Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Time in the specialized spatial dimension felt thick and distorted. There was no sun to track the passing hours and no changing scenery to mark the distance traveled. There was only the endless expanse of smooth grey stone and the relentless crushing weight pressing down on their shoulders.

As the hours dragged on, the steady trickle of dropouts turned into a continuous wave. The flashes of white teleportation light illuminated the grey expanse every few minutes. Cultivators who had spent years building their pride and their foundations were broken down to their basest limits. Their breathing turned ragged, their legs trembled and buckled. One by one their knees hit the stone and the array mercifully whisked them away.

Lei Gang had made it clear at the very beginning that there were no winners or losers in this specific drill. It was a test of the self. The weight was tailored to each individual so a weaker cultivator might endure the exact same relative agony as a stronger one. The goal was simply to go for as long as you could to train your physical vessel and improve yourself.

That objective truth did not stop the recruits from comparing themselves to one another though.

The competitive nature of the cultivation world was too deeply ingrained in their bones. Those who left early felt a bitter sting of dejection. They reappeared in the camp plaza outside and hung their heads in shame while watching the spatial portal continue to hum.

Conversely, those still running in the grey dimension felt a rising tide of satisfaction. Every time a white flash signaled another dropout, the survivors felt a validation of their own hard work. They were outlasting their peers and proving their Dao.

Chen Kaito was among the final fifty. The hardworking standard vassal recruit had pushed himself far beyond what he thought was his limit. His muscles were screaming and his vision was blurring at the edges. He watched the backs of the elite talents ahead of him and he wanted to show them what sheer determination could achieve against natural talent. But eventually reality set in and his physical vessel simply gave out. His stride faltered and his right knee crashed against the grey stone.

The white light enveloped him instantly but Chen Kaito did not feel shame as the dimension faded away. He felt a deep sense of accomplishment. He had outlasted hundreds of arrogant others and proved that his foundation was solid even if he was considered ‘average’ among them.

The numbers continued to dwindle. Fifty became thirty. Thirty became twenty.

Li Yu did exactly as he was instructed and kept running without paying much attention to others. He didn’t really know anyone so he wasn’t cheering for anyone or wishing others to get eliminated. He maintained a steady and rhythmic pace in the middle of the dwindling pack.

His dark robes were completely saturated with sweat and his chest heaved with every breath at this point. The tailored weight pressing down on him was astronomical now but his body was uniquely equipped to handle the punishment.

As the group shrank to the final ten, Li Yu allowed himself to reflect on the source of his endurance.

His physical body was naturally powerful from his journey but it possessed a hidden layer of strength that he recently acquired with his run in with Elder Mu. That essence had boosted his baseline durability and regenerative ability. It had woven itself into his muscle and fortified his skeleton further. This run was the first time he was truly testing the absolute limits of that tempered body in a controlled environment.

The final ten runners included Zhan Mingyu at the very front, followed closely by Zhu Dawa. Vennia was pushing herself relentlessly a few paces behind them. Li Yu ran steadily alongside the other remaining recruits.

A deep and reverberating hum echoed through the grey dimension.

Outside the portal, Lei Gang stood on the raised stone platform and watched the projection of the final ten. The chief instructor raised his massive hand and formed a single hand seal as he shifted the array into its final phase.

Inside the dimension, the ambient grey light suddenly shifted to a heavy oppressive iron color.

The recruits felt the change instantly. The array did not just increase the weight this time, it clamped down on the surrounding atmosphere and forcefully locked down their ability to use Qi altogether.

The spiritual energy flowing through their meridians was sealed tight and the breathing techniques they were using to sustain their stamina were rendered completely useless. They were forced to rely solely and exclusively on the raw strength of their physical bodies.

The transition was violent and without Qi to reinforce their bodies, the crushing weight became an unbearable reality. Five people instantly failed with this sudden switch.

The sudden loss of internal support caused five of the remaining ten recruits to collapse on the spot. Their legs buckled under the immense strain and their bodies hit the stone floor with heavy thuds. The white teleportation light flashed in rapid succession taking half of the remaining runners away in the blink of an eye.

Vennia stumbled hard, she had relied heavily on her specialized technique to stave off the exhaustion. Without it, the true agony of her muscles flared up in her mind. She let out a sharp gasp and forced her trembling legs to keep moving through sheer spite and willpower. She refused to drop out before the noble that she despised did first.

Zhu Dawa grunted loudly as the Qi lock took effect. The heavyweight brawler felt the increased burden but her natural bulk and terrifying physical strength allowed her to sustain her momentum. She simply leaned forward and used her massive frame to push forward.

Zhan Mingyu did not miss a single step. The muscular talent of the main clan proved exactly why his bloodline was revered. He had tempered his physical vessel in the extreme environments of the main clan. Losing his Qi was a severe handicap but his bones were forged from iron and his will was unbreakable. He maintained his position at the very front of the pack.

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Li Yu found himself within the top five.

The sudden loss of Qi was a shock to his system but it did not break his stride. In fact, once the initial jarring transition passed, Li Yu found the experience strangely clarifying. He no longer had to focus on managing his internal energy reserves or circulating techniques. There were no complex variables left to calculate. It was just meat, bone, gravity and the simple mechanics of placing one foot in front of the other.

His body responded to the pure physical challenge. His muscles contracted and released with mechanical precision. He stopped holding back to pace himself with the pack and simply fell into the natural rhythm his body demanded.

Even though it was not a competition, Li Yu slowly began to make his way toward the front.

He passed Vennia who glared at him with a mixture of exhaustion and disbelief. He passed Zhu Dawa who offered a breathless but appreciative grunt as he moved by. Li Yu continued his steady advance until he pulled up directly alongside Zhan Mingyu.

