The morning sun over the Imperial Cultivation Academy did not break through the thick, gray haze of the capital city. Instead, it stained the high overcast sky a dull, metallic pewter.
By 07:45 AM, the South Training Hall was already vibrating with a tense, manic kinetic energy. The hall itself was a colossal, brutalist amphitheater constructed entirely from interlocking slabs of reinforced obsidian granite. High above the polished floorboards, rows of glass-fronted viewing galleries allowed representatives from the capital's premier state syndicates and ancient hidden clans to peer down like Roman senators evaluating a new batch of gladiators.
Lin Feng stood at the rear of the staging line, his arms loosely crossed inside his unremarkable gray utility jacket. Around him, nearly fifty other newly arrived provincial representatives were pacing back and forth, their breathing erratic, their nervous systems completely saturated with adrenaline.
To his left, an elite youth from the northern military borders was aggressively executing a deep, rhythmic breathing script, his chest expanding with a wet, heavy wheeze as he forced his unawakened lungs to compress the ambient air. He was a proud Stage 5 Flesh Refinement practitioner, yet his meridians were so severely calcified with synthetic steroid impurities that his internal energetic path resembled a choked, rusted pipe.
"Line up! Silence in the ranks!"
The cold, whip-like voice of the female instructor from the previous evening, Instructor Meng, echoed off the obsidian walls. She stood at the center of the amphitheater floor next to a towering, three-meter-tall pillar of matte-black carbon-alloy crystal. This was the
Meridian Screening Array
—a high-tech piece of sensory hardware developed by the Central Regulatory Bureau to measure a mortal candidate's bone density, muscle elasticity, and latent spiritual conductivity.
"When your name is called, you will step forward, place your bare right palm against the primary terminal plate, and exert your maximum physical force," Instructor Meng commanded flatly, her sharp eyes sweeping past the independent block students with a practiced, systemic indifference. "The array will translate your baseline output into a numerical rating. The current capital average for legacy clan descendants is a score of 450 points. Anything below 150 points is an automatic expulsion. Let's begin."
"Candidate 01: Zhao Ming. Capital Core Branch."
A ripple of sudden, reverent murmurs rolled through the staging line as the elegant youth in the pristine white linen shirt stepped out from the elite front ranks. Zhao Ming walked with an absolute, unshakeable aristocratic swagger, his cool, detached gaze tracking toward the crystal pillar as if he already owned the record.
Behind him in the viewing galleries, several elderly men in deep gray corporate robes leaned forward against the glass.
Zhao Ming arrived at the threshold, unbuttoning his right cuff with deliberate slow precision. He took a long, sharp breath, activating his family’s hidden compressed breathing form,
The Tremor Core
. A faint, dark muddy hue seeped into his forearm, his muscle fibers tightening until his skin resembled ancient mountain stone.
He slammed his open palm against the black crystal terminal plate.
BOOM.
A dull, heavy shockwave of displaced kinetic air pressure detonated outward from the pillar, causing the loose hair of the nearest students to whip backward. The digital holographic display array suspended above the amphitheater violently flickered with green code before locking onto a single, massive number:
[580 POINTS — BONE RESILIENCE: SPECIAL GRADE / MERIDIAN DILATION: ACTIVE STAGE 6]
"Five hundred and eighty!" the northern military youth gasped, his face instantly turning a shade paler. "He's nearly a hundred and fifty points above the capital baseline before the spiritual awakening has even reached its peak... The Capital Zhao branch's resources are truly terrifying."
Instructor Meng’s severe, blade-like expression softened into a look of deep institutional satisfaction. She gave a brief, firm nod. "Exceptional foundation, Student Zhao. Your placement in the Vanguard Elite Section is confirmed."
Zhao Ming turned on his heel, his cool eyes scanning the staging line with a smirk of absolute, undisputed dominance. As he walked back toward the elite ranks, his gaze drifted right past Lin Feng, failing to log the thin youth as anything more than a statistical nobody from the provinces.
The screening continued with cold, mechanical efficiency.
Candidate 12: 210 points.
Candidate 24: 185 points.
Candidate 31 (The northern military youth): 340 points.
As the numbers went up, the independent block candidates grew increasingly desperate, several of them failing to cross the 150-point threshold entirely before being escorted out of the South Training Hall by silent, black-clad security enforcers.
"Candidate 45: Lin Feng. Jiangnan Provincial Registry."
Instructor Meng’s voice dropped its slight warmth, returning to a flat, synthetic bark as she read from her digital clipboard.
