105: Chapter 105 Elimination and Growth

Repeated physical pain, endless torture, and crushing defeats with severe injuries completely shattered all the innocence, kindness, and softness in the hearts of these young children.

With blood and tears, they learned the most bone-chilling truth: soft-heartedness leads to death, weak-handedness leads to defeat, and cowardice leads to destruction.

From then on, in every single combat and life-or-death struggle, they fought with fearless disregard for death, exerting every ounce of their strength.

The ignorance and warmth completely faded from their youthful eyes, leaving only icy ruthlessness; their green fists and feet no longer hesitated, every strike precise and savage, aiming directly at vital points.

On the martial arts field, the crisp sound of cracking bones, dull impacts, suppressed groans, and the heavy thuds of bodies slamming onto the ground resounded daily.

Bruises, hematomas, torn skin, fractured bones, broken fingers, and bleeding had long become the norm for everyone.

The defeated collapsed on the ground, their blood and Qi in disarray, suffering bone-deep pain as they bore all the torment alone; the victors were also covered in wounds, exhausted and collapsed, with not a single person able to win easily.

Occasionally, when fights spiraled out of control and strikes were too heavy, crippling or killing someone on the spot was also a common occurrence.

No one felt pity, no one mourned, and no one stopped.

The survivors silently wiped the blood from their faces, supported their battered bodies to stand up, and quickly adjusted their state to face the next life-or-death battle.

Day after day of bloody tempering and desperate combat completely erased the children's compassion and weakness, forcefully forging icy, ruthless, decisive, and fearless hearts of a Martial Artist.

They were no longer ignorant and humble children, but iron-blooded quasi-Martial Artists who directly faced blood, pain, and death.

Every evening as the sun set and the remaining light bled across the sky, Li Changqing would stand on the high platform and indifferently call out the numbers of those eliminated, one by one.

As each number was called, the corresponding child's body would instantly stiffen, the color draining from their face, and their legs trembling uncontrollably.

Not a single person in the entire field knelt to beg for mercy.

Everyone had seen the miserable fate of those who begged for mercy, and they had long since engraved the lesson that "pleading is useless, and the strong prey on the weak" into their very bones.

In just one month of purgatory-like bitter cultivation, out of five hundred children, three hundred and thirty-seven were brutally eliminated.

The remaining one hundred and sixty-three survivors had long since undergone a complete transformation, becoming entirely different people.

Their former innocence, softness, cowardice, and weakness were entirely crushed to pieces by blood, severe pain, death, and desperate situations.

There was no longer any childishness in their eyes, leaving only dead silence, forbearance, cold ruthlessness, and absolute obedience engraved into their Divine Souls.

Night shrouded Xuanling Island, and the entire training ground was strictly hierarchical, with a clear division between light and dark.

In the first-class quiet residences, the lights were dim and peaceful. Some of the surviving top youths were consuming spiritual water to recover their Origin Qi, while others were taking Body Tempering potions, sitting upright to regulate their breathing. Their backs were straight, their breath steady, and their postures as erect as sharp blades. They had already begun to show the character of death soldiers—quiet, enduring, and reserved.

Inside the second-class stone houses, everyone gritted their teeth and trained extra hard, not daring to slacken in the slightest. They exerted all their strength to catch up with the progress, fearing that a single day of laziness would cause them to fall to the bottom and plunge into a desperate situation.

Outside the third-class residences, several children who had ranked at the bottom that day stood rigidly as punishment in the freezing night wind.

Cold frost and dew soaked through their thin clothes, freezing their bodies stiff and pale, and turning their cracked lips purple. Hunger burned their internal organs, with pain and cold stacking upon each other.

Yet they remained motionless, their postures perfectly straight like cold, stiff, emotionless puppets, silently enduring the punishment.

Upon a high platform, Li Changqing stood with his hands behind his back in the evening wind, overlooking the entire solemn and desolate training ground.

There was not a ripple of emotion in his eyes, nor a single shred of pity or compassion.

He knew very well: gentleness could not raise a peerless weapon of slaughter, and mercy could not forge loyal death soldiers.

Only the extreme pressure of desperate situations, the cruel survival of the fittest, and the day-and-night honing between life and death could carve a group of mortal, ant-like children into the sharpest, most loyal, and most fearless blades in the world.

