"So, why don't you tell me how you've already passed into the Martial Warrior stage without anyone teaching you any cultivation techniques, huh, boy?"

Despite knowing it was coming, Qian Feng cringed slightly at that question. And immediately reverted back to his former position, becuse with those weights on, every movement was difficult.

"I don't know anything. I just remember always knowing how to cultivate, in detail. So, with nothing to do for three years, I just did that. And I grew stronger, hiding it because I felt like I needed to." He responded as innocently as he could, all while trying to keep the strain from holding the weights out of his voice. He succeeded mildly on both accounts.

   "Hereditary knowledge, huh? Well, since the Spirit Fox is a good bloodline, the cultivation techniques gaine from that shouldn't be bad... Wait a minute, you also have two affinities! They didn't tell me that... Did you manage to hide them?" The Iron Fox responded, having figured out another piece of the puzzle mid-sentence.

 Qian Feng, who had hoped the Iron Fox wouldn't realize that, was nevertheless prepared for the question. 

  "When I felt the force going towards my spirit realms, I tried to block it using my Qi because the elder was already shocked enough by my talent, and I thought that showing I had two spirit realms would draw even more attention than I needed."

  "Good, good, you're smart, too... Well, I'll just go back to my stump and meditate until you fall! Have fun, and try not to fall! Also, whenever you reinforce your body with Qi, I'll whip you ten times. AAnd don't worry, I won't miss it."

   Before long, beads of sweat had emerged on Qian Feng's body and his muscles began to tremble involuntarily. He was already in more pain than he had been in most of his life, and the sun hadn't moved since he had gotten to the training grounds.

   Ten more miutes passed, and Qian Feng was on the verge of collapsing. A tide of blackness was threatening to overwhelm his vision, and his head pounded along with his muscles. Thankfully, his regenerative powers were showcasing themselves as his muscles were constantly repaired as they tore themselves apart, growing stronger every passing moment.

   Twenty minutes later, every last dreg of energy, every scrap of rejuvenation was squeezed out, and Qian Feng dropped for the first time. His body had reached his limit, and even his regeneration had slowed down slightly. This was going to be a long day. 

   Thanks to the weights, even falling hurt. Not as much as the bullock whip wielded expertly by the Iron Fox, but still. It hurt. Qian Feng picked himself of the ground, a long line of blood on his back, the whip having easily broke through his clothing.

   And began his exercise again.

   The sun rose to its highest point, heralding the arrival of noon. In the middle of a training field on the top of a mountain, a young boy held himself in a horse stance with his arms held in front of his torso in a straight line. Rivulets of sweat flowed down his body, adding to the pungent pool below his feet. Bloody lines also traced their way down his back, counting 15 in total. Every inch of the little boy's body quaked incessantly, but he persevered. He snuck a glance at the whip of the middle-aged man sitting on the stump held, but immediately corrected his gaze, looking straight ahead with an expression equal parts resolute and fearful. And as the hot sun watched overhead, casting its heated rays on the struggling pupil, Qian Feng fell again. And again. And again.

    The first day was quite educational, in a way.

      As someone who had never exercised before, Qian Feng was naturally completely new to the feeling of exercise as intensive as this. After he had fallen for the first time, Qian Feng knew his limits had been reached. And, when thinking about how the rest of the day would progress, the young boy had almost never felt an impulse as powerful as the one he felt then, an intense desire to give up and back out. It was stronger than the desire he felt in the waiting room of the place he had went to after death, nearly as strong as his thirst for power born from a life of scheming. 

  But Qian Feng did not yield. He would not yield. As his limits were broken time and time again, as his body collapsed from exhaustion repeatedly, and as the bullock whip was wielded expertly by a master thousands of times stronger than him, Qian Feng continued. 

   Far more numerous than the tims he fell were the times he almost gave in. The times despair overwhelmed each of the cells in his body, the times he almost fell over the edge and succumbed. Every time, without fail, Qian Feng's muscles would sag for a mere instant, before his previous life's memories, and the feelings that came along with them, flashed before his eyes. The scheming. The trickery. The poisonous behavior. He had tossed away all the joy in his life, all to be able to overcome those stronger than him with sheer dishonorable behavior. He had ground his scruples and moral foundation, and why? Because he was not strong enough. But now, he had a chance. A chance to live another life, where he could gain the power necessary and keep his morality intact. Sure, he could scheme and plot and trick, but for what? To live a hollow life? A life not worth living? All these thoughts and more flashed through his mind in that instant where his muscles began to bend, and Qian Feng recognized that his chance to fulfill his only desire lay before him, if he would only reach out and take it. 

