Return Of The Demon - 137 Muscle tempering

Bai Yun now had to find a place to recover. Bai Yun went back to the inn he had stayed in earlier and booked a room for a couple of days. Bai Yun then spend the next few days resting.

When Bai Yun finally left the inn a few days later, the situation in poison valley had died down. From the word on the streets, Bai Yun was able to gain a lot of news. He learned that the explosion this time was the largest in recorded history. Thus there were many many blue lotuses, and that even now new blue lotuses were coming up, though rarely.

And the biggest news was purple lotuses. According to rumors, the city lord arrived on the lake long before anyone else and collected a few purple lotuses. Afterward, the heads of major factions of terracotta hill also arrived and fought each other for the purple lotuses.

But the biggest purple lotus actually came yesterday. It was four times largest than the second largest purple lotus that was born and was so dark that it almost looked black. After a fierce struggle, it finally fell into the hands of the city lord.

And during these battles Huang Yao’s mercenary group also became famous. They fought on the side of the city lord and repelled many other forces along with the city lord’s forces. A mercenary group led by a beautiful lady thus quickly became famous.

After finding out about this, Bai Yun left the inn and went to the alchemist assassination. Just like the blacksmithing union, the alchemist assassination also rented out rooms for use.

But Bai Yun was not going for a single room. From Qin Feng, Bai Yun learned that the alchemist association and blacksmith union also rented out stores. These stores were on the major commercial streets of terracotta hill and had basements where one could do alchemy or blacksmithing.

So Bai Yun went directly to the alchemist association and asked to rent out a store. Bai Yun was planning to stay there for a few months before moving on. He had quite a few things to handle first, and terracotta hill was a good place to stay. Not only did it have many places nearby to collect rare medical ingredients, but it was also close enough to ever green hills so that Bai Yun could go there to sharpen himself.

After spending the afternoon Bai Yun finally settled on a location for the shop. It wasn’t on the main street, but it was only a few blocks away. Bai Yun initially thought of renting a shop closer to the main street, but those were a lot costlier.

Bai Yun quickly finished the procedures for renting and paid the deposit for the shop. Bai Yun initially decided to rent the shop for three months and then go from there.

After this was done Bai Yun went straight to his shop to inspect it. It was a three story house in a little street near the main street. The ground floor was the shop while the first floor was living quarters and the second floor was a training room. And in the basement, there was an alchemy room, and a blacksmithing room, complete with many tools.

After inspecting it, Bai Yun found that it was a bit too much just for him. But it was unavoidable since he wanted a shop that had both blacksmithing as well as alchemy rooms. Usually, these stores were for a group and not a single person.

After arriving here, Bai Yun quickly cleaned up the shop. Bai Yun could have hired help for this, but since he wasn’t going to be focusing on alchemy and blacksmithing during this time, Bai Yun thought that hiring someone was a waste.

Bai Yun then hung up a board outside the shop. The board simply said ‘Open every day for one hour at noon. Can create any pill or weapon at the qi step. Also does consultations and examinations.’

Bai Yun was only planning to open the shop for an hour every day. He hoped that he would get some work and then his reputation would spread by word of mouth. And if it didn’t, that was fine too.

Since it was already afternoon, Bai Yun locked up the shop, leaving only the board hanging outside. Throughout the day, a few curious people stared at the board, but no one took it seriously. The shop wasn’t even open for it to be taken seriously anyway.

After this Bai Yun went down to the alchemy room. He then removed the bandages that he had covered himself with. All the injuries he had suffered in the poison valley had healed by now. The only thing left was the burn on his hand. Bai Yun’s left arm was pretty much completely burned out. But it was only a surface burn and did not affect his mobility. And Bai Yun figured that it would heal in about two months.

After this Bai Yun took out a few medicinal ingredients he had bought at the alchemist association. The first thing Bai Yun was going to do today was to break through to muscle tempering.

In the muscle tempering realm, the muscles, the tendons, and the ligaments of the body would undergo a special process of refinement. The idea behind muscle tempering was similar to tempering minerals. The process was to crack the muscles under extreme pressure and then repair them rapidly. During this repair, the muscles would get stronger and stronger.

Just like how skin sewing primarily raised one’s defense, muscle tempering primarily raised one’s strength and speed. It did not mean that it was the only improvement though, only that strength and speed were raised the highest.

