When Qian Feng heard the word "preparation", he was elated. Sure, it was just so that he wouldn't die, but still, there had been no such thing with the first pit.

Unfortunately, the Iron Fox had managed to elude Qian Feng's expectations on "preparation". He would have a 5-day resting period before the 10-day long stay in the second level pit, the Cloud Hammer pit. All that was revealed about the pit was its name, with all other inquiries receiving the response of "you'll see eventually, why the rush?".

Preparation under the prodigious master had consisted entirely of simple training for the entire five days, as well as twice-a-day baths in a strange sort of alcohol that seemed to have no effect other than adding a glossy shine to his skin. Upon looking inside himself using the terrifyingly sharp senses he had honed not only as a cultivator in this life, but someone who had undergone special training to boost his senses in the previous life, QIan Feng had found that not just his skin, but also his tendons, muscles, and bones were covered in that glossy shine.

The exercises Qian Feng underwent enlightened him on one thing, solidifying the knowledge of the benefits of his training in Qian Feng's mind: not only had his body toughness increased tremendously, the act of swimming through metal sand nonstop had strengthened his msucles even further, though not to the degree of the hardness of his skin. Qian Feng's agility had also increased, the wasted movement in the young boy's walking reduced slightly, the techinque of each and every step improved from that long period of technique training in the Metal Sand pit.

And quickly, the five days of rest ended. Sure, he had exercised and practiced, with almost the same intensity he had when he first got here, but having experienced pain beyond what he had originally thought possible in the pit of Metal Sand, the sensations of these types of exercises held very little sway over him now.

Finally, Qian Feng stood before the Cloud Hammer pit. This pit was far different compared to the Metal Sand pit. While the first level training area was quite noticeable and flashy, the Cloud Hammer training pit would seem as nothing but an empty hole in the ground to an untrained observer. However, to warriors and cultivators like Qian Feng, something was off about that assumption. Two things constituted that conclusion: one, the very keen sense of danger Qian Feng felt from that 'hole in the ground'. Qian Feng noticed a distinct feeling emanating from that pit, one that raised the hairs on his arms and legs and bore a sense of foreboding in him. Two, if Qian Feng focused on the empty space in the pit, like seeing dust particles illuinated by sunbeams floating in the air before they phazed out of sight again, Qian Feng could ever so slightly see flashes of a transluscent type of force.

Qian Feng quickly found something else that chased out any shadow of a doubt that this pit wasn't dangerous. He sensed an incredible abundance of incredibly pure Force Qi, to the point that cultivating his Infinite Force technique would become twice as fast in that environment.

His mullings were interrupted by the Iron Fox's voice: "Your task is similar to last time's. Survive ten days. Nothing more, nothing less. If you wish to do so by crawling on the ground like a turtle, it's fine by me. Just survive."

With that, Qian Feng was kicked directly into the twice-as-deep pit once again.

For about a second or two, nothing happened. The surroundings were peaceful, and Qian Feng(foolishly) thought that he would be able to concentrate in peace.

Then he was hit for the first time, only feeling a brief sense of danger with barely enough time to conjure a barricade of Earth Qi in the direction he sensed it before his vision swam as his body traced a parabola in the air. He almost instantly collided against the wall, an intense pain burning equally on his entire body. Qian Feng barely got time to groan in pain before the second one hit, this time striking his feet and sending him flying backwards.

After around the fourth strike, Qian Feng gained enough mental clarity to send his Life Qi blossoming out into his body, healing all of his wounds rather quickly. He also managed to put up some meager defenses with his Earth Qi before being struck again and sent hurtling into the left wall. He reinforced his defenses with Earth Qi as hastily as possible before being struck again, Life Qi making its way throughout his body the whole time, healing it.

Thankfully, Qian Feng's Life Qi specialization was more effective for this situation than the last pit. Where the Metal Sand pit required less effective, more constant healing, this one was made for less often but more dire wounds. This was what his Life Qi was meant to heal, as he didn't have as much of a quantity compared to his quality of Qi.

