Chapter 189 — Section 191: The Valiant Youth and the Vagabond [Part Two]

"What on earth is Teacher up to?" The little girl's lips puckered into a pout. "He's been locked in his room for over twenty days. Could he be doing something he can't let anyone see?"

Qingluan was instantly displeased and said, with a touch of reproach, "Miss, how can you talk about Teacher Tang that way?"

"But it's true!" The girl's pout grew even more pronounced. "What kind of teacher is this, vanishing for twenty days straight and leaving his student all alone? What sort of teacher is that..."

Her grumbling broke off abruptly. Eyes wide, she stared blankly at Tang Tang, who had just emerged from the room.

Tang Tang looked utterly dreadful. His hair was a wild mess, his eyes bloodshot, and his clothes were riddled with holes the size of sand grains. The sharp-eyed girl even noticed a steady trickle of sand-like bits falling from his body onto the magnificent carpet of Zhenqi City.

The carpet... and one dark footprint after another...

Catching sight of the food laid out on the dining table, Tang Tang's previously vacant eyes suddenly blazed with a greenish glow. He lunged at the table like a starving tiger, both hands reaching for the food—and only then did everyone notice that his ten fingers were swollen like ten fat carrots.

His dark claws had barely touched a plate of braised pork knuckle when he let out a yelp and jerked his hands back as if shocked. The knuckle, jostled by his touch, rolled off the plate and was about to drop onto the carpet.

Suddenly a figure flickered, and the knuckle vanished.

Eyes blazing, Tang Tang was like a beast in full sprint. He opened his enormous maw and caught the knuckle neatly in his teeth. It all happened in a flash, his movement so swift and clean it was beyond reproach.

The rich, succulent knuckle and its perfectly braised juices poured into Tang Tang's mouth, and he went completely wild.

The dumbstruck little girl, Qingluan, and the others bore witness to the most savage display of eating in history.

Crack!

One bite, and the bone at the knuckle's center—hard as iron—shattered on the spot. Meat juices and bone fragments flew everywhere, drool and plate alike reduced to a single hue.

Sweep, sweep. With an efficiency beyond imagining, Tang Tang cleared the entire table—fruits, tea, everything fell before him. The table was left as clean as if it had been washed. And through it all, he never once used his hands.

Belly round as a drum, Tang Tang collapsed into a chair and could not summon the will to move.

"Teacher... what happened to you?" the little girl asked cautiously, her face tight with worry. Teacher had been in his room for twenty days—how had he come out looking like this?

She waited a long while with no response. Looking up, she found Tang Tang fast asleep, snoring softly.

Tang Tang was truly exhausted beyond measure. Out here, twenty days had passed—which meant that in the Recruit Camp, he had trained for a full sixty.

In his former days of bitter cultivation, a session had opened every five days and lasted ten, a time ratio of one to two.

Now, however, the Recruit Camp's subjects opened one after another, and the ratio had reached one to three—and the bitter cultivation mode was no longer required, leaving his time all the more free.

To Tang Tang, though, there was no difference.

Sixty days in the Recruit Camp plus twenty in reality—eighty days of unbroken cultivation—had left him utterly spent.

Every day he did nothing but grind an iron anvil. Despite the protection of true essence, his ten fingers were still swollen like carrots. Once again he found himself back in the days behind the Light Gate, honing his martial killing moves through hundreds of thousands of repetitions.

He had to spend a fixed amount of time each day channeling true essence to reduce the swelling of his carrot fingers, and the results were quite good. Over eighty days, he had gone from wearing through one anvil every three days at the start, to three anvils a day by the tenth day. By the thirtieth day, he could wear through five anvils a day. By the eightieth, that number had climbed to ten anvils a day.

That figure would not be broken for a long time to come.

The efficiency of ten anvils a day had even shaken Ghost Claw. Tang Tang's progress surpassed his imagination.

Tang Tang's ten fingers were like ten indestructible files. Every pass across the anvil struck sparks. The clothes on his body had all been burned through by white-hot iron filings.

He was too tired.

It was pure, unadulterated hard labor. Tang Tang felt like a drudge in a blacksmith's shop, grinding at an anvil day and night without rest.

He found it strange—why had Ghost Claw ever conceived of such an odd method as grinding an anvil?

Ghost Claw had originally intended to have Tang Tang soak his swollen fingers in medicinal solution, but never expected that no matter how quickly Tang Tang's fingers swelled, a brief circulation of true essence would always bring the swelling down by the next day.

This left Ghost Claw, whose face rarely showed anything, astonished for a long while yet again.

In the end, he attributed it to Tang Tang's somewhat peculiar constitution. As for the "beast-school" theory of soldiers, Ghost Claw declined to comment—but Tang Tang's physical constitution was, in his eyes, unquestionably beast-tier.

Tang Tang slept for a full five double-hours, in a slumber deep as stone.

The curious girl pinched her nose and leaned close, picking up a grain of sand from somewhere on Tang Tang's body. She studied it for ages and still could not make sense of it.

It was Zhai Hengzhan who finally identified it: "It's iron filings!"

"Could Teacher be practicing Iron Sand Palm?" That was the girl's first thought.

"Doesn't look like it." Zhai Hengzhan shook his head. "The iron sand used for Iron Sand Palm is coarser than this. Besides, Iron Sand Palm is only a fourth-rank martial art—why would Teacher Tang train in a fourth-rank art?"

"That's true." The girl tilted her head, thinking hard. "But what other martial art needs this much iron sand?"

"I don't know." Zhai Hengzhan shook his head. "There's no telling how many martial arts exist in the world. Figuring out which ones use iron sand—that's impossible to tally."

"How strange..." The girl's face was full of curiosity.

When Tang Tang opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the girl's curious face. She had not expected him to open

his eyes at all, and with a startled shriek she leapt to one side.

Tang Tang's face was blank.

"Teacher, what's going on with you?" the girl asked hastily, her fright barely settled.

"Me?" Tang Tang blinked at the question, glanced down at himself, and said, "Oh. Cultivating."

"Do you mean you've been cultivating for over twenty days straight?" the girl asked.

Over twenty days? I could have sworn it was over eighty...

Tang Tang's expression did not change. He nodded. "Mm, that's right."

Qingluan and Zhai Hengzhan were filled with solemn respect. Even on a journey, he would not give up his cultivation—no wonder Teacher Tang was so young yet so astonishingly powerful. How many people could sustain such dedication to bitter training?

Strength never came by luck.

Tang Tang glanced around and asked, "Where's little Xu Xu?"

"Brother Ling cultivates every day too," the girl said. "He's at the training ground."

Ling Yan, already a cultivation maniac, had seen that Tang Tang would not leave his room at all, and immediately redoubled his efforts. He made the training ground his home—sleeping there, eating there.

Tang Tang nodded. "I see."

With that he rose and headed for his room.

In the eyes of all present, that unkempt, grimy figure suddenly seemed to grow towering. Deeply moved, Qingluan turned and strode off. "I'm going to cultivate too!"

And Tang Tang threw himself back into his training.