Barely suppressed agonized screams sounded out near the Pit of Metal Sand as Qian Feng swam. His tough skin was repeatedly worn down by the sand particles, before immediately being healed by the source of LIfe Qi in Qian Feng's body.

To make sure the Iron Fox didn't discover his third affinity, though, the young boy tried his utmost best to coat the Life Qi coursing throughout his body in a layer of Earth Qi, so it would appear to be the latter from a surface inspection.

As his clothing was quickly ground to dust, Qian Feng was quickly introduced to a new level of pain, on he had never felt, or even though existed, before. He was swimming in a strange fetal position in an attempt to protect his... bit, but to no avail as the soft skin was quickly torn apart. This resulted in a distribution of Qi throughout the body that would look less than innocent to someone who saw it.

Life Qi was spread rather evenly throughout the entire skin, but over 70% of the total Qi was concentrated on the crotch area, in order to attempt to heal the skin before the sand could grind the parts under the skin of that area to dust, resulting in a fate that made Qian Feng, and likely all of his readers, cringe.

  As his Life-affinity spirit realm was constantly drawed upon, Qian Feng split his efforts to not only keep on swimming and constantly heal himself, but also to draw in Life Qi as he did the former, trying to recover the Qi as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he had not focused his Life Qi for a situation like this. It was made to be more potent, at the cost of not having as much space. That meant that he wouldn't be able to hold on for the full ten days just by drawing on his spirit realm.

  Hence, no matter how hard it was, Qian Feng would also have to cultivate while expending energy under exruciatingly painful circumstances.

   And as the light of the sun faded and the day turned into night, as Qian Feng swam in that pit of demoic grains of sand, a silhouette shaped like the Iron Fox and a figure whose general shape was barely distinguishable conversed.

  "Well, Iron Fox, the month's training regime is over. Watcha putting the kid through now? Running? Fighting? Meditating?"

  "No. The Nine Kings of Hell for the next three months. No rests. No defending. Standard training."

  "But buddy, that's for seasoned warriors who have undergone several years of training! You can't put someone who's been training for a month there! You'll kill our clan's only hope off!"

  "Don't worry. I'm making sure he won't die completely. Worst case scenario, you just use the Phoenix mending pill and he's just fine."

  "You can't talk about our clan's top treasure like that! Ugh, I really hope you don't kill him."

  Despite his surface words, the figure talking to Iron Fox seemed to trust the latter quite a lot, given his tone.

  The sun rose, and Qian Feng still swam, tearing apart skin with each stroke. His Qi was noticeably less vigorous than before: what was previously a bright net of energy had become a dull glow.

  Even under normal conditions, simply staying awake for ten days without rest would be mentally straining. And that was under the easiest possible conditions.

  At the current rate, however; one day of swimming in the Metal Sand pit was as mentally taxing as ten days of normal rest.

  Looking at it numerically, if it was difficult to stay awake or ten days straight under easy conditions, doing the equivalent of staying awake 100 days straight under easy conditions should be impossible. And even if Qian Feng's limits were reached, even every cell of his was squeezed dry, even if every last inch of his potential was used up, it would not be possible. That Qian Feng knew.

  So what could he do? How could he survive the full ten days? How?

   Qian Feng started by looking at his situation in the simplest terms possible. What was the bare minimum he had to do to survive? What was his task? Well, what he absolutely had to do was stay swimming in the Metal Sand pit for ten days, or nine days now. How he would do that was a different question.

  Next level up: in simple terms, what did he need to improve upon in order to survive the nine days?

  1. Body toughness. Instead of constantly having to heal himself and expend his Life Qi, what if Qian Feng simply made it so that swimming through the Metal Sand pit did not harm his skin to the point that his natural regeneration couldn't heal it? 

  2. Regeneration speed and duration. He could go the current route, and keep persevering to be able to constantly use his Life Qi to heal himself before he could get too hurt. The expenditure of Qi, though large, would also drastically decrease over time due to the toughening of his skin. Of course, that also required a far higher mental fortitude than he already had, as cultivating while healing while swimming while enduring intense pain was immensely draining on the body, the Qi, and the mind. Obviously. This option, unless Qian Feng could find a way to actively increase his mental energy, would be entirely based on luck and would require that Qian Feng bank on his mind being able to keep up to the task.

 3. Pure technique. Instead of strengthening his physical aspects to meet the challenge, what if Qian Feng instead refined his swimming technique? If he found just the right way to slip through the grains so they caused minimal harm? If he swam with the pinnacle of skill, minimizing the amount of physical and mental stamina required to keep going?

  There were abviously problems with all three of these options, but from Qian Feng's point of view, they were all he could plausibly do. Of course, he could beg for mercy from the Iron Fox and save his life, taking the easy way out. He could also just play dead, or at least unconscious, and hope the Iron Fox wouldn't see through his act. But those wouldn't help Qian Feng achieve his goal of relying purely on strength to gain true power and freedom, to be able to ignore plots and schemes with raw might. And this was where that dream was realized, where that desire became a fruit not far out of his grasp, one that, with enough training and effort, he could reach.

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  The first method looked good on paper, but once on started looking more in-depth at it, some problems soon arose. First off, how would he increase his body toughness fast enough to meet his requirements? He didn't know any body refining techniques! Although, he could refine his body in the simplest way using Qi, just infusingit into his body slowly and permanently. However, this might make the Iron Fox punish him for using Qi to protect himself, even if the effects were permanent. As for the body refining methods of his cultivation techniques, and whether he could just repeat those, that would be ineffective because those techniques had already done all they possibly could for his body, so repeating them would result in incredibly slow progress, if at all.

