4 First cultivation steps

Mastery levels of the various movement tecniques and the requirements for each level were defined in the book, in most cases initial understanding was achieved when all the moves had been learned. Proficency, the second level, required flawless integration in real time depending on the situation, advanced necessitated the user to internalize the moves thanks to countless repetitions, removing the need to think about what to do and greatly improving execution speed, at the mastery stage the moves themselves lost meaning and formed a complete whole adaptation pattern, in particular all kinds of variations not described in the book but useful in a given situation would naturally be executed by the user.

Huang Mu still had a nebulous understanding of the fifth level, but from what he gleaned that was the ability to create new movements based on the user's understanding, something he was far from able to achieve.

Huang Mu was however reasonably confident that he had achieved the third level, advanced, in all facets and in the ones he practiced the most, like dodging and creating quick bursts of speed he had likely touched the boundary of the mastery level.

His ability to "cowardly slink away" as the rest of the kids called it, had earned him a few nicknames along the way, but to Huang Mu they were more like badges of pride, it showed that the rest of the pack had to resort to verbal bullying now that physical violence proved too difficult to achieve.

Another path where he made great strides early on was body forging. Luckily the valley transfers happened in the spring and the temperatures were reasonably high even after dusk. Huang Mu learned during his first week that bunking with the rest of the kids was a quick road to suicide, especially after the episode where he got badly beaten, as he later learned probably on behalf of elder Pin, and his lucky recovery thanks to the mercy of the passing elder, he decided to take matters in his own hands and try sleeping outside.

The white body forging foundation tecnique was comprised of a set of exercises to strenghten the user's muscles, skin, bones, tendons and finally internal organs.

Muscle strenghtening emphasised on one hand muscle flexibility through a series of stretches mimicking beasts, namely the elephant bend over, the crocodile plank, the bear walk, the tiger pose and the hippo tuck, to be perfomed before and after exercising and on the other a series of strenghtening compound movements like pull-ups, push-ups, dips, squats and deadlifts.

Huang Mu discovered a crooked, holed giant trunk close to the food storage and the start of the woods at one end of the valley and made it his home. It was hard however for him at first to sleep alone and close to the possible danger coming from the occasional roaming beast, he installed a very basic noise alarm system at the entrance of the trunk which would hopefully wake him up in case of an invasion and used the full muscle strenghtening routine to completely exhaust himself every night in order to forget about the situation and sleep.