Nine and a half years of arduous cultivation

  "Master Li, your disciple wants to go to Beifeng Mountain for training."

  On this day, Ye Chen finished his cultivation and came before a sturdy middle-aged Practitioner, bowing his head in respect.

  "Are you going up the mountain?"

  The head of the Upper House, Li Cang, frowned upon hearing this. He vaguely remembered that this disciple had only been promoted from the Lower House to the Upper House two months ago and his strength should be relatively weak. It was too risky for him to enter the mountains so soon.

  "Yes, my disciple has already cultivated the middle-level technique of the 'Tiger Leaping Knife Method', Tiger Leaping Double Slash, which is enough for self-defense. However, I lack herbal medicine to temper my body, and my physical cultivation has stagnated. I want to go into the mountains to gather herbs and cultivate!"

  Ye Chen said.

  "How did you learn intermediate martial skills so quickly?"

  Li Cang's eyebrows furrowed even tighter.

  He didn't doubt Ye Chen was talking nonsense.

  In just two short months, he had cultivated a mid-tier knife technique, which meant that Ye Chen was undergoing extremely high-intensity training. ...This also means that if Ye Chen doesn't use good medicinal herbs to temper his body in time and treat the internal injuries accumulated during the cultivation process, Ye Chen's physique may be ruined.

  Li Cang, as the head of the Upper House, would hardly be unaware of the serious consequences.

  The poor are literate, the rich are martial. The sons of aristocratic families have good medicine provided by their families and generally do not have such problems. But as a commoner, without money to buy good medicine, one can only take risks and go up the mountain to pick herbs.

  He was not optimistic about Ye Chen's future. There were many poor and humble young men who, although they seemed to progress quickly in their early cultivation, would later become indistinguishable from the crowd.

  "Since you can wield the Tiger Leaping Double Slash, you should have a strength of around 800 to 1000 jin, enough to kill a giant tiger. When searching for herbs on the outskirts of Beishan Mountain, don't venture into the depths of the mountain. The deep mountains are home to packs of tigers and wolves, which one person can't handle alone."

  Li Cang didn't have much interest in Ye Chen. The Upper House of the Beifeng Academy had more than 200 disciples, and he wouldn't waste his thoughts on a nameless disciple who couldn't even remember his own name.

  "Thanks, Coach!"

  Ye Chen obtained the consent of General Li, then went back to bring a bag of baked dry rations, bought a cheap new steel knife at the bookstore armory, left Beishan Academy, along the mountain trail, entered the northern mountains.

  The Beifeng mountain range is the largest and longest mountain range within the Wuguo border, with thousands of miles of overlapping mountains and rich resources, especially abundant in medicinal herbs. Within a hundred miles around this mountain range, you can find about three types of medicinal herbs, with some wild animal activity.

  If you enter the deep mountains, you can find even higher-grade and rarer herbs, but the danger level will also increase greatly, and you will encounter extremely ferocious wild beasts.

  Many herb collectors would risk their lives to enter the northern mountain range to collect herbs. Once they collected rare and precious herbs, they would sell them to large merchants and earn a large sum of gold and silver, enough for several years of food and clothing without worry.

  The first academy of Wuguo, Beifeng Shuyuan, was built at the foot of this mountain range, not without reason.

  It was also largely for the convenience of the students in the academy to enter the mountain and collect medicine.

  Of course, only the students of the Upper House who have reached the fourth layer of the Refining Body period dare to venture into the mountains to collect medicine. If they are lucky, they can pick some. The students of the Lower House are in the first to third layers of the Refining Body period and are roughly familiar with boxing and kicking, but their strength is too weak. If they enter the mountain, they can only go to feed the ferocious tigers and wolves, so it's not allowed to enter the mountain.

  Common students from Beiyue Academy often went up the mountain in groups to cultivate themselves.

  Ye Chen did not intend to do so.

  "I've been collecting about four types of herbs in the hundreds of miles around the northern mountain range, for tempering and cultivating my body. As long as I'm careful, there's not much danger."

  Ye Chen thought to himself quietly.

  In the northern foothills of the mountain range, Ye Chen never had to worry about food or shelter. He often hunted wild rabbits and pheasants, roasted them over an open flame, and at night, he would find a cave in the rocky cliffs, line it with wild grasses, and sleep soundly with his knife by his side.

  There aren't many wild beasts outside the mountain range.

  Try to avoid places with fierce beast tracks, as a fifth-layer cultivator of the Refining Body stage, safety is not a big problem.

  Ye Chen spent the morning searching for herbs in the mountains. In the afternoon, he practiced the third and fourth moves of the "Tiger Leaping Knife Method" on a mountain ridge with open space. At night, he tempered his body.

  Several months have passed in the blink of an eye.

  After entering summer, the weather gradually became hot.

  "It's already been three months since I entered the mountain... Time really flies! There are only a little over ten days left until the graduation exam at the academy."

