The first thing Long Shen learned was this—
They were not training him.
They were forging him.
He did not understand what that meant until the Divine Doctor seized him by the arm and pulled him out of the cave before the morning mist had even lifted from the valley.
Cold stone bit into his bare feet.
The air was sharp, heavy with the scent of wet earth and something else—something bitter that scraped at the back of his throat with every breath.
They stopped before a stone basin carved directly into the mountainside.
It was old.
So old that moss had tried and failed to claim its edges, burned away by faint lines of light that traced slow, pulsing patterns along the rim. Those lines were not carved—they were embedded, like veins beneath skin. Each pulse was steady. Patient. Alive.
Long Shen felt it before he understood it.
A pressure.
Not heavy.
Not crushing.
Just… there.
Waiting.
Beside the basin, the Divine Doctor knelt and began setting down bowls one by one.
The first held crushed black roots, still wet with sap that smelled like rusted iron.
The second was filled with a thick, dark liquid that moved too slowly when the bowl tilted, clinging to the sides like congealed blood.
The third contained dried leaves ground so fine they looked like ash.
As each was placed down, the smell in the air deepened—bitter, metallic, sharp enough to make Long Shen's stomach tighten.
The Thief King leaned against a nearby rock, arms crossed, watching with open interest.
Long Shen's gaze kept drifting back to the basin.
The stone inside it was stained.
Not with dirt.
With something darker.
Older.
"Take off your clothes," the Divine Doctor said, not looking up.
Long Shen hesitated.
Not out of modesty.
Out of instinct.
Every part of him was telling him that whatever waited in that basin was not meant for comfort.
The Divine Doctor finally looked up.
His eyes were calm.
Too calm.
"If you are afraid," he said evenly, "you should be. That means your body still remembers how to survive."
That did not make Long Shen feel better.
He stripped.
The mountain air raised goosebumps along his skin. Old scars—some faded, some still faintly visible—caught the pale morning light.
The Divine Doctor poured the contents of the bowls into the basin.
The liquid inside was clear at first.
Then it darkened.
Red bled into black.
Black thickened into something that looked almost alive, slow currents swirling across the stone bottom as if the basin itself were breathing.
Steam did not rise.
But the air around it warped, just slightly, as if heat and cold were fighting in the same space.
Long Shen took a step back.
The Divine Doctor caught his wrist.
Not roughly.
Firmly.
"Step in," he said.
"…What will it do?" Long Shen asked.
The Divine Doctor did not answer immediately.
He looked at the basin.
Then at Long Shen.
"It will find everything in your body that is weak," he said. "And it will not be gentle about it."
The Thief King's lips curled.
"On the bright side," he added, "you'll know you're still alive."
Long Shen swallowed.
Then he stepped forward.
His foot touched the surface.
For half a heartbeat—
Nothing happened.
Then the world exploded.
It felt as if his skin had been peeled away and replaced with fire.
Not heat.
Not flame.
Something sharper.
Something that bit.
The liquid crawled up his leg, and everywhere it touched, pain followed—immediate, intimate, invasive. It wasn't on his skin.
It was in it.
In his muscles.
In his bones.
His knee buckled.
He would have fallen if the Divine Doctor hadn't been holding him.
"Sit," the Divine Doctor said.
Long Shen tried to breathe.
The air tore at his lungs like broken glass.
He lowered himself inch by inch, teeth clenched so hard his jaw trembled.
When the liquid reached his waist, his vision went white.
When it reached his chest, he couldn't tell if the sound he made was a scream or a breath.
His heart hammered like it was trying to escape his ribs.
"Do not thrash," the Divine Doctor said calmly. "You will waste the medicine."
Long Shen's hands clawed at the stone rim.
The surface was cold.
The liquid was not.
Or maybe it was both.
He couldn't tell anymore.
"Circulate your qi," the Divine Doctor continued. "Slowly."
Long Shen tried.
The moment his qi moved, the pain sharpened—as if something inside him had noticed and decided to dig deeper.
His back arched.
His vision blurred.
"Slowly," the Divine Doctor repeated.
So Long Shen did the only thing he could.
He endured.
The Divine Doctor paused.
For a brief moment, the mountain wind slipped between them, carrying the sharp scent of crushed herbs and wet stone.
Then he said, "It will also feel like your body is being dissolved and rebuilt at the same time."
Long Shen did not understand the words.
Not really.
But something in the way the Divine Doctor said them—flat, precise, without even a trace of exaggeration—made his fingers curl slightly at his sides.
