Qian Feng awoke in the same place he had been. For a moment, he blanked, before everything came rushing back to him. The fight. The fear.

Looking ahead of him, he saw the huge corpse of the Cruel Shadow Dragon, prompting a momentary terror until his subconscious solidified the dragon's mortality in its mind.

Qian Feng slowly stood up. His body was still weak, but it seemed he had recovered quickly and there were only light wounds left on his body. Even though his body only weakened, Qian Feng could sense something had changed. Something was different, but the boy had no idea what it was.

He saw the bloodstained tooth dagger on the ground, damaged from the fighting, and immediately knew what had changed.

His consciousness morphed, Qian Feng's previous feelings of worry and any residual traces of fear disappearing. Qian Feng's expression became icy, and a cool feeling washed over him. His posture made slight changes, but however small they were, in their amount and preciseness, Qian Feng, even casually standing, was prepared for any surprise attack and ready to fight. His combat understanding and skill had changed.

Qian Feng shook himself out of it, finding it a crying shame. Qian Feng was skillful now, sure, but he knew that all of his technique would have to be scrapped, as it was suited to the dagger. Even his footwork's changes were mainly in speed and agility, sacrificing stability and power.

Recollecting his thoughts, the young warrior first picked up the dagger again and walked over to his prize and collected the magic core from the dragon, storing that core and the previous beast's in a hole he dug before covering it back up and leaving a mark in the form of a furrow in the tree right above it. He then started to do the same thing he had been doing when the Cruel Shadow Dragon arrived, which was fashioning a guan dao for himself out of bone.

He had even better and larger materials now, and Qian Feng removed the femur of the dragon, which was fortunately long and thick enough to be used as a weapon, provided he worked hard enough on it.

Qian Feng had plenty of time, since the scent of the dead Grade 3 beast would keep away weaker Grade 2 beasts, which were pretty much all the existed near Qian Feng. This was shown by the fact that he was able to stay unconscious peacefully and wake up naturally.

Taking another bone, Qian Feng began to grind his weapon-to-be down, shrinking and straightening the shaft of his guan dao but leaving a chunk of bone at the top untouched.

Once Qian Feng finished that, he had to work on the blade.

The unskilled crafter started with the ridge, creating a blunt edge on top and then working his way down.

Finally, after a few long hours of tiring work, Qian Feng held a sharp guan dao of bone, looking at it with a proud gleam in his eye. But he still had more work to do.

If Qian Feng wanted to realize his full potential skill-wise, he would have to develop in a way that fit his fighting style from the foundation to mastery. This meant that his current footwork and experience would have to be wiped clear from his muscle memory, something that would be very annoying to do since it had been burned into it by a life-and-death battle.

Although it, as a rule, is faster to ingrain something into your muscle memory in battle, that's only if you're flowing naturally. For a task like Qian Feng's, where he has to think deeply about every move he makes and ignore his muscle memory, a battle would be a very dangerous place for him - he could end up having to resort to his previous skills and only ingraining them deeper into him while he used them.

To bring himself back, Qian Feng resumed practicing the base forms the Iron Fox taught him, paying attention to every single detail and making sure he hadn't applied any form of interpretation(this was something each fighter would do when they became more experienced. the forms one were taught were in their base form, so they were neutral, and as a warrior developed more and more in a certain direction, they would change the way they struck, the way they moved, and the way they blocked).

Once he got that down, Qian Feng simply had to resort to mind-numbing repetition to bring himself back to his previous state.

Over this time, Qian Feng got used to his guan dao's heft, the way it cut through the air, and so on. His technique also regressed to its original state, ready to be forged back into his own skill.

Finally, Qian Feng ventured out into the forest.

Quickly, he found his first enemy, a Grade 2 Silver Flame Fox.

Seeing this beast, Qian Feng's breathing hastened, and his mind raced. Encountering this beast... could only be described as unlucky in Qian Feng's current situation.

The Silver Flame Fox was incredibly unique, in that it wielded a special silver flame that had very strange properties: it was practically useless before Qi and mystical defenses, but, among the most common Grade 2 and even 3 beasts, its flame was unrivaled against the physical. This meant that for most cultivators, it was extremely easy prey, but for those rare body cultivators, it was the one beast in the forest they wouldn't like to meet - even if it didn't penetrate their defenses, the silver flame would still cause them incredible pain.

Qian Feng was not yet a fully-fledged body cultivator, as he hadn't delved too deeply into the subject, but he was not allowed to use his Qi lest he get kicked out of the Iron Fox's tutelage, which put him in the same, if not worse, position as with body cultivators.

Bracing himself, Qian Feng tried to end the fight as quickly as possible by sending a chop down at the fox, hopefully killing it and saving himself from a world of pain and danger.

Unfortunately, a Grade 2 beast was not so easy to be killed, and it leapt to the side, sending a burning silver flame at him. This caused the warrior to instinctively tense up, before consciously willing himself to relax and attempting to slash the flame apart(the bones of the Cruel Shadow Dragon were incredibly tough - the Silver Fox's fire was only special among more common beasts, not something like the Cruel Shadow Dragon, who actually possessed a trace of the dragon bloodline, so Qian Feng was confident his weapon would remain unscathed). This worked to a certain extent and managed to dissipate the fire by slicing the Qi that it was composed of, but Qian Feng would still have to bear the remaining traces of the fire.