   Then vigor returned to his muscles and they tensed up. In response to his will, his body, his soul, and even his Qi strengthened under the pressure, and Qian Feng grew just a little bit stronger.

  His cultivation, which had been rather shaky due to his incredibly brisk cultivation pace, firmed up, and his foundation quickly grew flawless through the tempering.

   And so, in the span of one day, Qian Feng learned many valuable lessons. One: What it felt like to break through his limits. This would allow him to experience and persevere through all sorts of pain and difficulties in the future. Two: A cultivator, a warrior, was not meant to live an easy life. In his previous life, Qian Feng would read his favorite online light novels and wonder why the protagonists would not just go into hiding and cultivate for centuries, only returning when their power was enough to keep them safe. Why they, time and time again, risked their life for things that would only benefit their cultivation speed slightly on the surface. But now, having gone through one of those life-and-death situations as a cultivator, Qian Feng understood. Cultivation was not just drawing in Qi and absorbing it. It was a way of life, or rather, a way of death. Cultivation without strife was not true cultivation, and those that followed the easy path in their quest to grow stronger would never gain true strength. Qian Feng knew this because when he had attempted and followed that path for a period of time, he had never realized how shaky his cultivation was until he corrected his path. Each drop of sweat Qian Feng spilled was enhancing him beyond what the eye could see, or what the Qi could sense. It was traveling straight to his soul, and expelling its impurities, tempering it with a flaming hammer. Three: His teacher was a demon.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

   "Today was just an introduction to your future. We will continue this tomorrow, and tomorrow won't be nearly as easy as today. Count yourself lucky. Have a good rest, for you will need it!"

  After saying his frankly unnecessary piece, the Iron Fox retired to his quarters, and Qian Feng walked over to the barracks his instructor had pointed to during his training. Finally, sleep...

   During the night...

   "So, Iron Fox, how's the kid doing? Any abnormalities? Comments?"

  "The boy's doing impressively, I must admit. I put him through hellish training on his first day and he kept on working. Even though it hurts to say this, I'm slightly impressed."

  "Haha, I knew he wouldn't disappoint you. As the greatest talent our clan has ever had, you know I had to hand him off to the guy who once stood at the top of the Seven Prefectures and laughed, even if he wasn't happy about it. You're not venting too much, are you?"

  "Oh, no, don't worry..."

  Qian Feng found out the hard day that his teacher wasn't lying about his comments on the previous day's training. Oh, no, the Iron Fox had worked a miracle by somehow managing to make his already demonic training even harder. Thankfully, even without eating the previous day, Qian Feng had recovered fully from his night's rest and was read to resume his training, at least in body. Mentally, however, he was a little unwilling...

  "Please! No! Just let me go back to yesterady's training! Please..." Qian Feng was certainly willing to give up all of his dignity as a man over a century old in order to avoid his new training, at least.

  "Haha, boy, do you want me to make it harder?" The Iron Fox's merciless reply set Qian Feng even further down the abyss as he frantically shook his head.

   To be fair, the Iron Fox's new training wasn't ingeniously improved, he had just increased the weights as well as the punishment for falling. Oh, and he had introduced a new element.

   "Welcome to my class! Today, you're going to learn about all the affinities. Now, pay close attention, because there will be a test on this material tomorrow and for every question you get wrong, each 1000-pound weight you are wearing will be increased by 100 pounds in addition to the difficulty of the exercise increasing due to it being a new day. In other words, if the weights would go from 1000 pounds to 1500 from day 2 to day 3, if you get one question wrong, each weight will go from 1000 pounds to 1600 pounds. So pay attention!"

  Yes, indeed, the Iron Fox had decided to give lessons about the cultivation world while Qian Feng burnt his lifeforce just trying to stay standing. And with such harsh punishments, too... Well, at least it would serve as a distraction from his exhaustion, and hopefully not the other way around, right?

  "First off, there are six basic affinities. These are the most common, and while not necessarily the weakest, they have different strengths and weaknesses overall than other affinities. The six are Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, and Dark. Now, to keep this brief, we're going to describe these affinties with a uniform grading in three categories: offense, defense, and movement. Affinities will be graded trash-tier, low-tier, mid-tier, high-tier, or extreme-tier in each category. So, let's begin, and then talk about other affinities.

 Fire: Offense high-tier, movement mid-tier, defense low-tier.

Water: Offense mid-tier, movement mid-tier, defense high-tier.

Earth: Offense mid-tier..." 

