Chapter 35 - Hand Conditioning

Hand conditioning, so it was called this particular training that Hei was undergoing. Striking ever harder materials, he would harden his hands to an incredible level.

Since it was the first time, Bao Bei poured some water on the part of the soil that Hei had to dig so as to soften it. She also made for him two thin silk gloves that would protect his hands to a certain extent, to give him more chances to repeat the exercise.

Leaving Hei to his training, she focused on Lian, who had finished her running laps. Before she could teach her dancing moves, she should have to increase the young girl’s flexibility. So she began to make her stretching her arms and legs, and she would raise her exercises’ intensity as she would feel less discomfort in performing them.

Stopping for a moment to see how she was going, He resumed his exercise. The ground had become soft because of the water, and when he stabbed it with his fingers, he felt no pain. He soon got used to the shape his hands had to take, but as he was continuing to dig, the soil hardened more and more.

After he had been continuing for several hours, his hands were starting to shake, especially his fingers.

‘It's getting hard to keep my fingers together, but I have to keep going. Mother said I have to continue even if my bones break.’

Thus he continued again and again, and the pain of the fingers began to become unsustainable. With a slight moan, he stops for a moment to keep hitting the ground. His fingers were bent in a strange angle, and his whole hand was trembling visibly. Tightening his fingers to form a fist, he began using his knuckles to punch where he had to dig. However, after several hits that way, the pain became too intense again to continue with his fists.

‘Damn, my hands hurt so bad. I can't close my fist anymore.’

Since he couldn’t close his fist, he began to use his palms to dig. Until his mother said he could rest, he would continue his training in any way possible.

Fortunately, Bao Bei wasn’t so evil as to make him go on forever, and when it was lunchtime, she freed her son from this agony. After she helped him remove the silk gloves, he could see the bad state of his hands. But even if he was feeling pain, Hei made a wide smile full of happiness.

"What do you think, mother, I was good?" Hei said aloud as he breathed heavily.

‘You were excellent, my little one. Now come, it's time to eat. We must also heal those hands.’

So she brought Hei to the spiderweb house; inside, there were already Ye, Xing, and Lian. The two little spirit animals, seeing the terrible state of Hei's hands, approached him worried and pestered him with questions to know how he was. Hei smiled at them and replied that he was fine. Even if it couldn't be said that he was okay, he didn't want to make them worry.

When he finished calming the little spider and the little snake, he noticed a basin with hot water. Inside the water, some herbs were emitting a sweet fragrance. Smelling it, Hei immediately understood that those were the medicinal herbs that they had received this morning.

‘Dip your hands in the water and leave them soaking. Don't worry about how to eat. I'll take care of it.’ Bao Bei said as she masterfully lifted, thanks to her spiderweb, the bowl containing Hei's soup just above his mouth. By tilting the bowl slightly, she allowed Hei to drink the soup while his hands were soaking in the water.

The heat of the soup soon moved through his whole body as his hands began to show relief. The bath of medicinal herbs was having a surprising effect.

When they finished eating and also the herbs’ medicinal effect had run out, Bao Bei gave them two hours of rest for an afternoon nap. Hei checked his hands for a moment - the wounds he received were noticeably better, but the pain persisted, although attenuated. After examining his condition, Hei let himself go to a sweet afternoon nap with everyone else.

When he woke up, he found Ye tangled around his neck like a scarf, while Xing had slipped into his clothes and was sleeping in the middle of his chest. Not far from him, Lian was sleeping in a crouched position.

Hei laughed to himself as he watched that scene. He wanted to get up and talk to his mother to learn how to continue training. However, with his two sisters sleeping on him, this wasn't feasible, and at the same time, he didn't want to wake them up. Another half-hour had to pass before they woke up from their sleep and released him. But since they still wanted to sleep, they went to Lian to fall asleep next to her.

“Sleepy and glutton, I hope your training is going well, or mother will get angry with you.”

Tickling their bellies for a few seconds, he let them sleep and left the spiderweb house. Their mother, due to the size she assumed, wasn’t so visible in an open environment. But he could feel her presence - after all, she was his mother and unconsciously, he had developed the ability to perceive where she was.

‘Did you sleep well, my little one?’

"Yes, mother. I slept well. Ye and Xing are still sleeping with Lian."

‘Those sleepyheads ... alright, another half an hour, but that's it. They have to keep training and Lian too. Anyway, I'll explain what you'll have to do for the afternoon.’