Nearby, the Thief King lounged against a crooked pine, arms folded, one foot propped against the trunk. He was smiling, but his eyes were sharp, watchful, as if he were already measuring how long Long Shen would last.
"Try not to die on the first day," he said lightly. "It'd be awkward to explain."
The Divine Doctor did not react.
He picked up the first bowl and tipped it into the stone basin.
The clear liquid inside darkened at once, red spreading through it in slow, branching veins.
Then the second bowl.
The surface thickened, the color deepening into something ugly and opaque, like old blood stirred back into motion.
Then the third.
The smell hit a heartbeat later—bitter, metallic, sharp enough to sting the back of Long Shen's nose and make his stomach twist.
The basin seemed to drink the mixture in, faint runes along its rim pulsing once, slowly, like something waking up.
"Get in," the Divine Doctor said.
There was no urgency in his voice.
No warning.
Just fact.
Long Shen hesitated for less than a breath.
Then he stepped forward.
The moment his foot broke the surface, the world lurched.
Pain did not spread.
It arrived.
Complete.
Total.
It was not heat.
Not cold.
It was as if something alive had latched onto his skin—countless tiny, invisible mouths biting, tearing, chewing their way inward. The sensation did not stay on the surface. It sank. It drilled. It scraped against muscle and sank even deeper, toward bone.
His leg gave out.
A broken sound tore from his throat.
He would have fallen if strong fingers had not caught his arm.
"Sit," the Divine Doctor said, as calmly as if he were asking him to take a seat at a table.
Long Shen's vision had already gone white around the edges.
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth creaked.
He lowered himself inch by inch, every movement dragging fresh waves of agony through his body. The liquid climbed higher, and everywhere it touched, the pain followed—intimate, invasive, merciless.
By the time it reached his waist, his breathing had turned ragged.
By the time it reached his chest, he couldn't tell if he was inhaling or just choking.
His hands slammed onto the stone rim, fingers digging in as if he could anchor himself to something solid, something that wasn't trying to tear him apart from the inside.
"Do not thrash," the Divine Doctor said. "You will waste the medicine."
Long Shen tried to answer.
All that came out was a hoarse, broken sound.
"Circulate your qi," the Divine Doctor continued. "Slowly."
Long Shen forced his mind inward.
The moment his qi stirred, the pain sharpened—like a blade finding a nerve it hadn't touched before. His back arched despite himself. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth where he'd bitten through his lip.
"Slowly," the Divine Doctor repeated.
Long Shen's vision swam.
"…Begin what…?" he managed to force out between clenched teeth.
The Divine Doctor watched him for a long moment.
Then he said, "Enduring."
He adjusted one of the bowls, eyes never leaving Long Shen.
"And after that—building something inside you that won't collapse the first time the world pushes back."
The Thief King's voice drifted over from the side, almost amused.
"Congratulations, kid. That's cultivation."
The basin pulsed faintly.
The liquid seemed to tighten around Long Shen's body.
And the pain did not lessen.
Not even a little.
The moment Long Shen forced his qi to move, the world narrowed.
The liquid seemed to tighten around him, as if it had been waiting for that exact instant. Pain surged—not outward, not in waves, but inward, collapsing toward a single point deep in his chest and then exploding through every vein at once.
His breath hitched.
A raw, broken sound tore out of his throat before he could stop it.
His vision shattered into light and shadow, the edges of the world dissolving into a pale blur. For a heartbeat, he thought he might actually black out.
"Hold it," the Divine Doctor said.
The voice was not loud.
It did not need to be.
It cut cleanly through the noise in Long Shen's head.
"Do not let it scatter."
Long Shen clung to the words like a rope.
His teeth were already clenched hard enough that his jaw ached. Sweat ran down his face and dripped into the dark liquid, vanishing the instant it touched the surface.
"Listen," the Divine Doctor continued, as if Long Shen were not sitting in something that felt like it was eating him alive. "The path you have stepped onto is not a single road. It is a climb."
He moved slightly, and Long Shen felt a faint pressure against his back—two fingers pressing between his shoulder blades, steadying him when his body threatened to curl in on itself.
"First, you temper what is already there," the Divine Doctor said. "Flesh. Bone. The foundation that holds everything else up."
Another pulse of pain tore through Long Shen as his qi stuttered.
He dragged it back under control by sheer will.
"After that," the voice went on, unhurried, "you gather what is outside and make it stay inside. And only when something stable exists do you begin shaping it into something real."
Long Shen did not hear the names.
