Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Forge of Pain

The small, dimly lit room they were thrown into was barely wide enough to lie down in, its stone walls cold and damp. The air was thick, suffocating, and the only light came from a small flickering torch just outside the iron bars of their prison door. The silence was broken only by the brothers' ragged breathing, the aftermath of their brutal beating still echoing through their bodies.

Li Jian sat hunched against the wall, his face swollen and bruised, but his eyes burned with anger. Li Xuan lay beside him, blood caked to the corner of his mouth, his chest rising and falling slowly, as if each breath was a struggle. The taste of defeat still lingered in their mouths, but something else simmered beneath it—survival.

For hours, they remained there, left to fester in the pain of their broken bodies. Qi moved sluggishly through them, struggling to repair the damage caused by Bo Xiāo's fists. The silence in the room was oppressive, but neither brother spoke. There was nothing to say. They were prisoners now, bound by chains far stronger than iron.

Days passed—time became a blur of hunger, pain, and silence. Then, the door creaked open.

Bo Xiāo stepped into the room, his massive frame looming over the brothers like a mountain. His cold, calculating gaze swept over them, taking in their battered forms with the detached interest of a hunter inspecting his prey. He didn't bother with formalities.

"You want to survive in this world? To rise?" Bo Xiāo's voice was as sharp as a blade, cutting through the silence. "Then you need to understand what real strength is. Power comes from control, from breaking your body down and rebuilding it with Qi. That's what you'll learn now—whether you survive or not is up to you."

He stepped forward, his boots grinding against the stone floor. "The path to power starts with cultivation. The first stage: Qi Condensation. It's about drawing Qi into your body, controlling it, shaping it. Without this foundation, you're nothing."

Li Xuan's eyes flickered with a dim spark of interest, even through his pain. Li Jian said nothing, but his fists clenched at his sides.

"Qi Condensation has nine levels," Bo Xiāo continued. "By the time you reach the fifth, your body will begin to change. Your muscles, your bones, your very blood will be strengthened by the Qi that flows through you. But getting there—" he grinned, a predatory glint in his eyes—"requires more than just meditation. It requires pain."

He turned and gestured to the doorway, where Xiao Lan, Shi Yong, and Wen Qing stood, their expressions unreadable. "You'll be trained—by them. They will break you. If you survive, you'll be stronger for it."

Li Jian's jaw tightened. "And if we don't?"

Bo Xiāo's smile widened. "Then you'll die. Simple."

The brothers' days became a blur of training. Grueling, relentless, inhuman training that pushed their bodies and minds far beyond their limits. Bo Xiāo's lieutenants wasted no time in tearing them down, pushing them through a brutal regimen designed to break weaker men.

Li Jian's days began at dawn, pulled from his cell and thrown into the training grounds. Wen Qing was there waiting, the scholarly swordsman's eyes gleaming with cruel amusement. He didn't speak much—his blade did the talking. Day after day, Wen Qing drilled Li Jian in the art of the sword, his strikes precise and relentless. Every mistake was met with pain, the flat of Wen Qing's blade smacking against Li Jian's ribs or legs, leaving bruises that Qi could only barely begin to heal.

"Your strength is nothing without precision," Wen Qing would say, his voice calm even as he delivered another punishing blow. "Every swing wastes energy. Refine it."

But it wasn't just the sword. Xiao Lan, savage and wild, took over when Wen Qing's training ended, her hand-to-hand combat brutal and unrelenting. She fought with the ferocity of a beast, her fists heavy, each strike designed to cripple. Li Jian found himself on the ground more often than standing, his body wracked with pain, bones cracking under the force of her blows.

"Get up," Xiao Lan would snarl, her voice dripping with disdain. "Or you'll never survive."

And Li Jian always got up. Each time it took longer, but the fire in his chest never dimmed. He had to survive.

Li Xuan's training was no less punishing, though his tormentors took a different approach. Shi Yong's methods were quiet, insidious—like the poisons he specialized in. He taught Li Xuan the art of alchemy, though the lessons were often accompanied by the subtle threat of death.

"You must learn to control not just your Qi, but the materials around you," Shi Yong would whisper, his thin fingers mixing powders and liquids with the grace of a master. "Alchemy is about balance. Use too much Qi, and the mixture fails. Too little, and it's useless."

But Shi Yong didn't just teach. He tested. Often, Li Xuan was forced to drink or inhale concoctions that would burn through his veins, poisoning him from the inside out. Only by using his Qi to neutralize the toxins could he survive.

"The pain teaches you control," Shi Yong would murmur, his pale face always twisted into a small, cruel smile. "Embrace it."

Then came Xiao Lan, her fists as merciless with Li Xuan as they were with Li Jian. She trained him in hand-to-hand combat, pushing him to the edge of his endurance every single day. Her strikes were calculated, but vicious, and each bruise was a reminder that Qi wasn't just a tool for cultivation—it was survival.

"You're too soft," she would say after each session, standing over him as he gasped for breath, blood dripping from his mouth. "The world doesn't care about your intellect. It cares about strength."

The physical training was torture, but the Qi training was its own brand of suffering. Every night, after their bodies had been beaten and battered, the brothers were forced to sit in meditation, guiding the Qi through their veins, using it to heal the damage inflicted during the day.

The process was agonizing. The Qi didn't flow smoothly at first—it resisted, bucking against their will like a wild animal. Each time they tried to guide it through their broken bodies, it felt like their veins were on fire, their bones grinding under the pressure. But they had no choice. Without Qi, their bodies wouldn't recover fast enough to survive the next day.

As the days turned into weeks, the brothers began to notice the changes. Their muscles, once weak and sore, began to harden. Their bones, once brittle from the abuse, became stronger. Each blow they took hurt less than the one before, each failure in training became a stepping stone to progress.

By the end of the second week, they had reached the third level of Qi Condensation. Their bodies had transformed—stronger, faster, more resilient. They moved with a fluidity that hadn't been there before, their reflexes sharpened by the brutal training. But the toll it took on them was evident in their eyes, now dark and hollow, but filled with a determination that could not be broken.

One night, after another grueling day of training, Li Jian lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling of their small cell. His chest still ached from the beating Xiao Lan had given him earlier, but the pain was dull now, his body already healing.

"You think we'll make it through this?" Li Xuan's voice was quiet, barely audible in the oppressive silence of the room.

Li Jian didn't answer right away, his mind heavy with exhaustion. "We have to," he said finally, his voice rough. "We're stronger now. We'll survive."

Li Xuan turned his head to look at his brother, the faint light from the torch casting shadows over his face. "And then what?"

Li Jian closed his eyes, feeling the Qi flow through his battered body. "Then… we take back what's ours."

The brothers lay in silence, the weight of their situation pressing down on them. They were prisoners in Bo Xiāo's world, but their training—no matter how brutal—was making them stronger. And with each passing day, they could feel it: the power growing within them.

But power came at a cost, and in the Iron Eagle Gang's hideout, that cost was pain.