One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

Xu San's efficiency was as high as that of a sophisticated machine.

Three days after Zhang Chulan's "kidnapping" incident, a "Special Talent Early Graduation Approval Form" stamped with a bright red official seal was silently placed on the desk of the Dean of Academic Affairs at Nanbukai University. The document was worded in an official and vague manner, only emphasizing that the student was involved in a "national key scientific research project" and needed to leave the school immediately to participate in closed-loop work. The name of the institution and the level of confidentiality at the end of the document made the gray-haired professor adjust his glasses, wipe the sweat from his forehead three times, and finally sign his name in the "agree" column, the handwriting so strong that it pierced through the back of the paper.

Thus, Zhang Chulan's college life came to an absurd and almost comical end prematurely—no graduation ceremony, no farewell party, no photos of him throwing his cap in his graduation gown, and even the half-empty box of braised beef noodles under his dormitory bed became an untouchable relic of his youth.

"My graduation certificate... my degree..." Zhang Chulan stood in the dappled shadows of the dormitory building, clutching a worn-out suitcase stuffed with a few old clothes. His eyes were as empty as hollowed-out seashells. "I studied for over ten years, just for this piece of paper..."

"What do you need that thing for?" Nie Lingfeng patted his thin shoulder, the force neither too light nor too heavy. "When you fight someone, are you going to pull out your diploma and wave it around first? 'Fellow Daoist, hold on! I graduated from Nankai University with a bachelor's degree, a legitimate degree!'"

Zhang Chulan sketched the scene in his mind: a battlefield filled with smoke, a break in the clash between the Golden Light Spell and the Thunder Spell, and he suddenly pulled out a red-covered notebook... He fell silent.

Feng Baobao was squatting on the edge of the flower bed, intently munching on a steamed bun she'd swiped from the cafeteria. Hearing this, she looked up, crumbs still clinging to her lips: "Can a diploma be exchanged for money?"

"cannot."

"Oh." Feng Baobao lowered her head and continued eating her steamed bun, vaguely summarizing, "Then it's useless."

Zhang Chulan: "..." He felt that all the knowledge he had built up over the past twenty years about "normal life" was being shattered and ground into powder by these two guys in the most simple and unadorned way.

Xu San drove an inconspicuous black SUV, taking the three of them away from the campus. The car drove out of the city, through increasingly sparse villages and towns, and finally turned onto a private mountain road hidden under dense trees. At the end of the road, a gray-white two-story villa stood quietly, surrounded by a low stone wall and lush trees, like a secluded island.

The villa isn't large, but its design is simple and practical. It has two floors and a yard of about thirty square meters, paved with bluestone slabs, with an old locust tree in the corner whose leaves are beginning to turn yellow. The interior is minimalist, with white walls and wooden floors; the furniture is sparse but sufficient, and each room has its own bathroom.

Most importantly—it's remote enough. Nie Lingfeng stood on the open-air balcony on the second floor and looked into the distance. As far as the eye could see, there were only rolling mountains and forests and the occasional bird flying by. The nearest houses were two or three kilometers away.

"This is a property my father acquired years ago. He originally planned to stay here occasionally after retirement." Xu San placed a bunch of brass keys on the oak coffee table in the living room, making a crisp clinking sound. "It's usually empty, so it's perfect as a temporary training base for you guys. It has running water, electricity, and internet, and there's some basic exercise equipment in the basement. I had the refrigerator stocked with groceries beforehand—rice, noodles, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea are all included. Just give me a call if you need anything."

He turned to Zhang Chulan, his gaze behind his gold-rimmed glasses serious and sharp: "For the next month, your special training will be entirely in the hands of Bao Bao and Xiao Feng. Zhang Chulan, you need to understand that the Luo Tian Grand Ceremony is not a school sports meet, much less a child's game. At that time, the best of the younger generation in the entire world of supernatural beings will gather at Longhu Mountain, and there will be many among them who want to climb over others to get ahead, even resorting to unscrupulous means. If you want to come down the mountain alive and find out the truth about your grandfather and father, you have to train with your life on the line for this month."

Zhang Chulan's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, his voice dry: "Will...will people die?"

"People have died or been maimed in previous years," Xu San said calmly, as if he were stating tomorrow's weather. "So, don't take any chances."

Zhang Chulan felt his calves go weak and instinctively grabbed the back of the sofa next to him.