Qian Feng's beating continued, with each hit sending equal force throughout his body, damaging every cell equally. Perhaps, if Qian Feng wasn't so preoccupied with defending himself, he would have marveled at the strangeness of the equal distribution of force, but, unfortunately, he was more worried about other things.

Thankfully, compared to the previous pit, Qian Feng had ample time to recuperate, so although it was singificantly more difficult than the first pit, the young boy managed to get a hang of it by the end of the first day.

He started taking advantage of the abundance of Force Qi, cultivating while enduring the blows. While he couldn't make use of his entire midn for cultivating, and thus didn't reach his maximum potential for cultivation speed, it was still significantly faster than normal because of the sheer quantity.

QIan Feng started relying less and les son his Earth Qi - his body was toughened quickly, and the strikes became more and more bearable. Compared to having to muster up all the Earth Qi he could on the first day, by the fifth, only a relatively thick shell was used. And, Qian Feng knew, the less protection he had, the faster his body toughness would grow, but he just wasn't able to take an unprotected hit without being sent into a severe condition. As his defenses were, at that time, the young boy was already walking a fine line between training and torture.

Qian Feng grew quickly in his Force Qi cultivation, and his Earth Qi also grew a bit from its constant exercise and destruction. He reached the seventh-level Martial Warrior stage with his Force spirit realm, and the fourth-level with his Earth spirit realm. His Life spirit realm underwent minor improvements from Qian Feng drawing upon it so much, advancing one level to the third.

What was strange, however, was that every time he was hit, he felt a strange sort of heat emanating from his body, a weird sort of energy, that Qian Feng sensed strengthened his body even further. He had absolutely no idea where it had come from, put quickly put away his suspicions in favor of paying more attention to his Force Qi cultivation.

While the training was difficult, it didn't put him into a truly life-threatening situation like the first time. This was due to various factors, but most importantly that he was able to rely on Qi again. If he hadn't been allowed to, perhaps Qian Feng would already be dead.

And so, the ten days quickly passed, with the Earth Qi defenses completely unnecessary by noon on the final day. Qian Feng enjoyed the feeling of not needing any Qi to defend against something that had completely rendered him helpless just ten days ago.

Like in the first time, the Iron Fox phased into existence when Qian Feng's time was up, his usual stoic expression on his face. The five nights of rest began, progressing in a familiar manner, and soon his first day had finished. The baths had been drawn again, though this time with a different color liquid. Where the white one was clear, the one Qian Feng found before him was a deep blue, almost majestic in its shade.

At the end of his first night of rest, Qian Feng returned to his quarters. The moon was high in the sky, and the boy found he couldn't sleep. Why? Well, through such vigorous training, and being driven to exhaustion repeatedly, his body had been conditioned to feel fatigue only when a certain threshold was passed. And normally, with such intensive practice daily, this was an incredibly useful mechanism he had developed. But, after the threshold before fatigue was felt grew, due to his incredibly painful training the days before, Qian Feng's daily practice had become unable to reach that threshold.

So, Qian Feng was left with a couple of options: either go outside and train intensively, reaching that threshold and then going to sleep, or stubbornly stay in bed until he fell asleep naturally, risking removing the sleeping mechanism from his body.

Feeling that the former would be the more productive option, Qian Feng headed outside as silently as he could, not wanting to disturb the Iron Fox's sleep if he couldn't help it and get punished, and found the weights lying on the ground in front of the stump. Why they were there, Qian Feng didn't know, but he was more preoccupied with actually exercising.

Qian Feng proceeded methodically, exhausting his arms first with diamond handstand pushups(which consisted of pushups in a handstand position, with the hands forming a diamond by connecting the thumbs of both hands and the index fingers of both as well), then his core through heavily weighted planks, and his lower body through squats and jumping squats(these entailed squatting down low, and jumping as high as possible, then smoothly landing and squatting again, with no pausing in between any of these steps. In his previous world, Gong Lu could do at most 100 without collapsing, and jump about three feet with each one after squatting in a 90-degree angle. Now, Qian Feng, while weighed down by 3500-pound weights, did a thousand squat jumps, touching the ground with his butt in each squat, before jumping ten feet and landing again, before starting to really feel the muscular screaming). Finally, he did a whole body workout by weighted burpees.

