Xu Yi lied down on the ground with one hand buried deeply in the soil. Being insulted and beaten up, he couldn’t do anything, but helplessly watch as Junior Zhou casually walked away.

Actually, he had only arrived in this world approximately two years ago. After he had arrived in this world and entered the body of the original Xu Yi, he had retained all the former’s memories. Hence what Junior Zhou had just said grieved him a lot.

This was about a family feud that was already going on for several generations!

Ever since the great-great-grandfather of Xu Yi, Ming De, had mastered the complicated cultivation of Wu Dao, their family had quickly risen up to become a prominent factor in this village. Zhou’s great-great-grandfather, a refugee at the time, fled to the ‘Guanan’ prefecture and eventually became the Xu Family’s domestic servant.

This meant, that junior Zhou is actually a mere third generation servant!

However, Zhou Daoqian, junior Zhou’s uncle, was a genius in cultivating Wu Dao. At the age of thirty, he had already successfully learned its essence. At that point he became a member of the Peak Tower, one of the three most famous schools in Guanan. Due to Zhou Daoqian’s achievements in cultivating Wu Dao, their whole family had even escaped from the clutches of slavery and established the Zhou Family, which had since then become an influential family in this area.

...

When Ming De had eventually passed away, no offspring had the potential to cultivate Wu Dao, except for one of the slaves, Zhou Daoqian, who had even shown a great talent for it. Despite the fact that Daoqian was only a servant in the Xu Family, Xu Yi’s grandfather generously gave him the guidance to cultivate in Wu Dao, with the help of notes that were written down by Ming De. It was justifiable to say that without the support from the Xu Family, by tutoring him with Ming De’s notes and with the needed materials, Zhou Daoqian would’ve never been able to master Wu Dao.

Because, in order to be successful, resources were the key. Even if you were a peerless genius in some field, without any resources, like rare magical herbs or special guidance, you would most likely degrade into mediocrity.

Everyone searched for their own beneficial terms in this world. Since Ming De had passed away, the Xu Family was in dire need of a new powerful master to build on. Since the only talented person had been uncle Zhou, they had decided to nurture him, in the hope that he would protect them once he would become a force to be reckoned with.

However, reality doesn’t always happen as it is expected to. Uncle Zhou was sadly a person who didn’t have any sense of gratitude. The more fame he acquired, the more hatred he felt towards his identity as a mere servant. Thus, he planned to cut himself loose from these invisible chains.

Although Uncle Zhou had already become a member of the Peak Tower, he wasn’t satisfied with his individual success. Feeling ashamed by his family’s background as servants, he was determined to take revenge on the Xu Family and replace them. Uncle Zhou began mapping out a big plot. He was confident that he could easily kill the entire Xu Family by himself, but considering his position nowadays, due to cultivating Wu Dao, he didn’t want to sacrifice his reputation by betraying his master’s family. So he decided to follow master Sun’s Art of War, and decided to achieve complete victory without firing a single shot.

Uncle Zhou designed a fake crime and sued the Xu Family for committing this fabricated wrongdoing. This was a hard blow for the Xu Family. Eventually, a great-grandfather in the Xu Family had even died of extreme anger. Ever since, the once prosperous Xu Family had been on a rapid decline. Over the span of twenty years, Uncle Zhou had been using countless of tricks to annihilate the Xu Family. Eventually, the Xu Family collapsed economically and Xu Yi’s parents were subsequently toiled to death.

Xu Yi became an orphan and had to earn a living on his own. Luckily, he had read piles of classics and history books ever since he was very young. Therefore, he had quickly found a job as a teacher in one of the schools in Xu Village. At this time he was only 16 years old.

When the Zhou Family heard that Xu Yi had found a job as a teacher, they had shamelessly threatened the school in order to get Xu Yi fired. And as expected, Xu Yi was fired soon after. The Zhou Family ruthlessly drained everything that came from the Xu Family.

Suffering from a mixed feeling of extreme anger and horror, Xu Yi had eventually died. However, At the moment of his death, a soul had miraculously drifted by. This let to Xu Yi being revived with a stranger’s soul inside his ‘dead’ body.

Since Xu Yi was not ‘dead’, the Zhou Family had thought of countless new ways to make his life as miserable as possible.

All the Xu Family members had already passed away due to the schemes of the Zhou Family, leaving only Xu Yi. After the ‘new’ Xu Yi had processed all the memories of the late Xu Yi, he swore to take revenge for ‘his’ Xu Family!