Feng Baobao finally finished the steamed bun, dusted off the crumbs, and stood up. She walked up to Zhang Chulan, looked up at him with her expressionless face and empty eyes, and said in a flat, emotionless tone, "Don't worry, I know how to discipline him."

For some reason, as Zhang Chulan looked at that face and listened to those flat words, a chill suddenly ran up his tailbone to the back of his head.

First day of special training.

At 4:50 a.m., the sky was still a thick, inky blue.

"Bang!"

The sound of the dormitory door being violently pushed open was particularly jarring in the quiet villa.

Zhang Chulan was fast asleep, dreaming that he was still in a university classroom, with the professor lecturing incessantly on the podium. Suddenly, a bone-chilling touch pressed against his cheek, jolting him awake. Opening his eyes, he saw Feng Baobao's magnified, expressionless face right in front of him, holding a frost-covered aluminum can that had just been taken from the refrigerator.

"Get up," Feng Baobao said succinctly.

"Bao, Bao'er sister... what time is it..." Zhang Chulan's voice was slurred, and his eyelids felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead.

"Run." Feng Baobao took the can off his face and tossed it into the trash can. "Ten laps around the mountain."

"Ten laps?!" Zhang Chulan's sleepiness vanished instantly. He scrambled to the window and peered through the hazy morning mist at the mountain range whose massive outline shone in the pre-dawn darkness. "This mountain... this lap must be at least five or six kilometers long, right?!"

"Hmm." Feng Baobao nodded, her tone completely flat. "If we don't finish running, there's no breakfast."

Zhang Chulan tried to struggle, but Feng Baobao grabbed him by the back of his pajamas, lifted him off the bed like a disobedient kitten, and threw him out of the bedroom without any politeness.

"Wait! I haven't changed my clothes yet! My shoes—"

His response was a loud "bang" as the door slammed shut.

Five minutes later, Zhang Chulan, dressed in a wrinkled tracksuit and slippers, with a long face, was herded out of the villa gate by Feng Baobao with a tree branch that she had found somewhere, and onto the winding gravel path that disappeared into the depths of the mountain forest.

His morning began in a panic, with his heart pounding, his lungs burning, and his muscles howling.

Nie Lingfeng stood on the second-floor balcony, holding a freshly brewed cup of hot tea, watching Zhang Chulan's figure stumble and fall in the dim morning light, gradually becoming a small black dot on the mountain path. He shook his head and drank the last bit of tea in his cup.

Turning back to his room, he took out the Snow Drinking Blade from his storage bag. The blade gleamed with a cold, eerie blue light in the morning light. Even after being drawn only half an inch from its sheath, the temperature in the room dropped sharply, and a thin layer of frost quickly condensed on the windowpane.

He stared at his own eyes reflected in the blade, and after a moment, slowly sheathed the sword.

"I can't use it." He muttered to himself, "If I use Snow Drink here, one stab and this villa will probably be sealed by the cold air."

He put the Snow Drinking Blade away again and went to the center of the courtyard alone.

Take a deep breath and focus your energy in your dantian. The internal energy of the Xuanwu True Scripture begins to flow along your meridians, like the Yangtze River, surging endlessly.

Start with leg training.

Wind God Leg - Catching the Wind and Shadows!

His figure suddenly transformed into a wisp of green smoke, darting and weaving through the not-so-spacious courtyard. At first, his silhouette was still discernible, but after three breaths, only blurry afterimages remained, intertwined and overlapping. The wind whipped around his legs, causing the branches and leaves of the old locust tree in the courtyard to rustle and the wet clothes hanging on the clothesline to flutter wildly, nearly breaking free of their clips and flying away.

Practice palm strikes again.

Cloud-Dispelling Palm – Turning Clouds and Rain!

As he swung his palms, faint white clouds gathered from nothingness, swirling around his arms. The force of his palm strikes did not strike any solid object, but rather he repeatedly struck the air. Even so, wherever the palm wind passed, the air emitted a muffled boom, and on the gray-white brick wall at the edge of the courtyard, palm prints of varying depths and irregular cloud-like edges were quietly left.

Finally, we practiced our boxing.

