The communal washrooms of the Commoner Wing were notoriously brutal. The water was drawn directly from the subterranean ice-springs beneath the Jade Mountains, completely devoid of the warming arrays installed in the Noble Spire. Usually, a morning shower was a gasping, shivering ordeal. Today, for Kai, it felt like baptism.
It took nearly an hour and half a bar of coarse lye soap to scrub the thick, foul-smelling black sludge from his skin. As the dark, tar-like impurities of the Minor Cleansing washed down the iron drain, Kai watched the water turn from murky brown to crystal clear.
He turned off the rusted spigot and stepped out into the cold, humid air of the washroom, wiping the condensation from a cracked mirror on the wall.
Kai stopped. He stared at the reflection, genuinely unsure if he was looking at himself.
The boy who had entered the Jade Forest just days ago was gone. The "soft meat" Instructor Silas had mocked had been entirely burned away, replaced by lean, incredibly dense muscle that looked as though it had been chiseled from polished bronze. The lingering baby fat around his cheeks had vanished, leaving a sharp, angular jawline. His skin, previously calloused and uneven from years of village labor, was now flawlessly smooth, yet possessed a strange, unyielding tension—like the surface of a drum pulled taut over an iron frame.
But the most striking change was his eyes. The orange flecks had entirely consumed his irises, leaving them a vibrant, molten gold that seemed to glow in the dim light of the washroom. He looked older. He looked dangerous. He looked... undeniably handsome, in the sharp, predatory way a newly forged sword is beautiful.
Kai dried off, slipped into his standard grey academy uniform—which now fit far tighter across his shoulders—and headed back to his dorm room. The heavy Density-Stone Cuffs were still locked on his wrists and ankles, but the 2x gravity draw barely registered. He felt light. He felt invincible.
He pushed open the heavy wooden door to his room, fully expecting to find Robert staring at him in awe.
Robert was sitting on the edge of his cot, violently yawning and scratching the back of his neck. He looked incredibly relaxed. In fact, he looked too relaxed.
"Morning," Robert mumbled, blinking sleepily as Kai walked in. Robert paused mid-stretch, his eyes widening as he took in Kai's new appearance. "Whoa. Did you... iron your face or something? You look like one of those snobby Imperial statues in the main courtyard. Are you wearing makeup?"
"It's the Minor Cleansing," Kai said, trying to suppress a grin of pure, hard-earned pride. "One hundred cycles of the Titan-Pulse. I broke through to Tier 1 (Mid) and purged my marrow. I feel like I could punch a hole through a mountain."
Kai waited for the congratulations. He waited for Robert to ask how he survived the excruciating, bone-crushing agony of the unrefined elemental array.
Instead, Robert simply stretched his arms above his head. As he did, the ambient shadows in the room seemed to bend toward him. A sudden, deep resonance echoed from Robert's chest.
Kai froze. His newly upgraded senses, fueled by his balanced Five-Element core, immediately detected the shift in the room's atmospheric pressure. He activated his [Appraisal] skill instinctively.
[Target Entity: Robert Vance]
[Cultivation Realm: Tier 1 (Mid)]
[Affinity: Void / Nullification]
[Status: Exceptionally Rested. Meridians passively expanded.]
Kai stared. He blinked, thinking the System had glitched. He looked at Robert, then at the System screen, and then back at Robert.
"Robert," Kai said, his voice dropping to a dangerously calm whisper. "Did you break through to the Mid-Tier?"
Robert looked down at his own hands, seemingly noticing the swirling, dark Qi wrapping around his fingers for the first time. "Oh. Yeah, I guess I did. I was wondering why my back stopped hurting."
"How?" Kai asked, his eye twitching. "You went to sleep at cycle twenty. You didn't buy any spirit stones. You didn't do any breathing exercises."
"I don't know," Robert shrugged, looking genuinely innocent. "I was having a nightmare about being really, really hungry. Then, around midnight, there was this massive explosion of, like... spicy, thick energy in the room. My chest just sort of inhaled it while I was snoring. Woke up feeling great. Turns out, the Void really likes eating leftover elemental fallout."
Kai stood perfectly still. He thought about the 500 credits he had spent on absolute garbage. He thought about the excruciating, mind-bending pain of forcing jagged scrap metal and burning sulfur through his veins. He thought about his knees buckling under the malfunctioning gravity cuffs, bleeding black sludge onto the floor, and fighting for every single breath while his body felt like it was being fed through a woodchipper.
And Robert had leveled up by taking a nap.
"You..." Kai started, his molten-gold eyes flaring with a mix of utter disbelief and profound, undeniable jealousy. "I almost died in a gravity-crushing scrap-metal ritual. I was literally sweating blood. And you broke through... in your sleep?"
"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds a bit unfair," Robert chuckled nervously, grabbing his Siphon-Staff and backing toward the door. "But hey! Look at you! Your skin is glowing! I still look like a starved rat, so you definitely won the beauty contest!"
