The morning after the Mammoth's death was silent.
There were no birds, no winds—only the deep, groaning quiet of a mountain that had witnessed too many killings in too few hours.
Shen Mo stood at the edge of the ridge, arms crossed, eyes locked on the horizon. His bones ached. His meridians were still torn. But he stood as if he'd never fallen. He didn't turn when Frostveil stirred behind him.
"You've had one night," he said. "That's more than I ever got."
Frostveil didn't reply.
She had spent most of the night curled in the snow, still adjusting to her newly reforged body. Her spirit matrix was unstable—raw energy surged through her limbs like wildfire. She could barely walk in a straight line without her skin shimmering with half-released Qi.
She was strong now.
But strength without control was an illusion.
"Your Dao," he said, "is undefined."
She looked up.
"You mean I don't have one?"
"No," he corrected, turning to face her. "You haven't survived enough pain yet to understand it."
—
Day One
The training began with 10,000 push-ups.
Frostveil had never done one in her life.
Her arms gave out by the first hundred. Her bones snapped. Spirit tendons buckled. Her aura flared and collapsed over and over.
Jian Wuxin said nothing.
When she passed out, he dragged her body to the cliffside and tied her wrists to a boulder using vines and spirit-thread rope.
"Rest is earned," he said coldly. "Not given."
He did his own 10,000 push-ups beside her.
Perfect form.
Each rep laced with internal Qi, creating friction against the ground that cut small burns into his palms.
By noon, they began sit-ups.
By dusk, they ran up and down the razor-backed ridge of the Throat of Heaven twenty times, bare-footed, chased by howling winds and spirit wolves drawn by their blood.
He told her to run until her body screamed.
She did.
And it did.
---
Day Three
"Why are we doing this?" she finally asked.
Jian Wuxin didn't look at her.
"Because if you stop," he said, "someone will take that name I gave you and crush it under their heel."
"You think strength is built from form and repetition. It's not. It's the refusal to stop. Even when Heaven itself sends thunder to kill you."
---
Day Five
The workouts multiplied.
10,000 became 50,000.
Running was now barefoot with weighted chains, across terrain where the Qi was so dense it tore flesh apart from the inside.
Every meal was raw spirit roots boiled in mammoth marrow. No flavor. Just force.
They meditated every night on the edge of a death cliff, surrounded by lightning storms, letting bolts strike nearby while controlling breath and heartbeat.
She broke four times.
He let her.
Then waited until she crawled back to him.
"You can cry," he said once, when she bled from her eyes, nose, and fingernails. "But keep your posture while doing it."
---
Day Ten
Her Dao began to show.
Not through words.
Through the way she moved.
Her feet no longer slipped—she floated over stone with unearthly grace. Her body no longer shimmered uncontrollably. It now pulsed in rhythm with the air currents, adjusting passively to balance and threat.
It was subtle at first, but Jian Wuxin saw it.
Yin Qi no longer clung to her like a storm.
It obeyed her.
Her ice no longer cracked.
It curved.
It shaped.
It bent like silver threads forming armor across her skin.
"You are finding it," he muttered aloud during meditation.
"What?" she gasped.
"Your Dao."
She blinked. Exhausted. Drenched in snow and sweat.
"It's not Yin," he said. "It's not frost."
"…Then what is it?"
He opened his eyes.
"It's Elegance through Suffering. Your body moves like the memory of pain, not the moment of it."
She understood without understanding.
She didn't need a lecture.
The truth of it lived in her flesh now.
---
Day Fourteen
He increased the training load fivefold.
He carried boulders while doing squats, breathing through torn ribs. She ran until midnight through spirit-wind torn canyons, her lungs freezing from within.
She nearly died three times.
He did not save her.
Only left markers so she could find her way back.
On the final night of the second week, she collapsed beneath a tree they used for pull-ups, unable to move.
He sat beside her.
Silence stretched between them.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked.
"You think I don't see how broken you are?"
He stared into the dark sky. Stars above seemed to flicker out.
"I don't care that I'm broken," he said quietly.
"I just want to see what happens when I refuse to be replaced."
She turned her head slowly.
"By who?"
"By fate. By Heaven. By those who think the sword is gone because its sheath is cracked."
He looked at her.
And for a moment, something in his eyes wasn't cold.
"I'm training you to be a sword," he said. "Not because I need one. But because one day, when I'm gone again, the world will see you and remember what forged you."
She cried quietly that night.
Not because she was weak.
But because for the first time—
Her suffering meant something.