Chapter 13: Hellish Training (2)

After discussing for nearly 2 hours, Rayden fully understood the principles of his father's training method. He can totally judge that, if he practices according to Richard's method, he will definitely have a more balanced body.

Strength, agility, sensitivity, flexibility, toughness and so on will work together perfectly.

If a craftsman is to do a good job, he shall need good tools. Whilst Rayden trains to have a well balanced body, he will also be practicing offensive skills, fatal skills and the likes. Having good steel, why worry that a good knife cannot be made of it?

Afterwards, the training began…

There is a beautiful round lake 100 meters from log cabin that Richard and Rayden lived in. At this time, Richard was standing at the side of the lake. There was a mechanical pendulum clock beside him. The pendulum clock is a 24 hour one. There are 60 minutes in an hour.

"Quick, swim faster!" Richard coldly shouted at the silhouette in the lake.

A silhouette was swimming nonstop in the round lake. It is Rayden. According to Richard, swimming is an extraordinarily good method for training the body's coordination, flexibility and toughness. Therefore Rayden was ordered to swim nonstop in the lake.

Even though Rayden was very tired at this time, he clenched his teeth and continued to throw his arms forward. His legs also flapped against the water in coordination. He had been swimming 16 round trips. A round trip in this lake is about 150 m in length. Sixteen round trips amount to 2400 meters.

In the past Rayden often swam in the river close to their village. This river was very deep and with constant practice his swimming technique became very good but what he was doing now was nonstop swimming. Moreover, he has to finish within a predetermined limit of time. To Rayden, this is really painful.

His arms and legs are aching. His head is pounding.

Rayden clenched his teeth and persisted. Even though he has reached his limits, he still did not give up.

"Hurry up. A bit faster," Even though Richard was very impressed with his son's strong will power, he still urged Rayden on in an unsentimental manner.

There is a hint of firmness in Rayden's eyes. He stared rigidly ahead. Hearing his father's voice, Rayden constantly urged himself in his mind to speed up. Right at this moment, his pounding headache suddenly eased a bit, and his arms and legs seemed to have strength again. The latent spiritual energy in his body was being extracted and absorbed crazily.

Rayden now felt clearly that a stream of power suddenly came into being in his body. Rayden's eyes have a hint of excitement.

He had overcome his limits again.

He enjoyed this kind of feeling. Every time he transcended his physical limits, a stream of strength was generated again from the deepest part of his already exhausted body. He even felt his body's transformations. That was due to the potential stored up in the deepest part of his body.

"All right, you're two minutes late." Richard looked at the pendulum clock and said indifferently.

Rayden came ashore with a lot of difficulty. At this moment he could no longer move. His arms, in particular, were basically unable to move and his legs are aching severely. In this state, he was basically gasping for breath, trying his best to take in fresh air and to make himself recover a bit faster.

"You're two minutes late. As punishment, now you're going to run to the midpoint of this mountain from here then squat down deeply empty-handed 100 times on the training ground of the garden." Richard immediately dictated.

"Run to the midpoint of this mountain from here? But …" Rayden became breathless and speechless. He looked at his father in disbelief. At this moment he felt that his legs could basically not run even though he had broken through his limits a short while ago. But Richard just really told him to run and then do 100 deep squats.

"You have something to say?" asked Richard flatly as he realized his son's gaze.

"Yes, I have. Surpassing the body's limits can train the body. But if surpassing them too much, my body will collapse. I feel that I already surpassed my limits. At this moment I can't continue training anymore. Teacher, when I was swimming just now, I experienced those limits twice in a row. I don't feel I can go through the limits once more." Rayden looked straight at his father and pleaded.

Richard said indifferently: "I'm the teacher. My orders must be obeyed. If you think that my training has any problems and don't like to train, you can stop and we'll leave here immediately. I wouldn't care about lazy disciples like you."

Rayden's expression slightly changed. Then he casted a look at Richard, took a deep breath and tried hard to urge his legs into running. When he took the first step, his legs began to swell up and ache terribly. But after running for a while, the legs got stronger and stronger instead.

"Oh, what is this?" Rayden is astonished.

At his back, Richard smiled faintly and thought: "This brat. How can't I determine your true limits? When you were swimming, you used your arms much more than your legs. The muscles of the legs are basically more developed than those of the arms. Since your arms could persist, your legs can at least undergo another round of training."

As soon as he remembered that Rayden just criticized his method, Richard is even more amused.

"This brat," he laughed, shook his head and kept following Rayden.

After the day of training, Rayden was so exhausted that he couldn't properly walk back to the cabin. He began to wonder if every day will be like this. At this time, he was being carried back by Richard.