The two men ran shoulder to shoulder across the endless grey stone. They did not look at each other and they did not exchange words or challenges. They simply endured the crushing pressure side by side at the apex of the recruit class in this training course.

Beyond the spatial portal, Lei Gang watched the projected image hovering in the air above the plaza.

The mountain of a man crossed his arms and a rare genuine smile crossed his scarred face. He watched Li Yu match the pace of one of the main clan’s most promising young talents without using a single drop of Qi.

'The fruit rarely falls too far from the tree.' Lei Gang thought to himself with a sense of satisfaction.

‘Of course the son of Zhan Tielan would be able to do this much. She was a woman who could wrestle cosmic beasts with her bare hands. It made perfect sense that her offspring possessed a physical vessel capable of matching the elite talents.’

But as Lei Gang watched the boy run, a sudden realization hit him.

Tielan had explicitly told him that the boy did not know she was his mother. If Li Yu did not know his parentage then he was not raised within the clan. He did not grow up surrounded by the vast wealth, the ancient tempering arrays or the private tutors of the Zhan clan.

That meant Tielan had probably never trained him personally either or else it would have given it away.

Lei Gang frowned as his mind raced through the implications. He wondered if the fierce commander had secretly provided any kind of help to the boy from the shadows.

‘Had she funneled resources to him? Had she arranged for hidden masters to guide his path while keeping her identity a secret?’ He thought.

‘If his mother had helped him secure a solid foundation it would explain his current performance. It would still be a very good display of talent but not nearly as impressive since he had the backing of a supreme commander.’ He went on to think.

‘But what if he did it on his own? What if this boy had crawled his way up from the bottom of the cosmos using nothing but his own sweat and blood?’ Lei Gang stared at the projection. If the boy had forged a physical vessel capable of matching Zhan Mingyu without the resources of the main clan then his display of endurance was nothing short of miraculous.

Lei Gang decided he needed more context to properly evaluate the recruit. The chief instructor focused his gaze on the image of Li Yu and activated a specialized sensory technique. It was a subtle and harmless scan designed to read a cultivator's bones to determine their rough age.

The invisible wave of energy passed through the portal and brushed against Li Yu. He sensed it but didn’t think much of it, most likely the array reading his body to evaluate how much more weight to add on. The sensory feedback returned to Lei Gang a fraction of a second later.

The chief instructor physically staggered backward. His heavy boots scraped against the stone platform and the imposing aura of the veteran slaughterer wavered. His eyes widened to the size of saucers as he stared at the projection as if he were looking at a ghost.

His scan had returned an impossible number. Li Yu was merely around twenty five to thirty years old. Lei Gang felt his heart hammer against his ribs. His mind completely blanked for a moment before a tidal wave of disbelief crashed over him.

'Thirty years old?' Lei Gang screamed internally. 'That is impossible! That is an absolute lie!'

He cast the sensory technique a second time, pushing more power into the scan to ensure he had not made a mistake. The result came back exactly the same. The boy running shoulder to shoulder with the elite heirs of the cosmos had barely lived for three decades.

To put it into perspective, Zhan Mingyu was considered a prodigy of the main clan. Mingyu had been bathed in the blood of rare beasts since birth. He had been locked in gravity chambers and fed pills from a young age. His age now was measured in centuries. The other recruits like Vennia and Zhu Dawa had lived for centuries as well, honing their bodies and cultivation.

And yet this boy who had not even lived long enough to see a fraction of an era pass was matching them. The test wasn’t the same for everyone so there were still a lot of questions but Lei Gang could see the amount of weight being applied on him. How was he so monstrous?

Lei Gang rubbed his face with a massive hand. The Zhan clan was famous across the myriad realms for their physical supremacy. They possessed some of the greatest resources for body tempering and some of the most ancient bloodlines. But in all of their recorded history, they had probably never produced a monster like this before. To reach this level of bodily perfection in under thirty years defied everything he knew.

And all of this when he has most likely been hidden away from the main clan the entire time.

Lei Gang stared at the young man and a philosophical debate erupted in his mind. If Li Yu had been raised and nurtured within the heart of the Zhan clan with all of their resources at his disposal, would he have become some sort of unstoppable demon by now? Would their training have accelerated his growth even further? Then he thought deeper about the nature of the cosmos and wondered if that would actually be true.

The great clans provided safety and resources but they also provided rigid structures and comfortable walls. Perhaps it was precisely because Li Yu was raised outside those walls that he became the monster he was today. The wild universe was an unforgiving teacher but sometimes it was the best teacher.

Being forced to survive in the chaotic realms without a safety net might have given the boy unique opportunities, deadly encounters and life or death struggles that forged his foundation far better than any safe chamber ever could.

Lei Gang slowly let out a long breath and allowed his racing thoughts to settle. He dismissed the hypothetical ideas. There was no point in wondering what could have been or what had happened. Everyone had their own fate and their own path to walk towards the Dao.

The wild cosmos had delivered a supreme talent to his doorstep and now it was his job to train him. Lei Gang crossed his thick arms over his chest again and looked at the projection with a burning excitement in his eyes now. He could not wait to see what this boy could truly do when pushed to his limits.

The chief instructor chuckled a low rumbling sound that carried over the howling wind of the plaza.

"You kept your secrets well, Commander." Lei Gang muttered to himself as he watched Li Yu running steadily beside the main clan talent. "You did not give birth to a dragon of a son. You gave birth to a Heaven Trampling Kui Ox."

The Heaven Trampling Kui Ox was the spiritual animal of the Zhan Clan. It was the pet of the very first ancestor of the clan and had become the clan guardian through countless years. It unfortunately died long ago in the clan’s history, leaving no descendants. The clan still honors it to this very day, with a grand ceremony every year on the date of its death.