While he was exercising, Qian Feng started to get more and more immersed into the pain and discomfort of his exercises. He cut off all other senses, focusing only on the bodily pain from his exercises. The young boy began amplifying those feelings, only dimly aware of continuing the exercise. As the pain grew and grew and grew, and as Qian Feng's movements became more violent, tears began unknowingly falling. Tears of want for his old home, for a place where severed arms and crippling wasn't the norm. Where such strife, such pain, wasn't necessary to survive. And since he couldn't have that, Qian Feng began focusing on what he could of, began dreaming of ways to live his life peacefully.

Why did he have to train so hard? Why him? What made him so special? Was it because he was reincarnated? Because of his talent?

Qian Feng stopped doing burpees, lying down on the cool ground of the training field. He started to imagine a simple life, a peaceful life, as someone in a menial job. Sneaking away from the clan grounds and living humbly.

It was so hard! It was so painful to continue like this! Forget reason and logic, WHY WAS IT SO HARD! The sound of droplets of water hitting the ground echoed out quietly at a faster rate.

Although Qian Feng was born in Heidas as well, his mind was fully developed throughout the whole encounter, and it didn't impact him nearly as deeply as his first birth, his birth on Earth. This meant that he was still, at his very core, a human from Earth, despite having been born in a different world, with a different life, and undergoing experiences a normal person from Earth would shudder to imagine.

It was in this situation that Qian Feng's origin from Earth began to show. Although his life on Earth had not been easy, Qian Feng found it far easier than his current life on Heidas. Although on Earth, the law had only been a false pretense to keep the masses appeased, his current life on Heidas was far more unjust and cruel than even the darkest point in Earth's history.

People native to Heidas in body and soul would not usually question the cruelty and lawlessness of their world. They would accept it as a fact of life, something that made sense. When comparing this mentality to that of Qian Feng's, however, the difference was large. Qian Feng saw that people didn't have to live this way. They hadn't on Earth, so why not here? The answer was simple: strength. The gaps between might were too large. On Earth, even if one person was a professional boxer and the other an ordinary person, the latter could still kill the former with the right tools. On Heidas though, the gaps in strength were far too large to be crossed by anything. This resulted in the strong gaining complete dominion over the weak, often treating the weak and poor badly. Inevitably, a genius would rise up from within the poor, bringing an uprising with them and overthrowing the strong, taking their spot. The cycle would continue like this, the world in perpetual chaos.

But if everyone could unite under one person's strength, under their banner, then this wouldn't happen. Everyone would be treated equally, because under the judgements of their leader and their leader's envoys, a peasant and a noble would hold no distinction.

Snapping back into reality and out of his musings, Qian Feng silently laughed at himself through his tears. How idealist was that? As if.

Mindlessly Qian Feng completed his exercises, reaching the threshold, heading back to his bed. Qian Feng had lost his spirit after the very foundation of his beliefs, the base all of his actionns operated on, had been self-questioned. Perhaps sleep would resolve the issue...

Unbeknownst to Qian Feng, the Iron Fox had been watching the whole ordeal with an expression of pity on his face. This boy has reached a fork in his path, the master said to himself, and it's up to him which way he goes. I can only watch, and hope he makes the right decision.

The rest of the four days were a blur of exercise before going to sleep. Qian Feng was barely responsive to external stimuli, and did things almost entirely on a subconscious basis.

This was because the rest of his mental energy was focused on a constant, huge debate, leaving only the bare minimum for the rest. Why?

The Iron Fox knew exactly what Qian Feng was experiencing, and knew that this took priority over simple training, as this would determine his entire future. So, the warrior simply stood back and watched the young disciple figure things out on his own.