In the half-finished building, Zhang Yu threw a punch. His boot slammed the concrete floor, and a dull explosion shook the empty floors. He was already drenched in sweat, but he didn't stop for an instant, working through the Thirty-Six Health-Building Exercises move after move.
His whole body burned hot, leaking faint ribbons of white steam in the cold black night.
Ever since, a week earlier, he'd managed to keep up the Wild Bull Soul-Suppressing Heart Art while practicing the Boundless Cloud Hand up to level 10 in his weighted training suit, Zhang Yu had been pushing himself even harder. Now he was chasing level 10 on the Thirty-Six Health-Building Exercises.
At first it had been brutal, a double grind of body and mind. The only saving grace was that as long as he held his heart art active, the Wild Bull Soul-Suppressing Heart Art always rewarded him with a small, expectant joy and satisfaction.
And when he couldn't hold it?
There was always the Ritual Contract to steer him back onto the straight and narrow.
Like right now. The moment his focus slipped and the mental focus image in his mind began to blur, he knew the ritual was about to start yapping at him.
"Please honor the Ritual Contract. Strive earnestly to complete your wish. Do not deliberately slack or delay. Ten."
Zhang Yu forced his mind back, clinging to the Wild Bull Soul-Suppressing Heart Art until the image in his thoughts sharpened under him once more.
Damn it.
The chill had receded, but he still couldn't hold back a curse.
Just then, a phone rang somewhere in the dark shell of the building. To Zhang Yu the sound was pure heavenly music. At least this brainless ritual had a scrap of judgment—it let him rest a little while he took the call.
He picked it up: a message from Zhou Chechen, vice president of the student council.
Zhou Chechen: "Zhang Yu, what have you decided?"
Zhang Yu glanced at the time.
Ah. A student council message at four in the morning. Perfectly normal working hours for us Songyang folk.
Zhang Yu: "I want to focus on preparing for the monthly exam first. Let's talk about the contract after it's over."
Zhou Chechen: "Ha, no problem. We'll chat once the exams are done. I've already drawn up a contract you'll be completely satisfied with. Looking forward to the day we sign."
Zhang Yu knew Zhou Chechen probably said the same soothing words to every signatory. Still, being buttered up like this every now and then for a month straight—it wasn't entirely unpleasant.
"Too bad it's never pure friendship. Not a shred of self-interest in it, just wanting to compliment me."
The idea of keeping up this pretense with the man made Zhang Yu's stomach sour.
"I wonder if, after this exam, refusing him again will finally make him drop the smile?"
Zhang Yu looked up at his Feather Book.
Dao Heart: Level 2 (93%) Mana: 18.7 Body Strength: Level 1.33
After these brutal days of training, his power had climbed again. Dao Heart was edging ever closer to Level 3, and his mana had shot to the clear top of Songyang's freshman year—a league of its own that even Bai Zhenzhen couldn't match. Only his body strength had slid back to seventh or eighth, because he'd stopped training it for half a month and had only recently started again.
Still, Zhang Yu figured that at this rate he'd soon be ruling the freshman physical rankings too.
But even so, he was still a long, long way from placing into the Ten.
The thought made him draw a deep breath and dive back into his bitter practice.
---
The day of the monthly exam.
A grim, warlike air hung over the campus.
But for Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen, the exam itself was barely worth worrying about anymore.
He sailed through the morning's theory paper. After lunch and his midday meditation, he showed up at the test hall for the Daoshu exam, finished the questions with sweat beading his forehead, and then came the last test of the day.
Combat practice.
This time his opponent was Qian Shen.
Qian Shen sized him up with a complicated look. Here was the one who'd scored six points below him on the monthly exam, yet had outranked him by dozens of points in the mana competition overall. So Zhang Yu might be below him—and yet he somehow couldn't be below him at all. It made Zhang Yu inscrutable, the first exam-taker in Qian Shen's memory who scored lower on the test but made him tread with total caution.
Zhang Yu read the wariness on his face and smiled. "Here I come, then."
The next instant, he had closed the distance in a blur, one palm surging forward.
Qian Shen was careful, but a dozen-odd exchanges in, he was losing ground. Finally a gust of force blew into his face and he saw the fist stopped in front of his skull. He sighed. "I lose."
But before the second round began, he stared at Zhang Yu and spoke with sudden seriousness. "You weren't going all out, were you? You didn't even use the Boundless Cloud Hand."
The Boundless Cloud Hand was the technique Qian Shen had seen Zhang Yu learn on the competition floor that day; he knew Zhang Yu held its usage rights. And in the past two weeks of combat class, Zhang Yu had pulled it out every single time he sparred with Bai Zhenzhen.
"Use the Boundless Cloud Hand," Qian Shen said gravely. "Fight me with everything you've got. This is the monthly exam, not practice. Every point I earn in this exam, I want it clean. Use your full strength. Don't insult my score."
Zhang Yu took a deep breath. "Understood."
Inside, he lamented: "The one bit of fun I get between stretches of bitter training... it's about to end too, isn't it?"
He blurred forward once more, the palm wreathed in Formless Cloud Qi crashing down at Qian Shen.
