The Skin Tempering Garden was slowly starting to greet the morning light when Sol left his uncomfortable dirt hole. He was unsure how long he had slept after his hours-long cultivation session, but it could not have been much. An uncomfortable tree root had pressed into his lower back, his neck had stiffened from his sleeping posture, and an early breakfast had made him want to hurl the wooden bowl out into the woods.

  The early meal had not even given him raw meat or cooked vegetables that had cooled off—it preferred to enrich his day with half-rotten fruit and what seemed to be insect meat. Sol instead finished his own water and ate the few remnants of travel rations that he had left before heading toward the training area.

  An eerie fog hung over the area, making it difficult to see further than a few dozen meters.

  Since they were technically inside, Sol guessed that it could also be a technique or a feature of the floor. Maybe it could help his training in some way? The added moisture might shift the concentration of Qi flow?

  Sol hurried toward the pathway before slowly walking in a straight line, closing his eyes and taking in the state of the Qi that his skin absorbed. He quickly realized that it would be impossible to do so while walking. It simply took him too long to judge it accurately, and veering off the path every minute was enough to break his concentration again.

  So he tried to feel his inner Qi state with open eyes, walking toward the training area. The damp fog clung to his clothes, and by the time he reached the first area—a large-scale snowpit with a wooden obstacle course above—he could at least feel his current Qi reserves. He would have to train this new perception more in order to move, much less take the finer details of his surroundings into account.

  The temperature around the snowpit slowly decreased the closer he got. It was not unpleasant. Maybe the areas were designed to give an impression rather than mimic the real deal?

  Two skin-tempering students were already up high on the wooden construct, towering dozens of meters above the pit, slowly ascending it with deliberate steps. Sol did not recognize them from the acceptance ceremony. So they were likely from an older generation. He would have liked to talk with them—maybe they could share some insights—but he did not want to interrupt their training.

  There were fewer people around than expected. As Sol dipped his fingers into the lake he found the water to be rather pleasant. The warm water lake and its obstacle course were about twice the size of the snowpit, wrapping around it in a curved shape.

  Since no one had shown up to train here, Sol took the initiative. He climbed the wooden poles that ascended into the sky in various degrees of steepness before they branched off from one another, forming a web, some paths more difficult than others.

  Nyx’Sol took great care with his steps, as there was an odd amount of liquid running down the wood. It made for a very slippery experience, and one false step would mean a quick fall and swim in the lake below. The obstacle course became steeper, diverted into two smaller poles alongside one another, and had holes that had to be jumped over.

  The jumps made his heart race, knowing that nothing protected him from a fall into the lake below. There were a variety of even harsher challenges further up, but Sol quickly learned the path itself was not the real challenge.

  It was the wind. With every meter of height he ascended, the wind picked up more and more, carrying small droplets of water with it. At first, this merely stung a little on his skin, and it took him some effort to soak his skin cells in Qi and brace against the newfound onslaught.

  But as he advanced, the increased wind and force punched right through his defenses, slowly but surely wearing away his energy and reddening his skin. It was quite obvious that he had a long way to go with applying his defenses efficiently. He could have continued with his current defense—at the cost of all the reserves the few hours of respite had replenished for him.

  As he contemplated a jump into the water, visible through the fog below, another realization kicked in. If he did not wear sandals, could he apply some Qi to stick to the surface? Was this the purpose of this?

  Sol pictured himself sticking to the surface of a tree horizontally, ignoring gravity and waiting to ambush someone below. It would be useful to learn such a technique. If someone knew how to do it, then surely it would immediately become obvious when they applied it. He would have to pay attention to that.

  Looking down into the lake, the constant wind still assaulting his body, he grew a bit dizzy. It was quite high. He had never been that high up above the ground before. He had only focused on the challenge and the obstacles in his wake before—now that he looked down, jumping seemed insane.

  He could spot the water through the fog, as that had dissipated with the increasing wind of the upper layers of the obstacle course. Sol had not noticed how much progress he had made. The distance to the watery surface was easily more than fifteen meters. Maybe twenty?

  What if the lake was shallow? It was an irrational thought—of course, the sect would not build a training facility that would kill its students. Yet his feet would not obey. Looking down the path he had come from, he immediately decided that it would be even harder to descend it.

  With the constant reminder of a potential fall, looking down was making Sol even more nervous. So he advanced a bit further toward a small wooden platform that served as a jumping point to grab the next wooden pole above, and sat down.

  He closed his eyes and tried to efficiently apply the Qi that he absorbed through his skin toward his cells. Instead of just generally soaking it, Sol tried a few different approaches. First, he tried to infuse the cells directly, letting the inner parts of the cells soak in the energy directly, which made his defenses stronger but also required more Qi.

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  Finally, Sol tried to make his Qi spin on top of his cells—which seemed to make his defense even weaker, as the wind seemed to carry parts of the energy away. For a while, he thought that maybe it was just a flawed approach on his part, and moved on to observe his permanently altered skin on the back of his hand, and noted that they resisted the outside forces adequately.

  It took a few more minutes of shifting his seating position with the wind, to avoid getting harassed from one side only, before Nyx realized his error. It might not be his approach that was wrong. It might just be the fact that he could not gather enough energy. If he trained his absorption rates further, he would be able to defend himself, even with unpolished mastery.

