It took half a day, and most of the novice disciples had found the cultivation manual they desired and left. Ye Qin lingered until the very end, using the spare time to carefully deliberate over which martial art he should select.

Having known nothing of martial arts since childhood, even after half a year wandering around the outskirts of Zhuqi County, he had only glimpsed a few hurrying martial artists, never witnessing them display any technique, nor grasping what martial arts truly were or what purpose they served. However, he vaguely recalled the elders in his remote mountain village speaking of martial arts as something legendary, capable of scaling walls, traversing roofs, tearing apart tigers and wolves—omnipotent, capable of almost anything, he supposed.

After thinking for a long while, Ye Qin hesitantly voiced the kind of martial art he had imagined, tinged with self-doubt. “Senior Brother, is there any technique that can ensure my stamina is sufficient, allow me to endure hunger when food is scarce, bear the cold in winter, and survive without water during a severe drought?” The young man was utterly stunned by the sheer pathetic nature of Ye Qin’s request.

He hadn't expected Ye Qin to ask for such a “peculiar” manual. The other novices all sought techniques with ferocious power, capable of combat, or perhaps extreme speed.

Why would this one ask for a skill that focused on endurance, starvation, freezing, and thirst resistance? The youth couldn't help but frown.

Endurance, hunger resistance, cold resistance, and low water consumption—these qualities likely belonged to the realm of internal cultivation methods; external arts could never achieve such effects. The guarding youth pondered for a moment, then walked over to the shelf holding the basic internal cultivation manuals and began flipping through them.

He selected a few related internal manuals. The Drunken Long Slumber Art.

This technique was excellent for enduring hunger; one could go ten days or half a month without food, but it required consuming copious amounts of wine, which the boy probably couldn’t afford. It would be difficult to master.

The Profound Origin Inner Scripture. An offensive internal cultivation method.

Not what was required. The Body Nurturing Scripture.

Ah. This one seemed capable of strengthening the physique.

It should allow for endurance of labor, hunger, cold, and thirst. The guarding youth retrieved it from the dust of the shelf.

He had been stationed here for over a decade, having leafed through the contents of every manual in this room. Thus, he had some recollection of it.

But such a low-level internal manual was something a core disciple of the Medicine Gathering Hall like himself would never deign to practice. Core disciples only trained in the Hall’s highest-tier internal arts.

“This basic internal manual, the Body Nurturing Scripture, isn't bad. I don't know which minor sect this manual was acquired from, but its methods fully align with your requirements.

Take it and practice this internal art diligently. If you can survive the medicine gathering, you might make a name for yourself in our Hall decades from now, perhaps advancing to the rank of Apothecary or Master Physician.” After taking down the book, the guarding youth casually flipped through the attached introduction to check its provenance.

“Oh, the summary says this technique was a family heirloom. Later, the family members couldn't survive and were forced to sell it for coin.

... The description also claims it has miraculous effects in enhancing the physique and prolonging life.

Hmph, perhaps it’ll let him live a few extra years after training.” The young man’s expression was cool as he explained the manual’s supposed benefits and tossed it carelessly to Ye Qin. He inwardly scoffed, wondering what kind of minor martial family would treat a low-grade internal manual as a treasured heirloom.

What the guarding youth did not know was that the book indeed came from a family, but the story was not as simple as he imagined. A thousand years prior, a mysterious and powerful clan was said to have emerged in Pingzhou Prefecture.

This family possessed an heirloom manual, and their patriarch relied on it to become overwhelmingly influential across the one prefecture and eight counties of Pingzhou. The manual's original name was the Sitting in Oblivion Scripture, not the Body Nurturing Scripture.

Yet, the family’s destiny was not everlasting; it experienced two major rises and falls over the span of a millennium before ultimately declining. According to the disciple who sold the book, the manual required a person of a special constitution to practice it—a special constitution that might only appear once every few generations, perhaps one in thousands of disciples.

After the first generation's patriarch died, several hundred years later, a descendant possessing this special constitution managed to master the techniques within, restoring the family to glory. However, for centuries after, no one else managed to cultivate it, and the family eventually withered away.

This mysterious family gradually faded into legend within the Martial State's Pingzhou Prefecture. The seller was the last male descendant of this line, reduced to begging on the streets in destitution, forcing him to sell the manual for the paltry price of ten gold coins to a mid-tier martial arts gang in Pingzhou: the Carp Gang.

The Carp Gang, with nearly a thousand members, made their living from river transport within Pingzhou. Upon acquiring the manual, they immediately mobilized personnel to study the book meticulously, hoping to uncover its secrets.

