Training

"Wake up!".

Ice cold water attacked Aryan's sleeping body, shocking his senses into instant alertness, "What the fu-".

It had been two months since Aryan had woken up in an old man's house, traumatized, afraid, and unable to think straight, he had improved a lot now, he was able to enjoy life a little bit again, although that was not to say that there wasn't an unrivaled fury, begging for release under that fragile, cheeky smile. Most of this was thanks to the old man whose roof he was living under, he was a mysterious man who Aryan knew little about, only that he lived in the forest not too far from Yandiroo and he was on the way to the village market for food when he heard Aryan's screams, only to find him in a pool of his own blood so he decided to help. Since then the old man had fed, sheltered, and cared for Aryan, for which he is eternally grateful, today, however, was slightly different than usual though, after being shocked awake by the frigid water the laughing man told Aryan to get ready and meet him outside, soon Aryan as cleaned and ready and went outside only to see the normally joyous old man was unnaturally serious, "Have you heard of Cultivators?", the term 'Cultivators' tore through his mind, horrific memories played on repeat, seeing a tear fall from the tranced Aryan, the old man sighed, "I see, so that what happened.", the old man's words awakened Aryan from his despondence, he quickly wiped away the tears and replied, "I have.". "Well then, I have an important question for you, do you wish to become one such being.", Aryans pupils constricted, his brain whirred into motion, untold amounts of thoughts passed by, but only a single word escaped his mouth, a word that signed the death of a being hundreds of miles away.

"Yes."

Seeing the pure, unadulterated determination in Aryans' eyes, a light smile that shined with excitement for the future appeared on the old man's wrinkled face. "Good. First things first, let's test your level of talent. You see everyone has a talent for cultivation, whether it's high or low talent is a different matter but everyone has it, and the manifestation of that talent is a spirit seed, with the size of your spirit seed showing the level of your talent. Although none of that matters until you reach the absorption stage, first you must go through the body perfection stage, where you bring your body to the limit. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let us begin then, the first stage is Skin Strengthening, it's the most simple stage and requires only one action, constant beating", "Wha-", the old man's hardwood cane came down upon Aryan with the force of a whip, "AHHHH!STO-", before Aryan could finish his sentence, the cane came down again and again and again, but seeing his words would mean nothing to the cruel man he stopped shouting, he just stood there, taking each individual hit with a stone face, Aryan wasn't stupid, he knew this had something to do with that so-called, 'Skin Strengthening', and this sort of pain was little in comparison to the heinous torture he previously experienced. He stood there for hours, dusk soon arrived, at this point the old man had whipped every inch of his body, leaving him weak, sore, and exhausted, until finally, the old man stopped, "Whew, that was a good exercise, well, anyway follow be back inside.", Aryan, now collapsed on the floor from unbearable fatigue, let a tear of regret flow from his eye, 'I should have said no.', he then began to drag his damaged body, inch by inch, across the dirt floor, towards the building.

It took Aryan an hour to finally reach his room, and when he finally opened the dilapidated door, he saw the old man by a barrel full of an unknown green liquid that let off hot steam, "Get in.", sighing, Aryan dragged his body over to the barrel and climbed in under much difficulty, soon a cold refreshing feeling covered his body, sending a shiver of pleasure down his spine that caused a moan to escape his lips, with this came a moment of clarity that led to a shocking thought, 'How was the old man able to swing his cane for 12 hours straight without tire?', however, his fatigue and comfort led him into a deep sleep before he could think any further.

The sun warming rays had just risen above the horizon, a melancholy chirping sounded from the trees, "WAKE UP!", a resounding shout, followed by a crisp slap, disturbed the surrounding forest and shocked the sleeping Aryan, he quickly shot up and out of the murky bath, "Wha-, what's going on!", "It's time for another day of training.", replied the old man with an innocent smile. Aryans' life repeated like this, Wake up, eat, go through torture, have a bath, and repeat, he wondered if this so-called strengthening was even useful since the pain of getting hit never lessened, but he must say that the bath prepared for him left him rejuvenated and repaired for the next day of 'training', he had asked what was inside of the bath only to get told it was his 'secret concoction' so seeing it was unlikely he was going to get a truthful response, he stopped asking. Life continued like this for about a month and a half, when one day he woke up as usual in the bath but this time the usually murky liquid was clear, and although he didn't know what it meant, it seemed to be a sign for the old man to start the next stage of Body Perfecting - Muscle Strengthening.

"Alright. Now that you have finished Skin Strengthening, next up is the aptly named Muscle Strengthening stage, this will require you to train your muscles to the peak, this is done through intense training, so let's start easy with a 10 km run followed by 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats a 10-minute plank and we will end it with balance training.", the old man listed this heinous routine with an innocent smile, reciprocated with a depressed sigh from Aryan. Much like the Skin Strengthening stage, the day of training was ended with a bath, but this time the liquid was an azure colour rather than the previous emerald, the days continued like this, and with each passing day the training got harder (by about 10%) and to his dismay, the recuperating baths were only once every two days meaning, sometimes he would have to train with an already agonized body, however with this training he felt his strength slowly increasing, unlike the previous stage where, although he knew something was different it wasn't as quantifiable as the increase in his strength from this stage. Aryan continued his training for another month and a half with each days training being 10% harder than the last and at the end, he was able to do a 1,000km run without rest, 10,000 sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and a 23 hour long plank as well as being able to complete the old mans 'Balance Training' , which consisted of Aryan having to walk across a tightrope about 3 meters high and 15 meters longs and having rocks, sticks and sometimes logs thrown at him, and should he fall, he would have to deal with the pain and start again, only being able to sleep after completing the course without getting hit more than 3 times. Over time the course became harder and harder, until up to this point where he would have hundreds of items thrown at him constantly for the 100 meter long tightrope walk without getting even stroked by an item once. He was much stronger than before, but not even he knew the true extent of his strength.