Not clearly.
What he heard was the implication: step after step, each one higher, each one easier to fall from.
Somewhere to his left, the Thief King snorted.
"In simpler terms," he said, "most people don't make it past the part where it hurts."
Long Shen's vision swam again. The stone rim under his fingers felt very far away, as if his hands were no longer quite connected to the rest of him.
He forced his focus back inward.
His qi was thin.
Uncooperative.
Like trying to guide smoke through a cracked bottle.
"Those with talent," the Divine Doctor continued, "rush."
Long Shen felt a faint shift in pressure as the man's gaze settled on him.
"They climb quickly. They stack strength on top of strength before the lower layers have finished settling."
The pain spiked again, sharp enough to make his shoulders jerk.
"And when weight is placed on something unfinished," the Divine Doctor said quietly, "it breaks."
Long Shen's breathing turned ragged.
"…My dantian…" he tried to say.
The words barely made it out.
There was a pause.
Then the Divine Doctor said, "Is not suited for rushing."
He did not say weak.
He did not need to.
Long Shen felt it in every stubborn, leaking thread of qi he tried to control.
"So we will not rush," the Divine Doctor went on. "We will not stack. We will not gamble on speed."
He placed a hand briefly against Long Shen's back, steady and warm, anchoring him when another wave of agony threatened to fold him forward.
"We will build slowly," he said. "Layer by layer. Until what you carry can no longer be shaken apart by pressure alone."
The Thief King's voice came again, quieter this time.
"Means you won't look impressive for a long while," he said. "But you'll still be standing when the impressive ones start falling."
Long Shen swallowed, his throat burning.
The liquid continued to chew at him.
The pain did not fade.
But beneath it, beneath the chaos in his nerves, something else was happening—something tight, something stubborn, something refusing to collapse.
And for the first time, he understood.
This wasn't about getting strong fast.
It was about not breaking.
That rhythm settled in quickly.
Morning.
Stone.
Silence.
And the Divine Doctor's hands.
Long Shen lay on the cold slab with his shirt discarded and his teeth already clenched in preparation. The cave was quiet except for the faint drip of water somewhere in the dark and the soft, precise sounds of metal touching stone.
The Divine Doctor stood beside him, sleeves rolled back, expression unchanged. A row of needles lay arranged on a cloth—thin, bright, and far too many.
"Do not tense," he said.
Long Shen tried.
The first needle went in at the base of his neck.
It did not feel like a prick.
It felt like pressure being forced into a place that did not want to open.
Then another slid in along his spine.
Then another through his shoulder.
Then one near his abdomen.
Each insertion was exact. Measured. Unhurried.
And each one carried its own, distinct flavor of pain—some sharp and biting, some deep and heavy, some spreading outward in slow, nauseating waves.
By the time the array was complete, his back was already slick with sweat.
"Begin circulating," the Divine Doctor said.
Long Shen obeyed.
The moment his qi moved, the needles answered.
It felt as if thin threads had been hooked into his meridians and were being pulled tight from the inside. Heat flared along his spine. Pressure crushed down on his chest. Something inside him burned, then burned deeper.
A sound tore out of his throat before he could stop it.
The Divine Doctor did not look up.
"Again," he said.
Long Shen forced the qi through another cycle.
His vision blurred.
His fingers dug into the edge of the stone slab until his knuckles went white.
The pain did not stay the same.
It changed.
Sometimes it felt like his meridians were being stretched wider than they could bear. Sometimes it felt like they were being scraped raw from the inside. Sometimes it felt like something was hammering at the inside of his bones, testing how much they could take before giving way.
He screamed once.
Then again.
Later, he learned to bite it back.
Not because it hurt less—
But because he needed the air.
Time lost meaning.
There was only the Divine Doctor's voice.
"Hold it."
"Do not let it scatter."
"Again."
By the time the last cycle ended, Long Shen was barely aware of where he was. His clothes clung to him, soaked through. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Every nerve felt like it had been rubbed raw.
The Divine Doctor finally reached out and adjusted one of the needles—just a fraction.
The world tilted.
A sharp, blinding spike of pain shot through Long Shen's abdomen and up his spine. His body arched despite himself, a broken gasp tearing from his throat.
He lay there afterward, shaking, staring at nothing.
"…Why…" he rasped, his voice barely more than air. "Why does it… hurt more every time?"
The Divine Doctor paused.
He studied Long Shen's pulse for a moment, fingers light and steady.
"Because before, your body was giving way," he said. "Now it is pushing back."