Lin Feng let his arms drop to his sides, stepping smoothly out of the rear staging ranks. He walked across the polished obsidian granite floor with a slow, unhurried gait, his hands loosely tucked into his jacket pockets. To the viewing galleries and the elite students watching his ascent, he looked like a complete joke—his posture lacked the explosive, coiled tension of a trained martial artist, and his skin appeared too smooth, too soft, to possess any genuine structural weight.
"That's the kid from the Jiangnan excavation site," Zhao Ming murmured to Old Tang, who stood quietly in the shadow of the gallery stairs. "The one whose regional files claimed he survived a trench collapse using 'spatial reflexes.' Look at his shoulders. There isn't an ounce of functional muscle mass on his frame."
"A common laborer who lucked into a fluke," Old Tang muttered back indifferently.
Lin Feng reached the black crystal pillar. He didn't unbutton his utility jacket or execute an intricate, dramatic sequence of martial breathing exercises. He calmly pulled his right hand from his pocket. His hand looked entirely ordinary—porcelain-smooth, free of calluses, and completely devoid of the dark, stone-like hue that Zhao Ming had displayed.
A standard carbon-alloy array,
Lin Feng analyzed mentally, his vacant, bottomless eyes looking through the polished reflective surface of the plate.
The machinery uses a baseline kinetic sensor calibrated to measure mortal muscle density and unawakened lung torque. It calculates force using linear physical resistance. If I release even a single microscopic strand of my liquid Qi, the high-density energetic feedback will violently fry the internal processing logic boards of the entire network.
He didn't need his Qi to cross this threshold.
Lin Feng closed his eyes for a split second, shifting his internal awareness backward into his own skeletal framework. Within his lower abdomen, his
Dantian
remained completely flat, but the absolute, compressed density of his
Mortal Flesh Refinement—Stage 9 Peak
foundation—the unbreakable marrow structure he had scoured using the Mount Tai stones—vibrated with a deep, silent frequency.
He placed his bare palm flat against the black crystal. He didn't strike it with a heavy punch; he simply relaxed his shoulder and delivered a short, compact, three-inch flex of his forearm tendons.
...
For three seconds, absolutely nothing happened. There was no thunderous explosion, no dramatic shockwave of air pressure, and no flashing strobe lights. The amphitheater remained perfectly silent.
"A total dud," a legacy candidate from the elite section scoffed, letting out a short sneer. "He didn't even trigger the minimum kinetic threshold. Expel him already."
Instructor Meng raised her digital pen, preparing to write a flat rejection code across Lin Feng's provincial ledger. "Student Lin, your physical output is insufficient to—"
Suddenly, a sharp, metallic
screeech
cut her off.
The matte-black carbon-alloy crystal pillar violently shuddered. Deep within the core of the three-meter structure, a series of rapid, explosive fractures split across the stone like a spiderweb. The polished surface plate beneath Lin Feng’s palm didn't just register pressure—the solid alloy violently warped and compressed, turning into a hollow, half-inch-deep mold of his hand as if the material were nothing more than soft, wet clay.
High above the amphitheater floor, the holographic display monitor completely froze. The numbers didn't count upward; instead, the entire interface flashed with a blinding, pulsing crimson error code:
[ ALERT: STRUCTURAL MASS VARIANCE LIMIT EXCEEDED]
[baseline kinetic calculation: ERROR // OVERLOAD]
[CURRENT BASERATING: 999+ POINTS]
The entire South Training Hall fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Instructor Meng’s digital pen slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the granite floorboards. She stared at the warped, ruined alloy pillar, her severe face twisting into an expression of absolute, uncomprehending psychological paralysis. A carbon-alloy screening pillar was explicitly engineered to withstand the direct impact of an armored infantry vehicle without a single scratch, yet this broke provincial student had turned its core into a deformed lump of metal with a casual tap of his open hand.
Up in the viewing galleries, the corporate syndicate representatives stood up from their leather chairs so abruptly that several glass panes rattled in their frames.
Zhao Ming’s aristocratic smirk was completely erased, his face turning a dark, mottled shade of ash as his cool eyes locked onto Lin Feng’s unblemished, smooth palm. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine points...? That’s... that’s physically impossible for an independent commoner. His meridians aren't even open!"
Lin Feng calmly pulled his hand back, sliding it neatly into his jacket pocket before the automated secondary sensors could log his internal liquid Qi circuit. He turned his vacant, bottomless gaze toward Instructor Meng, his voice carrying a smooth, undisturbed humility that felt heavier than a mountain strike.
"Did I pass the minimum threshold, Instructor?" Lin Feng asked softly.
The institutional chessboard had just experienced its first terminal fracture within the capital, and the undefeated apex of New Huaxia was already looking toward his next seat.