Both martial arts and spells require their users to have a minimum of proficiency in spiritual energy manipulation as well as having comprehended and grasped how the martial art or spell works. Spells were primarily used by spirit cultivators and, just like martial arts, their users needed to comprehend the spell to be able to execute it. 

 

However, unlike spells, martial arts additionally demanded its user to maintain a certain level of understanding regarding their own body. To know how much strength they could exert, the amount of hits they could take, how much energy they still held and more. All of this was necessary for any body cultivator who wanted to go far on the path of body cultivation. Although not the sole reason, this was the main cause for why Chen Huang’s attack did so little damage to the golem. 

First of all, even though he had believed to have done enough, it was now clear he had not studied the martial art as much as he should have. In addition, his understanding of his own body needed to be greatly improved as it was currently only at the level of a mortal veteran soldier. Although this sounds like he is very experienced, when compared to other body cultivators, it is actually severely lacking.

 

Chen Huang was unable to dodge the golem’s strikes. In less than a second, a hundred gaping holes appeared on his body. The perfectly cut holes looked like someone had used a cookie cutter to remove pieces of his body. Naturally, as soon as they arrived, his body also began regenerating. The flesh from the sides of the punctures grew, twisted and weaved together to fix the multiple holes. Yet the golem did not relent and threw punch after punch forcing Chen Huang to stay on his toes as he attempted to dodge the hits.

 

With the help of his physique, Chen Huang was able to match the golem. However, since he knew his master would not let this fight end until he defeated the golem solely through his martial art, he couldn’t use his physique’s golden aura to boost his performance. 

 

Chen Huang took multiple blows which were just as soon healed. Feeling his flesh tear before being reconstructed, Chen Huang became more and more aware of his body. The golem lunged at him, appearing as a green blur. It feinted a left jab causing Chen Huang to instinctively raise his arms to block. Having fallen for the trick, the golem promptly stopped with his jab and swung its right leg into the sky. Its leg struck his exposed throat, brutally crushing his larynx and propelling him to land on his back. The golem’s leg did not stop and continued, causing the golem to do a backwards flip before landing onto Chen Huang’s stomach.

 

“Cough! Cough!”

 

Its legs had plunged into his stomach inevitably causing Chen Huang to cough out in a pained and raspy voice. Before even letting his throat and abdomen regenerate, the golem launched another fist into his stomach. It subsequently released a second fist and very swiftly went into a second downward rapid succession of punches. Chen Huang felt his body being smashed into a pulp, regenerating then being ground up again by the golem’s hits. 

 

Surprisingly, as Chen Huang was being crushed, he began to perceive his body on a deeper and more profound level. His muscles that would subconsciously contract before every hit, his bones and heart which produced his unique golden blood full of immense vitality, his cells that were being stimulated by the golden blood to rapidly divide to heal any injuries and even his very brain which was conducting all of these thoughts right now. 

 

And as he learns more about his body and its functions, the previously impenetrable and unavoidable assault of the golem started revealing some minor flaws. The next time that the golem prepared to punch him, Chen Huang managed to detect a flaw in his attack. Using that error, Chen Huang rolled to the side and sprung back upright. Once his feet touched the ground, he punched the golem with his right fist, which inflicted little damage to it. 

 

The fight restarted again except that this time Chen Huang didn’t even bother to escape its strikes and instead simply took the blows, knowing fully well that he would recover from them, or retaliated by meeting the golem’s fist with his fist. No matter how much he got injured nor how much pain he experienced, Chen Huang continued with his pummeling. 

 

This caused the fight to stagnate as both opponents launched hit after hit in rapid succession. The auras that emanated from their bodies became increasingly intense to the point that it whipped up a small tornado with them at the center and caused their punches to emit resounding shockwaves that spread throughout the room.

 

Lei Huang looked at his disciple whose clothes were drenched in his blood. Strangely, despite the tornado in front of them, the elder was completely unaffected. In fact, all winds that entered a certain radius around him were forcibly reduced to becoming a gentle and still breeze. 

