The heavy iron gate of the training grounds groaned loudly as it was pushed open. A pair of rough, calloused hands shoved the metal aside, creating a harsh, grinding noise that set teeth on edge.
Long Xiuyuan stepped onto the field, his tall, imposing figure silhouetted against the bright midday sun. His military boots struck the floor with heavy, rhythmic thuds, echoing through the silence.
"Fall in!"
The loud shout acted like a physical blow, sending a jolt of panic through the thirty-plus students of Class Three.
Chaos ensued immediately. Several students who had been lazily dozing in the shade of the trees scrambled frantically to get into formation. In the panic, a tall, thin boy tripped over his own feet, his knees slamming hard onto the unforgiving Green Steel Stone floor with a nasty crunch.
Situ Xuan stood quietly at the very end of the line, apart from the chaos. His right hand was wrapped in bandages stained with dried blood, and the knuckles of his left hand were dark with bruises—evidence of him smashing the training puppets the night before. He narrowed his eyes slightly against the glare. The morning light caught the Shark-Tooth Emblem on Long Xiuyuan's shoulder, making the symbol of the East Sea Legion shimmer with a cold, metallic glint.
Long Xiuyuan scanned the group with a critical eye. He reached to his waist and unfastened a pitch-black short stick. The metal gleamed coldly under the sun, carrying an air of danger.
"Today, we're going to conduct basic reaction training," Long Xiuyuan announced, his voice carrying easily across the field. "Pair up and take turns parrying attacks. Move!"
As the students of Class Three began to pair off and start their drills, Long Xiuyuan watched them, his gaze eventually landing on Situ Xuan. A rare hint of satisfaction crossed his rugged face. Finally, after all this time, he had come across a genuine prospect.
He was thinking ahead to the upcoming Class Promotion Tournament. It wasn't just the Student Union that stood to gain rewards from a victory. As the class teacher, Long Xiuyuan would also receive a substantial bonus if his class performed well. Ever since he had retired from the East Sea Legion, he hadn't felt this kind of vigor or anticipation. Life had become somewhat dull, but now, he saw a spark.
He didn't want to waste a talent like Situ Xuan. More importantly, he refused to let the general laziness of Class Three drag them down into failure during the tournament.
Piece-Exchange Tactics.
The phrase surfaced in Long Xiuyuan's mind. It was a combat strategy commonly used by the Spirit Master combat squads within the East Sea Legion.
The concept was simple: King against King, General against General.
In a situation where the number of troops was equal, you had to fully trust your side's strongest combatant. The goal was for the strongest member to hold off or defeat the enemy's aces, buying time while the rest of the team managed the weaker opponents. It was a gamble on individual strength.
When he looked at the rest of the class, Long Xiuyuan knew this was his only option. The best talent among the other students in Class Three was merely an Innate Level Seven. Theoretically, a student with that level of talent should have been placed in Class Two or even Class One. However, that student possessed the Golden Scaled Deer Spirit. It was a Spirit that leaned heavily towards the support system, not the attack system.
In the three-on-three matches of the Class Promotion Tournament, a support Spirit Master was completely useless without strong teammates to protect and buff.
Long Xiuyuan didn't expect the rest of this ragtag bunch to achieve any decent results on their own. His entire strategy hinged on one thing: creating a suitable environment for Situ Xuan. As long as he could engineer a one-on-one scenario, a Spirit Master of the same age would absolutely not be a match for Situ Xuan. They wouldn't even last a single round.
This way, they could crush the enemy through superior quality, even if their overall quantity of talent was lacking.
Having completely abandoned the mindset of a nurturing school teacher, Long Xiuyuan fixed his gaze solely on Situ Xuan. The boy was currently conducting weight training alone, separated from the rest of the class.
In the military, the winner takes all. The strong naturally possessed more resources and attention. Even after retiring and becoming a teacher, Long Xiuyuan had not changed this view. In fact, he saw no need to change it. The world of Spirit Masters was harsh, and only the strong survived.
Not far away, slightly removed from the main group of Class Three, Situ Xuan had once again strapped on the heavy gear. He wore a thirty-kilogram weighted belt given to him by Long Xiuyuan, along with wrist guards that added another five kilograms. He was training by himself, aloof from the rest of the world.
Situ Xuan's status in Class Three was that of an outsider. He was sometimes close to his classmates, but mostly distant. Long Xiuyuan gave him the maximum amount of freedom possible. As long as Situ Xuan didn't fall behind in the daily curriculum, he was allowed to manage his own time without restriction.
The only mandatory requirement was that for two hours every night, Situ Xuan had to engage in brutal, flesh-to-flesh practical combat training with Long Xiuyuan.
At this moment, the scorching sun shone through the glass skylight of the training ground's roof. The heat baked the arena, heating Situ Xuan's thirty-five-kilogram weighted belt until it was burning hot. The lead core inside the belt absorbed the solar energy, scorching the skin at his waist. several blisters had already formed where the hot material pressed against his flesh.
Situ Xuan was completely oblivious to the pain. His attention was turned inward, entirely focused on every contraction of his muscle fibers. He felt the wave-like ripples of his calf muscles as his toes gripped the hard ground, and he felt the tremors running up his spine as it transmitted power like a tensioned steel cable.