Kai let out a long, heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. He couldn't even be truly angry. Robert's Void-affinity was a terrifying, passive black hole. It was exactly the kind of ridiculous talent that the Academy instructors called the "Sons of Heaven."
"Just... don't tell Instructor Silas you leveled up by snoring," Kai muttered, grabbing his Quintessence Blade. "He'll probably make you sleep on a bed of nails just to balance things out."
The massive iron bells of the Academy tolled, summoning the first-year class to the Grand Courtyard for the morning assembly.
The contrast between Kai and Robert and the rest of the Commoner Wing was almost comical. As the students filed out of the dormitories, they looked like a procession of the undead. They were limping, groaning, their eyes sunken with dark bags from a night of agonizing, fruitless attempts at the Titan-Pulse Exercise. Most had failed to reach even fifteen cycles.
Then came Kai and Robert. Robert walked with a light, bouncy step, twirling his staff. Kai walked with a predatory, silent grace, his posture perfectly straight, the heavy gravity cuffs hidden beneath the sleeves and trousers of his uniform. The subtle, metallic sheen of his skin caught the morning sunlight, and his bright golden eyes stood out like beacons in the crowd of exhausted, pale faces.
Whispers immediately broke out among the commoners.
"Who is that?"
"Is that Hart? The farm boy?"
"Why does he look like he belongs in the Noble Spire?"
The whispers didn't just stay with the commoners. Across the courtyard, the noble students were forming their own pristine, organized ranks. Even they looked slightly fatigued, having spent the night refining the expensive pills they had bought from the Vault.
Princess Zhao Yan stood at the front of the noble formation. When her violet eyes landed on Kai, she stiffened. She had expected to see him broken, his meridians torn by the unrefined slag he had purchased. Instead, she felt the unmistakable, heavy pressure of a Mid-Tier core radiating from him.
"Impossible," muttered a voice beside her.
It was Zhao Feng, a cousin from the branch family. He was a tall, arrogantly handsome boy who carried a Tier-2 Rapier at his hip. He had been the one complaining about sharing air with commoners in the Aurelian Vault two days prior.
"He used trash materials," Feng scoffed, his face twisting with aristocratic disdain. "He must have used a forbidden demonic art to alter his appearance and fake his cultivation base. A mud-blood doesn't just undergo a Minor Cleansing in one night."
"Do not underestimate him, Feng," Yan warned coldly, though she couldn't tear her eyes away from the profound physical transformation Kai had undergone.
Instructor Silas stepped onto the raised stone dais at the front of the courtyard. He looked out over the sea of exhausted faces, a grim smile of satisfaction playing on his scarred lips. Then, his eyes locked onto Kai.
Silas's smile faded, replaced by a look of intense, clinical scrutiny. He didn't need the System to appraise the boy. He could smell the ozone. He could see the absolute lack of wasted movement in Kai's stance.
"Well, well," Silas's voice boomed across the silent courtyard. "It seems one of you actually decided to take the curriculum seriously. Hart. Step forward."
Kai stepped out of the commoner ranks. The 2x gravity cuffs pulled at him, but his stride was effortless.
"You purged your marrow," Silas said, stating it as a fact, not a question. "One hundred cycles. In one night."
"Yes, Instructor," Kai answered, his voice ringing with that deep, metallic resonance that sent a shiver through the front rows.
Before Silas could commend him, a sharp, arrogant voice cut through the morning air.
"Instructor Silas, with all due respect, I call a fraud."
Zhao Feng stepped out from the noble ranks, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his rapier. He glared at Kai with pure, unadulterated contempt. "It takes weeks of specialized alchemical baths and pure spirit stones to safely achieve a Minor Cleansing. A commoner doing it overnight with scrap metal? He's either using an illusion artifact to look the part, or he's bloated his meridians with unstable energy. He's a balloon waiting to pop."
The courtyard went dead silent. Challenging a student's cultivation validity was a massive insult in the Empire.
Silas didn't look angry. He looked entirely amused. He crossed his massive, scarred arms over his chest. "Is that so, Zhao Feng? You think the boy is a balloon?"
"I do," Feng said, drawing his rapier. The blade hummed with a sharp, piercing Wind-affinity Qi. "And as a member of the Imperial Bloodline, I cannot allow a fraud to stand in the vanguard of this Academy. I request a Verification Spar. First blood."
Robert tensed, stepping forward, his Void-Qi beginning to swirl aggressively around his staff. "You want to fight? Fight me, you over-dressed peacock."
Kai put a hand on Robert's chest, gently pushing him back. Kai looked at Zhao Feng, then down at his own wrists, hidden beneath his sleeves, where the heavy Density-Stone cuffs were locked in place. He had a Mid-Tier core, a cleansed body, and a lot of pent-up aggression from a night of absolute torture.
"Let him try to pop the balloon, Robert," Kai said, an orange-gold fire igniting in his eyes. He slowly drew the Quintessence Blade from its scabbard. The charcoal-grey steel hummed, eager to taste its first real fight. "I've been wanting to test the new engine anyway."