Lu Yang, Zhou Lin, and Zhang Kehan left.
When they departed, they even seemed to feel great pity for Yang Jing, as if not being able to curry favor with Senior Sister Qi together tonight was some tremendous loss for him.
Yang Jing watched the three of them out of the courtyard with a smile on his face, then shook his head slightly.
Where there were people, there was society.
Whether in this world or his previous life, it was all the same. In his previous life, hadn’t there been people who spent all day orbiting some “big brother”? In this life, there were people orbiting some “big sister.” In the end, they simply wanted to gain benefits and protection.
What these people failed to understand was that one’s own strength was the foundation.
If you had no strength yourself, even if you fawned over others every day, they still might not spare you a second glance.
The original host was a vivid example. He had given so much, yet that Senior Sister Qi couldn’t even be bothered to look at him properly.
“Damn it. You owed the debt, but now I’m the one who has to pay it back,” Yang Jing cursed inwardly.
After that, Yang Jing began practicing the Mountain-Crushing Fist.
The earlier tempering of his qi and blood had only been a warm-up, allowing him to enter a martial-training state more quickly. The Mountain-Crushing Fist was the core.
Sun Yong, the master of the Sun Martial Hall, had established himself precisely by relying on the Mountain-Crushing Fist, and he possessed no small reputation throughout Yuhe County.
Before he began practicing, Yang Jing’s mind stirred, and a line of small words that only he could see appeared before his eyes.
[Mountain-Crushing Fist, Beginner (31/200)]
This was the cultivation progress of the Mountain-Crushing Fist.
When Yang Jing had first transmigrated here, the original host had already been apprenticed to the Sun Martial Hall for more than two months, yet his progress in the Mountain-Crushing Fist had only been 22/200. It was only after Yang Jing recovered his body and slowly resumed training that he raised its progress to the current level.
Although the original host’s aptitude was poor, he had indeed been lazy as well.
Yang Jing walked up to a hanging sandbag, closed his eyes slightly, then slowly opened them. As his eyes closed and opened again, his condition adjusted to its peak.
He spread his feet shoulder-width apart, bent his knees slightly, and settled into a firm horse stance. When he drew in a deep breath, his chest swelled high; then he abruptly sank his abdomen and exhaled. His right fist blasted forward like a cannonball from its barrel, the muscles of his forearm tightening, blue veins bulging one by one along his arm, as if he were gathering all the strength in his body into a single point at the edge of his fist.
As the force of his fist descended, Yang Jing followed through by bending his body, and his left fist came right after it, smashing into the sandbag.
There was a muffled bang.
The sandbag was sent flying backward by the blow.
Bang, bang, bang!
As Yang Jing punched again and again, every swing of his arm carried a force that tore through the air. Sweat-soaked strands of hair clung to his forehead.
From noon until nightfall.
Aside from a few brief rests in between, Yang Jing spent the entire time tempering his qi and blood and practicing the Mountain-Crushing Fist. Even when he felt he had already reached the limits of exhaustion, he still gritted his teeth and endured.
The usually rather lazy Yang Jing had actually become this hardworking, which left many disciples astonished and curious.
“What’s gotten into him?”
“Has Junior Brother Yang been injected with chicken blood or something?”
“Who knows? He probably won’t last long. By tomorrow he might not be able to keep it up.”
Some disciples discussed it quietly for a while.
However, in the days that followed, Yang Jing’s performance greatly exceeded many people’s expectations.
From morning until night, aside from eating and brief rests, Yang Jing spent all his time tempering his qi and blood and practicing the Mountain-Crushing Fist.
Tempering his qi and blood was, on one hand, a warm-up for practicing the Mountain-Crushing Fist. On the other hand, when qi and blood were active, practicing martial arts yielded twice the result with half the effort, and his cultivation speed also became somewhat faster.
One day, two days, three days.
Before he knew it, half a month had passed.
The tiny ripple Yang Jing had stirred up within the martial hall also gradually settled into calm with the passage of time.
As for Yang Jing’s madness, the other disciples had gone from astonishment at first to acceptance later on, and had already grown used to his change.