He made another small adjustment, careful, precise.
"When something collapses, it feels dull," he continued. "When something resists, it tears. That means it is changing."
Long Shen swallowed, his throat dry and burning.
The Divine Doctor began removing the needles one by one.
"And remember this," he said, as if speaking about something simple and ordinary. "Cultivation is not about how fast you climb."
The last needle came out.
Long Shen lay there, breathing hard, every part of him aching, but still—still—holding together.
"It is about whether the thing you are climbing on can bear your weight," the Divine Doctor finished. "If it cannot…"
He did not complete the sentence.
He did not need to.
Long Shen already knew what falling felt like.
And this—
This was what it meant to build something that wouldn't.
Afternoons belonged to the Thief King.
The forest at the edge of Demonic Beasts Valley did not welcome visitors. The light thinned beneath tangled branches, and the air smelled of damp leaves and old, rotting wood. Every step sank into something soft or slid across something sharp. Nothing here felt stable.
Long Shen had learned that stability was a lie.
"Move."
The word came without warning.
A stone whistled past his ear and shattered against a tree behind him, spraying bark across his cheek. Long Shen flinched and twisted aside on instinct, heart hammering as he searched for the Thief King's position.
He didn't find it.
Another stone came.
Then another.
He ran.
Roots clawed at his feet. Low branches tore at his sleeves. The ground dipped suddenly, and he barely caught himself before tumbling headfirst into a shallow pit camouflaged with leaves.
Laughter drifted from somewhere to his left.
"Murim isn't a place of fair fights," the Thief King's voice called out, relaxed and faintly amused. "It's a place of sects, grudges, and idiots who think reputation will save them."
Long Shen didn't stop moving.
He couldn't.
Something sharp snapped past his shoulder and buried itself in a tree trunk with a dull thud. He ducked, rolled, came up in a crouch—and felt the air shift.
He threw himself sideways just as something swept through the space where his head had been.
The Thief King stepped out from behind a tree, hand already lifting again.
He pointed deeper into the woods.
"There are three kinds of forces out there," he said. "Orthodox. Unorthodox. Demonic."
Another stone left his fingers.
Long Shen barely got his arm up in time. The impact rattled his bones and sent him stumbling back two steps.
"Orthodox sects," the Thief King went on, strolling forward as if they were on a casual walk, "love rules, titles, and 'righteousness.' Shaolin. Wudang. Big names."
He flicked his wrist.
Something struck Long Shen's leg from the side.
Pain flared.
His balance vanished.
He hit the ground hard, breath bursting from his lungs.
"They look clean," the Thief King continued, not even breathing hard. "Some of them even are."
Long Shen rolled just as a thin wire snapped tight where his neck had been a heartbeat earlier. The wire hummed, angry and sharp, before sinking back into the undergrowth.
"But never forget," the Thief King said, "most of them care more about face than truth."
Long Shen pushed himself up, mud on his hands, blood on his sleeve.
The Thief King's foot hooked behind his ankle and kicked.
Long Shen went down again.
"Unorthodox?" the Thief King said, as Long Shen scrambled away on instinct. "They care about profit and survival. No pretty banners. No holy speeches."
He tossed something small and dark.
It struck the ground and burst—smoke and grit exploding up into Long Shen's face.
"They won't pretend to be saints," the voice continued calmly through the haze. "They'll just stab you and take your things."
Long Shen coughed, eyes burning, and staggered blindly—
Only to feel the ground give way beneath him.
He threw himself forward just in time, skidding across leaves as a concealed snare snapped shut behind his legs with a dry crack.
His heart was trying to tear its way out of his chest.
Then the air changed.
The forest seemed to go quieter.
The Thief King stepped closer, his footsteps no longer playful.
"And the Blood Demonic Sect?" he said.
His voice was colder now.
Not amused.
Not casual.
"They cultivate with blood. With souls. With things that should stay buried."
Long Shen felt a chill crawl up his spine that had nothing to do with the shade.
"Fast growth," the Thief King went on. "Ugly results."
He stopped a few steps away.
"If you see their mark," he said, "run."
He smiled—but there was no humor in it.
"And if you can't…"
His gaze sharpened.
"…hope they're in a good mood."
The forest seemed to press in around them.
Long Shen swallowed, forced his shaking hands into fists, and pushed himself back to his feet.
The Thief King's smile returned, faint and dangerous.
"Good," he said. "You're still standing."
Another stone appeared in his hand.
"Now move."
Time stopped being counted in days.
