Thinking back to all of this, Han Li could not stop a knowing smile from forming on his face.
Over that half year or so, he and Zhang Tie had grown so close in temperament, and their origins were so alike, that it had come quite naturally to them to become inseparable bosom friends, telling each other everything.
Slowly, Han Li loosened the legs he had crossed beneath him and kneaded his calves with his hands. He had sat in meditation so long that his legs had gone numb, and the circulation in them had grown sluggish. After rubbing them a while longer, until full feeling had returned to his legs, he rose from his cushion and, from habit, patted a few specks of dust from his clothes before pushing open the stone door and stepping out.
Turning back to glance at the stone hut where he practiced, Han Li laughed quietly at himself.
That room had been hollowed entirely out of the sturdy granite of the mountain face, and its door was carved from a single great slab of bluestone. For any ordinary man to burst in from outside, he would have needed a mountain-splitting axe to hew at it for quite some time—anything less, and he could forget about it. Such a meditation chamber was not something just anyone could claim. Within the Sect of Seven Mysteries, even the core disciples of the Seven Ultimate Hall could not casually possess one; only the sect leader, the elders, and the hall masters, who held rank and standing, were entitled to such a place. These stone rooms were built specially for those who trained in deep inner arts, to shield them from outside interference and to ward against qi deviation while they cultivated. Only the spirits knew what method Doctor Mo had employed to persuade a number of elders to consent to the carving of such a chamber into the mountainside of Spirit Hands Valley—a chamber no ordinary disciple could ever enjoy.
No sooner was the stone room finished than Doctor Mo, at his own discretion, assigned it for Han Li's exclusive use. The decision caught Han Li so pleasantly by surprise that he was almost flattered beyond his bearings.
This master of his was far too good to his pupil. From the very day Han Li had formally become his disciple, Doctor Mo had him swallow several different medicines every day and soak his body in infusions brewed from some nameless herbs. Han Li could not recognize the names or uses of these drugs, but whenever Doctor Mo administered them, a look of reluctant tenderness would steal over his usually expressionless face, and from that Han Li could gather something of how precious they must be.
Clearly, this outside help had done its work. Han Li's cultivation sped up no small amount, and not long before, he had finally broken through the barrier and succeeded in refining the first level of the Nameless Formula.
During the breakthrough, however, a few of his channels had nearly ruptured, leaving him with an inner injury neither light nor grave. Had it not been for Doctor Mo's superb skill at medicine—for the damaged channels were not too serious, and he was willing to spend freely on good medicines—Han Li might have been left with lasting aftereffects.
After Han Li was hurt, Doctor Mo behaved even more anxiously than Han Li himself. Throughout the whole course of treatment he could not sit or lie still, and only when he saw that his patient's injury had finally begun to mend did he let out a great sigh of relief.
Such behavior from Doctor Mo went far beyond the bond that should ordinarily exist between master and disciple, and it stirred in Han Li an unease he could not very well account for. Had it not been that no one from the Han family except his Third Uncle had ever set foot beyond their poor mountain valley, Han Li might almost have believed that Doctor Mo was some distant relative of his.
After stepping out of the stone chamber, Han Li stretched his limbs and ambled slowly toward his lodgings. Since becoming full disciples, Han Li and Zhang Tie had moved out of their old quarters, and each now had a small private hut of his own.
Passing Zhang Tie's hut, Han Li gave it a casual glance.
As expected, Zhang Tie was not inside—he had probably gone off to train beneath the waterfall at the foot of Redwater Peak.
Since taking Han Li as his formal disciple, Doctor Mo had continued to have him train only in the Nameless Formula, showing not the slightest intention of teaching him any other art. Perhaps by way of comfort, Doctor Mo instead taught him medicine without holding back, guiding him hands-on, answering every one of his questions to his complete satisfaction, and allowing him to freely browse all the medical books in his quarters.
As for Zhang Tie, keeping to the promise he had made earlier, Doctor Mo taught him another art, quite a practical one.
The art Zhang Tie practiced was strange indeed. According to Doctor Mo, it was a rare martial skill called the Elephant-Armor Art, a technique that, he said, few in the jianghu had ever laid eyes on. Many had not even heard its name, let alone practiced it.
Unlike the ordinary martial arts circulating in the jianghu today, which grow harder the higher one climbs and demand ever-multiplying effort, this art had nine layers in all. The first three were easy to cultivate, no more difficult than any common art. From the fourth layer on, however, it suddenly turned arduous, demanding that the practitioner endure unimaginable pain and torment. Many who took up the skill could not withstand this inhuman suffering, gave up at that point, and their cultivation stagnated forever after. As for the fifth and sixth layers, the pain required there was several times worse still.
Yet once one broke through the sixth layer to reach the seventh, the path smoothed out again, free and unimpeded—except that each month, certain days had to be endured when the torment came back, agonizing near to death.
All of this was enough to make those who wished to practice the art step back in fear, and it was the chief reason the technique had almost fallen into obscurity.
Odd as the art was, its power at the higher layers was truly astonishing. It was said that a person who reached the ninth layer was as though robed in divine armor, impervious to blade and spear, proof against water and fire. Not palm force, not fist force—even precious sabers and treasured swords would struggle to wound him gravely.
Even more enviable was what happened to ordinary people who practiced it: they gradually came to possess the might of a giant elephant, and at the higher layers their strength knew no bounds. They could seize a fierce wolf alive and tear tigers and leopards apart with their bare hands—formidable indeed.
Those who knew of the art felt for it a mixture of fear and love. Apart from the master who had created it, no one had ever managed to bring it to the ninth layer. Legend had it that this master had been born without any sense of pain, which alone enabled him to devise such a monstrous martial art and push it to its utter limit.
Though Doctor Mo had laid out in full the art's advantages and its dangers to Zhang Tie, Zhang Tie could not grasp the harm by personal experience, and so did not take it to heart. He only coveted the fearsome power of the Elephant-Armor Art and agreed without a moment's hesitation to practice it. And the skill seemed to suit him remarkably well—in a mere two months, Zhang Tie had trained it to the very peak of the first layer.
Of late, in order to break through the first layer of the Elephant-Armor Art, and on Doctor Mo's advice, Zhang Tie had been spending every afternoon beneath the waterfall that plunged dozens of meters down Redwater Peak, training beneath the tremendous impact of the falling water.
By Zhang Tie's own account, the method worked remarkably well, and he now stood only a thin paper's thickness away from the second layer—one more push, and he would smash through the bottleneck.