Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 911: The Elemental Crucible and the Headache

The midday sun offered no warmth to the desolate realm. Li Yu sat on a wooden bench inside the mess hall and finished his meal. He consumed large portions of roasted beast meat and drank a bowl of thick medicinal broth. He sat alone at a corner table as the other recruits kept a wide berth of him today. They still viewed him as the mysterious noble who bypassed the camp rules. His display of endurance over the two days had earned him some silent respect but it had not earned many friendships. They did not know who he was or what powerful forces backed his arrival. They decided the safest course of action was to maintain a respectful distance.

Li Yu did not mind the isolation though. He preferred the quiet time to process the lessons of the morning right now. He finally understood the core philosophy behind the physical abuse. He needed to make pain irrelevant to his mind and grow his body even stronger so both his Qi and soul could become stronger.

The rest period ended quickly.

The recruits gathered in the central plaza once again. Lei Gang stood on the raised stone platform and channeled his Qi into a different control matrix. A spatial portal tore open in the air and revealed a swirling vortex of chaotic elemental energy.

"Move in." Lei Gang ordered loudly.

The recruits marched through the portal. They stepped into a vast and barren wasteland composed of cracked stone. There was no sky and a shifting dome of violent elemental storms raged above them.

"This is the elemental array." Lei Gang announced as he stepped through the portal last. "The morning session tested your resistance to blunt trauma. This afternoon session will test your resistance to the raw elements of the cosmos. Endure."

Lei Gang waved his massive hand and the array activated instantly.

The temperature in the wasteland plummeted. A freezing gale swept across the recruits and coated their skin in a thick layer of frost. The cold pierced straight through their robes and bit deep into their bones. It was a chilling agony that tried to slow their blood and freeze their meridians.

Li Yu gritted his teeth and circulated his Qi to generate internal heat. He focused his mind and pushed the freezing pain to the back of his awareness. He was trying to treat the chilling sensation as mere background noise.

The freezing gale lasted for twenty minutes before the array abruptly shifted.

The frost evaporated instantly and a wave of burning heat washed over the wasteland. The air became so hot it scorched their lungs with every breath. Ethereal flames erupted from the cracks in the floor and licked at their boots. The recruits were forced to transition their Qi from generating heat to projecting a cooling internal barrier.

The sudden shift in extremes was brutal. Several recruits collapsed from the shock and were immediately teleported out by the safety mechanisms.

The array continued its relentless cycle. The fire was replaced by a localized thunderstorm. Thick bolts of purple lightning crashed down from the dome and struck the recruits repeatedly. Li Yu forced his body to remain upright while the lightning coursed through his flesh.

Finally the storm faded and was replaced by a physical manifestation of metal Qi. Heavy iron rods materialized in the air and rained down on the survivors like a meteor shower. The recruits had to cross their arms and block the falling metal.

The cycle repeated over and over. Freezing cold was followed by searing fire. Lightning was followed by crushing metal rods.

The numbers dwindled steadily as the hours passed. The pain was absolute and unrelenting. Li Yu found his rhythm within the chaos but the pain never went away. He stopped fighting the elements and simply allowed his reinforced body to absorb the punishment. He maintained his focus and kept his mind clear of distraction.

He eventually found himself among the top twenty five survivors. Vennia and Zhan Mingyu were standing a short distance away. They were battered and exhausted but they refused to yield as Li Yu prepared for the next cycle of lightning.

Up on the observation platform Lei Gang watched the array carefully. He saw Li Yu standing strong in the top tier of recruits. The chief instructor knew he had to intervene before the boy made it to the very end. He would have Li Yu float around towards the top but not truly in the top.

Lei Gang isolated Li Yu's position within the array matrix and he poured a massive surge of his own Qi directly into that specific coordinate. The dome above Li Yu flashed with a blinding light as a bolt of lightning roughly ten times thicker than the others crashed down directly onto his shoulders.

It shattered Li Yu's internal defense instantly and his body seized up as his vision went entirely white. He collapsed onto the floor like a felled tree as the silver safety array wrapped around him and whisked him out of the dimension. Li Yu materialized in the medical pavilion outside. He was covered in soot and his muscles twitched uncontrollably.