Thankfully, if there was one thing Qian Feng was used to, it was pain. Just his experience under the tutelage of the Iron Fox made him experience pain he never thought existed, let alone the far more agonizing Nine Pits of Hell.

His tough skin, already conditioned to heat by one of the nine pits(Qian Feng had never considered that benefit before, but he supposed the training also had the additional effect of providing him with a resistance to cold, from the fourth pit; heat, from the fifth; blunt attacks, from the second pit; poison, from the eight pit - well, acid, but many poisons had the same effects; and even lightning attacks from the final pit. Perhaps this would hold many benefits even in days to come...) wasn't very damaged by the flame, but even if it wasn't lethal, Qian Feng had to undergo quite a bit of pain.

This cycle continued - the Silver Flame Fox would dodge a strike then throw out a searing attack, burning his skin but keeping him largely whole. This proved to be incredibly annoying.

The worst part was that the fox seemed to have intelligence, and would look at him mockingly whenever it dodged yet another attack, which began to provoke him at around the third repetition, let alone where Qian Feng was currently at; somewhere around a few hundred.

That wasn't to say nothing was changing, in fact, Qian Feng was growing and adapting even as the fox attacked and hurt him even more.

His moves were becoming sharper, more precise. They strayed from their target less and sliced through the air cleaner, improving at an almost visible rate. Qian Feng struck at more profound angles, sealing more and more paths of escape more and more thoroughly.

These things that Qian Feng was improving on were not the reason the Silver Flame Fox found it so easy to do. No, instead of that, it was his killing intent.

As a spirit beast, the Silver Flame Fox had gone through countless battles while reaching adulthood, coming close to death several times. Through these processes, it has become receptive to killing intent, which would be unconsciously emitted by most people whenever they started to attack. Only through intensive training methods or nonstop fighting could someone learn to conceal their killing intent, placing them on more of an even ground with their opponent. It was this killing intent, that Qian Feng hadn't yet learned to conceal, that gave away how he was attacking, where, and when, which allowed the Silver Flame Fox to dodge so efficiently.

The Cruel Shadow Dragon was naturally able to sense killing intent as well, but Qian Feng back then, as a result of the suicidal fighting style and the assistance of his martial spirits, was emitting so much of it that it was impossible to sense focused attacks inside it.

In this battle, however, Qian Feng was not in critical danger, so his martial spirits had not deigned to help him and he himself was not at 100% killing intent.

As the battle progressed, Qian Feng's killing intent became fainter and fainter, and over the course of two hours, the Silver Flame Fox could dodge less and less effectively. Soon enough, Qian Feng ended it with a sideways slash, immediately collapsing to the ground, breathing heavily.

Taking the magic core and mvoing on, Qian Feng hoped to encounter spirit beast less his match.

Soon, the sun set over the mountain in the distance. A young child trumbled along the forest floor in search of a place to sleep, his right pocket having a slight bulge, with four or five spherical objects inside it. He reeked of blood and had sharp eyes, holding a pale bone guan dao with a single scratch on it. Finally, he found an especially large tree, huge, in fact, and decided to carve out a place to sleep.

Qian Feng took his guan dao in his hand, and with a few cuts, he carved a room into the tree, before settling in and siiting in the lotus position, cultivating the Tian Mountain Technique. An unshakable aura soon emerged from him as a result, seemingly solid despite its impermeability.

The sun rose, and Qian Feng, slightly stronger than before, rose. He hadn't encountered any trouble throughout the night, and was able to practice his technique in peace. Just a bit more before I reach Initial mastery. Then, I'll get a lot stronger. Heh, by then, the Cruel Shadow Dragon wouldn't have been a match for me.

Stepping outside of his "room", Qian Feng noticed something strange very quickly.

He had thought it unusual when he found the incredibly large tree which he nested in, but now he saw that a long line of such trees extended in a single direction, leading to no apparent place.

With nothing better to do, Qian Feng followed it, quickly noticing a complete lack of spirit beasts, but paying no further attention to that.

It took 3 hours of Qian Feng's sprinting before he found his first trace of a clue as to what those trees led to.

Ahead of him, a shimmering force field, transparent and following a line written on the ground. Cautious, Qian Feng picked up a close rock and tossed it at the force field, which let it pass and fall to the ground, as if nothing was there.

Slowly, the boy approached the transparent shield, placing his hand upon it. It met a slight resistance for a moment, before completely giving way and letting his hand fall through. Confident that whatever lay behind this barrier was special in some way(after all, he had never seen something like it before), he stepped through.

Off in the distance and back on the mountain, the Iron Fox frowned. That place? No one has been able to get past the barrier, not even me... Just how did that kid do it? Eh? And now I can't see him! I hope no trouble befalls him while he's in there...

Meanwhile, Qian Feng stared wide-eyed in shock and the completely new surroundings revealed.

The moment he had stepped through, what Qian Feng saw from the outside perspective completely changed, becoming a clear field with only a huge palace in the middle. In large, skillfully-drawn characters in front of the palace, there said the following:

"Forest King's Mansion"