Volume 2, Chapter 65: The Weight of Steel and Song
The animal fat worked. I walked down the stone steps of the main courtyard, and my left boot didn't make a single sound. It was wonderful. But my joy didn't last very long, because the courtyard was currently filled with a massive block of gray iron.
Arbitrator Vane stood next to the iron slab, looking like she had spent the last three nights drinking vinegar. Her black uniform was pristine, but she had a dark smudge of grease on her collar. I felt a little better seeing that. Even the high and mighty executioners get dirty sometimes.
The machine she brought wasn't subtle. It was a heavy obelisk made of grey stone, wrapped in thick copper bands and long iron tubes. It didn't use a screen. It had a row of glass tubes filled with colored sand that rose and fell based on the purity of a person's soul power. It hummed with a flat, cold vibration that made my teeth itch.
"Professor Lakas," Vane said, her voice cutting through the morning air like a saw through wood. "Your advanced track students are required to submit to a purity check. The Federation needs to ensure no one is carrying the sickness from the North."
The whole school had gathered around the edges of the square. Hundreds of students were whispering, their eyes darting between Vane's armed guards and my small group. Yuhao stood at the front, his hands tucked into the pockets of his stiff black uniform. His face was pale. I could see the faint twitch in his forehead where his third eye rested. That spiritual core inside his head was spinning hard, and the cold hum of the machine wasn't helping his headache.
"Vane, you really know how to ruin a beautiful morning," I said, walking up with a wide, lazy smile. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, resting my hands on my hips in a completely relaxed pose. It was the look of a man who didn't have a single care in the world — a look that usually made bureaucrats lose their minds. "We were just about to start our morning stretches. Do you know how bad it is for the muscles to stand around in the cold?"
"Save the jokes, Lakas," Vane snapped. "Step up the golden girl first."
Wang Qiu'er stepped forward. She didn't look at Vane. She didn't look at the guards. She just stared at the iron obelisk as if it were a particularly ugly piece of trash. The faint golden aura of the Auspicious Beast lingered around her like a quiet sun.
I caught Xiao Xiao's eye. She was leaning against a white pillar a few paces away, casually wiping her dark bamboo flute with a small cloth. The Nine Phoenix Dancing Flute and the Three Lives Cauldron were her twin soul spirits — tools that carried the quiet authority of the Phoenix Hall. I gave her a tiny, almost invisible nod.
Xiao Xiao didn't raise the flute to her lips. She just blew a very soft, silent breath across the top hole while pretending to clean it.
It was a trick I taught her during the timeskip. The Nine Phoenix Dancing Flute doesn't need to be loud to work. The tiny, silent vibration rippled through the air, hitting the copper bands of Vane's machine. It didn't break the device. It just shifted the local frequency by a fraction of a note, creating a small blanket of normal resonance around the testing plate.
Qiu'er pressed her bare palm against the cold iron plate.
The copper bands hummed. The blue sand in the glass tubes rose steadily, stopping right at the mark of a high-level expert. There was no red light. There was no alarm. The machine read her as a perfectly normal human soul master.
Vane stared at the glass tube, her jaw tightening. "That's impossible," she muttered.
"See? Just a normal girl from the provinces," I said, offering a confident grin. "Maybe she just eats a lot of carrots. I hear they're good for the soul power."
Yuhao stepped up next. He didn't wait for Vane to ask. He laid his hand on the plate, his teeth clenched against the throbbing in his brain. The purple sand shot up to the mark of a Level 72 Soul Sage. It was an incredible rank for an eighteen-year-old, but the machine didn't flash or explode. The All-Seeing Library in his mind stayed completely invisible beneath Xiao Xiao's musical blanket. His Spirit Eyes remained quiet, and the Ice Jade Swan soul spirit Bai Xue stayed dormant inside his spiritual sea.
"The machine says they're clean, Vane," I said, crossing my arms. "Are we done here? I have a lecture on footwork at ten, and I really don't want to be late."
Vane didn't look at me. She looked at her guards. "I don't trust the stones. The sickness in the North can hide from sensors if it's deep enough in the marrow. I want a live combat test."
She waved her hand, and four heavy military trucks rolled into the courtyard, their tires tearing up the manicured grass. I winced. The groundskeeper was going to murder me for this.
The trucks were pulling a massive iron cage covered in heavy chains. Inside the cage was a shape that made the watching students gasp. It was an Abyss General. The thing was nine feet tall, its body a horrific mix of grey flesh and black bone armor. It had four long arms ending in jagged obsidian claws, and it didn't have a face — just a vertical slit that leaked a thin grey mist.
"This creature was captured near the ridge," Vane announced, her voice echoing across the courtyard. "If your students are as pure as your machine says, they should have no trouble subduing it. If they fail, the Hall will take them into custody for further examination."
"Vane, this is a school, not an arena," Yuhao said, stepping forward. His voice was flat and dangerous. His third eye was practically bulging under his skin now. "That thing is a bio-hazard."
"Then kill it, Arbitrator Huo," Vane countered.
The guards began to turn the heavy iron cranks to open the cage door. But they didn't get the chance to finish.
