The Spiritual Pivot of Mortal Cultivation

After three days of continuous rain, the sun finally stopped, and a few rays of sunlight finally pierced through the sky above Caixia Mountain.

On the training ground in front of the Seven Mysteries Sect, the mud and water had long been trampled into a hard layer of soil by hundreds of pairs of rough cloth shoes. The air was filled with the strong smell of sweat, the pungent odor of cheap liniment, and the vibrant energy of hundreds of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys.

This is the lowest level of the Seven Mysteries Sect, and also its most authentic ecosystem.

There was none of the lofty and ethereal world of cultivation; only the brutal infighting of mortals striving to rise above others. The wooden dummy was driven into the ground with a resounding thud, and the stone weights were lifted high and slammed down again, each person squeezing out every last drop of their strength.

Bai Xuanxin stood out awkwardly among the group of gray-robed disciples.

Instead of grabbing the heavy training equipment, he found a corner with decent sunlight and slowly stretched his muscles. His movements looked neither like boxing nor practicing martial arts; rather, they resembled an old man practicing Tai Chi while walking his bird in the park in the early morning.

However, if a master of human anatomy were present, they would be astonished to discover that every stretch and twist Bai Xuanxin made precisely engaged every core muscle group from the cervical spine to the coccyx. He was using minimal energy expenditure to achieve the most efficient muscle fiber stretching and meridian unblocking.

"Bang!"

A dull thud suddenly came from not far away, followed by a furious outburst of profanity.

A burly disciple with a fierce-looking face clutched his right wrist, wincing in pain. The sack in front of him, stuffed with iron filings, had been smashed with a deep dent, but his own wrist was also swollen half an inch high.

Bai Xuanxin stopped what she was doing, dusted off her hands, and strolled over.

"Hey, Liu Liguo, are you practicing your 'Monument-Breaking Hand' or are you planning to make yourself a plate of braised pig's trotters? They're swollen in such a unique way."

Bai Xuanxin's tone was relaxed, carrying three parts teasing and seven parts laughter. This was his "public persona"—unpretentious, quick-witted, and able to defuse the somber atmosphere of training with just a few words.

Liu Liguo glared, about to explode, but upon seeing Bai Xuanxin, he forced back his anger. A few days ago, he had personally witnessed Bai Xuanxin casually prepare a few herbal remedies and pull a disciple in the same room back from the brink of death with a high fever. In the outer sect, you can offend those who can fight, but you absolutely cannot offend those who can heal.

"Senior Brother Bai, don't laugh at me." Liu Liguo was sweating profusely from the pain. "My 'Broken Monument Hand' has been stuck on the third level for months. Today, I was just trying to force my way through, but as soon as my internal energy reached my wrist, it felt like I hit a wall and was directly attacked by the backlash."

Bai Xuanxin didn't say anything, but casually grabbed Liu Tiezhu's wrist and gently pressed his thumb near the Yangxi and Yangchi acupoints twice.

Liu Liguo gasped in pain and tried to pull his hand back.

"Don't move." Bai Xuanxin's smile faded, and although her tone wasn't loud, it carried a natural, authoritative force that a doctor would exert over a patient.

"The external hard martial art you're practicing follows the Yangming Large Intestine Meridian. That's fine in itself, but in your pursuit of lethality, you're relying entirely on the dead muscles in your forearm to forcefully pound away." Bai Xuanxin pointed to his wrist bones. "In medical terms, this is called 'Qi stagnation at the joints, slight misalignment of the bones.' Your scaphoid and lunate bones have shifted extremely slightly due to long-term incorrect force application. The channels are blocked, yet you're still desperately pouring in true qi; it would be strange if it didn't swell."

Liu Liguo listened in a daze. Although he only knew the basics of those professional acupoint terms, he still understood "incorrect force application" and "bone misalignment".

"Then... Senior Brother Bai, is my hand ruined?" Liu Liguo panicked.

"I won't ruin you, I just want to teach you a lesson."