And during muscle tempering, each muscle could be tempered a maximum of one hundred times. Theoretically one could break through to flesh transformation, after completing a single tempering for every muscle. But the more the tempering process was done on a muscle, the stronger it would be, and the greater the foundation would be.

And as for the hundred times limit, the greater the number number of temperings, the harder the next tempering would be. Theoretically, anybody cultivation technique created by a god or above can allow one to reach one hundred temperings. But due to the high requirements, no one had ever reached a hundred tempering for even a single muscle. For example in his previous life, Bai Yun had only reached ninety seven temperings. And this was considered extremely high. Even the God of War who created undying body only reached ninety four temperings. As far as Bai Yun knew the highest anyone had ever reached was ninety eight temperings.

And there was another peculiar thing about muscle temperings. The only requirement to a breakthrough was that every single muscle had to be tempered at least once. There were no requirements that all the muscles had to be tempered the same number of times, or even that they had to be tempered simultaneously.

Thus there arose two different ways of tempering. One was to distribute the energy of muscle tempering evenly across the body so that all the muscles were tempered evenly. This would allow the strength of the body to increase in a stable holistic fashion.

Another method was to temper only a part of the muscles in the body. This would cause those muscles to be extremely strong, while the rest of the muscles, that had not been tempered would not increase in strength. This way the same medicine can be used to temper a smaller number of muscles for a larger number of temperings than it would be possible if all the muscles were tempered. For example, instead of choosing to temper all the muscles in the body, one could temper just the muscles in one arm twenty five or even thirty times. This would cause an explosive increase in strength of the arm, but not any other part of the body.

After thinking about this for a while, Bai Yun decided to go a mixed route. He was going to temper his entire body partially, and then give some extra tempering to his legs. And Bai Yun decided to temper his legs first because whether it was for running away or for applying force, the most important part was the legs.

Bai Yun first took out a blue lotus he had collected earlier. He had studied its properties and found that it was perfect for the first part of the muscle tempering process, breaking the muscles. He then took a few more ingredients that he bought from the alchemist association and started to prepare them.

Bai Yun went down to the alchemy room and started to work on his medicine. Starting with the blue lotus Bai Yun started to add items into the cauldron in the alchemy room. Then he added the hundred beast flame to the cauldron. Slowly time passed and a pill finally formed inside the cauldron.

Bai Yun took the pill out of the cauldron and slowly analyzed it. This was the first pill that Bai Yun had ever made by himself without a recipe. He had followed the knowledge he had gotten from the alchemy legacy to make it. And from the analysis, Bai Yun understood that while it still had room for improvement, he had done a good enough job.

Bai Yun sat down on the floor and rested until he had completely recovered from the drain of making the pill. Bai Yun then threw the pill into his mouth and swallowed it in one gulp.

A moment later a powerful pressure radiated out from the pill. Bai Yun could feel a powerful destructive force coming from it. Bai Yun used his god devil sense to trap it, and then slowly released it out into every muscle in his body.

The destructive force rampaged through his body, tearing up every muscle, ligament, and tendon in Bai Yun’s body. This caused Bai Yun to nearly scream in pain. Bai Yun could have taken some medicine to dull the pain, but that would have caused him to not accurately judge the situation in his muscles. And Bai Yun did not want to do that. Even a small mistake during muscle tempering can cause problems later on, and cause Bai Yun to temper less than he could otherwise.

And Bai Yun closely monitored each and every fiber in his body with his god devil sense. When he noticed that they had all reached the very limit of breaking, Bai Yun stopped letting out the destructive force in the pill. Then Bai Yun started to release the healing force that was stored in the pill, which he had also trapped with the god devil sense.

Slowly, one by one, Bai Yun’s muscles started to heal. As they healed, they rapidly strengthened. A cooling sensation arose all over Bai Yun’s body as his muscles strengthened.

Once his muscles had all healed, Bai Yun was done with the first round of tempering. But the first few rounds of tempering only used a little bit of energy, so Bai Yun had a lot more left.

Slowly Bai Yun started the second round of muscle tempering. He had to go through the entire process of pain and healing once again. After this Bai Yun continued this process again and again.

All in all, Bai Yun completed fifteen rounds of muscle tempering for his entire body. But even after that was done, he still had a lot of energy left.

Bai Yun only directed this energy into his legs. Slowly, one after another, his leg muscles started the tempering process. Bai Yun did the tempering process for his legs ten more times for a total of twenty five temperings before he ran out of energy.

And with this Bai Yun had taken the first steps into the second realm of body cultivation, muscle tempering.