Zhou Ming had no idea how long he had been squatting.

It could have been a quarter of an hour, or it could have been two hours.

Time had lost all meaning to him; the only things that mattered were his legs.

They went from aching to numb, and from numb to completely devoid of sensation.

Then, after the pain faded, it would start all over again, a cycle that felt like he had been thrown into a meat grinder that never stopped churning.

Sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes, stinging so badly he couldn't open them, but he couldn't spare the effort to wipe it away.

Because his hands were already clamped tightly over his knees, terrified that if he let go, his whole body would collapse.

His clothes were soaked through from the inside out, clinging to his body, cold and sticky, as if he had just been fished out of a pool of water.

"Stop."

Dongmei finally spoke.

That single word falling into Zhou Ming's ears sounded better than the finest music.

The breath he had been holding rushed out of him, but he couldn't manage to stand up.

Zhou Ming's legs had locked up; his knees felt like they had been filled with molten iron, unable to bend or straighten, leaving him frozen in that half-squatting position.

Then his body tilted, and he fell straight to the ground like a toppled door panel, hitting the packed dirt with a thud and kicking up a small cloud of dust.

Dongmei stood up from her small stool, paced over to him, and looked down at him from above.

Her short sword was already back in its scabbard, her arms crossed over her chest, her head tilted slightly to one side, wearing an expression as if she were admiring a piece of work that greatly satisfied her.

"Is that all you've got? Didn't you manage to stand for so long holding a wooden board on the Western Mountain yesterday? I didn't see your legs shaking then."

Zhou Ming lay on the ground, his chest heaving violently. He opened his mouth, but couldn't get a single word out.

His lungs felt like a pair of broken bellows straining to expand and contract, and his throat was filled with a metallic, fishy taste. Even breathing was an effort; he had no strength left to bicker with Dongmei.

He could only stare up at the sky, feeling his legs slowly regain sensation from their rigid state.

That needle-like, numbing itch was even more unbearable than the previous soreness, as if countless ants were crawling through the crevices of his bones.

Dongmei wasn't in a hurry; she just stood beside him waiting. By the time he had caught his breath and struggled to sit up, Dongmei had already walked to the center of the Martial Arts Training Ground and beckoned him over with her finger.

"If you've rested enough, get up and run through the form for me to see."

Zhou Ming resignedly crawled to his feet. He knew this form; it remained in the memories of his predecessor, called "Monkey Fist."

It was a crude martial art taught to all the servants of the Marquis's estate. The name was straightforward, and the movements were just as simple; it didn't rely on strength, but rather excelled in agility.

In his previous life, Zhou Ming knew nothing about martial arts, but fortunately, the muscle memory of this body remained. He closed his eyes to recall it for a moment, then assumed the starting stance.

"Monkey Fist, first Move, Agile Monkey Reaches for the Branch."

Dongmei called out the name of the Move from behind him, her voice lazy, as if she were reading from a menu she was tired of looking at.

Following his memory, Zhou Ming raised his arm and extended his claw, leaning his body forward to mimic the posture of reaching for a branch.

He thought he had performed it quite standardly, but when Dongmei looked, she only let out an "Hmm," a sound that carried a critique she left unspoken.

Zhou Ming continued with the second and third Moves.

Dongmei stepped forward from time to time to correct his movements.

His elbow was raised too high above his shoulder, his wrist wasn't flexible enough when extending the claw, and his center of gravity was off when turning.

Every correction was a jab of her scabbard against the offending spot—not too light, not too heavy, but precise enough to make one's teeth ache.

"Monkey Fist emphasizes agility. Do you know what agility means?"

Dongmei circled to his side.

"It doesn't mean just hopping around quickly."

"A monkey's agility means leaving thirty percent of your strength in reserve with every Move—if you can reach it, fine, but if you can't, you can pull back at any moment."

"You're not a monkey; you're a hornet whose nest has been poked."

Zhou Ming gritted his teeth and ran through it again.

This time, he slowed down his movements, trying his best to internalize what Dongmei meant by "leaving thirty percent in reserve."

However, when he hopped from the east end of the Martial Arts Training Ground to the west, and then back to the east, his peripheral vision accidentally caught a few guards at the edge of the field who were packing up their weapons.

Those guards were stealing glances over here, and one of them couldn't help but let the corners of his mouth curl up, as if he had seen something extremely amusing.

Zhou Ming froze for a moment, then looked down at himself.

Two legs as thin as hemp stalks, spindly arms, a sharp-mouthed, monkey-cheeked face, all paired with this hopping-around martial art.

His movements suddenly faltered for a beat.

Good grief, this wasn't Monkey Fist; at most, other people just looked like monkeys when they performed it.

He, on the other hand, looked exactly like a real monkey.

A real monkey, so skinny it was just skin and bones, jumping up and down on the training field.

No wonder those guards were laughing.

"What are you spacing out for? Continue!"

Dongmei's scabbard poked him again, this time hitting him in the small of his back, with a force two parts heavier than before.

Zhou Ming jolted, quickly pulling his thoughts back to continue the form.

After he finished running through Monkey Fist twice, Dongmei called a halt again.

Zhou Ming thought he could finally rest, but before he could even feel happy, Dongmei had already pursed her lips toward the empty spot where he had been squatting in Horse Stance earlier.

"Go back and squat."

So he squatted back down.

Same spot, same posture, same two legs that had barely recovered.

Dongmei was still sitting on that small stool, only this time she wasn't wiping her sword.

Instead, she used the scabbard to tap against her palm, one beat after another, at a steady pace, as if she were keeping time for Zhou Ming's Horse Stance.

With every tap, Zhou Ming's heart constricted, and his knees sank lower; he suspected Dongmei was doing it on purpose.

After squatting, it was more Monkey Fist.

After Monkey Fist, it was more Horse Stance.

After repeating this for two full rounds, Dongmei finally relented:

"That's enough, we'll stop here for today."

By this time, Zhou Ming didn't even have the strength to stand.

His legs felt like two pieces of hemp rope soaked until they were rotten, he couldn't even muster the strength to clench his fingers into a fist, and lifting an arm felt like he was hoisting a mountain.

He slumped onto the ground, gasping for air, his sweat dampening a patch of the dirt ground beneath him.

Dongmei glanced at him, shook her head, and turned to call out toward the outside of the Martial Arts Training Ground: "Come here, two of you."

Before long, two guards walked in, grabbed Zhou Ming's arms from left and right, and hauled him up from the ground.

Zhou Ming's legs dragged limply on the ground, his toes carving two shallow marks in the dirt, looking exactly like a fish that had just been fished out of the water.

He was carried out by the two guards, his whole body hanging between them, even his neck was crooked.

He no longer had the strength to hold his head up straight.

When passing by Dongmei, he struggled to lift his eyelids and looked at her.

Dongmei was standing there, arms crossed, a blatantly mocking smile hanging on the corners of her mouth, her gaze seeming to say:

"This is only the first day; there are many long days ahead."

Zhou Ming hurriedly lowered his head.

He had never felt so humiliated in his life.

To be trained into this state by a maid barely two years older than him, and then to be carried out of the Martial Arts Training Ground.

He didn't dare to imagine how many people would see him in this state along the way.

In his heart, he silently blamed all of this on that broken wooden board on the Western Mountain, and a thought became even more firmly rooted in his mind:

From now on, even if it killed him, he would never stand at the cave entrance holding that broken wooden board again; it was just too damn humiliating.