...

Xu Yi had barely stabilized himself after getting up, when he vomited a mouthful of blood. As he tried to open his mouth, he realised that there was a small wound on his lip. However, the pain coming from his mouth was nothing compared to the soreness deep inside his heart.

He then unlocked the door to his house, letting the dog back out. The two of them then searched through the debris and managed to find some eatable meat and rice, which they happily enjoyed. After they finished their lunch, Xu Yi made his way into the mountains, which were surrounding his house, and began hunting some wild animals for food.

As night fell, moonlight quickly spread all over the place, making it look exceedingly tranquil and peaceful. Xu Yi had already returned from a successful hunt and had decided to do something important tonight. He was now only waiting for his dog to fall asleep before he’d leave to do this ‘important’ thing.

Xu Yi was sitting inside, looking into the distance, waiting for his dog to finally fall asleep. After his dog finally fell asleep, He quietly got up and left, closing the door behind him. He then went down along a mountain trail and into the forest where he quickly struck a pose and shouted, “Hu! Ha! Hu! Ha!”

Xu Yi started acting like an ox, sometimes raising his head, sometimes stamping his feet and sometimes hitting a nearby tree. He practiced these three movements over and over again. He did so restlessly, for four hours, only occasionally putting some black looking herb into his mouth.

While practicing, Xu Yi seemed to be moving rather slow, as if there was a large weight pressing down on him. With these movements Xu Yi guided qi throughout his blood vessels. Until he eventually successfully reached a subtle state, where he did no longer feel any pain or exhaustion. This happened because the qi was now perfectly flowing throughout all of his blood vessels.

“Hu! Ha!”

Exhausting his physical strength, Xu Yi jumped into a giant pine tree and knocked the tree down, which fell with a - thud - sound.

As the tree came crashing down, Xu Yi steadily landed on the ground and curled up, looking similar to a spineless shrimp. He was completely exhausted on the outside. However, deep inside, he was overwhelmed with an incomparable happiness and a sense of accomplishment. Because he realised that this last gesture, which had knocked the tree down, had the equivalent power to an ox’s strength, which was an indication of having reached the peak state of a forged body.

Even though he was incomparably happy, he was also shocked that he had reached the peak state in such a short amount of time. He gasped for air as he started to regain some energy. After a while Xu Yi got up and, after searching around for a bit, picked up a stick. He weighed this stick until he suddenly made a quick movement with his hand, as he hit the stick right in the middle, cutting it in half. He threw away one of the two pieces, while he held the other part of the stick firmly in his hand, before he cut it across one of his arms, to see if he could make it bleed. To his satisfaction, this action only left a deep white mark, not even letting a single drop of blood come out. Xu Yi was overjoyed by this result, as it was exactly what would happen after one entered the peak state of a forged body.

As he looked at the result on his arm, excitement quickly started to drive him crazy. He quickly tried everything he could think of to reassure himself, that he was in fact at the peak state of a forged body. In his euphory he suddenly noticed a large rock and quickly ran towards it. He loosened his shoulders, readying his fists and then suddenly smashed his fist on this large rock. - Bamm! - He was astonished, as he saw the rock collapse in a mere second!

“Ox’s skin, iron bone! The peak state of a forged body, it truly deserves its reputation!” Xu Yi stared at his palms and murmured.

After he calmed himself down a bit, Xu Yi realised that he should leave this place at once and do something to stabilise this newly acquired peak state.

He quickly made his way back to the wooden house. Here he seeked out a dozen of Oolong herb and held them in his palms. He then walked into the bathroom to prepare a warm bath. As the bath was finally ready, he sat down in the bath and took a meditative pose. Xu Yi concentrated all his attention on the qi inside his body and as he did, he felt how his body was getting hotter and hotter. Thanks to this heat, the qi could easily penetrate into his blood vessels and meridians [1]. In other words, the qi incorporated with his body.

After he finished stabilizing this peak state, he rose up from the bathtub. As he looked at the water in the bathtub, he realised that it seemed to have turned into a somewhat dark color. He then turned and looked in the mirror and there he saw a gentle, rather than tough, young man. He could even vaguely see a miraculous energy that was disguised within this gentleness.

............

[1]: A meridian chart:

https://theamt.com/meridian_chart_and_map_of_meridians_meridian_points_acupoints.htm