He accepted a healing pill from a camp medic and sat up slowly. He did not feel angry or disheartened. Since he did not talk to anyone in the camp, he had absolutely no idea that the difficulty did not spike like that for everyone else. He assumed the array was simply designed with an exponential difficulty curve at the end to weed out the final survivors.

He actually felt a sense of satisfaction. With Lei Gang's earlier explanation anchoring his mindset, Li Yu accepted the defeat as a sign that his body simply needed more refinement. That he had a long way to go to endure as much as the others. He looked forward to pushing further the next time.

This brutal cycle became his life for the next seven days.

The entire camp rotated through a grueling schedule of bodily abuse. It would mix between two training sessions each day the training cycled through. From the heavy pressure running in the grey dimension to being beaten by the iron dummies or the veteran soldiers, or enduring the elemental extremes.

There was also the introduction of a new drill that involved climbing a mountain cliff while a gravity array steadily increased the weight on their shoulders. Li Yu would consistently make it to the top twenty five or top ten during every single drill. He would hold his ground until Lei Gang secretly turned the array pressure up to an insane degree to blast him out.

Li Yu continued to believe this was the normal progression of the camp. He thought everyone was being eliminated by similar massive spikes in difficulty, why else would they fail otherwise? He simply dusted himself off and prepared for the next round.

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The results of the extreme punishment were undeniable.

Li Yu began to feel his body getting stronger and vastly more refined. His muscles healed thicker and denser every single night. The remnant essence from Elder Mu fused even deeper into his bone and flesh under the constant pressure. He had rarely endured such systematic and constant punishment before.

Lei Gang watched this progression from the shadows and felt incredibly happy. He was like a master craftsman watching a piece of unpolished stone slowly become a crowning jewel. It would take a lot more time to reach perfection but Lei Gang could clearly begin to picture the terrifying result.

Despite the exhaustion of the camp schedule, Li Yu maintained his own personal routine.

Every morning before the camp officially woke up, he stood in his premium courtyard. He would draw Gilded Calamity and swing the sword through a series of basic forms. It centered his mind and prepared him for the daily suffering.

After putting Gilded Calamity away, he would draw Firmament's End.

He practiced his sword control diligently as he sent the blade flying through the air like a deadly javelin. He refined his mental connection to the artifact until it moved as seamlessly as a natural extension of his own will.

Once his morning routine was complete, he would join the recruits and begin the cycle of pain all over again. In the evenings he would share meals with the other 8 in his courtyard as they were cultivating and improving themselves as well.

The end of the first week arrived with a heavy dust storm sweeping across the camp.

Lei Gang sat alone in his private office near the instructor quarters. He was reviewing the medical reports and adjusting the array parameters for the upcoming week. He poured himself a cup of bitter tea and rubbed his scarred chin.

The space in the center of his office suddenly distorted.

A jagged tear opened in the fabric of reality as Zhan Tielan stepped out of the spatial void. The supreme commander wore her dark combat robes and carried an aura of authority. She looked around the simple office before locking her cold eyes onto the chief instructor.

Lei Gang nearly choked on his tea at her arrival. He quickly set the cup down and stood up to offer a deep and respectful bow.

"Commander." Lei Gang greeted her nervously but was mainly wondering why she was back so soon. He rarely got to see her so often and quickly determined it was of course because of her son.

Tielan did not return the pleasantries. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the massive man.

"I have been reviewing the training logs for the past seven days." Tielan said. Her voice was quiet but carried a dangerous edge. "I see that you changed the entire curriculum of the camp on the exact day my son arrived. You canceled all technical drills. You canceled the weapon training. You are running thirty days of body tempering."

Lei Gang swallowed hard but he kept his head bowed.

"All you are doing is having my son beaten from dawn until dusk." Tielan stated coldly. "You have him crushed by gravity, struck by lightning and pounded into the dirt by veteran soldiers. Is this your way of getting back at me for all the punishments I have made you endure in the past?"