Time served as the hammer, day and night as the fire; through thousands of blows and endless tempering, they would be forged into steel.

From this day forward, the lives, loyalty, and combat power of these children belonged entirely to him, Li Changqing.

As long as he could temper a few top-tier talents from among them, this purgatory-like polishing would be of immeasurable value.

Meanwhile, within his Sea of Consciousness's Changsheng Garden, that plot of Three-Color Spiritual Soil specially dedicated to growing the low-grade Spiritual Plants needed by Martial Artists was uniquely blessed and growing rapidly.

Once the Spiritual Plants matured, they would all be handed over to Zhang Yuxi to be refined into low-grade Body Tempering medicinal liquids. In the future, these would be continuously supplied to this group of specially trained children to consolidate their Foundation, temper their bones and muscles, and accelerate their Physical Body's transformation.

On this day, under the warm morning light, Li Changqing's gaze swept across the over one hundred dark, upright, and slender figures below. He spoke in a deep voice, announcing the conclusion of the one-month basic purgatory training.

"The one-month basic Body Tempering ends today."

"From this moment on, even those who are eliminated may remain on Xuanling Island permanently and be spared from expulsion."

As his voice fell, the bodies of the over one hundred youths below, who had undergone the purgatory tempering, shook in unison. Their deadened minds, which had been tightly strung for over a month, finally relaxed slightly.

Li Changqing had already decided on the subsequent arrangements:

In the future, the eliminated would no longer need to participate in the cruel life-or-death special training. They could remain at Xuanling Lake to reclaim the wasteland within a five-mile radius of Xuanling Lake, help cultivate Xuanling Island's Spiritual Plants and Spirit Medicines, repair the Immortal Caves and residences, assist in raising spiritual birds and Spirit Beasts, and manage all miscellaneous affairs inside and outside Xuanling Island and Xuanling Lake.

Anyone who was diligent, down-to-earth, and law-abiding could obtain a peaceful haven here to live out their days in comfort and die of old age. Those with outstanding performance could marry and have children, allowing their descendants to escape the humble fate of slavery.

At the deep bottom of Xuanling Lake, the green water was tranquil and shrouded in dense Spiritual Qi.

Li Changqing sat cross-legged upon a massive rock, his eyes lightly closed. His surrounding aura was as calm as water, merging into one with the spiritual rhythm of the lake bottom. The moment he slowly opened his eyes, the secluded cultivation aura enveloping him suddenly dispersed.

In the blink of an eye spent in closed-door cultivation, the outside world had already undergone vast changes.

Winter faded, withered trees budded, and the barren earth was dyed anew with fresh green. A whole cycle of seasons had quietly passed in the snap of a finger during his cultivation, silent and unnoticed.

During the more than half a year of his secluded cultivation, the beast tide had completely ended.

This small-scale beast tide had limited momentum. To the various Golden Core Sects and established top-tier forces within Huangfeng Prefecture, it was merely an insignificant ripple that failed to shake their Foundations in the slightest.

However, for the small and medium cultivation Families below the Golden Core stage with shallow Foundations, it was a considerable tribulation.

News arrived one after another. After the entire catastrophe of the beast tide, a total of three Foundation Establishment families in Huangfeng Prefecture had their Foundations completely destroyed. More than twenty small Qi Refining families rooted in various areas were displaced, their Legacies severed, and their Family properties accumulated over several generations ruined under the rampage of the Yao Beasts.

Since Li Changqing went into seclusion, the remaining one hundred and sixty-three children had undergone nine full months of extreme competition, iron-blooded punishment, and life-or-death combat. Through waves of filtering, another batch of youthful figures had dejectedly exited the stage.

Some had weak physiques, and their Foundations stagnated, making them unable to keep up with the daily-increasing intensity of the purgatory Body Refining, leading to them being ruthlessly weeded out.

Some had a restless Heart-Nature and lacked resilience, unable to endure the constant day-and-night grinding of bones and flesh, ultimately failing under the day-to-day torment of the desperate situation.

Even more children repeatedly lost in arena death matches, their combat power ranking at the very bottom with no progress, and were ultimately flatly eliminated by the strict iron rules.