As the sun went down, Lin Hai flopped onto his bed gratefully as he looked at his bandaged up hand.
Earlier today, he had defended himself against the prince, who was attacking him, and in the process, Lin Hai had caught the prince's second fist out of instinct.
However, the prince was just too strong, and half the flesh of Lin Hai's hand had been blown apart, leaving behind a nasty chunk of missing flesh and exposed bones.
One thing that made Lin Hai curious was that no matter how hard he was hit by the prince even after that, his bones didn't break, and though at times it felt like they were going to and Lin Hai even heard faint cracking sounds, they barely managed to survive.
He was curious about this, because a normal person would have had their bones completely broken, but he had managed to survive the encounter with only some missing flesh, which would heal back later.
Even after the prince used 60% of the strength of his inner energy in a kick to Lin Hai's leg, all that happened was a minor fracture which didn't even go all the way through the bone, meaning that it was still structurally sound.
This was by far the best Lin Hai had ever done against the prince.
But he wasn't arrogant enough to think that he could resist the prince, because not only did the prince not use his full strength of his inner energy, he also didn't even use any techniques, which could increase the efficiency of using the inner energy and increase the power dramatically.
In a real life or death fight against the prince, he would die in one or two hits at most, and he knew it.
The only reason he managed to escape the fight with the prince today was because someone had come to tell him that he had business to attend to and that it was urgent, forcing him to leave.
If this hadn't interrupted, Lin Hai was sure that a few of his bones would have been broken at the least before he was allowed to leave.
After all, Lin Hai could tell that the prince was especially pissed ever since yesterday before the latter had seen Yan Daiyu.
It seemed that something had happened to annoy the prince, because Lin Hai had almost never seen him this pissed before, and Lin Hai was sure that if it wasn't for the intervention of Yan Daiyu or the other person today, he might have died both times.
For this reason, he had to be especially wary from now on.
Adding on the fact that Lin Hai 'dared' to 'fight back', he was absolutely positive that the prince would be on a warpath for him, as his favorite punching bag was actually fighting back, which was something that he absolutely couldn't allow.
But the good thing that came from all of this was that Lin Hai had some experience defending himself now, and he could do it better in the future.
On top of that, because he completed all his tasks early, he was able to go back to the orphanage early and was allowed time to cultivate, which was a privilege he never had access to before due to the arduous tasks presented by the prince.
This meant he was actually able to make a little bit of progress towards the next stage of the martial arts path, the third stage.
He obviously didn't make much progress since it was only an hour or two, but it was still infinitely more progress than before, and adding on the fact that his body had obviously started to change after merging with the Ruby Heart, it was even better.
He figured that it was possible for him to reach the third stage in only a month based on this speed of progress, which was insane. Even Yan Daiyu was only this fast, and she was one of the greatest geniuses in the kingdom.
At this moment, out of curiosity, he unwrapped his hand to look at the wounds, and when he did, he was surprised to find that it had completely stopped bleeding.
On top of that, another interesting thing had happened.
The scab that had formed was not only an unnatural bright red color, like that of fresh blood, but it was much more flexible than normal scabs, and moving his hand around, he felt that he could move his hand freely without pain or breaking the scab.
He found this interesting, because it meant that he wouldn't even have to worry about bleeding from his wounds from tearing them open again or anything similar.
As such, he decided to take all the bandaging off his body since it would just limit his mobility, and he continued to mess around, figuring out just one of the changes that had been brought by the Ruby Heart.
He didn't even realize what kind of fortune had fallen out of the sky upon him, and he wouldn't realize until much much later.
...
*Meanwhile, in the prince's courtyard*
"Something's different!" The prince slammed his fist against a table, breaking it in half.
Thinking back to today when he was fighting Lin Hai, even when using a fairly significant portion of his strength, he wasn't able to badly injure Lin Hai, and when thinking about how Lin Hai's eyes had locked onto his and the fear he felt in that moment, he felt disgusted.
He wasn't the brightest, but he could definitely tell that something had fundamentally changed, and he could tell that there was something very wrong with Lin Hai for this to be happening.
But even if he was the prince, he couldn't kill Lin Hai just because he wanted to; he needed an actual reason, and most of the slaves who had died to him either committed suicide or were killed for actually trying to fight back instead of defending themselves.
But Lin Hai had only defended himself, and he hadn't done anything directly wrong.
When he had nearly killed Lin Hai before, the only reason he did so was because his sister had intervened and severely pissed him off, and he was also already angry before, so he could just blame it on that if he died.
