“I’m going back to sleep.” Mira said and went back to lay down and sleep. Maria did the same thing.

The night passed quickly and soon they woke up. Mira was the first to wake up, she woke up just before dawn. She went out to go find two giant boulders. After an hour, she brought back 2 giant boulders near the cave and placed them in front of the entrance. These boulders were around 2.2 meters in diameter. They weigh around 10,000 kilograms each.

Maria came walking out confused as to why there were these giant boulders.

“Good, you’re awake. Time for your punishment. You will push one of these builders around until noon. Then you will go and hunt 5 magical beasts in the afternoon. The magical beasts can be any Rank 1 magical beast, but they have to be rank 1. You have 15 minutes to eat something before you start!” Mira dropped a bomb on Maria that she wasn’t expecting. She just stood there slack-jawed.

“Ehhh?! I can’t push that thing! Forget until noon, I might barely be able to last an hour!! Plus 5 beasts! I can barely kill 1! Isn’t this unfair?!” Maria complained.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that when I tell you to do something, it will be done to perfection, or you can spend the rest of your days following me while pushing giant boulders! And don’t worry about not lasting, I will be watching you the whole time. I will also give you some encouragement when you stop hehe. With regards to killing the 5 beasts that should be easy, I’m not giving you something impossible. The only difference is that if you get into trouble you will die rather than me stepping in. Oh, I almost forgot, after hunting I better not see any fractures or broken bones. Cuts are fine though. “

Now Maria was sure, this was a demon instructor from hell. Just barely missing her slash already caused her this much pain. Nevertheless, she still complied and started pushing the giant boulder around in circles. Maria noticed that Mira was also pushing the other boulder, it was a little slower than her but that was expected.

Sometimes Maria would stop and as soon as she stopped, she would suddenly get whipped by this long vine-like whip. Mira seemed to add a thorn on the end of it so that it would also cut her. After the second time that happened, she decided that she wouldn’t stop again.

Maria was able to make it till noon, but Maria was covered in a thick sheen of sweat and had blood splotches here and there on her body. Mira wasn’t much better as she was pale and looked like she was drowning in her sweat.

Mira’s training was rather special. She would push her body to the limit, revolving her cultivation technique and forcing qi into her bones. This was a very crude way of reaching the Bone Forging realm and she would have to force only the tiniest amount of qi into her bones as to not injure herself. This process will take a while, but pushing her body to the limit will lessen that time significantly.

Maria and Mira both sat down and recovered their energy and Maria dressed her wounds. They ate lunch and after about an hour they were fully recovered. Maria was just staring at Mira, seemingly waiting for something.

“What? You may go. Be sure to bring back 5 Rank 1 beasts. Bye.” Mira said without even looking at her.

Maria just sighed and picked up her weapon then went off hunting. Mira was about to go back to training.

“Doing this kind of training is very efficient, but it would be much easier if I had some bone-chilling ice. I could even temper my muscles along with my bone with something like that. Wait… Ice. Ice. Now that I think about it, I wonder if I have an affinity for an element. When I brought out my scythe my body seemed to react pretty hard. Let’s see if I have an affinity for ice.”

Mira started meditating immediately and tried to form a shard of ice in her hand. After a minute or so she was able to form a 10-centimeter long shard of ice. She tried the other elements like fire, earth, water, air, darkness, and light. She also tried some other auxiliary elements, but she wasn’t able to form anything.

“I guess I do have an affinity with ice. It seems it’s only ice which is a bit odd. I should’ve been able to at least make a water drop since I have an affinity with ice, but nothing happened. I wonder if I have some sort of special physique. I’ve heard of a somewhat rare physique called the Extreme Yin Physique, which gives someone a bit stronger constitution as well as a great affinity for Ice. It also allows them to gain understandings of the Dao of Ice faster as well. I’ve heard that people with this physique have ice-blue colored bones.”

Mira sent her mind to check on her bones and to her surprise they were ice-blue.

“I guess I have that physique after all. Well, ice suits my preferences as well. I guess I will embark on the Dao of Ice path. I will have to spend some time meditating on this while trying to come up with different ways to use ice.”

Mira went back to her training until Maria came back.

It was almost dusk and Maria came back with 5 Low-Stage-Rank 1 magical beasts. She was covered in scratches. Mira checked her and it looked like she had no fractured or broken bones.

“Good, this will be your schedule until I say otherwise. There will be 1 change though. Tomorrow you will have to kill 1 Mid-Stage-Rank 1 magical beast. And keep adding to that by 1 every day, so in 5 days you will hunt 5 Mid-Stage-Rank 1. After that, you will kill 4 Mid-Stage and 1 Late-Stage. Keep going like this until you reach 5 Peak-Stage-Rank 1 magical beasts and that will conclude your training. If you are unable to kill the required amount then stick to what you can kill. Your training will only end after killing 5 Peak-Stage-Rank 1 beasts in an afternoon.”

“WHHHAATT?! I thought today was just punishment! I’ll die to this freakish training before I die to any magical beasts!” Mira yelled, but Mira just grinned. This grin looked like one of the devils. Now Maria’s back was covered in a cold sweat thinking of what else Mira is going to do.

Mira opened her mouth and said, “Well since you think that this is too hard, then, of course, I will have to help you out. After you come back and have dinner, we will spar. This will also help me gauge your progress.”

Maria’s mouth twitched. She didn’t know why, but even though she is stronger than Mira she feels that Mira will crush her in a fight. This must be when experience makes up for strength.

After they had dinner, they started sparing. It didn’t last long as Mira just parried her sword and beat her down. This kept happening for an hour until Maria couldn’t stand up anymore.

“Circulate your cultivation technique and force the qi into your marrow. This will be extremely painful, but just bear with it and use the qi to temper your marrow. It should be no problem for you to break through as long as you are careful.

Maria did exactly as she said. All she felt was this ungodly pain coursing through her bone marrow. Just doing the tiniest amount was almost unbearable, but it did seem to quicken her progress though.

They continued this style of training until Mira reached 9 years old. They continued training for 6 months.