They repeatedly examined every sheet of paper, every character, every hidden fold, attempting to find any hidden treasures, maps, codes, or hidden messages. Regrettably, after decades of exhaustive effort and depleting their resources, the Carp Gang found nothing within the book.

They even mobilized dozens of the most gifted children within the gang for training, dreaming of cultivating a cohort of supreme experts. But alas, not a single child showed any effect; these children, upon growing up, were even less capable than common martial artists.

The Carp Gang was reluctantly forced to believe that only those with a special constitution could cultivate this manual; it was useless for ordinary people. As for defining that "special constitution," no one knew—even the members of the original family were ignorant of what it entailed.

Because the Carp Gang's most gifted children spent over a decade practicing this so-called "legendary manual," they missed their optimal window for learning martial arts, leading to a severe lack of capable successors. The gang soon declined and was annihilated by rival factions.

This incident caused quite a stir. At the time, the martial world mockingly dubbed the manual the "Legendary Waste Manual," as it had caused a respectable mid-tier gang of over a thousand members to cripple its own martial foundation and sever its lineage.

The final leader of the Carp Gang was forced to sell off all their manuals to scrape by. Thus, this manual passed through the hands of several small gangs, finally ending up with the Medicine King Gang for the price of a single gold coin.

The Medicine King Gang was just beginning to rise in Pingzhou at that time, a mid-tier gang with over a thousand members. The higher-ups of the Medicine King Gang had heard rumors that this was an internal manual left by an ancient Pingzhou family from centuries past, so they purchased it to investigate its contents.

They even used the unique elixirs of the Medicine King Gang to perform chemical analysis, checking for invisible script, but still found no hidden secrets within. The Medicine King Gang leadership repeatedly studied the book’s contents and concluded that labeling it the "Legendary Waste Manual" was somewhat unfair; they felt the book likely did possess some minor effects, such as physical enhancement and life extension.

However, these effects—physical strengthening and life longevity—were not what martial artists sought. Jianghu practitioners were only interested in peerless martial arts, powerful offense, and defense.

Therefore, they appended an evaluation to the book: If practiced with perseverance for several decades, this book should yield very satisfactory effects in strengthening the physique and extending life. However, it possesses none of the offensive or defensive power inherent in common internal arts.

Proceed with caution; do not learn lightly! Heeding the painful lesson of the Carp Gang, the Medicine King Gang's leadership dared not mobilize their young disciples to practice this "legendary" manual.

When the book underwent elixir analysis, its old outer cover was damaged by the solution, and a new cover was affixed in its place. On the new cover, the Medicine King Gang's leader renamed the book to a more fitting title: Body Nurturing Scripture, reclassified it as the lowest tier of basic internal cultivation methods, and shelved it in the manual repository, gathering dust.

In time, this manual was gradually forgotten. Over the subsequent century, the Medicine King Gang continued to grow and expand, eventually establishing a foothold in Zhuqi County.

This book was sent along with a large batch of low-grade external and internal martial manuals to the library room of the Medicine Gathering Hall in Zhuqi County, where it rested for decades, accumulating dust, its origins known to almost no one. The guarding youth chanced upon it, but he knew nothing of its detailed history, unaware that it was the legendary Waste Manual.

He simply regarded it as a low-grade internal cultivation manual sourced from some nameless minor family and handed it to Ye Qin. The Medicine Gathering Hall possessed countless low-grade internal manuals; the one Ye Qin took was merely one among hundreds, nothing significant.

Ye Qin quickly accepted it, nodding his thanks gratefully before departing the manual room. The guarding youth remained impassive and expressionless.

After Ye Qin left, several other equally aloof guarding youths approached the lead guard, their faces etched with confusion. “Senior Brother, why did you give him the Body Nurturing Scripture?

He’s just a Medicine Gathering novice, constantly scaling mountains and valleys. Learning an internal manual with no offensive or defensive power like this one will likely hasten his death.” The lead guarding youth stepped out of the third-floor manual room and stated coldly, “Since he specifically asked for this strange internal art that aids labor, hunger, cold, and drought resistance, why do you care so much?

Our Medicine Gathering Hall is not a charity ward. If he dies, it’s his own doing, irrelevant to anyone else.

We lose so many people every year; he’s just one more. Stop loitering here; return to the second floor to train.

Tomorrow, I will test your progress in martial arts!” “Yes, Senior Brother!” The guarding youths dared not speak further and quickly retreated to the second floor. .

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