As his boxing technique became more and more refined, he fell less and less often. After soaking in medicinal wine and practicing boxing, the effect of refining the poison also gradually became apparent. Logan Whitman was full of energy and vigor every day, his muscles and bones became exceptionally strong, and even when struck with a mop handle, not even a white mark was left on his body.

Logan Whitman was overjoyed to see his body growing stronger day by day, and after every practice session, he would stand in the courtyard, indulging in self-admiration for a while.

On this day, Harold Whitman was squatting in the courtyard, slurping hot cornmeal porridge from the edge of his bowl. Seeing Logan Whitman looking so pleased with himself, he laughed and scolded, “You’re already this happy, and you’ve barely started.”

Logan Whitman shook his head with a grin. “Of course, I’m not there yet, but soaking in medicinal wine and practicing boxing every day, my body is getting stronger and stronger. A few days or months isn’t enough, but after a few years or decades, my body will surely be as hard as steel.”

Harold Whitman ignored him until he finished slurping up the bowl of thin porridge, then let out a long, satisfied sigh. “The meridians are like a rubber pouch, with limited capacity for ordinary poison. The wrong-fist can both store poison in the meridians and stretch the pouch a bit, but there’s always a limit. Once you exceed that limit, the meridians will rupture, and the deadly poison will corrode your internal organs. At that point, you might as well wrap yourself in bandages and go on display in Egypt! Maybe you’ll fetch a good price… Hand me a carrot.”

The two of them squatted in the courtyard, crunching on carrots. “Soaking in medicinal wine now is just laying the foundation for your body. When you’ve mastered all thirteen forms of the wrong-fist, your meridians’ capacity for poison will have reached its limit.”

Logan Whitman let out an “oh,” disappointment written all over his face. His dream of becoming a muscle-bound demon was dashed, and then he grew a bit worried. “I won’t explode ahead of time, will I?”

Harold Whitman laughed and scolded, “How did I end up with such a fool for a disciple! Sometimes you’re foolish beyond belief, sometimes you seem a bit clever, but in the end, you’re still foolish beyond belief!”

Logan Whitman held up half a carrot and put on a show of being foolish beyond belief.

“The thirteen forms of the wrong-fist are all about gradual progress. If you can’t master the first move, don’t even think about moving on to the second. Your constitution changes along the way, and by the time you’ve mastered the last move, your foundation will be just right! In all the generations of the Wen family’s disciples, I’ve never heard of anyone dying from the poison in the medicinal wine before mastering the thirteenth move.”

Soaking in medicinal wine and practicing the wrong-fist is just to lay a solid foundation for cultivating advanced poison techniques in the future. By the time the wrong-fist is mastered, a person’s meridians will have reached their limit for tolerating the toxins in the medicinal wine. If they want to make further progress, the practitioner must concoct their own poison formulas according to their own constitution, seeking out toxins that suit them, introducing poison into the body and then slowly resolving it, further strengthening the meridians. This cultivation can only be done by testing poisons on oneself, constantly experimenting to find the type of poison their body can best adapt to. No one else can help with this. Throughout the generations, many Wen family disciples have spent their whole lives searching, but never found the five-element poison their bodies could adapt to, and ultimately could not make any further progress.

Logan Whitman suddenly understood, grinning and showing a mouthful of neat teeth.

Besides practicing the wrong-fist, Logan Whitman also began systematically learning the methods of concocting and deploying poisons from his uncle or great-uncle. The Wen family divides poisons according to the five elements, with mutual generation and mutual restraint. Each type of deadly poison has only a vague pattern for concoction and deployment, with no unified or strict procedure. To achieve maximum potency, one must follow the interactions of the five elements and slowly experiment through practice.

Ordinary Wen family disciples, after the age of twelve, concoct poisons by following the family’s poison manual, just like cooking from a recipe—so long as the quantities are right, the result won’t be too far off. But what Logan Whitman was learning now was like systematically studying physics; whether he could build an atomic bomb in the future would depend on his own understanding and opportunities.

The former is like copying a model—simple and practical, but with little room for development. The latter is about applying theory to practice; once you gain insight and entry, you step into a whole new level.

Two years later, Logan Whitman finally mastered the last move in the boxing manual. By then, he was eighteen years old—not particularly tall, just shy of 1.8 meters, and not especially burly, but very solidly built. The honest look on his face hadn’t changed; at a glance, he was just a simple young man raised in the mountains.

Harold Whitman was overjoyed and took him to see the three elders of the Wen family.

Seeing Logan Whitman scratching his head and grinning foolishly with delight, Senior Whitman burst out laughing. “Silly boy, what’s there to be so happy about, taking two years to master the boxing manual? The Wen family’s children have been training their bodies and martial arts since childhood just to lay the foundation for this set of boxing. Ask your uncle how long it took him to learn it?”

“Twenty months.”

Logan Whitman stuck out his tongue in surprise.

Mr. Whitman kept a straight face and snorted, pointing to a big locust tree in the courtyard. “Go throw a few punches at that tree and let me see.”

Logan Whitman frowned. “That tree is over four hundred years old…”

“When I tell you to hit it, you hit it! Why so much nonsense!”