But now, he had calmed back down, and he couldn't just kill Lin Hai for no reason because there weren't unlimited slaves, and if they hadn't done anything wrong, the most he could do was beat him up for 'not completing his jobs'.
Even his father, the king, couldn't just kill people as he pleased, so how could he?
His father killed people on a daily basis, but they had all done something wrong or failed to do something right, which gave reason for him to be angry and he usually ended up killing them due to that, but he didn't kill with no reason.
His mind was racked thinking about this, and he was even getting anxious about it, though he didn't know why.
*Meanwhile, in the princess' courtyard*
"You're telling me that he was actually capable of defending himself against my brother?"
Yan Daiyu's voice was filled with utter disbelief. After all, nobody knew better than her and her brother how weak Lin Hai was previously.
Hearing that Lin Hai could actually defend himself without breaking bones shocked her to the extreme.
Previously even if the prince only used his physical strength and nothing else, he could kill Lin Hai in a single hit, but now he was able to defend himself even against her brother using his inner energy?
This was simply too unbelievable.
She was talking to the royal doctor at this moment, who had instructed some of the other servants to keep watch for Lin Hai and report anything that happened, and the one who stopped the fight earlier was one of those servants.
"According to the servant who witnessed the fight, Lin Hai was able to take a hit with 60% of the prince's full strength without any broken bones, though a bit of his flesh was burned away.
Of course, this is unverifiable because he was the only person to witness it, but it should be somewhat reliable at least." The doctor spoke with some degree of confidence.
All of the slaves loved the princess because she was always kind to them and helped them when she could, meaning that they would be ten times more honest to her than they would to anyone else.
It was for this reason that she was able to have some degree of confidence in the news.
Little did she know that this was just the beginning of Lin Hai's rise, and that she would be an integral part of it, and she had no idea just how much that one action of helping Lin Hai would affect her life.
...
A little later, Lin Hai woke up groggily with a weird expression. He felt weird waking up, and looking around, he found that nobody else was actually awake yet, which was weird.
He realized that the reason he woke up was this odd feeling that he had, though he had no clue where it was coming from or why he had it.
It was currently the middle of the night, and as he looked outside, he realized that it should be about 3:00 AM.
As he realized that nothing was happening and he wasn't tired any longer, he decided to get ready for the day.
This weird feeling persisted for a few minutes before finally fading away, and when it did, he felt much better.
Feeling his chest just because he was curious, he found that he still had no heartbeat, and he was confused as to how his blood moved through his body without a heartbeat.
However, he didn't even need to think to know that it was the Ruby Heart.
But despite knowing what caused it, it didn't mean that he knew why it happened or how it worked, hence why he was curious.
Soon, aside from eating, which he could only do once everyone was awake, he was ready for the day, and since there were still several hours before everyone woke up, he decided to try working out.
He had never worked out before, so he didn't know much about it, but he knew the basics, such as pushups, squats, and crunches.
Another thing that he knew which was more advanced was handstand pushups, in which you would lean your feet above your head against the wall and do pushups in a handstand.
As such, he started to do pushups, but he was surprised to find that it was many times easier to do than before, and he wasn't even really getting tired while doing them either.
Before, he could only do one or two pushups at the most, but he now only started to get tired after doing ten, and he managed to do a total of fifteen before collapsing to the ground, exhausted.
Although fifteen was below average for the number of pushups a person could do, it was much higher than he used to be able to do, and he was extremely happy with this progress.
He then moved onto squats and crunches, with him performing much much better than before in both, and he finally decided to try the handstand pushups, but he failed after only doing three of them, whereas he couldn't do a single one before.
After working out, he rested a bit since he didn't know how much he could work out without hurting himself, while he also had to be concerned about the injuries on his body, as they felt stressed while he worked out and he didn't want to make them worse.
But he had also noticed that they were considerably less damaged than they were earlier, and he could tell that they were healing extremely fast compared to before.
The damage was already extremely small, with only small chunks of his flesh missing, only about an inch or two wide, and they weren't deep, so they weren't considered major wounds, and the most damage on his body was his slightly fractured leg.
Also, he realized that the surface of his flesh had healed fast enough that there weren't even any bruises left behind around the areas where he was hit, which was proof enough that his healing had increased.
He realized that everything about his body had improved dramatically compared to before. On top of that, it didn't leave any scars!
However, he still hadn't realized that the biggest change was the shift in his personality, which gave him an unconscious confidence in everything that he did, making him appear strong and powerful despite not being so.
But it still didn't change his perception of the world or his way of thinking; not caring about anything that happened. This was why he was still so casual about his injuries and his Ruby Heart.