Training with Tian Jue Dui was akin to walking through a thunderstorm barefoot—brutal, enlightening, and completely unrelenting.
Qiang Ming had always known he was talented. Not just in the shallow sense, but truly—born with a rare Martial Soul, trained under pressure, molded by combat and hardship. His hammer strikes carried weight. His instincts were sharp. His movements, deadly. At least, that's what he had believed.
And then came Tian Jue Dui.
"Your hammer swings are loud and wasteful," the man had said on the first day of this particular regimen. "Like a child crashing pots together. We'll fix that."
From that moment on, Qiang Ming was rebuilt. Piece by piece. Not just physically—but in how he understood battle itself.
The first step? Breaking down everything he thought he knew.
His grip was wrong. His footwork was inefficient. His follow-through left openings. His body positioning didn't maximize rotational torque. His transitions were too linear. The list never seemed to end.
And so, Tian Jue Dui began again with him—starting from the very roots of hammer usage.
They spent days—weeks even—just on stances. On how to move with the hammer without becoming a slave to its weight. On how to let its mass flow with him, not against him. How to hide the hammer's danger until it was too late for the opponent to react.
Qiang Ming resisted at first. His pride didn't take well to being treated like a child. But each passing day made it harder to argue. As he honed these "basic" forms, he felt the shift happening—his hammer strikes, once brutal but telegraphed, now became silent and oppressive. Subtlety was woven into strength. He didn't lose power—he gained purpose.
It was during one of their long training evenings under the star-strewn sky that Tian Jue Dui introduced him to the concept of the four Tiers of Weapon Mastery.
Consciousness. Soul. Saint. God.
Qiang Ming, despite all his confidence, stood firmly in the Consciousness tier. That was the level of awareness—knowing the hammer's heft, reacting with instinct and experience, fighting with fluid efficiency. A good place to be. A strong place to be. But still, the base of the mountain.
The Soul tier, his Master explained, was when the weapon and wielder's intentions became indistinguishable. The hammer no longer needed to be thought about—it moved as thought manifested. It anticipated. It felt.
At the Saint tier, the hammer wasn't just a weapon. It was a symbol. It carried will, and with that will, it could exert pressure even without striking. Saints shaped battlefields with presence alone.
And then… God.
Tian Jue Dui made no spectacle of it. He didn't demonstrate explosive power or ethereal illusions. He merely held out his hammer—and in that moment, Qiang Ming could feel the air bend. The wind didn't dare touch it. The stone beneath their feet seemed to hush.
"I am a Hammer God," he said quietly, "not because of how many I've crushed… but because I understand this weapon as well as I understand myself. There is no separation."
It wasn't arrogance. It was truth.
And it shook Qiang Ming to his core.
He bowed that night—lower than he had ever bowed—and said, "Please teach me."
From there, every day became sacred. Not just muscle memory—but philosophy. Flow. Rhythm. Timing. Deception. Pressure. Control. Qiang Ming learned to make his hammer breathe. To make each swing feel like a question the opponent couldn't answer until it was too late.
But hammer wielding wasn't all. There was another storm to be tamed.
The Destruction Energy.
That cruel, unstable energy that clung to the Blackstone Abyss Hammer like an ever-hungry curse. Qiang Ming had only begun to tap into its nature—when he survived Gu Yue's ultimate spell. Back then, he had used it instinctively, to form a crude barrier and survive an attack no human should have.
Now, with the safety and guidance of his Master, it was time to understand it.
Together, they meditated over the hammer, studying its pulse, its whispers, its fluctuations. The destruction energy was wild—constantly leaking, ever eroding. It acted like a predator—feeding, breaking, corroding everything it touched. At first, Qiang Ming couldn't even hold it for more than a few seconds before it lashed back at him.
But slowly, he began to shape it. Define it.
He discovered that the energy responded most clearly to emotions—rage, despair, conviction. It surged under will and purpose, and with training, he could manipulate it just slightly—enough to form a shield, enough to weaponize it in bursts.
Yet, its true nature eluded him.
"It's not your energy yet," Tian Jue Dui said, arms crossed. "It belongs to the Blackstone Abyss Hammer. As long as you walk this path, and as long as that hammer grows… it will grow with you."
That was both comforting and daunting. On one hand, the destruction energy wasn't stagnant—it could evolve. But it also meant Qiang Ming's progress with it would always be tied to the hammer's deepening legacy, and not something he could brute-force with willpower alone.
For now, it was a tool. A dangerous one. Reserved for desperate situations. But one day… it could become something more. Something absolute.
Each night, after his body was broken by training and his spirit taxed by cultivation, Qiang Ming sat beneath the stars with Jin Shi's voice murmuring in his mind, reciting old philosophies and combat stories from a beast who had lived for over a hundred thousand years. Sometimes, Jin Yi would join him and spar without words, showing him what raw bestial grace looked like when paired with ancient cunning.
Hammer. Energy. Body. Will.