The Abyss General didn't wait. It smelled the raw golden energy radiating from Qiu'er. It smelled the vast, compressed spiritual power inside Yuhao's head. It went completely wild.
CLANG!
With a terrifying burst of speed, the creature slammed its upper arms against the iron bars. The heavy chains didn't just rattle; they snapped like old string. The iron door flew off its hinges, crushing one of the testing machines into scrap metal.
The beast lunged out of the dust, ignoring the guards entirely. It aimed straight for Yuhao's throat, its claws tearing through the air with a sound like ripping silk.
"Get back!" Yuhao shouted to the crowd.
Xiao Xiao acted first. She threw her dark flute into the air, and a massive green cauldron materialized above the courtyard with a heavy BOOM. The Three Lives Cauldron dropped directly between the monster and the fleeing students, acting as a massive shield. She caught her flute as it fell and began to play a fast, sharp melody. The music wrapped around the courtyard, creating a barrier that stopped the grey mist from choking the air.
But the General was too strong. It slammed two of its massive fists into the side of the cauldron, leaving deep dents in the green metal. Xiao Xiao gasped, stumbling back as the feedback hit her soul power.
Yuhao tried to move, but his head gave a violent, blinding throb. The spiritual vortex in his upper dantian had reached its absolute limit. It was spinning so fast it felt like a physical drill trying to burst out of his forehead. He fell to one knee, his vision going completely dark.
Through the haze, he felt a hand grab his shoulder.
It was a small hand, but it was incredibly warm. It felt solid. It felt like the only real thing in a world that was turning grey.
Qiu'er stood over him, her golden hair whipping around her face like solar flares. The light of the Auspicious Beast flared around her. She didn't look at the monster. She looked down at him.
"You're spinning," she said, her pink eyes locking onto his three open eyes. "Stop looking at the noise. Look at me. Use my weight."
Yuhao grabbed her wrist. The moment his fingers closed around her skin, the chaos in his mind stopped. Her resonance wasn't like a human's; it was the ancient, unyielding presence of the golden forest. It was an anchor.
And then something clicked.
The spinning vortex inside Yuhao's mind didn't just slow down; it collapsed inward. The vast ocean of his spiritual energy compressed into a single, tiny point of absolute density.
THUMP.
It felt like a second heart had just started beating inside his brain. The pain vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, limitless clarity. His Spiritual Soul Core was fully formed. He had achieved a complete breakthrough in stability.
Yuhao stood up, his movements perfectly smooth. He didn't let go of Qiu'er's hand.
"Let's fix it," he said.
They lunged together. They didn't use a flashy combination or a named skill. They moved as a single frequency. Yuhao opened the Gaze of Openings, turning the world into a clear map of energy. He saw the exact knot of grey corruption holding the monster's chest together.
"There," Yuhao said.
Qiu'er didn't hesitate. She threw her weight forward, her right fist glowing with a warm golden light that completely erased the grey mist around them. Yuhao channeled his deep Level 72 soul power through their linked hands, injecting his new, stabilized spiritual pressure straight into her strike.
They hit the creature's chest at the exact same moment.
There was no explosion. There was no dramatic shout. There was just a loud, solid CRACK that sounded like a heavy hammer hitting a stone block.
The Abyss General froze. The grey bone armor on its chest shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. The grey mist inside its body simply dissolved, turning into harmless white vapor that floated away in the morning sun. The creature collapsed into a heap of empty black ash.
A stunned silence fell over the entire school. The students stared at the pile of ash, then at Yuhao and Qiu'er, who were still standing in the center of the square.
Xiao Xiao lowered her flute, her own chest heaving as her soul power settled into a deeper, more refined rhythm. The pressure of the fight had pushed her own cultivation forward — a small breakthrough of her own. She looked at the two of them and let out a dry, quiet chuckle.
I stepped forward, dusting off my sleeves. I looked at the ruined grass, then at Vane, whose face was completely pale.
"Well," I said, my voice carrying easily across the quiet courtyard. "The students subdued the threat, and the machine still says they're clean. I think that means your live test is a success, Arbitrator Vane. Though I am going to have to send the Hall of Execution a bill for the lawn."
Vane looked at Yuhao, then at Qiu'er. She could feel the new, permanent weight radiating from Yuhao's head — the unmistakable sign of a formed Soul Core. She knew she had been played, but in front of the entire school, she had absolutely no ground to stand on.
"We are leaving," Vane hissed, turning on her heel. Her guards quickly scrambled to follow her, rolling the broken iron cage away.
As the crowd began to break up into excited chatter, Yuhao finally let go of Qiu'er's hand. He looked down at his palms, then up at her.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "If you hadn't been there… the core would have torn my mind apart."
Qiu'er brushed a strand of golden hair behind her ear. She looked at the fountain nearby, her pink eyes reflective. "I told you. You are a book, Yuhao. I don't want the book to burn before I finish reading it."
She turned and walked toward the dorms, her movements as silent and pure as always. But as she walked away, I noticed she didn't look back. She didn't need to. The thread between them was already tied.
I walked over to Yuhao and gave him a heavy pat on the back, making him stumble.
"Nice breakthrough, kid," I said with a confident grin. "Now go clean up. You still smell like bacon grease from my office."
End of Volume 2, Chapter 65