  As soon as the leaves brightened at dawn, he got up. Every day, he would draw a horizontal line on the knife handle to count his days in the North Mountain Range.

  He had been staying in the northern mountain range for nearly three months, although he would wash and bathe in the streams, his body was clean and refreshing, but his clothes were tattered, the blade of that steel knife was blunt and worn out, with many notches, and stained with a lot of wild beast's blood.

  His physical refinement was slowly and steadily improving. His martial arts techniques were also becoming more refined with each passing day.

  Every day, the wind blows and the sun shines, and Ye Chen's originally tender face also has a more serene color.

  The sky gradually brightened.

  Ye Chen finished eating the roasted wild rabbit meat from last night, and then searched for herbs in mountain ridges, steep cliffs, and precipitous terrain. The general areas had long been turned over countless times by other herb collectors, only the most treacherous places would have herbs left behind.

  This place is so treacherous that even herb collectors are unwilling to set foot in it.

  "Zi Wu Cao! ... Only four inches long, roughly a fourth-class herb, can be used to promote the marrow's Qi and blood density!!"

  Ye Chen's body was tightly pressed against the cliff wall, searching around in all directions, when suddenly his eyes lit up.

  On the left cliff, a small black grass, in the sunlight and rain, sways in the wind.

  Ye Chen grasped a rock with one hand and carefully plucked the small black grass from the cliff wall with the other, revealing a joyful expression.

  Ye Chen put the small grass into the medicine basket, and with a forceful push of his toes on the rock wall, he sprang up and climbed onto the top of the cliff that was several zhang high.

  "Although this Zi Wu Cao is not of high quality, it's still pretty good. Today's luck is great! In the past few days, I couldn't even find one in several days, but today I found a herb for nourishing Qi and blood in just half an hour, and I'll use it to temper my body!"

  Ye Chen was surprised.

  He came to a clean stone wall, sat down with his knees crossed, washed the roots of the Zi Wu Cao with clear water, put it in his mouth, chewed slowly and carefully, absorbing every drop of black juice.

  This herb is extremely warm and nourishes Qi and Blood.

  After Ye Chen took the medicine, he soon felt a surge of hot air rising from his abdomen. This stream of air flowed through countless meridians and spread throughout his entire body. In just a moment, every part of his skeletal system began to produce new vital energy and blood.

  In the middle stage of martial arts training, the most important thing is the density of one's vital energy and blood. The stronger a martial artist is, the higher their vital energy and blood density will be.

  When a warrior reaches the sixth level of Body Tempering, his qi and blood are full and overflowing throughout his body. The density of qi and blood in all the meridians inside his body has reached its peak. At this point, it is impossible to further enhance it.

  Ye Chen absorbed the medicinal power for two hours, and had such a strong feeling that every part of his body's bones and blood vessels were saturated to a bottleneck.

  Intense energy and blood, as if burning inside the body.

  Ye Chen's entire body was burning hot, a fierce and violent power wanting to burst out.

  "Cheers!"

  He suddenly swung out a heavy fist, a lightning-like punch that smashed into the protruding boulder on the nearby rock wall.

  Bang!

  A deep fist print appeared on the hard rock wall, with crack marks spreading out in all directions. The center of the hard rock was shattered into countless fragments within a radius of one foot. Without six hundred kilograms of force, such power could not be achieved.

  Such strength, opening stele and splitting rocks, is already effortless.

  "After three months, I finally advanced from around the fifth and a half layer of the Refining Body stage to the sixth layer!"

  Ye Chen took a look at his bruised fist and felt excited.

  Three months of arduous training in the depths of the mountains finally paid off just before the academy's assessment, reaching the sixth layer of Body Refining.

  "I recall half a year ago, Shi Gong, the head of the Lower Court, used 'Invisible Leg' to shatter a thick stone pillar one chi thick and zhang high. My current strength may not be as profound as Headmaster Shi's, but my power is no less than his!"

  "Out of the two hundred students in the Upper Academy of Northern Spiritual Academy, those who have reached the sixth layer of Body Refining are probably no more than forty or fifty!"

  "It's time to go back and participate in the assessment of the Academy!"

  Ye Chen carried a blunt-edged steel knife and strode away from the Beifeng Mountains, heading towards the Beifeng Academy a hundred miles away.

  －－－－－－－－－－－－－

  By the way.

  Compared to Zifu's 20 chapters to discover the gray egg, and entering the Qi Refining stage at 100 chapters. Xianfu's 4 chapters of ancient paintings, and participating in the Academy graduation exam at 10 chapters, is considered concise and fast-paced. The protagonist will not linger in the Martial Artist stage, so the opening does not waste time on irrelevant small fights.

  The protagonist Wu Zhe's period at the academy is a key plot point, with intense battles during the assessment.

  In addition, this book tries a new style, with simpler and more fluent plot. It will be different from the old books. After all, it's impossible to keep using the same writing method to write books.