All the gods began by cultivating the Iron Shirt technique.

"Gentlemen, what are your thoughts on this dragon crossing the river?" The leader of the Red Scorpion Gang, sitting at the head of the table, finally couldn't contain his impatience and spoke up after a long silence.

Upon hearing this, the two subordinates exchanged a glance, and after a moment, the advisor spoke slowly:

"Let's wait and see. Although this 'cross-river dragon' killed Chu Ying, he hasn't come looking for trouble. Either he and Chu Ying were both severely injured, or he's already left. Until his purpose becomes clear, I suggest we don't act rashly."

"That's right. Besides, all those in the Black Stone Gang who knew about this have been killed, so even if we wanted to investigate, we wouldn't know where to start. And don't forget, Chu Ying's strength is not much different from yours or mine."

After the aide finished speaking, the leader of the Bamboo Union added.

Upon hearing their conversation, the leader of the Red Scorpion Gang knew that they were not planning to take the initiative, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

As the leader of the Bamboo Union said, their strength was not much different from Chu Ying's. Now that Chu Ying had been killed by this intruder, if the intruder really turned around and attacked one of them, they would probably suffer the same fate as Chu Ying.

However, he always harbored a glimmer of hope, thinking that the other party might have left after their battle with Chu Ying and wouldn't cause them any trouble. Therefore, he was unwilling to provoke the other party.

However, although the three gangs in Jingu County are opposed to each other, they will always unite against any external forces that cause conflict. If the Bamboo Union and the county government intend to target that outsider, in order to survive in the county, the leader of the Red Scorpion Gang, no matter how unwilling, will have no choice but to join forces.

Therefore, in order to test their reactions, he had to feign anxiety and even be the first to ask. Fortunately, their answers were exactly what he had in mind.

Having spent so many years navigating the underworld, he had long since come to understand one thing.

Not everyone in the martial arts world is one of the Five Greats, able to roam freely based solely on personal strength. Someone like him, a third-rate martial artist, who wants to be surrounded by followers and enjoy wealth and status, has to use his wits.

All you can do is fight, not use your brain; you'll always be a nobody!

After agreeing on a strategy, the three continued to speculate about the identity of this outsider. Jingu County was a small county; otherwise, a martial artist of Chu Ying's strength wouldn't have been able to carve it up. The three guessed that the person who had killed Chu Ying and a group of Black Stone Gang members was clearly quite powerful. Even in the martial arts world, with caution, one could make a name for oneself; therefore, it was highly unlikely that this person would remain in the county.

Having made a rough guess, the three of them felt reassured, and gradually their panic subsided.

After a detailed discussion lasting half an hour, the group dispersed. Although they had decided to observe the situation, they remained fully prepared with all necessary precautions.

The Red Scorpion Gang and the Bamboo Union immediately summoned all their core members to their gang headquarters, while having other peripheral members stay around the headquarters for defense.

This arrangement, however, immediately put the entire Jingu County in a state of panic. But with these two gang members no longer roaming the area, the people of the county were much more at ease.

Yang Pan paid little attention to the changes in the city, as he was currently studying the martial arts techniques he had looted from the Black Stone Gang's base in an empty room at the inn.

At that time, Yang Pan had collected two martial arts manuals. One was a palm technique called "Piercing Clouds and Splitting Stones Palm." After examining it carefully, Yang Pan discovered that it was also a rather exquisite hard palm technique.

Even the training method has many similarities with Iron Shirt. During training, one needs to strike hard objects with their bare palms and then apply medicine to repair them. When the palm technique is mastered, the palms will turn bluish-black when the energy is channeled, and the palms will be as hard as iron and stone, easily breaking iron and shattering stones.

What's even more remarkable is that this palm technique, in addition to its power and ferocity, also possesses speed.

Yang Pan recalled his fight with Chu Ying last night. Chu Ying's first palm strike was fierce, but his second palm strike was sharp and swift, like that of a hawk, a stark contrast to its previous heaviness.

With such a perfect blend of strength and gentleness, he must have a profound understanding of this palm technique, or at least achieved some success. It's just that his opponent met him.

Yang Pan's Iron Shirt technique already gave him a strong physical defense, and his internal energy was even more profound than his opponent's. Chu Ying lost the initiative when he went head-to-head with him, and it was inevitable that he would be easily captured and killed by Yang Pan later.

Yang Pan didn't feel sorry for the other party. The winner lives and the loser dies; such is the cruelty of battles in the martial world.

Putting away his palm technique, Yang Pan turned to the second manual. If the Cloud-Piercing Rock-Splitting Palm made Yang Pan happy that he finally had a decent palm technique to make up for his shortcomings in hand skills, then this second manual, titled "Hard Qigong," truly surprised him.

Since mastering the Iron Shirt technique, his physical defense and strength have already surpassed those of third-rate martial artists who have just begun to condense their internal energy. Not to mention that after condensing his internal energy, the internal energy circulates through his heart meridian, stimulating his blood and qi to further nourish his body, enhancing his physical defense and strength, making him significantly stronger than martial artists who have opened up the same number of meridians.

However, it is an undeniable fact that Iron Shirt has reached its limit. It is conceivable that if he does not cultivate more advanced external martial arts, this physical advantage will eventually be made up for and surpassed by other martial artists.