As soon as Bai Xuanxin finished speaking, she suddenly grabbed Liu Liguo's hands and forearms with both hands, accompanied by a very small pull, rotation and sudden force.

"Click".

A crisp sound of bones realigning rang out.

"Agh—!" Liu Liuli let out a miserable scream.

"What are you howling about? Try moving around a bit." Bai Xuanxin released her grip and took a half step back.

Liu Liguo carefully rotated his wrist, and the stinging and stiff feeling that had been there before miraculously disappeared, replaced by a relaxing warm current.

"Hey! Amazing! Senior Brother Bai, it really doesn't hurt anymore!" Liu Liguo waved his fists twice in surprise.

"Go back and get a hot towel to apply two doses of blood-activating powder. Don't touch the iron sandbag for the next two days. Remember, the force should start from your heels and travel down your spine. Your wrists are just the tip of a whip; don't use them like a hammer." Bai Xuanxin gave these instructions and then turned to leave.

The disciples who were watching the spectacle all showed expressions of admiration.

"Senior Brother Bai's medical skills are amazing! He was even more efficient than the elders of the inner sect's medicine hall just now."

"That's right. Ever since he recovered from his qi deviation, Senior Brother Bai seems to have suddenly become enlightened."

Bai Xuanxin ignored the discussions behind him. He was thinking about what to get from the kitchen later when suddenly, a muffled thud came from the wooden stake area to his left, accompanied by a scream of pain.

A slender disciple with good lightness skills fell directly from the wooden stake, which was more than two meters high, and rolled around in the mud while clutching his right ankle.

"You monkey, your 'Flying Swallow Technique' is too realistic! Do you really think of yourself as a swallow with broken wings?" Bai Xuanxin sighed, took a few steps over, and squatted down.

The boy, nicknamed "Monkey," was in so much pain that tears were almost streaming down his face: "Senior Brother Bai, help! My ankle is broken! I was trying to practice that triple kick with an aerial spin, but I didn't land properly..."

Bai Xuanxin reached out and pinched the swollen ankle, feeling the elasticity of the ligaments and the integrity of the bones.

"Broken my foot! It's just that the anterior talofibular ligament slipped out of its groove, forcibly severing the Qi of the Gallbladder Meridian." Bai Xuanxin asked casually, pressing his thumb against his Yanglingquan acupoint, "What did you eat this morning?"

The monkey gasped in pain, completely bewildered by Bai Xuanxin's abrupt question: "Huh? I... I ate two cold cornbread buns and drank half a ladle of well water..."

"No wonder." Bai Xuanxin shook his head and started his usual old Chinese medicine doctor's吐槽 mode, "The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic says, 'The spleen is the foundation of acquired constitution, and the spleen governs muscles and limbs.' You practice this kind of high-intensity lightness skill every day, which consumes a lot of energy, and as a result, you drink cold water and eat cold food first thing in the morning."

"Cold and dampness trap the spleen, causing it to malfunction and resulting in insufficient nourishment of your muscles and fascia. With your ligaments in a state of relaxation and fatigue, how dare you attempt aerial spins? You're lucky you haven't broken your kneecap."

The monkey seemed to understand but not quite: "Senior Brother Bai, then what about me...?"

"Bear with it." Bai Xuanxin pressed her right thumb against the dislocated ligament, grabbed his instep with her left hand, and suddenly flipped it outwards, then pushed it inwards in an instant.

"Click!"

"Ah!" The monkey's scream was only half-finished before the excruciating pain receded like a receding tide.

Bai Xuanxin clapped his hands and stood up: "Alright, go back to your room and lie down for a day. Go to the kitchen and slip the fat cook two copper coins to have him make you a bowl of ginger and jujube soup, and get some cheap meat bones to make some hot porridge. Warm up your spleen and stomach so your muscles will have the strength to grip the ground. If you keep eating and training like this, you'll never be able to step into the inner sect in your lifetime."

