The stone-carrying duty was brutal. Eight hours moving granite blocks from the mountain quarry to the outer wall construction site. Each block weighed more than Wen Dao himself.
He used it.
Every block was training. He didn't just carry — he focused the lift through his legs, through his spine, through his arms, as the Iron Body Scripture described for the Level Three gate: deep body loading.
By the end of the day his entire body felt like it had been put through a forge. But something had shifted in his bones. A faint density that hadn't been there before.
He was approaching Level Three.
Li Meng found him at the water barrel after the duty.
'How are you not dead?' Li Meng said. He had carried stones for two hours helping a friend and looked ready to collapse.
'The work is the training,' Wen Dao said.
'That's something a torturer would say.'
Cai Rong appeared. He was grinning for the first time since the trial. 'I heard you told Pei Tao he was afraid in front of his whole group. Half the outer disciples heard it. Pei Tao is furious.'
'He'll be more careful next time,' Wen Dao said.
'Or more dangerous,' Li Meng said quietly.
Wen Dao looked at him. The ink-stained boy was right. Anger and wounded pride were unpredictable. Something to watch.
Two weeks passed. Wen Dao trained every available hour — body tempering in the mornings, Iron Question Fist forms in the afternoons, reading in the evenings.
He visited Mei and Kun once. They were working in the sect's kitchen — Mei handling food prep, Kun carrying water. Both looked cleaner and better-fed than he had ever seen them.
'You look terrible,' Mei told him.
'I feel excellent,' he said.
She gave him extra food. He accepted it without argument.
On the eighteenth day, his Body Tempering broke through to Level Three.
He had expected it to feel dramatic. It didn't. He was doing wall strikes at midnight when a deep warmth moved from his bone surface into the tissues around his organs. His organs, his blood — they began to harden. Reinforce. Like iron lining his insides.
He sat down on the floor and breathed through it. It hurt, but it was a productive hurt.
Inner Body stage begun.
The next morning, Master Ren tested all outer disciples in a basic combat drill. Wen Dao was paired with a Grey Peak disciple — not Pei Tao, a different one. The disciple was at Level Three also.
The drill was straightforward. Exchange ten strikes and defend. No full-force hitting.
The Grey Peak disciple came in hard on the first strike. Not a drill hit — a real one.
Wen Dao took it on his forearm. It stung. He moved with it instead of blocking it dead, redirected the force sideways, and tapped the boy's sternum twice with his knuckles in the opening.
The boy blinked. Both taps had landed clean.
They exchanged nine more strikes. Wen Dao let three land — took them on the reinforced forearms — and landed seven of his own. Every one landed on a different spot. Knee. Hip. Shoulder. Elbow. Deliberately varied. Each hit a question the body hadn't answered yet.
The Iron Question Fist in early form.
Master Ren watched without expression.
After the drill, he stopped Wen Dao.
'Where did you learn the Question Fist?'
'The public library, sir.'
'That scroll has been in the public library for forty years. No outer disciple has ever used it.' Master Ren's eyes were unreadable. 'It was moved to the public library because the sect considers it a failed technique. Too complicated. Too dependent on reading the opponent.'
'Failed by whom?' Wen Dao asked.
'By every outer disciple who tried it. They couldn't read opponents fast enough.'
Wen Dao thought about that. 'Perhaps the problem was not the technique.'
Master Ren looked at him for a long moment.
'Come to the private training hall this evening. We'll see.'
Wen Dao nodded.
Behind him, Fang Lie had been watching the entire exchange from across the training ground. His flat eyes were not flat anymore.
Something moved in them. Something calculating.