At that point, she led him to the field on which it had been spread the manure-slurry compound. His job was to activate his spirit power and do push-ups with his legs to strengthen his leg muscles and, at the same time, increase the duration of his spirit power, trying to keep it as active as possible.

Hei nodded his head, and as he began to take the required position and activate his spirit power, Bao Bei took out notes on dance styles for Lian's training.

After exactly half an hour, she sent a mental message to the three who were sleeping, urging them to wake up, and when they arrived, she assigned their respective tasks.

Meanwhile, Hei was sweating again dramatically. The exercise, even if it was nothing complicated, was really tiring for the body. Fortunately, he had his spirit power, but that could only be maintained for a limited amount of time.

Seeing that he was about to exhaust his spirit power, Bao Bei made him stop.

‘Now you have to cultivate to recover your lost spirit power. Once you have recovered it, start training again. And when you are about to finish it again, cultivate yet another time. Repeat this cycle until I tell you enough. Now open your mouth and take this.’

Bao Bei threw something tiny that ended precisely in Hei’s mouth that he had opened as his mother had requested. From contact with the tongue, it was something small and round, like a sphere. Thinking about what it might be, it occurred to him shortly after that.

"This are the pills we bought, right?"

‘Yes. Now, begin your cultivation quickly; don't waste the pill's content.’

So Hei took the lotus meditation position and focused on cultivation.

When he began to cultivate, he realized that this operation was much easier than the day before. It was the effect of the pill that was taking its course. Happy, he began to concentrate again.

The pill’s effect continued for a couple of cycles of meditation, but then it ran out. Bao Bei gave him only one, but that's it. She didn't want him to rely too much on those pills because excessive use would do more harm than good.

When it began to set, Bao Bei finally made him stop. Hei fell to the ground in pain - his legs, like his hands in the morning, were visibly trembling. Unable to stand up, Hei decided to lie on the ground while he breathed.

As he was catching his breath, from the direction in which the spiderweb house and the stable were, Shui arrived with the other buffaloes. They were carrying what appeared to be a plow. When Shui came to them, it communicated how some members of the sect had arrived and left this plow. Since it knew that Hei was preparing a crop field, Shui immediately brought the plow to Hei along with the other buffaloes.

Getting up with difficulty, he stroked the buffaloes one by one to thank them, and immediately began to connect the plow to two of the buffaloes and had them start plowing the land. To check that everything was going well, he got into Shui’s back, who stood behind the two buffaloes with the plow and walked with them.

The field soil was easily being dug thanks to the plow pushed by the powerful force of the two buffaloes. Even though it was setting now, Hei decided he would finish the job that same day, so he could start plants as early as tomorrow morning. To make everybody participate and not to tire the buffaloes too much, he made turns for those who had to pull the plow. There were eight buffaloes, and with two buffaloes to pull the plow, they were, therefore, four pairs and hence a total of four shifts. Shui, on the other hand, didn’t pull the plow but merely followed the buffaloes in their path.

With their collaboration, Hei succeeded in the intent that he set for himself, and finished plowing the field in the evening. When the work was completed, he detached the plow from the last couple of buffaloes and left it near the field for the time being. Living practically in solitude, there was no need to worry about possible thieves. Besides, his mother would feel any stranger trying to get close to their territory.

Finally, it was time to go home. Since his legs were still sore, Hei gladly accepted Shui's lift, who took him home with the buffaloes. Once he got off its back and greeted the buffaloes for the night, Hei entered his home. To welcome him, there was the inviting scent of meat that immediately made his mouth water. Usually, since he was dirty from the training, Bao Bei would force him to wash himself, but for that evening, she let him go.

Without wasting time, he sat down with the others who were waiting for his return and told them how they had finished plowing the field. Ye and Xing were excited because they wanted to plant the plants immediately. They also asked Hei to let them choose some plants with the excuse that they had helped to remove the weeds. The reason was obvious - they wanted to grow their favorite fruits so they could eat them every day.

Laughing, Hei tickled them until they confessed their real motive. But when he lowered his guard after being told the truth, Xing and Ye attacked him by surprise and began to sneak into his clothes, causing a burst of tingling all over his body.

Bao Bei and Lian merely looked at the scene, amused. As the days passed, Lian's expressions were gaining warmth, and Bao Bei thought it was only a matter of time before she confided in them.

When the brothers finished playing, Bao Bei finally asked Hei,

‘What are you going to plant, my son?’

Hei, who was still recovering from the tickling, turned to his mother to answer her.