As the fist unleashed its power, a chilling aura filled the air. Within a three-meter radius of Nie Lingfeng, a thin layer of crystalline white frost rapidly condensed on the bluestone pavement, shimmering with a delicate, cold light in the rising sun. The fist's shadow blurred, each strike leaving icy blue afterimages that lingered in the air for a long time.

When Xu San came to deliver a new batch of training equipment and supplies the next afternoon, he stopped in his tracks as soon as he entered the courtyard. He pushed up his glasses and his gaze slowly swept over the wall covered with handprints, the frost marks on the ground, and the old locust tree that looked as if it had been ravaged by a typhoon and had lost most of its leaves.

The silence lasted for a full minute.

Then, he silently took out his phone and sent a message to the finance department: "[Repairs to the training base's perimeter wall and courtyard; additional budget of 20,000 yuan.]"

In the afternoon, Zhang Chulan's ordeal was not over.

When Feng Baobao dragged him back to the villa like a lump of mud, it was already past noon. Ten laps of mountain road, nearly sixty kilometers, and he had almost climbed the last two laps. His throat was full of the taste of blood, his legs were shaking uncontrollably, and every breath was accompanied by excruciating pain in his ribs.

"Get up." Feng Baobao nudged Zhang Chulan, who was sprawled on the living room carpet, not even wanting to move a finger, with her toe. "Practice your skills."

"Sister Bao'er...please...let me...take a breath...just one breath..." Zhang Chulan's voice was weak and feeble, his face buried in the carpet, like a stranded, dying fish.

"Catch your breath after you finish practicing." Feng Baobao squatted down, and a thin twig appeared in her hand at some point. She poked his lower back. "Hurry up."

Tears streamed down Zhang Chulan's face as he struggled to his feet, feeling as if every bone in his body was groaning.

Feng Baobao passed on a set of techniques to Zhang Chulan, which included not only meditation and circulation but also a set of movements, leaving him somewhat bewildered.

That set of movements... how should I put it, it was extremely bizarre. It was somewhat like the Tai Chi that old men do in the park, but the rhythm was much more sluggish, the transitions between movements were awkward, and the way of coordinating breathing was unheard of—inhaling while contracting the abdomen and lifting the anus, and exhaling while expanding the dantian. After a set of twelve movements, Zhang Chulan felt like a rusty marionette, his hands and feet almost tied in knots.

"This is called 'Old Farmer's Kung Fu'," Feng Baobao said, watching him struggle through the routine. "I created it myself."

Zhang Chulan's lips twitched, and he muttered to himself: Bao'er created this herself? Is this reliable? It feels like a product of randomly piecing together radio calisthenics, Five Animal Frolics, and some weird postures she picked up from who-knows-where?

But Feng Baobao's eyes were serious; she didn't seem to be joking.

With a "nothing to lose" mentality, Zhang Chulan patiently repeated this awkward "old farmer's kung fu" over and over again, under Feng Baobao's "branch encouragement."

Gradually, a strange feeling began to appear.

At first, he only felt a slight warmth in his body, as if he had done some low-intensity exercise. But after a dozen or so repetitions, he clearly felt that the "qi" in his body, which had been running around like headless flies and was difficult to control precisely, began to flow slowly along some small and obscure meridian routes that he had never traveled before, guided by this set of strange movements.

This flow was initially difficult, like a stream squeezing through a narrow crevice in the rocks. But with repeated guidance, the "stream" gradually became smoother, and its route became clearer. The "qi" that was originally scattered throughout the limbs and bones with extremely low utilization was effectively gathered, purified, and concentrated into the main qi-circulating meridians.

After completing a full cycle, Zhang Chulan was shocked to discover that the source of "Qi" in his dantian had not only solidified slightly, but its circulation speed and control over "Qi" had also increased by at least 30%!

"Sister Bao'er! This...this technique..." Zhang Chulan's voice trembled with excitement, his eyes filled with disbelief as he looked at Feng Baobao. "It's amazing! It really works! I feel like my control over my Qi is much smoother now!"

Feng Baobao tilted her head, seemingly puzzled by his excitement: "It's good that it works. I was just thinking about it casually, figuring that this way of circulating Qi might be smoother."

Zhang Chulan: "..." Just thinking about it? You created a technique that can regulate runaway Qi and improve cultivation efficiency just by thinking about it? Sister Bao'er, what kind of monster are you?

After the brief moment of surprise, came Nie Lingfeng's "Combat Awareness Training".