6 First cultivation steps (3)

There were also advantages to his long farming hours however, not only could he carefully examine what was edible and hence forageable in the evening, the constant toil also worked charms to consolidate his muscular gains and, since he initially did not have the strenght of the other children, he had to substitute it with better tecnique and efficiency, improving both his movement tecnique and his coordination, as well as helping him familiarize himself with handling a variety of tools.

Another task that allowed Huang Mu to develop his body forging was the afternoon woodcutting, being the most inconspicuous new sect member sometimes also had its perks and in this case it allowed him to focus on mastering this one task, contrary to the rest he was rarely asked to run any kind of errand for the first year of his stay in White Valley.

Besides developing his muscular strenght the task provided him with one of the best materials for initial skin strenghtening, wood.

The process was quite brutal and consisted of breaking down the material as finely as possible by constant skin friction, starting with the limbs and proceeding with the rest of the body, while chanting an appropriate mantra to absorb the generated energy and direct it to rebuild the newly strenghtened skin.

Needless to say Huang Mu's early attempts left a series of scars and wounds on his hands and feet until he got the hang of it.

The white skin body forging tecnique had three levels, at the bronze skin level only fast moving sharp objects would be a threat for the cultivator, at the silver skin level only magic weapons and beasts would be able to hurt you, at the gold skin level most attacks from normal cultivators and beasts would be useless, unfortunately silver and gold required specific materials which Huang Mu had no access to at the time, it also took him the better part of a year just to reach the initial bronze stage in any case.

Bone, tendon and internal organs required proficiency in muscular and skin strenghtening to begin with, not to mention a host of ancillary materials making any kind of attempt pointless.

Finally as for Huang Mu's initially most neglected branch from the white foundation tecniques, unarmed combat, he could only practice the basic fist and kick moves it illustrated against the scarecrows in the farming fields or by shadowboxing, trying to fight back against the other kids would have been an extremely unwise idea, not only did they always have the number advantage when bullying him, they were also almost twice his age, not to mention if he by some miracle actually managed to come up on top he would probably face the ire of elder Pin Fan as a reward for such success, definitely a bleak proposition no matter how you slice it.