 

Upon seeing Chen Huang’s rapid and nimble movements as well as his blows becoming more and more powerful, he let out a small smile. ‘It’s working.’ Chen Huang’s main path was focused on body cultivation despite him having an incredible spiritual root due to his abnormal body. 

 

Since body practitioners mainly used martial arts, as a replacement for spells, which required the cultivator to understand not only their martial art but also their body; it was incredibly important to have a sufficient amount of understanding about their body. 

 

To heighten their control over their organic body, most body cultivators would spend years fighting and even later on sometimes go on a pilgrimage into the wild to train their mastery similar to the one undertaken by spirit cultivators. This was all done to temper the person’s comprehension of their body. 

 

However, for Chen Huang who held the Sacred Eternal Heart physique, there was a shortcut available. When a person is at the brink of death, their soul will stimulate the body’s natural spiritual energy out of fear which provides the person. This produces what many mortals call a ‘last struggle.’ The importance of this lies in the fact that during this brief burst of power, a person will gain a more profound and intimate understanding regarding their body. 

 

Of course, this method would require one to reside on the edge of life and death numerous times and would inevitably take a long time. But for certain people, like a cultivator with a practically immortal body, this method is the most suitable assuming it doesn’t break their mind in the process.

 

Chen Huang dodged the golem’s hits while executing a counterattack here and there. The golem’s fist suddenly increased without warning and brushed past his face, tearing off his ear. Chen Huang experienced a sharp pain where his left ear should be. He endured through it, though, and when the golem threw another hit at him he took that time to leap backwards. The golem failed to hit his target which allowed Chen Huang to quickly get back into the necessary stance required for the martial art.

 

Chen Huang released his spiritual energy into his body. He steered it all into the three center fingers of his right hand as the dragons from before reappeared and hovered above their respective fingers. He quickly utilized the martial art to injure the golem. He repeated its execution over and over.

 

One time

Two times

Three times

...

Thirty times

 

Chen Huang was like a madman as he recklessly spent his spiritual energy while executing the same martial art over and over again. Each time that he performed the martial art, his heightened sense over his body would notice slight irregularities or obstacles in its own execution. If he guided his spiritual energy to these muscles, it would produce more power. Contracting these tendons at the right time would grant him more speed while doing it. And so, his proficiency in the martial art as well as his comprehension and control over his body were improving with every strike.

 

The golem, on the other hand, was completely on the defensive as it furiously attempted to block Chen Huang’s attacks. Its once sturdy green rock body was covered with claw marks and it seemed like it wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer.

 

Lei Huang calmly watched as Chen Huang repeatedly performed the Three-Clawed Dragon Art on the golem. 

 

‘Hm, he managed to catch that flaw... but it seems that he overlooked that one.’ He thought to himself as he watched Chen Huang correcting the mistakes that he’d discovered in the martial art. The Three-Clawed Dragon Art was a flawed martial art to begin with. It was produced by a mortal realm cultivator in the past. It wasn’t until an immortal cultivator noticed its potential and developed the complete martial art, the Five-Clawed Dragon Art that the art began to display its proper power. This was also one of the reasons that Chen Huang’s attacks were not doing much damage. 

 

However, as Chen Huang perceived his body on a more profound level, his movements became more graceful while his strength and proficiency with the martial art increased and he began to overpower the golem. 

 

“If you are unfit to slay your opponent, do not blame your tools but rather your inability to utilize them.” Lei Huang recited the famous phrase of a past body cultivator who was known for his mastery in weapons of any kind.

 

Slash!

 

A turning point in the battle had finally arrived as Chen Huang had managed to cut off the golem’s right arm forcing it to leap backwards for safety. Chen Huang smirked a bit at this scene. Shockingly, the golem seemed to have noticed his smug face and it extended both of its arms with its palms facing Chen Huang. 

 

A green energy that was strikingly similar to his master’s appeared between his palms. With an intensifying glow from his eyes, the energy squirmed and twisted into the shape of a grand and mighty mountain. The mountain emitted an aura of earth and firmness. The golem pushed his palms forwards and the mountain moved to be right above Chen Huang’s head. 