"I imagine that spirit wheat is a must. But I would like to divide the field into three sections so as to implement a crop rotation. In one, we will put the wheat, and if there are no problems, we should be able to have it ready to be delivered by the end deadline. In the second one, I intend to put various vegetables that take little time to grow so that we can consume them as soon as possible. In the third, I want instead to leave it at rest. Once the first growing cycle is finished, I will change the sections’ order. What do you think, mother?"

‘Do as you want, my little one. You know that whatever you do, you will have my full support. Continue as you think is right for you.’ Bao Bei replied as she looked lovingly at her son, who was growing more and more day by day.

Hei, hearing those words, smiled, and ran to hug her. He felt really happy every time he listened to his mother's compliments and how she trusted him. Then he went to his two sisters to tell them that they could choose which vegetables to plant. Unfortunately, fruit trees usually took years to grow, and he couldn’t plant them in the field because they took up so much space. But he promised them to go and visit the nearby woods in search of rare fruits to eat.

The following day, Hei woke up before dawn broke. It was finally time to plant the seeds, and he was eager to do so. The others also got up with him, ready to help him.

After a quick breakfast, they went first to fill the buckets they had with river water. The soil excavated in the hand conditioning training was certainly not at such a depth as to create a well. So they opted for this solution and, considering that they could tie buckets on the buffaloes, they could acquire all the water they needed in a single trip.

Once the water was taken and they returned to the field, Hei proceeded, therefore, to vertically delimit the three sections of the piece of land, free from the weeds. He would leave the central one at rest so that we could walk on it, while on the right one, he would plant the wheat and on the left one, cos lettuce and cucumbers, separated by a dividing space so that they wouldn’t mix during their growth.

After having finished planting the seeds in the respective sections and given them the necessary water, his task had finally ended for the moment. Thanks to the spirit vein that enriched the land, Hei didn’t have to worry so much about climate changes for this type of classic crop. Obviously, that would have been different if he had planted more rare plants and flowers, but this wasn’t the case.

Although it seemed easy to plant seeds and pour water on them, Hei still had to make sure that the growth of the plants was going well and that there were no problems. Even with the help of the spirit vein, it was necessary to pay a lot of attention. Also, since he had no water source in the immediate vicinity, he would have to go to the river frequently, while at the same time finishing creating the well he was building.

As for the training of the day, Bao Bei decided to indulge the glutton of her two daughters and sent them all to the forest in search of fruits to eat. When an hour had passed, she called them back to continue training. Lian would continue her dance lessons to increase her stamina and flexibility, while Hei, Ye, and Xing should have to hit the tree trunks.

This time, Bao Bei ordered Hei to alternate the blows using his hands first, then moving to his elbows, knees, shins, and feet. Using these parts of his body, at the same time as his spirit power, she wanted him to strike repeatedly without a moment's pause. To do this, he would have to adjust his breathing to his movements in order not to go short of breath.

For martial artists who had just started cultivation, their spirit power was insufficient to fuel their bodies during the fight. Because they would feel exhausted after they ran out of it, they had to learn to quickly end their fights after activating their spirit power or learning how to limit their consumption.

At the end of the day, Hei returned home in pain. Even though his hands weren’t in as precarious a condition as last time, this time, he had pain all over his body. Fortunately, Bao Bei had prepared a hot bath with medicinal herbs for the occasion. To do this, she had dug a large hole in the ground and covered the walls with thick layers of a hard spiderweb. Thus the water wouldn’t filter into the soil, nor would it be soiled by it.

Because the healing effect would diminish over time, Bao Bei made everyone enter, making Hei and Lian undress first.

When he saw the girl's naked body, he had a moment of confusion for a moment. Although he knew about the reproductive process through sex, he wasn’t so interested. The biggest concerns at the time were becoming strong and protecting his family. But in front of that thin body and its smooth and white skin, somehow Hei became unconsciously attracted to it, and an innate desire to touch it arose within him. This impulse got accentuated thanks to the moon’s that went to illuminate the body of the beautiful blue-haired girl who was looking him straight in the eyes.

Suddenly, however, came a splash of water from nothing that hit Hei to the face. Taking off the water from his eyes, he could see Ye and Xing start chasing each other. Their movement caused the medicinal herbs to move faster, and the water went green and thus hiding Lian's body.

Upon receiving the splash, Hei laughed, and, forgetting the scene of before, he began to play with the two little spirit beasts until Bao Bei called everyone to eat.