"Thank you, Senior Brother Bai! Thank you, Senior Brother Bai!" The monkey got up from the ground with tears of gratitude and bowed repeatedly.

The commotion wasn't loud, but it was enough for the dozen or so outer disciples nearby to notice.

As everyone gathered around, their gazes towards Bai Xuanxin shifted from awe to genuine closeness and trust. In this place where human life was treated like dirt and only brute force mattered, a senior brother who understood medicine, could accurately pinpoint your martial arts weaknesses, and was unpretentious was an extremely rare strategic resource.

"Senior Brother Bai, your bone-healing skills are simply amazing. If you had this ability six months earlier, you might have already been taken in as a personal disciple by the head of the medicine hall," Liu Tiezhu said, leaning closer with a fawning expression.

Bai Xuanxin rolled her eyes and put her hands in her sleeves: "Forget it, I don't want to smell those bitter medicines all the time. Knowing how to treat injuries is just to save my own life in a critical moment. When it comes to fighting with bayonets, nobody cares if you're a doctor or not."

Monkey Ma limped closer, lowered his voice, and said mysteriously, "Speaking of bayonet fighting, Senior Brother Bai, how are your preparations going? I heard from the kitchen manager that our outer sect's 'Ten-Day Examination' is in five days!"

"A ten-day exam?" Bai Xuanxin raised an eyebrow slightly.

The Seven Mysteries Sect has extremely strict rules. Outer disciples not only have to undertake various miscellaneous tasks, but also undergo routine assessments every month. The mini-exam held every ten days is called the "Ten-Day Test," which is mainly conducted by the instructors responsible for passing on skills to check the disciples' progress in practical combat.

"Yes, the ten-day exam in five days." Liu Tiezhu chimed in, his tone a mix of excitement and nervousness. "And I heard that this ten-day exam is special because there are less than three months left until the triennial inner sect exam. This ten-day exam is like a 'test' before the big exam."

"It's said that several powerful deacons of the inner sect, and even the vice sect leader, might come to secretly observe. If you can make it into the top ten in this ten-day examination, you'll not only receive two high-quality Qi Gathering Pills, but you'll also have a chance to be directly noticed by the inner sect instructors and secure a guaranteed spot in the inner sect assessment!"

The disciples around them whispered among themselves, their eyes blazing with longing.

Bai Xuanxin maintained his nonchalant and seemingly uninterested demeanor. He waved his hand with a smile, "Alright, you guys practice hard and try to get into the top ten. I just crawled back from the brink of death; I'll be happy as long as I pass and don't get punished by having to clean the latrines. I'm going to the kitchen to see if the fat cook has left any meat scraps today."

After saying that, Bai Xuanxin turned and left unsteadily, his back view appearing extremely relaxed and without ambition.

However, after turning a corner and completely disappearing from everyone's sight.

The carefree and playful smile on Bai Xuanxin's face vanished instantly, replaced by an absolute calmness and calculation that only a "lower-class personality" could possess.

"Ten-day trial... preliminary assessment... deputy sect leader..."

He rubbed his chin, his brain working at lightning speed like a sophisticated supercomputer.

Helping people set bones and treat illnesses in the outer sect can indeed earn you excellent interpersonal relationships, but this is merely survival wisdom at the bottom. In this cultivation world where cultivators regard mortals as ants and high-level martial artists regard the lower classes as weeds, being merely a "good-tempered doctor" is far from enough to truly seize the initiative and unite with Han Li to take over Mo Juren's big piece of meat.

In this world, only those who display a sharpness capable of killing are qualified to sit at the negotiating table.

"Five days. I've already laid a good foundation for the outer sect's reputation through my medical skills. Now, it's time to let the sect's higher-ups truly see me in terms of martial arts."

A cold smile curved Bai Xuanxin's lips.

It's time for him to bring out his revised "Luo Yan Bu" and "Da Qin Na Shou," which specialize in targeting joints and fatal acupoints, and put them to the test in real combat.