During this period, Senior Brother Lu and the other two invited Yang Jing several more times, but Yang Jing politely declined them all.
After being refused repeatedly, Senior Brother Lu and the others finally sensed the distancing intent Yang Jing was revealing.
From then on, Senior Brother Lu and the others no longer sought Yang Jing out, and the looks they gave him also grew much colder.
Many disciples, including Senior Brother Lu, were quite disdainful of the change that had appeared in Yang Jing.
If hard work were useful, if hard work alone could allow one to cultivate force, they would have long since trained themselves to death. Why would they have spent their energy currying favor with disciples who had already cultivated force?
In the eyes of Senior Brother Lu and the others, Yang Jing was still too young. Once he later discovered that no matter how hard he worked, it would still be difficult to break through the bottleneck and cultivate force, he would understand that all effort was futile. Only by then, their circle would no longer accept Yang Jing.
Early in the morning.
Chengping Ward, Sun Martial Hall, in the front courtyard.
Yang Jing was practicing the Mountain-Crushing Fist in an open space.
After half a month of diligent training, the muscle definition on Yang Jing’s body had become extremely clear and distinct. The blue veins on his forearms tightened with each punch, full of explosive power. The muscles around his waist and abdomen were firm as an iron plate, without the slightest hint of slackness.
With a thought from Yang Jing, the panel appeared before his eyes—
[Mountain-Crushing Fist, Beginner (76/200)]
After half a month of effort, Yang Jing had raised his Mountain-Crushing Fist progress by a large margin, more than doubling what it had been before.
“At this speed, in a little over a month, I should be able to break through the Mountain-Crushing Fist to the minor achievement stage and step into the Manifest Force level,” Yang Jing thought to himself.
Martial training had three major realms: Manifest Force, Hidden Force, and Transforming Force.
Whether one could cultivate force was the dividing line between ordinary people and true martial artists.
If one could not cultivate force, then no matter how hard one trained, one would merely be a bit stronger in body, and the difference from ordinary people would not be great.
But once one cultivated force, that meant truly stepping over the threshold of the martial path. When spoken of, one could even be called an “expert.”
If Yang Jing could cultivate force and step into the Manifest Force realm, then when the time came, let alone a mere Feng Lei, even the Ning family, the powerful local clan of Wazi Village standing behind Feng Lei, would no longer dare to pressure him lightly.
“Stop for a moment. Master is coming out. Everyone line up properly.”
At that moment, a voice rang out in the courtyard.
The more than twenty people in the courtyard who were tempering their qi and blood or practicing their fists hurriedly withdrew their hands and walked toward the open space at the center of the courtyard.
Yang Jing stopped practicing as well and followed the others over, standing at the back of the group.
Twenty-six or twenty-seven people formed an uneven square formation. The few people at the very front were several of Hall Master Sun Yong’s formal disciples: Eldest Senior Brother Xu Hong, Second Senior Sister Qi Yun, Third Senior Brother Zhao Wenzheng, Fourth Senior Brother Liu Maolin, and the others.
Not long after everyone had taken their places.
An old man in a black robe, his hands clasped behind his back, walked out from the inner courtyard.
“Greetings, Master.”
“Greetings, Hall Master.”
Once the black-robed old man came closer, the disciples all bowed in salute.
According to the rules of the Sun Martial Hall, only those who broke through to Manifest Force could become Sun Yong’s formal disciples. Only formal disciples could call him Master, and only they could remain in the martial hall indefinitely.
As for those disciples who failed to cultivate force within half a year, in the end, they could only leave of their own accord. Moreover, they were not allowed to flaunt themselves outside under the name of Sun Yong’s disciples. At most, they could say they had once studied martial arts at the Sun Martial Hall.
The black-robed old man was none other than the founder of the Sun Martial Hall—Hall Master Sun Yong.
Although he was already over sixty, his vitality and spirit were vigorous. His expression was solemn, and his back and waist were held perfectly straight. Aside from the somewhat graying hair on his head and beard, he showed little sign of age. Merely standing there, he gave off a fierce, valiant aura that struck one head-on.