Martial arts cultivation has no such restrictions; anyone can practice martial arts to strengthen their body and likewise increase their power.

Therefore, in any era, there have always been more martial artists than qi refiners. Correspondingly, the inheritance of martial arts is more widely spread among the people—even in a study like this one in town, there would be a whole cabinet of martial arts manuals and secret techniques.

However, these manuals and secret techniques that can be easily obtained are certainly not very advanced.

Perhaps because of spiritual roots, qi refiners have always looked down on martial artists.

Even though a mortal martial artist who reaches the pinnacle is in no way weaker than a peak qi refiner, and may even be stronger in pure combat power.

Even though among the Twelve Immortal Sects, there is the Tianwang Mountain lineage that practices pure martial arts.

But it doesn’t matter—they still look down on them.

So, if one is an orthodox Daoist cultivator, they would certainly disdain practicing martial arts techniques.

But Henry Thompson is not a Daoist cultivator at all; he doesn’t even have a spiritual root, so naturally, he doesn’t have any sense of superiority.

So he asked, “Excuse me, shopkeeper, are there any body-tempering techniques among these?”

“There are.” Mr. Newman bent down, rummaged around for a while, stirring up clouds of dust. After a moment, he shoved a thin, old, yellow booklet in Henry Thompson’s face.

There were eight large characters on the cover.

“Learn Iron Shirt in Thirty Days”

Chapter Eleven: Our Iron Shirt Is Truly Amazing!

When Henry Thompson returned to the Deyun Temple, he happened to see several aunties from nearby villages coming out of the gate, all beaming with radiant smiles.

Usually, when he received them, the aunties would smile too, but never with such genuine happiness—it was as if they were seedlings nourished by a spring rain.

It seems there’s still a big gap between me and Master.

Thinking this, Henry Thompson walked into the front hall with a heart full of admiration.

Brian Sullivan was temporarily filling in for Henry Thompson in the front hall. When he saw him return, he quickly stood up and said, “Disciple, you’re finally back. I’m exhausted! Come, take these things to the kitchen—let’s have an extra dish for lunch.”

Around him were two baskets of eggs, a bundle of green onions, a wild pheasant, and so on—probably gifts from those aunties just now.

The villagers don’t have much money, so it’s common to offer food as incense offerings. The Daoists are grateful as well—every vegetable and grain is a merit.

Brian Sullivan rubbed his back and walked to the backyard, while Henry Thompson picked up the items and followed closely behind.

After enjoying a hearty lunch with an extra dish of scrambled eggs with green onions, Henry Thompson returned to the front hall.

On a summer afternoon, the grass and trees were tranquil, and the air was filled with a drowsy scent.

But Henry Thompson was in high spirits. He took out the “Learn Iron Shirt in Thirty Days” booklet and began to study it carefully.

Upon close reading, the principles were very simple.

The first step is to concentrate all the internal energy in the body to a single point, tensing the muscles to withstand attacks. As long as the force is strong enough, it can even resist sharp weapons.

Common street performances like spears to the throat or rolling on a bed of nails are all trained through this method.

The next level is to turn this defense into a conditioned reflex, so that whenever attacked, the muscles tense instantly, without needing to prepare in advance.

Finally, you expand from a single point to the whole body, developing powerful defense everywhere.

This is what’s called Iron Shirt.

When this technique is mastered to the extreme, being impervious to blades and spears is no exaggeration.

This kind of self-defense skill, common in the martial world, is certainly not very profound. But this is all Henry Thompson could get, so he didn’t mind.

He had never practiced martial arts, and had no internal energy in his body, but he possessed another, possibly even stronger, power—let’s call it spiritual power.

Henry Thompson thought for a moment and felt that using spiritual power to practice might work just as well.

After all, it’s just another form of energy; there shouldn’t be much difference.

No sooner said than done. He immediately mobilized his spiritual power, trying to concentrate it on a single point on the surface of his body.

This was his first time attempting such an operation. Previously, his spiritual power always flowed smoothly within his body—even when drawing his sword, he never needed to concentrate it in large amounts; just a little spiritual power was enough to wipe out his enemies.

Out of caution, he didn’t dare try it on any important part right away, so he chose a completely dispensable spot on his lower body—

A long, utterly useless, and rather ugly thing.

Something that, if anything went wrong, could be cut off entirely at any time.

That’s right.

He gathered his spiritual power onto a single leg hair.

To his surprise, as he slowly gathered fifty percent of his spiritual power onto that leg hair, it began to glow.

A glowing leg hair.

For some reason, this scene felt strangely familiar to Henry Thompson.

When the spiritual power reached sixty percent, it started to heat up!

It was like a piece of red-hot iron wire.

Henry Thompson finally remembered why it felt familiar—when he was a child, his family still used old-fashioned light bulbs...

He also had a hunch that if he kept pouring spiritual power in, it might explode.

To avoid injuring himself before even mastering Iron Shirt, he temporarily stopped the experiment.

It seemed that sixty percent spiritual power was the limit for a leg hair—he wondered how much the skin could take.

He pondered for a moment, frowning.