Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 42 Dual-Track Cultivation

When the alarm clock rang at 4:30 a.m., Su Xinpei felt like he had only just closed his eyes. He lay in bed staring at the crack in the ceiling for a moment, then sat up, pulled on his sweatpants, and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. The water was very cold, and the splash made his scalp tingle, washing away most of the remaining sleepiness. His eyelids were still a little swollen in the mirror, but his eyes were already wide awake. He dried his face with a towel, put on his running shoes, and went out the door.

At 4:30 a.m., the sky over the lower part of Ironthorn City was still dark. Streetlights flickered on intermittently, their glow obscured by dust, casting a hazy glow on the cracks and potholes in the road. A damp, coal-ash smell mingled with the rust and salty odor drifting from the distant port. Su Xinpei did a few stretches on the steps outside his apartment building, then began to run. His morning run route was fixed—starting from the east side of the old Beihe district, heading north along the back alley of the vegetable market, passing the abandoned water pump station, circling the playground of resettlement site number seven, and then circling back from the tenement building, a total distance of about two kilometers. Previously, he would be out of breath after running this route, but now, after mastering his muscle-strengthening techniques, his cardiovascular endurance and leg muscle strength had improved significantly. He finished the two kilometers without losing his breath, only slightly sweating on his back. Upon returning, he stood in the center of the apartment's living room, feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, spine straight, arms crossed over his chest—a standing meditation stance. The warmth at the Guanyuan acupoint came almost instantly when he closed his eyes, rising along the Ren meridian, splitting into two streams at the chest, flowing over the shoulders, and returning to the perineum along both sides of the spine. One complete cycle of the body's energy circulation took about ten minutes; he usually stood for a full hour, and today was no exception. After finishing his standing meditation, he took his old military tactical vest from the hook behind the door, put it over his T-shirt, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed towards the Iron Bone Hall.

The courtyard of Tiegutang was deserted in the morning. Old Tie Tou was still sleeping inside—since injuring his left forearm, he'd been waking up later than usual; Associate Physician Liu said it was a side effect of the antiparasitic serum, causing drowsiness. Su Xinpei didn't wake him, instead practicing his boxing stance in the center of the courtyard. He performed the Eighteen Hands form three times, from the opening stance to the closing stance, each time standing still and performing it again at an extremely slow pace—slow boxing was a rule set by Old Tie Tou: fast movements were for control, slow movements were for effortless mastery. After finishing, he took off his vest and hung it on an old nail, went to the corner to pour himself a cup of cold tea, drank it all in one gulp, then slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed to work at the neighborhood office. As he left, the old man selling roasted sweet potatoes at the alley entrance had just set up his stall, the sweet aroma of roasted sweet potatoes wafting in the morning breeze. He bought a small one and put it in his coat pocket, eating it as he walked.

This is Su Xinpei's morning routine now. A dual-track system. The first track is traditional martial arts—morning running, stance training, and boxing forms, gradually tightening his body from the relaxed state of sleep. The second track is the neighborhood committee office—sitting at his desk at eight o'clock, turning on the computer, stamping documents, answering phones, mediating disputes, and organizing files, gradually relaxing his body from the martial arts practitioner's state until it's just enough to handle the neighborhood committee aunties and complaints about minimum living allowances, no more, no less. He's maintained this dual-track life for several weeks now, making it his norm after emerging from seclusion at the Iron Bone Hall.

He didn't go to the cafeteria during his lunch break. His office colleagues had all gone downstairs for lunch; the fluorescent lights were still flickering, the printer sat quietly in the corner, and the water dispenser's red light was on. Su Xinpei took out a lunchbox from his drawer—leftover rice from last night and a spoonful of pickled vegetables—microwaved it for a few minutes, and then ate it while flipping through documents at his workstation. He was working on updating the emergency supplies reserve ledger for the lower district—the supplies consumed at resettlement site No. 7 during the rift crisis needed to be reported. Old Sun had sent the list yesterday, and he had to check each item before entering it into the municipal supplies management system. A compressed biscuit purchase order and a rune consumables requisition form were tucked together in the same ledger; he had placed a yellow sticky note between the two pages as a marker. Halfway through his rice, Aunt He came out of the inner room to pour water. Passing his workstation, she glanced at the densely packed ledgers and spreadsheets on his computer screen and said, "Xiao Su, you've lost weight lately." Su Xinpei chewed his rice and said, "Aunt He, I haven't lost any weight." Aunt He ignored him, placed a cup of hot soy milk on his desk, and turned back to the inner room. Su Xinpei picked up the soy milk and took a sip—it wasn't instant; he had ground it himself and added sugar. He placed the soy milk next to his lunchbox and silently bowed to Aunt He in his heart.

