothes, and went out with the old man. They went to the back of the inn where there was a giant courtyard. Although it was still dark, the bright moonlight was enough to see things clearly.

There Zhi Fen saw two private annexes sitting on the opposite sides of the courtyard. And stone pathway in the middle divided the courtyard into two.

In the middle of the courtyard, there was a small pond with a stream flowing through it. The stream flowed diagonally to the central path and divided the courtyard into four quadrants with the pathway.

‘If the garden had been maintained and cleaned up properly, this place would have looked beautiful.’

While imagining how the courtyard would look if it was fixed, Zhi Fen followed Old Man Ji along the stream in the upstream direction. After a five-minute walk, they reached a bamboo forest with a clearing in the middle.

There was an old hut and a pavilion in disrepair overlooking the space overgrown with weeds. The area of the clearing was about the size of about equal to two basketball courts. Zhi Fen guessed that there was probably a garden where the weeds were growing.

‘I hadn’t noticed but the area of the inn is quite big. Just the price of the real estate would be substantial right? And this place is inside the city near the port. Wow, if the owner wasn’t a powerful martial artist, I guess the inn would’ve been eaten up by the wolves already.’

“I can hear the wheels in your brain turning from over here. It would be best if you stopped wasting your energy on useless thoughts. You will need all the energy you can spare.” Old Man Ji smiled sinisterly.

“Why does this feel like I am about to be tortured, master?” Zhi Fen asked nervously.

“Don’t think too much. Here, put these on.” Old Man Ji handed metal braces and armor that were a little too big to fit Zhi Fen. “The braces are for your hands.”

‘Fuck! Is this one of those cliché, training with weights on your body thing? What next? Is he going to strap iron balls to my legs?’

Even before Zhi Fen’s thoughts had enough time to disappear, he saw the old man bringing out two metal balls with chains on them. “Clasp these on your legs.”

Zhi Fen looked at all the metal ‘training tools’ with a look of horror and hurriedly spoke to his esteemed master, “Master, isn’t this too excessive for the first day of training? Shouldn’t we start with a balanced training method while gradually increasing the difficulty? This will just destroy my body.”

Although Zhi Fen wasn’t a gym rat in his past life as Stephen, he went to the gym occasionally and had some superficial knowledge about proper training methods. There was no way such an ignorant method like running around with weights on wouldn’t destroy his muscles and bones completely.

‘Maybe I can even use my gym knowledge to systemize the body training methods of murim?’

But Zhi Fen was making the mistake of looking at everything from the lens of a modern person.

“Of course, it will destroy your body. That is the whole point. We need to constantly break and build up your muscles and bones that have begun to harden with age. If you weren’t older we would have gone with a systematic training method. But this is the only way you will be able to build a solid enough foundation to reach higher realms.”

Martial artists have been training their body and mind to go beyond human limits for hundreds of years. All the techniques that were developed had the same purpose of squeezing out even the tiniest bit of potential from their mortal bodies.

There was no way martial artists who could cleave mountains in half wouldn’t have developed training methods far more advanced than modern people training in gyms with their scientific tools.

And Zhi Fen had overlooked one crucial detail. He was in the fantasy world of Murim.

“After your body breaks, you will soak in the medicinal bath for two hours then you will be as good as new and ready for another day of training.”

There were countless types of magical herbs in murim that could be used for medicinal purposes. Some herbs were known in legends to bring people back from the dead and some were said to make people invincible. Even the cheap, common herbs were highly effective.

By gradually breaking down and healing Zhi Fen’s muscles and bones, Old Man Ji wanted to decrease the time required to train his body while also establishing the foundation for a sturdy body suitable for training the Moon-Shadow Arts.

Looking at Zhi Fen’s dark expression, Old Man Ji clucked, “Tsk. Stop pouting you bastard, this is how I trained too. Luckily or unluckily, when my master found me, my body was already a mess. Right after my body got a little better, I did the same training that you will be doing now.”

When Old Man Ji began training in martial arts, he was about the same age as Zhi Fen. Although he came from a fairly wealthy family, his father’s stubbornness to not associate with martial arts factions meant that Old Man Ji was only taught some basic self-defense moves as a kid.

‘Are you trying to make me suffer the same thing you did? Is this some kind of generational trauma passed down in the Moon-Shadow martial arts?’

Before Zhi Fen could complain, Old Man Ji glared at him and shouted, “Stop talking and start running. You will continue running around this clearing until I tell you to stop.”

While Zhi Fen ran, the iron balls and chains on his feet were getting caught and dragging the weeds. Zhi Fen ruefully ran while cursing his fate that nothing came easy to him even when he transmigrated to a new world.

‘I’m just a human lawn mower at this point.’