  Apparently, there were multiple solutions waiting for him here. Pathways of power through efficiency and pathways to power through quantity alone. He remembered the word of the Sword God: “Be more of who you are, before cultivation makes you more of who you are right now.”

  Nyx had always thought it to mean that a strong foundation was necessary to be better than others at his next cultivation level. This might mean one could reach Skin Tempering through the quantity of Qi or through the quality with which it was applied. If Sol trained his defense to be as efficient as possible, would he advance as well? Quantity was the obvious solution to brute force his way through.

  But could quantity be increased indefinitely? Could efficiency be improved beyond a certain limit? How would he know that he had advanced both of these areas far enough to advance? Or was mastery in both the bare minimum requirement?

  Sol could feel the way in which he defended against the harsh winds improve slightly. When he opened his eyes, his skin was reddened significantly, and his Qi reserves had diminished as well. He would have to train this in friendlier conditions.

  He stood, refusing to look down. Nyx knew that the moment he did, he would likely stand up here for a long time. Instead, the climb upwards seemed like the only logical approach. If you fail to climb upwards, you fall. No choice to make. Fear of heights he would tackle when he was not so high up. Maybe three meters. That sounded like a better height to struggle with.

  Sol jumped, reaching for the slippery wooden pole, his claws cheating the spirit of the challenge somewhat, and hauled himself up. Here, the wooden pole was uneven, curving and bending at odd angles, while the wind changed tempo. The wind speeds accelerated from still to quick bursts of energy, then changed directions rapidly.

  The path of wood up here no longer resembled thick round poles, but rather broken pieces of trees that had randomly assembled themselves, some with bark, others slippery as glass. They curved up, down, demanded jumps and quick crouching, all while sharp winds blew left and right to try and knock you down.

  All of this Sol peacefully considered on his way down toward the water, as he had fallen at the first rapid gust of wind.

  The water welcomed him with a sharp burning sensation that knocked the air out of his lungs briefly. Nyx’Sol’s scream of frustration underwater made ice-cold water flow into his mouth, which he spat back into the lake as soon as he breached the surface.

  Huh? Ice cold? The water he was currently swimming through was by no means cold. He could have sworn that it was neither warm nor cold. With a few heavy strokes, he reached the grass. The lake’s depths fell off sharply right where the grass ended—likely made so whoever fell into the water from up high would never dive into the ground below the surface.

  Sol sat at the edge of the grass and brought a handful of water to his mouth. As soon as it touched the inside of his lips, it was ice-cold.

  Sol did not immediately connect what mystery had made this happen. When he did, the harsh sound of his flat hand impacting his forehead audibly hollered over the surface of the lake into the remnants of mist that slowly dissipated against the ever-increasing sunlight.

  He had forgotten the necklace! Sol pulled it from his robes, the white crystal from his older sister, protecting him against the cold.

  A horrible realization crept its way into Nyx’Sol’s head.

  What if? He hastily pulled off the necklace and stored it away in his ring, wincing at the ice-cold clothes that clung to his body. Ignoring the stinging cold, he pulled his feet out of the water and took a sitting lotus position. With eyes closed, he immediately focused on the Qi that his body was taking in.

  Suddenly he was much more aware of how long it took him just for a simple check like this. His body started shivering, the cold feeling unbearable, before he confirmed the changes. The Qi that was entering his body now was largely composed of Yin Qi. The necklace had balanced the Qi around him in order to protect him against changes in temperature.

  Suddenly he was a lot more grateful for his sister's gift. Not only had it served as protection against temperature changes, but it also had given him the chance to practice cultivation in a state that had a perfectly balanced Yin-Yang balance. Since it always provided him with equal parts Yin and Yang, he could easily analyze and work with it.

  Now that he had taken the necklace off, his experience had changed. Some drips of Qi were composed of nine parts Yin and one part Yang, others were closer to a seven-three or a six-four split. Some were pure Yin. And that was just a few nodes on his forearm that he analyzed.

  It would take him hours upon hours to just get an accurate picture. The constant intake of a Yin surplus made his body cool down. He would slowly but surely freeze to death over time. Now he had a new problem that had replaced his perceived solution. He would not be able to simply always split the two forces and apply Yang Qi to heat himself while expelling Yin Qi through a technique.

  In cold situations, there would not be a lot of Yang Qi. The colder the environment, the more Yang energy he would need—but the colder the environment got, the less Yang Qi would be present.

  For cultivators that had formed a core, this would be child's play, since they generated their own Qi in vastly higher quantities than a body cultivator could ever dream to absorb from his environment.

  Maybe the goal here would be to cut off one type of Qi and only let in the other? But then your Qi generation would suffer in cold or hot environments.

  Sol stopped his cultivation efforts and exhaled in exhaustion. He had thought himself some kind of genius, for understanding it so easily! And then it immediately got complicated again.

  He retrieved his necklace with shivering fingers and put it on, sighing in pleasure as warmth immediately crept back into his body. Did the necklace adjust the Qi to mostly Yang Qi to balance his internal composition? He would have to find out later.

  Nyx stretched himself as he stood up. It sure was good to have a supportive family.

  He would have to give his sister a big hug when they would finally meet.

  After he advanced through Skin Tempering.