After finishing get off work in the afternoon, he left the neighborhood office on time and rode a shared bicycle to Tiegutang. Wu Xiong was already there, squatting in the corner mending the tattered sandbag—this time the side was torn, the canvas had been punched through by Wu Xiong's fist, leaving a fist-sized hole, and sand was spilling all over the ground. Old Tie Tou sat in a rattan chair and scolded him for "not knowing how to control his strength," to which Wu Xiong grinned and said, "I don't control it so I can hit people." Su Xinpei changed his shoes and walked to the center of the courtyard to begin his evening training.

From 7 to 8 pm was sparring. He sparred with Wu Xiong. Wu Xiong's punches were heavier than before—he had trained his explosive power for several months under Lao Tietou's guidance, and his punching speed was faster than Su Xinpei's. However, Su Xinpei's ability to withstand blows was now vastly different. After mastering the Tendon Refining Technique, the density of his forearm fascia had more than doubled. Wu Xiong's punches hit his forearm so hard that his own hand hurt, and he cursed Su Xinpei, saying he was as tough as iron. Su Xinpei didn't retort; he simply blocked Wu Xiong's punch, then sidestepped and delivered a sleeve strike, pushing Wu Xiong several steps away. Wu Xiong rubbed his shoulder and asked, "What kind of strength is this?" Su Xinpei replied, "It's from practicing standing meditation."

At nine o'clock in the evening, the sparring session ended. Su Xinpei returned to his apartment from the Iron Bone Hall, took a shower, changed into a dry old T-shirt, and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn't lie down—the evening training wasn't over yet. It was time for Dan Dao (internal alchemy). He closed his eyes, pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, placed his hands on his knees, and began fetal breathing. His breathing gradually decreased from about twelve breaths per minute to about six, and then continued to drop—five, four. The breath no longer entered and exited through his mouth and nose, but seeped in and out of his dantian on its own. The warm area below his navel settled steadily in place, forming an extremely thin heat line between the deep abdomen and the Mingmen point. He maintained fetal breathing for an hour, and when he finished, he glanced at the panel: his experience points in standing meditation had increased slightly, and his proficiency in fetal breathing visualization had also increased slightly. The simultaneous increase of both was not a coincidence—the concentration developed through standing meditation directly translated into the efficiency of fetal breathing, and the sinking breath in fetal breathing, in turn, made the depth of the circulation in the body during standing meditation more stable. The two techniques share the same focus interface at the underlying level, allowing him to advance both progress bars simultaneously with just one training session. This is something the panel won't tell him—the panel only records individual experience points, but the causal relationship between those experience points needs to be discovered by himself. He's already filled almost two pages of his notepad with notes about this synchronization phenomenon, preparing to ask Master Chen about it next time he sees him.

After the initial breathing exercise, the last task of the night was an introduction to Western runes. He took out a booklet from his briefcase—"Basic Rune Structure (Southern Alliance Military Research Institute Public Edition)," an internal publication of the Special Meteorology Bureau. The cover was stamped with a red "Internal Document - Not for Distribution" seal. The content had been abridged, with key technical parameters blacked out, but the basic theoretical section was complete. This booklet had been lent to him by Wang Shu, who said the abridged version was sufficient for beginners, while the complete version required a higher level of security clearance. Su Xinpei spread the booklet out on the table and turned to Chapter Two, "The Relationship Between Rune Stability and Geometric Structure." Several basic rune shapes were drawn on the pages—trident, hexagram, and concentric circles, each with its corresponding energy capacity and application range marked next to it. The text was dry and uninspired, as if it had been directly ripped from a technical manual, offering no explanation of why these shapes could carry primordial matter. Su Xinpei stumbled through the text for about twenty minutes, repeatedly examining the geometric figures. Finally, he sketched a few diagrams on his notepad, marking the range of parameters for capacity and stability. There was a certain complementarity between the runes and the trembling mechanism of tendon refining—the physical precision of tendon refining allowed his hands to be as steady as a fine machine, unaffected by tremors; this was the same ability he had developed while helping Aunt He organize files. Meanwhile, the slight energy leakage in the rune structure was precisely sensed by his nascent form of Qi cultivation. The two abilities ran parallel at the underlying level—his document classification and memorization skills, honed repeatedly over three years at the street office, were now feeding back into his rune learning in a way he had never anticipated.

At one in the morning, he closed the booklet and turned off the desk lamp. Lying in bed, his mind was still swirling with the relationship between the trident diagram and the practice of strengthening tendons and trembling energy. He lay awake in the darkness, recalling the pulsation in his Yongquan acupoints on the soles of his feet during his morning standing meditation, the cup of hot soy milk Aunt He had left on his desk during his lunch break, the expression on Wu Xiong's face when he pushed him out in the evening, and the sinking heat in his dantian during his embryonic breathing earlier. He switched back and forth between these four tracks every day—traditional martial arts, alchemy, runes, and the local government—but today he suddenly realized that these four tracks were not parallel. They converged on the same foundation, and that foundation was his own body. He closed his eyes; the warmth in his Guanyuan acupoint was still there, expanding and contracting very lightly and steadily. He had to get up at four-thirty tomorrow.