There were a total of three log cabins: apart from the master and his apprentice's log cabins, there was also another one Richard never went in. Upon entering the log cabin, a dense hot steam could be seen coming out.

In this wooden cabin interior could be seen a rock with a pool dug out around. To say it accurately, it should be the pool that was here first, and then this log cabin was built around.

The water of the pool was overflowing. The water inside the pool was brown colored, numerous medicines floating inside. At this time Rayden who was so exhausted had fallen asleep in Richard's arms so he quickly stripped off Rayden's clothes, carefully putting his body inside of the pool. Only the part above his nose was outside of the pool.

The hot spring here was, in fact, dug by Richard, but Rayden, still in a coma, didn't know this. In the pool's water, he was soaked into these medical materials that had a value that even 1, 000,000 berries could not compare with.

The sunlight was gradually disappearing, leaving room for the dim light of the night and, unknowingly, it was already dusk.

"Aah, it really hurts!" Rayden shouted, waking up from his coma while being soaked in the hot spring.

His body moved, but naturally it could not keep its balance. The water in the pool wasn't deep, but he drank some and just spat it out. From the pool, a loud 'cough' sound could be heard.

"Where am I?" Rayden ignorantly looked at the surrounding steam and the water around him. The intense pain he originally had was already all gone and, except from the fact that his whole body was completely cleaned and naked, he felt completely natural.

Opening the door and holding clothes, Richard entered from outside.

"Wear these clothes and come out." after letting out a simple sentence, he left again.

Rayden came out from the water, a bit confused, grabbing a towel on his side before putting clean clothes on. Then, he thought back about the events that happened today.

Remembering the severe pain he had at that moment, he couldn't help but shiver intensely. At that time, he relied entirely on his will power to bear it, but thinking back about this, he felt once more the severe pain of that moment.

As he pushed the door, he discovered that he was in the third log cabin and entering into the middle cabin, he discovered a rich meal arranged on the table.

"Come and eat." Richard acted as if nothing had happened, pointing to the meal on the table and starting to eat.

Looking at his teacher, Rayden haltingly spoke: "Teacher, I… …"

He was really embarrassed that he had fallen asleep in his teacher's hands.

"Come and eat first." Richard looked at him with a stern gaze.

Rayden didn't dare say anything else and hurried to sit down and to start eating as if he hadn't eaten anything for a long time. He was especially hungry tonight; his appetite was three times more than usual. Except from the little portion Rayden ate, in a little while, Rayden had eaten everything edible on the table.

"Tell me how you felt today." Richard didn't let him tidy up the table yet, calmly inquiring.

"It was very painful. But this training was very helpful as it helped me break through my limits continuously" Rayden sincerely answered.

"You did very well today." Richard coldly spoke: "But this was only the beginning. Come out with me and take your wooden swords along."

"Okay."

The master and its apprentice left the wooden cabin, arriving at the summit of the mountain.

A similar wooden sword appeared in Richard's hand, "The sword is known as the king of weapons. It can attack as well as defend. If you want to defend others, you have to be able to defend yourself first. Now, I am going to teach you a set of techniques. Look carefully."

The wooden sword moved. Letting out some afterimages, these sword rays that looked so unreal shone on the summit of the mountain. Sentences accompanied these sword rays, unceasingly entering into Rayden's ear. Today, his hellish practice had just begun.

A whole seven days passed. At this time, Richard instructed every day to Rayden, various subjects; astronomy, geography, navigation and history were included. Astonishing he was also taught how to read Ancient Text. it was really surprising that Richard could read and interpret this language very well. On the next day, there would be an examination about the course of the day before, but to Rayden, it was the happiest moment of the day.

In the afternoon, hell began. The limit training which pushed his body to its limits would continue. This inhumane pain made Rayden almost want to die, but every time his heart thought of giving up, Richard would remind him that he would be able to go home when he reached a certain level.

Every time, he trained until the moment he would faint, and once he woke up, he would find himself in the middle of the hot springs, with the pain already gone. After dinner, practice started over: Richard passed some skills to Rayden and let him do mechanical memorising to learn a few things. Only when the night was very late would the day of training end.

The most painful thing for Rayden was the fact that Richard didn't permit him to sleep. When it was late at night, as he was completely exhausted, Richard taught him a meditation technique which he was supposed to practice when he was most exhausted. According to Richard this technique would help him restore his energy faster. He realised that this meditation method had a similar effect to the Nine Heavens mental cultivation skill but was far worse in quality. So after only a day, he switched and practised the Nine Heavens Mental Cultivation and Body Cultivation technique every evening. And in the morning, Richard's sword would hit him, without a doubt, to wake him up.


To be Cont...

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