Lei Gang froze. He needed to think about that accusation for a second as he searched his own feelings.

‘Was it really the case subconsciously? Did I change the curriculum to secretly torture the son of my terrifying commander as a form of petty revenge?’ Lei Gang thought.

He shook the thought off immediately. It was absolutely not true, he was a pure martial artist at heart.

"No, Commander." Lei Gang answered honestly as he stood up straight. "It has nothing to do with revenge. I assure you."

"Then explain this madness." Tielan demanded.

"His physical vessel is a miracle." Lei Gang explained while his eyes lit up with genuine passion. "He has the foundation of a supreme beast but he endures like a noble. He dodges and evades. He does not understand how to anchor himself and simply endure. If I do not break his muscles down and rebuild them properly right now, his potential will be forever capped. He needs this tempering more than anyone else in the camp to some degree."

Tielan listened to his reasoning. She understood the mechanics of body tempering perfectly well. Her own martial path was built on a similar foundation of pain and refinement. She could clearly see the logic in Lei Gang's approach.

"I agree with your method for building a foundation." Tielan admitted slowly. "His body will indeed grow stronger. But Li Yu came here for actual instruction. He came here because he lacks a proper master. You cannot just beat him for a month and call it an education."

She stepped closer to the desk and tapped a finger against the wooden surface.

"You need to at least mix in actual combat teachings." Tielan ordered. "Teach him our martial forms. Give him grand strategies. Show him how our forces utilize their Qi in ways during battle. Do not just make him a punching bag."

Lei Gang looked at his commander. A look of deep confusion crossed his scarred face.

"Combat teachings?" Lei Gang asked blankly. "Grand strategies?"

"Yes." Tielan frowned. "What is so confusing about that?"

Lei Gang scratched the back of his head. He looked genuinely bewildered by the request.

"Commander with all due respect, what grand strategies are you talking about?" Lei Gang asked. "Isn't the entire philosophy of our army to just hit things until they are gone? We march forward. We hit the enemy very hard. If the first hit is not enough, we use more power and hit them harder. If that does not work, we get a bigger weapon and hit them again."

Tielan opened her mouth to argue but the words died in her throat.

She stared at Lei Gang for a long moment. She mentally reviewed the combat doctrine of her own elite forces. She thought about her own fighting style and she realized that Lei Gang was entirely correct.

They did not use illusions. They did not utilize complex techniques or intricate shifting arrays. Their entire military strategy boiled down to overwhelming physical force and unbreakable resilience. They were extremely powerful but there was absolutely no grand strategy to their methods. They were not showy in the slightest. They just got results by breaking their enemies in half.

Tielan was taken aback by this realization. It was a glaring blind spot she had never truly considered because it was never an issue before. They got the results they wanted and were renowned. It was only now that she needed to provide elegant instruction for her son that this ‘issue’ was actually an issue.

"That is..." Tielan started to say before sighing heavily. "That is indeed true."

Lei Gang spread his massive hands in a helpless gesture. "I cannot teach him elegant combat forms because we do not have any. We just hit things. So I am teaching him how to take a hit and how to hit back."

Tielan rubbed her temples. She had an understanding that her son was hoping for enlightenment or at least a more structured form of guidance. She knew he wanted to learn the secrets of the cosmic elite and how to reach such heights. Finding out that the elite just punched things really hard would likely be a massive disappointment to him.

She turned around and prepared to step back into the spatial tear.

"I do not care how you do it." Tielan said over her shoulder. "Find a way to make it look like actual instruction. Mix something else in. Just figure it out!"

She stepped into the void and the tear sealed shut behind her.

Lei Gang stood alone in his office as he stared at the empty space where his commander had just been. He let out a long and suffering groan. He sat heavily back down in his chair and rubbed his scarred face with both hands. She had just left him with a monumental headache and absolutely no clear instructions on how to solve it.

"Figure it out." Lei Gang muttered to himself. "Sure. I will just invent profound martial techniques before lunch tomorrow, no problem at all. What’s wrong with just teaching him how we fight normally? It's clearly effective enough."