The five-kilogram Profound Iron wrist guards were beginning to deform. After three continuous hours of punching, the metal edges had curled from the repeated impacts. These sharp edges ground against the skin on the inside of Situ Xuan's wrists, turning the area into a bloody mess.
But the youth merely shook his hands, letting the blood flow. He allowed it to evenly coat the lining of the wrist guards. In his mind, this was practical; the blood would become sticky as it dried, preventing the guards from slipping due to sweat.
During a set of squats, Situ Xuan suddenly changed his movement trajectory.
The force that should have been directed vertically upward was suddenly shifted. He twisted, turning the motion into a lateral rotation. The heavy, thirty-five-kilogram belt swung around his waist like a meteor hammer.
The metal buckles at the belt's joints let out an overburdened creak as they strained against the centrifugal force. His oblique muscles displayed exaggerated spiral patterns as they fought to control the momentum.
This whimsical variation caused a chain reaction throughout his entire body. Dozens of veins, looking like earthworms, suddenly bulged across his back as every muscle engaged to keep him upright.
His training uniform had been soaked with sweat and dried by the sun three times over. It was now as stiff as dried fish skin, chafing against his body. Frustrated by the restriction, Situ Xuan grabbed the collar and tore the uniform apart, revealing an upper body covered in shocking purple bruises.
However, a strange sight unfolded. Those bruises were changing at a speed visible to the naked eye. They shifted from deep purple to a greenish-yellow, and finally faded back to a normal skin tone. The entire healing process took no more than ten minutes.
This was the perfect combination of his breathing technique and his Body Spirit. It allowed his body's self-healing ability to completely exceed the scope of ordinary humans.
The extreme physical pressure, combined with the perfectly timed breathing, caused his spirit power to circulate faster. Usually, his spirit power efficiency was slow due to his low innate talent, but under this duress, it was continuously climbing.
Situ Xuan's panting echoed in the empty section of the training ground. His chest heaved violently, and sweat crashed onto the stones like beads falling from a broken string.
The knuckles of his right hand were raw and bloody. The bruises on his forearms were purplish-black, looking like refined iron that had been struck repeatedly by a heavy hammer. Yet, he did not stop to rest. He didn't even bother to bandage the wounds. The blood soaked into the existing bandages and congealed into dark red scabs at his wrists, which he treated as a natural form of protective gear.
Dragging his heavy, exhausted body, he slowly walked to the center of the training ground and sat cross-legged on the Green Steel Stone floor.
The thirty-five-kilogram weighted belt lay limp beside him like a dead snake. Its metal buckles were polished smooth and shiny from the friction of countless high-intensity training sessions. The heavy Profound Iron wrist guards had also been violently tossed aside. His wrists were rubbed raw with streaks of blood, and the salty sweat seeped into the open wounds, bringing waves of sharp, stinging pain.
He slowly placed his hands on his knees, palms facing up and fingers slightly spread. The skin at his knuckles had split open, revealing the pale red tendons beneath.
"Hoo..."
He closed his eyes and took a sudden, deep breath.
The moment his chest expanded, the joints of his ribs made subtle crack-crack sounds, resembling a wooden structure being forced open by immense pressure.
His breathing rhythm shifted abruptly. It was no longer the long, deep inhalations and exhalations required for the Big Dipper Divine Fist. Instead, it became a short, near-suffocating pause.
"Inhale... Exhale..."
Each breath seemed to be deliberately cut short. He would exhaust every ounce of air in his lungs before forcing in a new, sharp stream of oxygen.
This was the Black Heart Baleful Palm. The core of this technique emphasized that "Evil Qi is the foundation."
A strange, pitch-black aura gradually began to seep from Situ Xuan's body. This aura was not spirit power, nor was it pure killing intent. It was something else entirely—a strange medium that existed between energy and physical matter.
Like flowing ink, the darkness spread along the lines of his skin. It covered his arms first. The blood-congested vessels, which had been swollen from the workout, seemed to be forcibly suppressed by the black aura. Under its shroud, the veins slowly contracted, turning from purplish-black to a sickly greenish-gray, until they were completely swallowed by the black Qi.
Cold sweat continued to slide down the side of his face, but the moment a droplet touched that black aura, it vanished. It didn't evaporate; it was simply swallowed up, disappearing silently into the darkness.
Situ Xuan's breathing became slower and slower. Eventually, there was almost no visible movement in his chest at all. He looked like a gradually cooling corpse, with only the slight, rapid twitching of his eyeballs beneath his eyelids proving he was still alive.
Drip.
A single drop of blood fell from his fingertip and hit the Green Steel Stone ground.
It didn't soak into the cracks of the stone. Instead, it hovered there, maintaining its shape like a condensed black pearl. Then, it was entwined by a wisp of the black Qi and slowly evaporated into nothingness.
"Refine."
Situ Xuan suddenly whispered the word. His voice was unrecognizable, sounding as hoarse as a knife scraping against rusted iron.
His hands suddenly clenched tight, his fingernails sinking deep into his damaged palms. Blood seeped through the gaps between his fingers, but strangely, it didn't drip to the floor this time. Instead, the blood was drawn upward by the black aura. It condensed in the air, forming a thumb-sized blood bead that hovered just above his palm.
The surface of the blood bead was constantly being traversed by tiny black filaments. They wriggled across the red sphere like living things, pulsing with a dark, sinister energy.