Chapter 3469: Meng Bai’s Hellish Training The journey between worlds was rarely peaceful. This time, it was worse. The teleportation array hurled them into a long chain of spatial relays prepared by the Immortal Court and reinforced by the Martial Fist King Sect. Even so, traversing that distance required weeks of drifting through layered teleportations channels that crossed pocket spaces, and sealed transit domains that could only be used by the Immortal Court. Time itself felt distorted, stretching and compressing in strange ways. For Meng Bai, it became six months of hell that he had willingly invited. From the very first day after departure, Meng Bai imposed a brutal routine upon himself. There were no excuses. No delays. No "tomorrow." Every single day began with cultivation before the others even woke. He would sit cross legged inside the cultivation chamber of the mobile courtyard, circulating his Qi until his meridians felt like they were being scraped raw from the inside. He focused heavily on refining his Water Dao comprehension, drawing upon every insight Lin Mu had ever shared with him. Water was patience. Water was persistence. Water endured. But water could also drown. Meng Bai meditated on all of it. He imagined Qi flowing like deep currents beneath the ocean surface, unseen yet unstoppable. He practiced compressing his Water Qi, forcing it to circulate faster, denser, heavier. Several times he nearly lost control, cold sweat soaking his back as his meridians threatened to seize. Lin Mu noticed. He did not intervene. Only once did he say quietly, "If you force it past the breaking point, you will cripple yourself." Meng Bai nodded and adjusted, but did not slow down. After cultivation came formation study. Hundreds of formation plates littered his chamber. Some were jade, some crystal, some metallic alloys scavenged from Lin Mu’s stores. He carved arrays until his fingers cramped and his mind throbbed. He no longer studied formations as isolated structures. He studied them as living systems. Inspired by the Lapis Link Body Array Totemic Art, Meng Bai began experimenting with dynamic formation logic. Arrays that adjusted based on incoming force. Arrays that flowed instead of remaining static. Arrays that mimicked circulation patterns rather than rigid geometries. He failed constantly. Explosions cracked several formation plates. Once, a feedback loop knocked him unconscious for an entire day. When he woke, Dongxu Ning was not there to scold him. But Lin Mu was. "Again," Lin Mu said simply, placing a new formation plate beside him. Meng Bai swallowed and began carving. Sparring was the worst. And the best. Every afternoon, without fail, Meng Bai sparred with someone. Sometimes it was Lin Mu. Those sessions were humiliating. Lin Mu suppressed his cultivation heavily, using only a fraction of his power, yet Meng Bai could barely land a single clean strike. Every mistake was punished instantly. A wrist twisted. A leg swept. A spear knocked aside and pressed against his throat. "Dead," Lin Mu would say calmly. Meng Bai learned quickly. Other days, it was Cattaleya. She was merciless. She refused to suppress herself much at all, forcing Meng Bai to rely on formations, movement, and sheer instinct to survive. "Body," she would say, slamming him into the ground. "You have none." "Resolve," she would say, knocking him sprawling again. "You hesitate." "Anger," she added once, pinning him down with a knee to the chest. "You are finally learning this one." She trained him like a weapon that needed tempering. Elyon’s sessions were different. The wolfkin taught him awareness. Sensing killing intent. Reading movement. Recognizing danger before it manifested. More than once, Meng Bai found himself immobilized with a blade hovering near his throat without ever realizing when Elyon had moved. "You died before you knew you were in danger," Elyon said flatly. Meng Bai shuddered. Daoist Chu focused on discipline. He made Meng Bai deploy formations under pressure, mid combat, with limited time and incomplete resources. He forced him to adapt arrays on the fly, tearing down old logic and replacing it with new patterns in seconds. "You cannot afford perfection," Daoist Chu said. "You need effectiveness." Slowly, painfully, Meng Bai changed. His Spear Dao advanced first. Unlike sword cultivators who pursued elegance, Meng Bai’s spear became practical. Direct. Brutal. The spear was reach. The spear was control. The spear kept death at a distance. He practiced thrusts until his shoulders burned. Sweeps until his waist screamed. He learned to channel Water Qi into his spear, turning every strike into a flowing assault that chained into the next. Under Lin Mu’s guidance, he stopped thinking of techniques as fixed forms. "A spear is an extension of intent," Lin Mu said once. "If your intent wavers, the spear wavers." Meng Bai learned to strike without hesitation. Formation Dao followed. He began integrating miniature formations into his movements. Temporary arrays activated by footwork. Defensive runes that flared for a split second at the point of impact. Flowing formations on his robes that circulated Qi through his limbs, reinforcing strikes and dampening recoil. It was inefficient. It was exhausting. But it worked. His Water Dao comprehension deepened alongside this. He stopped thinking of Water as merely gentle or overwhelming. He learned it was adaptive. He learned to yield and redirect force rather than resist it head on. He learned to let pressure build, then release it at the precise moment. The night he finally succeeded in creating an auxiliary self stabilizing formation that could reinforce his body without requiring prior body cultivation, he collapsed from exhaustion. While it still needed robes to be used, it was still some progress. Lin Mu quietly carried him back to his chamber. Even if Meng Bai had the pills that helped him skip sleep, passing out from exhaustion was not something that the pills could help with. Six months passed. Meng Bai barely noticed. He grew taller. Leaner. Harder. His Qi circulation became smoother. His reactions sharper. His confidence quieter but stronger. He still had far to go. But he was no longer helpless. The day the mobile courtyard shuddered and slowed, everyone felt it.