It became something measured in how many times Long Shen collapsed before standing again.
In how many bowls of bitter medicine he swallowed before the taste stopped making him flinch.
In how many times he woke with his muscles locked in pain and still dragged himself back onto cold stone or into shadowed trees.
The forest changed before he noticed it.
At first, the leaves had been bright and heavy with life, the air thick and wet against his skin. Later, they thinned, yellowed, drifted down in slow spirals that crunched underfoot and gave away careless steps. The wind grew sharper. The mornings colder.
His body changed with it.
In the beginning, his hands had trembled after every session with the Divine Doctor. Sometimes they shook so badly he couldn't even lift the water bowl without spilling it. Now, even when his muscles screamed and his bones felt packed with lead, they stayed steady.
He still hurt.
He just didn't fall apart.
The medicinal baths no longer stole his consciousness.
They still burned.
They still chewed their way through him, finding weaknesses he hadn't known were there.
But he could sit through them now, jaw clenched, breath controlled, qi moving in slow, stubborn cycles that refused to scatter no matter how much his nerves begged him to stop.
The needle arrays grew more complex.
More precise.
Sometimes, when the Divine Doctor adjusted a single needle by the width of a hair, pain would spear through Long Shen's body so sharply that his vision went white.
And sometimes—
Nothing broke.
No tearing.
No collapse.
Just pressure.
Dense.
Relentless.
Endurable.
In the forest, the ground stopped surprising him.
He began to notice the places where leaves lay too evenly.
Where branches bent at the wrong angle.
Where the air felt just a little too empty.
He still triggered traps.
But not as many.
He still got hit.
But less cleanly.
Once, a wire snapped shut where his throat had been a breath earlier, and he realized he hadn't dodged it because he'd thought to—
He'd moved before the thought existed.
The Thief King noticed.
He didn't praise him.
He just threw things faster.
Sometimes, between bruises and breathless pauses, lessons slipped in.
Not like lectures.
Like warnings.
Like scars with names.
A sect that ruled a mountain range because they'd betrayed three allies at the right time.
Another that preached righteousness and sold information to enemies in secret.
Stories of demonic cultivators who grew strong in months—and died screaming when their own power ate them from the inside.
Long Shen stopped thinking of "righteous" as safe.
He stopped thinking of "demonic" as simple.
He started thinking in terms of distance, cover, escape routes—and whether pride was worth bleeding for.
Autumn came.
The air turned crisp.
The forest floor became a map of dry leaves and hidden noise.
One morning, after a needle session that should have left him shaking, Long Shen realized his hands were still.
Not calm.
But controlled.
By winter, his breath no longer hitched every time he circulated his qi.
The familiar tearing sensation had faded into something else—pressure, resistance, weight.
Like pushing water through a narrow channel that was slowly, stubbornly widening.
His dantian was still the same.
Slow.
Stubborn.
Uncooperative.
Qi did not rush into it.
It had to be forced.
Guided.
Held in place through sheer will.
But when it stayed—
It did not feel thin anymore.
It did not feel like mist ready to scatter at the first disturbance.
It felt heavy.
Packed.
Real.
Like something that would not vanish just because the world hit him hard enough.
One night, sitting alone near the cave entrance, Long Shen opened his eyes and realized something else.
He was still exhausted.
Still sore.
Still far from strong.
But his body no longer felt like it was waiting to break.
It felt like it was waiting to be tested.
And that—
More than any lesson, any explanation, any warning—
Told him he was no longer the same person who had first stepped into that basin of red-black medicine.
breath.
He remembered fragments—slipping on wet leaves, the taste of iron in his mouth, the way the creature's roar seemed to shake his ribs from the inside. He remembered driving forward when every part of him screamed to run.
He remembered being thrown against a tree hard enough to see white.
And then—
Silence.
The beast lay still.
Long Shen did not.
He stood there, swaying, one arm hanging uselessly, blood soaking into the dirt at his feet. His breathing was ragged, uneven, but it did not stop.
When he finally staggered back to the cave, night had already fallen.
The Divine Doctor looked at him once.
Just once.
Then he nodded.
The Thief King laughed softly, eyes sharp as they traced the cuts and bruises and the way Long Shen was still, somehow, upright.
"A year in hell," he said. "And you're still here."
Long Shen said nothing.
Inside him, something vast and silent remained coiled.
Not loud.
Not eager.
But unbroken.
Unyielding.
The pain still existed.
The weakness still existed.
But beneath them, deeper than both—
The real path had finally begun.
To be continued...