Fifty miles above the Planetary Core Chamber, in the center of Dry-Well Metropolis, stood Dry-Well Public Elementary & Cultivation School #1.
Out on the wide green sports field, ten thousand eight-year-old children—human kids in neat blue school uniforms, fluffy-eared wolf pups from the Southern Steppes, little pink-cheeked mermaid kids sitting in wheeled water-tubs, and ten-foot-tall Frost-Giant toddlers—were lined up for their afternoon Furnace-Blood Breathing Class.
Standing on the wooden podium at the front of the field was Old Village Head Zhao—the hunched old man who had leaned on a crooked date-wood cane three years ago when Dry-Well Village only had thirty-five mud huts—alongside his big-boned grandson Zhao Tiezhu.
Today, Old Man Zhao wasn’t hunched anymore. Thanks to three years of Sweet-Spring Water, Meat-Belly Potatoes, and the Furnace-Blood Scripture, the seventy-year-old village elder had thick black hair, a ruddy face, and the solid cultivation of a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster.
Still, as Old Man Zhao watched the children practice their punches, he couldn’t help letting out a small sigh.
“Look at Little Tiger and those farmer kids in the third row, Tiezhu,” Old Man Zhao said softly to his grandson. “They work so hard every day, and Lord Pei’s fused manual lets them train their iron bones up to Rank 3 Peak using blood-heat. But because nine out of ten mortal children on our planet are born with blocked, withered Spirit Roots, breaking through the wall from Rank 3 (Martial Grandmaster) into Rank 4 (Immortal Qi Gathering) still takes ten…