  The second method was even harder than the first. How would he possibly increase his mental fortitude, even if he could hypothetically find a way to increase his Life Qi capacity. Those two went hand-in-hand, and if he could only accomplish one, he would inevitably fail. So, that was immediately out.

  The third method was intriguing. While, from an outside perspective, it would sting to not get as much out of the training as he could, from Qian Feng's perspective, he simply could not go on in the most brutal, effective way to increase the toughness of his skin. It would kill or maim him! So, Qian Feng was absolutely fine with reducing the effectiveness of the training in order to make it survivable. After all, what he was losing in terms of body toughness, he was gaining in movement skill. So, not necessarily a bad trade.

   But gaining skill was easier said than done. Qian Feng spent hours just thinking about the most efficient way to swim through the sand, pondering the existence of each wasted movement and, when he found one, how to get rid of it.

   It took two days of constant swimming and working before Qian Feng was confident that he had the most efficient way to swim down pat. This did not mean, however, that he was taking the least damage from the metal grains of sand, just that he was using as little strength as possible when swimming. Through the two days, the act of swimming perfectly was also drilled into his mind, and the constant burning pain of his skin being ripped off and rehealed became more bearable, little by little. This meant that he could spare more mental energy for improving his technique.

   A day after finding the perfect swimming form, Qian Feng was finally able to swim through the Metal Sand pit without rubbing too much against the grains of sand. It was still immensely painful, but Qian Feng could bear it now that he had not only gotten used to the pain(somewhat) but managed to reduce it. So, as every inch of his skin became tougher, Qian Feng's burden was lightened. With method 3 finished, Qian Feng might as well attempt method 1: toughen up his body even further than what would normally happen. 

  Completing this was far more plausible now than if he had chosen it before succeeding at method 3. This was because it was instinctual now to swim through the sand as efficiently and least painfully as possible, resulting in the pain being reduced. His skin was also several folds tougher than before he had been kicked into the pit, which resulted in even less pain. At that point, Qian Feng barely had to use any Life Qi to keep himself safe, so his drain was also reduced, meaning Qian Feng could afford to absorb the Qi much less frantically. With the reduced pain and reduced need for Life Qi, Qian Feng mental fortitude was more than enough to go through six more days after being enhanced by the four days he had spent at the pits, coping with extreme pain.

   So, how was he to toughen his skin even further? Well, Qian Feng didn't want to do so by any methods that would increase the pain he felt, as that would drain his mental energy even faster.

   So, the only thing he felt he could do reasonably was to use his Qi in conjunction with swimming to toughen his skin. Now, thinking up the idea was easy, but finding a way to make use of it was far, far harder. He didn't want to trigger the attention of the Iron Fox while using Earth or Force Qi to temper his body, so his method would have to be ingenious and unnoticeable, while still producing significant results.

  It took Qian Feng a day of constant pondering to get an idea. The simplest way to temper the body was to create outside force with the Qi and force the skin to withstand high amounts of power. This would, albeit painfully, toughen up the skin, leading to effective results, even with such a simple technique.

   But Qian Feng could not do that for to reasons. One, it would be incredibly easy to detect. While it was possible that the Iron Fox would recognize he was toughening his skin while swimming through the pit and do nothing, it was likewise possible Qian Feng would immediately be punished by being thrown into the second level pit, a fate that would inevitably kill him. The second reason was that while it would be effective in conjunction with the grains of metal sand, it would be extremely painful if he wanted to observe significant results, and that was something that would increase the drain on his mental energy.

    So that method was certainly out. What else could he do?

  Qian Feng's eyes widened as he realized what he could do.

  The body tempering methods in Qian Feng's cultivation techinques would not work only because they were too weak in their execution, but not their concepts! What if he changed a few aspects of the techniques around, but kept the idea, in order to make more level-appropriate body tempering techniques.

  The body tempering sections of the Unyielding Bastion cultivation technique, the Earth affinity technique, were the ones that focused most on defense, which is what Qian Feng wanted. So, he would adapt those.

  Given that the techniques were imprinted into his mind, it was rather easy to recall them and view them mentally.

   The base concept of the entire Martial Refiner section was taking the Earth Qi and infusing it into each cell, toughening it. Simultaneously, Earth Qi was used to press down on certain acupoints, helping to expel impurities. The technique also had a variety of more moving parts to it, but as someone who learnt the technique from it being directly imprinted into his brain, Qian Feng found it to be quite difficult to articulate.

   Identifying the parts of the technique that could be changed to yield better results took Qian Feng half a day, and actually changing those parts took another day. 

  This left the sun high in the sky on the fifth day the moment he finished altering the Martial Refiner section. Qian Feng had four and a half days to try out his new and improved body tempering technique.

   The results were incredible. It was almost as if Qian Feng was redoing his Martial Refiner stage, with how much he improved. Considering that the grains of sand were wokring in sync with his technique, Qian Feng experienced great improvement as his skin became tough to the point it would be better described by the word "carapace".

  Little did Qian Feng know the Iron Fox was watching his disciple perform that body tempering technique ever since Qian Feng came up with it, and knew exactly what was going on. The warrior had considered giving out his promised punishment, but held back given two factors: while technically, what Qian Feng was doing was in violation of the rules the Iron Fox had set, it was only to increase the effectiveness of his training, meaning there was no motivation for the Iron Fox to punish him. Second off, at Qian Feng's current state, the second-level pit would kill him within three days. Not a good way to train a disciple.

   Finally, the ten days were up, and Qian Feng watched in awe as the Iron Fox seemed to simply phase into existence in front of him, outside the pit. 

  "Go on, get up here. Your next phase of training will begin soon, and we need to prepare so that you don't die."