Han Li slowly drew the stream of energy flowing through the meridians of his body back into his dantian. This was the seventh Grand Circulation he had run in a single day, and he knew that his body had reached the very limit it could bear. If he pushed through yet another Grand Circulation, his meridians would almost certainly split open once more, and he would again taste that agony of wanting to live but finding it worse than death. The moment Han Li recalled the pain of those meridians shredding apart bit by bit, cold sweat broke out down his back—even he, who was ordinarily bold, could not help trembling.
More than half a year had passed since Han Li had entered the sect, and the formal entrance examination for registered disciples had concluded two months earlier.
Only a small fraction of the registered disciples managed to formally enter the inner sect. Most of the examinees failed to pass that gate, and those who did not make it could only pack their bundles and go down the mountain to serve as outer disciples.
Most of those boys who failed were assigned to the Treasure Gathering Hall and the Flying Bird Hall. A few of the more outstanding among them might receive further training, and might then be recruited into the Outer Edge Hall, which offered better treatment. Of course, the very best treatment in the outer sect belonged to the Four Seas Hall. Unfortunately, that hall only recruited famous figures of the martial world; without one or two impressive techniques to show, one might as well not even think of it, let alone these wet-behind-the-ears children.
Whenever Han Li recalled the contents of the examination the other registered disciples had faced two months earlier, he still felt a creeping dread even now.
They had to run a circuit of the Caixia Mountain Range, which spread some dozen miles around, then pair up in groups to fight one another in a sparsely populated mountain forest, and finally withstand a set number of techniques under the furious onslaught of those senior brothers with skillfully trained martial arts. Every one of these trials made Han Li, against his will, feel a trace of malicious delight.
Han Li and Zhang Tie had not taken part in any of those terrifying trials. Just as Doctor Mo himself had said, the two of them were only tested on their progress in cultivating that formula. But this was by no means the easy gate Han Li had imagined. Even now, he remembered the circumstances of his training back then with perfect clarity.
According to Doctor Mo, this formula, whose name was unknown, was divided into several layers, and the two boys had received only the cultivation method of the first layer. In other words, as long as the two of them achieved some accomplishment in the first layer within half a year, Doctor Mo would consider them to have passed, and they would become his formal disciples, enjoying the same fine treatment as all the other inner disciples of the Sect of Seven Mysteries.
Ever since Han Li learned from others about the difference in treatment between inner and outer disciples, he had completely abandoned his earlier notion of idling through the half year and becoming an outer disciple so he could go home. To him at that time, nothing mattered more than drawing a little extra silver from the Sect of Seven Mysteries and sending it back to his family. Having grown up in poverty and feared it deeply, he knew that every extra piece of silver he earned meant a slightly better life for his parents and siblings back home.
After receiving the formula from Doctor Mo, Han Li stopped leaving his room and began cultivating day and night, pouring every spare moment into it. Because Doctor Mo gave them no guidance whatsoever, Han Li had to feel his way forward on his own, borrowing the methods by which the other boys practiced the sect's basic internal art, the Blazing Sun Force, and comprehending the way of cultivation for himself.
Following this method, he toiled for three months, and then came a shock: the speed at which he cultivated this formula was alarmingly slow. For all his exertions, he could only produce a faint stream of slightly cool energy within his body, so fine and insubstantial it was almost as if it were not there at all—had he not looked inward closely, he would never even have noticed it.
This, he supposed, must be what the instructors called internal true qi. Naturally, Han Li assumed as much without a second thought.
But the other boys practicing the sect's Blazing Sun Force said that the true qi their bodies produced was an unmistakably hot, scorching current, whereas what his own body produced was a stream of cold air. And the results after running their two energies differed even more drastically.
The other boys, after channeling their Blazing Sun Force true qi, could already snap a bowl-thick sapling with a single punch and leap more than a zhang into the air. Yet Han Li, after running his strange qi, saw almost no change whatsoever compared to how he had been before. The only difference was that his spirit seemed more vigorous than before, and his appetite much better than before he had come up the mountain. But what good was that? Watching the other boys who had come up the mountain with him show off their wondrous power before his eyes, Han Li grew disheartened.
That unexpected discovery nearly made Han Li give up months of effort. He thought his talent was too poor, that he could never pass Doctor Mo's examination in the remaining time. He even began making preparations to go down the mountain.
Then, one day by chance, Han Li learned from Zhang Tie, who cultivated alongside him, that Zhang Tie—from the very start of practicing this formula to the present—had experienced not the slightest change in his body. There had been no effect at all, no trace of true qi produced, not even a thread, as Han Li had managed.
Learning this by chance made Han Li recover some of the confidence he had cast aside. In the days that followed, he resumed his arduous cultivation.
No—he worked even harder than before, with even greater fury.
From then on, Han Li spent every quarter of an hour in meditation. At night, when he slept, he even kept the posture of cultivation, hoping to wring a little more progress from himself. Naturally, this frantic practice lasted only a few days before it fell apart, for he did not get enough sleep and could no longer keep up his daytime efficiency.
What puzzled Han Li was that Doctor Mo, ever since passing the formula to the two boys, had stopped paying them any attention at all. He never asked about their progress, never inquired about their problems in cultivation, as if he had entirely forgotten that the two of them existed.
Every day, Doctor Mo hugged that same book with its cover of three black characters, reading it with total devotion, as if within that book there truly were a golden house and a jade maiden. At first, Han Li and Zhang Tie even thought Doctor Mo no longer intended to practice medicine and heal the injured, but had taken to studying for the scholar's examination instead. Only later, once they had learned to read, did they recognize those three characters: the Scripture of Long Life, a book about how to cultivate body and mind and prolong one's years.
Only then did it dawn on both of them. Doctor Mo had no wish to become a scholar. He wanted to live on, like a turtle in the river, never growing old, surviving ten thousand years or more.