 

He assumed the mountain would attack him and raised his arms to defend only to discover that he was unable to move his arms or any part of his body. This was unlike his master’s restraints and felt closer to him having an enormous weight on him that prevented him from any movement whatsoever. He quickly realized that this situation was most likely caused by the image of the green mountain above his head. The golem used Chen Huang’s immobility to land a strike on him.

 

A bit further away, Lei Huang exposed a curious face for a second. When he constructed his spiritual creation, he had also materialised a gem of crystallized knowledge within its head that would allow it to perform more complex movements than the average golem. In addition, he infused the required knowledge for the ‘Immovable Mountain’ spell into the gem in case it was unable to fight back and would need to halt Chen Huang’s movements. 

 

To begin with, he had never intended for his disciple to defeat the golem and was solely using it to improve his awareness regarding his body, his combat intuition as well as deepening his understanding of not just the Three-Clawed Dragon art but martial arts in general. 

 

Although he knew that with the Sacred Eternal Heart physique, Chen Huang would definitely be able to overcome opponents with a difference in strength similar to that of the golem; He also knew Chen Huang was at the moment incapable of drawing out its maximum potential. As a matter of fact, by doing this training, Chen Huang was also learning how to better control his physique. But that wasn’t why Lei Huang suddenly became curious, the reason for his curiosity was his direct knowledge of what was about to happen.

 

Chen Huang failed to intentionally avoid the uppercut from the golem and its fist drove into the area underneath his chin. The impact naturally produced a strong force that carried Chen Huang upwards. Yet Chen Huang did not despair and instead shifted his body to be in a nosedive position. Then he, once again, properly guided his spiritual energy to perform the martial art. 

 

Regrettably, he could feel the immaterial mountain obstructing the movement of his spiritual energy. It was at this moment that the runic symbols on his bones and around his heart glowed as an image of a golden beating heart overlapped with the mountain. The golden heart gave off intense waves of vitality that shook the green mountain. The sacred aura of life that was emitted by the golden heart spread into the green mountain causing it to flicker as its effect was reduced by a large margin.

 

The three illusory dragons appeared once more but this time they seemed more compact and material than in the previous instances. Instead of slashing downward, Chen Huang thrusted the three dragons into the golem’s head. 

 

Rooaaarrr!!!

 

The dragons let out sound-shattering roars and fiercely drilled into its head. They wildly thrashed around inside the head until they discovered a green gem, no bigger than an acorn, which they promptly destroyed. Now that the gem was gone, the light in the golem’s eyes dimmed and its body slumped to the ground. With its creator deceased, the green mountain also faded away. Chen Huang lay on the ground, exhausted and tired.

 

Suddenly and without warning, his master’s face appeared in his eyesight. His master bore a impassive face as he gradually opened his mouth to talk, “Well, you did beat it with your martial art even if you had to use your heavenly physique to be able to use it.”

 

“Grrraaaa!”

 

Jin Long’s face appeared upside-down as he licked the entirety of his face. Lei Huang manipulated his spiritual energy to carry Chen Huang to his feet.

 

“Ohhhhhh,” Chen Huang exclaimed as he was combating the dizziness. Jin Long was currently residing on his head with his tail draped over his back. 

 

“If master will accept, I would appreciate being able to return to my private room.” Although Chen Huang was physically fine, he was mentally dead from this grueling session. 

 

Seeing his disciple’s drooping shoulders and being wonderfully pleased with his performance today, Lei Huang nodded approvingly at his question. Chen Huang was instantly relieved at the favorable response and left while his body unconsciously swayed from side to side naturally prompting Lei Huang to give his disciple a slightly concerned look. 

 

Nevertheless, Lei Huang would also not stop disciplining him for the next few days. For a banquet with all of the other Peak Lords and their personal disciples, he would desperately need to significantly increase his personal knowledge and overall power.