However, the external martial arts techniques he knows in the martial arts world are all core inheritances of major sects, and are not something Yang Pan can touch at present.

He even planned to cultivate his internal strength in seclusion while there were no suitable external martial arts techniques available, so as to quickly make himself a top-tier figure in the martial arts world and at least establish a foothold in this world for the next few decades.

Unexpectedly, he acquired a new external martial art in Jingu County.

Suppressing his turbulent emotions, Yang Pan unfolded the cultivation technique to examine it.

Aside from the Taoist and Buddhist schools, the martial arts manuals in the Jianghu, while still somewhat convoluted and difficult to understand, lacked the terminology of the Taoist and Buddhist schools, making them less obscure and difficult to read. Therefore, Yang Pan did not find it difficult to read this hard qigong manual.

During this time, Yang Pan even discovered that there were many annotations on the eyebrows, the title page, and the frontispiece of the technique, which were obviously marked by predecessors who had practiced this technique. This allowed Yang Pan to understand the cultivation method of this technique more quickly.

After reading the entire text, Yang Pan realized that this method of hard qigong training was completely different from the Iron Shirt training method.

In Yang Pan's view, any external martial arts technique always involves tempering the physical body. Even more advanced techniques like the Golden Bell Cover and Dragon Elephant Prajna Skill can at most cultivate internal strength, like the third level of the Iron Shirt technique, to stimulate blood and qi and nourish the physical body.

Regardless of the circumstances, the physical body always grows stronger step by step during the cultivation process, and this strengthening is permanent. Even if one day all the internal energy in the dantian is gone, this kind of martial artist who practices physical training can still exert great strength.

However, this hard qigong goes against the grain. During the cultivation process, it does not require any external objects to assist in the fight, nor does it require qi and blood to nourish the body. The only thing needed is internal strength.

In Yang Pan's view, this technique was less of a physical training method and more of a method for guiding the flow of Qi.

In the martial arts world, no matter how martial artists cultivate, they initially rely on external skills like fists, feet, swords, and sabers to hone their muscles and bones. Only after their bodies are strong enough do they begin to refine their essence into internal energy. This is what is known as external training of muscles, bones, and skin, and internal training of breath.

Yang Pan believed that this hard qigong was a method of guiding qi circulation because martial artists who practiced this method only needed to circulate their internal energy, passing it through their meridians and filling the spaces between their flesh and skin.

This is equivalent to putting a layer of internal energy veil over the fragile flesh and blood body, or more precisely, filling the hollow and fragile parts between the flesh and bones with internal energy, thereby making the entire body hard.

To put it more vividly, it's like a cup filled with soybeans. Although it appears to be completely filled from the outside, there are actually many gaps that are not visible to the naked eye. These gaps mean that the cup itself is not firmly packed; you can easily flatten or roll it into a ball with just a gentle squeeze.

If you then add even finer grains of sand to the cup, these grains will slip into the gaps and fill them in.

Now that the cup is filled with sand, the entire cup will be filled and bulged, becoming incredibly hard. At this point, not only can you not flatten it, but you can't even scratch it with a knife for a short time. This hard qigong is based on the principle of filling with sand.

Those who practice this method only need to circulate their internal energy to fill the space beneath their flesh and skin, causing the flesh to become full, swollen, and hard. In fact, the more internal energy is filled, the harder the body will become, until it reaches the upper limit of the internal energy or the body's capacity.

Yes, this hard qigong has its limits in terms of training. If we compare a martial artist's physical body to a cup, then internal energy is the grains of sand that fill it.

A martial artist's physical body has its own upper limit of strength. If too much internal energy is added, it will eventually burst the flesh itself. At the same time, a martial artist's internal energy will be rapidly consumed during the process of filling the body. When the internal energy is exhausted, the strength of the body will naturally drop back to its original state.

Such techniques are utterly useless to those masters with abundant internal energy, who can even defend themselves directly with their internal energy. At the same time, for lower-level martial artists, whose internal energy is weak and insufficient to replenish their strength, their physical defense will not be improved much.

Such a technique is practically useless to martial artists. No wonder Chu Ying obtained this technique but did not cultivate it. Given the opponent's internal strength, Yang Pan estimated that even if the opponent used the technique to replenish his flesh and blood, he could not withstand more than a few of his punches.

However, as the saying goes, every sip and every bite has its own destiny. This technique might be useless to others, but it might not be truly useless to Yang Pan.

The world is a dangerous place. If he were to encounter a master with his current strength and be unable to dodge their attack, then using this hard qigong technique might just save his life.

Moreover, he originally planned to cultivate both internal energy and physical body. In the future, after he cultivates the Nine Yang True Scripture and more advanced body-refining techniques, his internal energy will be as vast as the sea and endless, and his physical body's blood and qi will be as powerful as a dragon and an elephant. How could he be afraid that he would not be able to support the operation of this technique?

If all else fails, Yang Pan can simply go to the Duan family in Dali and search around to see if he can find the Northern Darkness Divine Art.

At that time, they will absorb the opponent's internal energy while fighting, and will not be afraid of internal energy consumption.