  The lesson continued, and Qian Feng paid as much attention as he possibly could even as each muscle fiber screamed in agony. Luckily, his 100-year-old mind, as well as his Spirit Fox bloodline, did not seem to fail him as he was able to remember the lesson almost word-for-word when he tried. 

  Luckily, at noon, the Iron Fox stopped the lessons and just let him mull over the new info while he internally committed seppuku, whipping him when necessary, of course. 

  Finally, after falling ten times, Qian Feng was able to retire to his living "quarters" with his once-every-other-day meal, which consisted of... something Qian Feng could only call gruel, for complete lack of knowledge.

   "So, let's begin the test, nice and early! 

   First question, what grade is the Dark affinity's offense?"

   The test continued like this, with Qian Feng being quizzed on various questions abuot affinities. Thankfully, Qian Feng scarped by without getting any questions wrong, and "just" had to contend with 2500 pound weights. Fun...

  And so, the month continued. Qian Feng didn't end up doing any cultivation, just resting and sating himself outside of cruel workouts assigned by his master, but his cultivation still stabilized under the pressure, and he even managed to advance one level through the difficulty. 

  And, while his cultivation underwent some good progress, his body transformed from the roots.

   The Iron Fox's training clearly had a lot more thought put into it than Qian Feng would be able to admit. How else would it be able to drive him to his true limits without(permanently) hurting him? But this achievement paled in comparison to the effectiveness of his training. In just one month, Qian Feng's already impressive strength had tripled, and the benefits did not end there. Despite only doing one sort of training(to be fair, Qian Feng did it in many sorts of ways), where he held a pose or stance with weights, various attributes where increased. Due to various whippings, which looking back, seemed to have been aimed very precisely, or precisely enough that the whole of his skin was strengthened equally, his skin had toughened significantly. His endurance and regenerative powers also grew; from dealing with such intensive workouts for such a long time and having to regenerate and heal all those cuts, bruises, and pure muscle damage, respectively. His mentality had also been toughened, becoming for befitting for a warrior of a world as cruel as Heidas.

   But no matter how tough Qian Feng had become, he still shivered when thinking about the rest of the two years, eleven months that he would have to endure now that this one-month training period was over.

  Finally, at the end of the final day of the month's training,

   "So. You successfully lasted a month under the weakest training I could think of. Good job. Now, stuff will actually start to get hard.

   In the future, we will be worrying about stuff like fighting styles, specialization of body training, weapon masteries, all that, but for now, we'll just be training your body the tried and true method, without any Qi or mysterious techniques, so that you're able to just barely survive the next phase. How long will this take? One year. So, that leaves us two years for the fun stuff!"

  Without responding(Qian Feng had learned it was often better not to say anything), the young boy nodded.

  "The first type of training you did - the training we've been doing the past month - is stance training. Just taking and maintaining a pose, often with weights, in order to strengthen the muscles. This was engineered mainly to strengthen the muscles, so, although you might have experienced some other benefits, they wouldn't be able to compare to the improvement in strength. Now, we'll move on to toughness training. You need to be able to take a hit to receive one, unless you're one of those speedy freaks that just runs around the battlefield. Wimps. As for how we're gonna toughen you up in the next three months, well, you'll see. For now, though, go get some rest. You'll need it."

   Qian Feng moved on to his room. He lay on his back thinking about the future horrors he would experience for about ten minutes before succumbing to blissful, innocent sleep.

  They woke up even earlier for toughness training than for stance traing, that QIan Feng knew. Where the sun would be nowhere to be seen, and the moon just peeking out from the west, for toughness training, the moon would be high in the sky. Why did the Iron Fox think that was alright? Because he had decided to make full use of Qian Feng's unusual regenerative powers to train for as long as possible. Also, he just wanted to annoy Qian Feng as much as possible.

  Without any unnecessary words, the Iron Fox led Qian Feng to a large pit he had a bit further down the mountain, fillied with grains of grey sand.

  "I have an array of nine different pits, each one more damaging than the last. This is the first pit, the Metal Sand pit. It's filled with many sharp, dense grains of sand. You will be swimming through this nonstop, with these weights on, for ten days straight. You will not leave to sleep, eat, or relax. You will not leave at all. Should you stop swimming, I will take you to the next pit, which will probably kill you. Finally, you cannot use Qi to protect yourself in any way, but you can try to boost your regeneration, however inefficient it would be with your affinity."

  With that, the Iron Fox brutally kicked Qian Feng into the pit without giving him any chance to mentally prepare for what was to come next.