Qian Shen had seen the power of the Boundless Cloud Hand in class. He didn't meet it head-on. He dodged, driving a kick at Zhang Yu's legs as he did.
But Zhang Yu's other hand swept up, laced with layers of cloud qi, and caught the incoming leg. The kick struck the mist and felt like kicking a soft, weightless fog—only to have a fierce rebound of force explode back through it, hurling Qian Shen clean out of bounds.
Second round over.
Third round began.
After that exchange, Qian Shen very much wanted to take back everything he'd said. Sure, he'd looked cool shouting it, but losing points in a practical exam still stung badly.
Not far off, Coach Lei Jun's gaze drifted from Zhang Yu and Qian Shen to the other pair, Bai Zhenzhen and He Dayou—only to watch He Dayou get floored in a couple of moves.
Lei Jun thought to himself: "Too big a gap. Next month I'll just stop letting Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen draw opponents—I'll pair them against each other for the combat test."
---
The next morning was the Dao Heart and mana exam.
Zhang Yu stepped back into the Spirit Realm.
This time he found himself strapped to a hospital bed, a syringe on his left, a button on his right. A female voice crackled over the speakers: premium pills, choose Purple Cloud; wholehearted healing for all ages, the all-in-one remedy that banishes any ailment; thank you to the Purple Cloud Corporation for co-sponsoring this exam—
Listening to the rules as they were announced, Zhang Yu understood: this Dao Heart test was all about happiness.
Every press of the button fed a dose of a drug called Harmony Sol into his body. And once the exam started, a shot was injected automatically.
From then on, the test was simple: press the button as rarely as possible, inject as little as possible. The fewer injections, the higher your ranking, the higher your score.
All because this medicine, newly developed by the Purple Cloud Corporation, could relax your nerves, stimulate your brain, and deliver supreme bliss. And of course, according to the corporation's own advertising, the drug had no side effects, no addictive potential, and had passed all clinical trials...
Zhang Yu didn't believe a word of it.
"The hell are these people?"
"Running ads during a monthly exam now, are we."
"The one who wrote this Dao Heart test is getting more shameless every year. One day I'll smash them..."
Even though he was inside the virtual world of the Spirit Realm, and the Harmony Sol flooding into him was just virtual ecstasy, he couldn't help a string of curses—before helplessly feeling the rush of the drug his body.
The pleasure slammed into his brain. No matter how strong his will and his heart-art cultivation, before the exam ended he found himself pressing the button twice. Clearly, this Harmony Sol hit hard.
---
Next to the spectacle of the Dao Heart exam, the mana exam and the sports exam felt flat and ordinary.
But when the sports exam ended, Wang Hai once again petitioned the school administration to let Zhang Yu into the competition team—and was once again refused. The stated reason was that Zhang Yu's athletic performance had slipped, and he still needed time to settle.
What was whispered to Wang Hai privately, though, was that the council had a hand in it.
Wang Hai thought it over, and the next day he messaged Zhang Yu.
"What's the beef between you and the student council? They don't seem to want you on the school's athletics team."
---
Inside the half-finished building.
Zhang Yu stood still in his weighted training suit, feeling the changes in the sea of his consciousness.
He had finally reached Level 3 Dao Heart.
His control over his flesh had grown finer; the mana in his dantian felt livelier, more obedient; every shred of muscle and blood and strength in his body felt more coordinated, more comfortable under his awareness. Even the days of spiritual exhaustion seemed to lift in that instant, leaving him extraordinarily light.
Dao Heart: Level 3 (0%)
This was what Level 3 Dao Heart felt like—a deeper command over himself and his own power.
"Finally, Level 3 Dao Heart."
"Which means I can start on the Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art now, right?"
For this expert-grade technique, passed down from a Golden Core True Person, Zhang Yu had been waiting a long time.
Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art! Let me see where your limits lie!
The moment his Dao Heart hit Level 3, he couldn't wait to switch his Feather Book's specialty to this technique.
The Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art is a martial heart technique comprising nine sets of martial arts: fist, palm, leg, finger, claw, blade, sword, spear, and staff. Some are combat forms, some are body-forging methods—but none of that was the point.
The true core of the Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art lies in grasping the artistic conception hidden within those nine forms and, from them, condensing your own martial intent.
Once again, like that day at the art exhibition, Zhang Yu began working through the nine sets from beginning to end.
With every move, gales of force kicked up around him, and the concrete boomed underfoot.
Having raised his Basic Scattered Hands to level 5, his Basic Thirty-Six Health-Building Exercises and his Intermediate Boundless Cloud Hand all to level 10, and having sparred with Bai Zhenzhen over a hundred times, Zhang Yu's eye had changed beyond recognition. The more he trained, the more he saw the technique's fullness—combat methods and body-forging methods alike, a net that covered everything. Once mastered, it could hammer his body and break his enemies in equal measure.
"...Just takes a while, is all."
Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art: Level 1 (0/10)
Dressed in his weighted training suit, Zhang Yu ran through all nine sets and it took him close to fourteen minutes.
Noticing that, he felt a familiar ache in his liver.
He knew this routine was going to be a long slog.