No. 8 Middle School, Outer City of Gao Yuan City, Northwest Province, Xia Country.
The harsh winter had passed, and the early spring was mild. Inside the training hall, the afternoon air was steamy with sweat. A hundred-odd boys from Class Eight lowered their centers of gravity, sinking into a steady horse stance like rows of human posts. With a shout of "HO!" they threw a right punch, and with a "HA!" they alternated with the left. The unified whoosh of their fists cutting through the air reverberated off the four walls of aluminum and iron.
Every punch and retraction sent sweat flying. Their stances were like rooted trees, neither advancing nor retreating; once they sank down, they wouldn't fall for ages.
Standing at the back of the formation, Jiang Qiu clenched his jaw tightly. His lower body trembled like a lame man trying to balance in a lone boat. Large beads of sweat fell one after another from the tip of his chin, forming a continuous line that splattered onto the concrete floor.
THUD.
A classmate to his left collapsed, his stance failing. He simply stayed down, propping himself up with his hands as his chest heaved like a great wave. Gasping for breath, he tilted his head back to sneak a moment of rest, letting the sweat wash over his face and soak his shirt until he looked like a drowned rat.
More students soon followed, collapsing one after another. A sudden outburst of curses drowned out the whoosh of fists: "Fucking hell, this is exhausting! They said we'd learn Martial Arts in our senior year, but we're still just building our foundation. My whole life has been nothing but foundation work!"
"Heh, building a foundation is great," another student said sarcastically. "They'll teach us a few moves of a Spear Technique, and then we'll be ready to charge onto the battlefield and fight Demon Beasts..."
The self-deprecating remarks buzzed in Jiang Qiu's ears like mosquitoes, but he remained silent. A clear, bright light shone from within his ink-black eyes, and his jaw trembled with effort.
Time dripped away with his sweat. He stood out like a stiff crane in a flock of chickens, the muscles in his neck bulging and engorged, his jaw set like iron. His legs trembled as fast as a dragonfly's wings.
"RING RING RING..."
As the dismissal bell rang, the students who had spent half the afternoon sitting on the floor drying their sweat jumped up nimbly. Their faces were long and miserable as they cursed their way out the door.
Jiang Qiu let out a long breath and forced his aching legs to straighten. He wiped the sweat from his face and watched his classmates leave with their arms slung around each other's shoulders. He remained standing silently, alone, like a wooden post against a torrent.
The muscles connecting his calves and thighs felt ready to snap. The slightest movement sent a pain shooting to the bone. He could only close his eyes and wait for the blood to flow back up from his feet and pass the barrier of his knees.
When the training hall was completely empty, Jiang Qiu silently took a step with his right foot. He paused for a moment, then ambled toward the exit.
In his nearly eighteen years, he had long grown accustomed to the way of life in this world.
Not every high school in Xia Country was focused on the national college entrance exam. However, practicing Martial Arts and getting into a Martial Arts University was everyone's dream. But this was the Northwest Province. Here, to learn Martial Arts was to learn to kill, and the entrance exam was war itself.
It began a hundred years ago, when numerous Secret Realms emerged. Beasts mutated into Demon Beasts and swept across the land like a flood. Most conventional firearms became obsolete, and ordinary people were brutally slaughtered.
However, the Secret Realms also brought about humanity's awakening and breakthrough. These individuals defied the odds, fought back against the strange invaders, and repelled countless species of Demon Beasts on the plateau. They became known as Martial Artists.
And in the Northwest, the only institution that could cultivate Martial Artists was the Northwest Martial Arts University.
Martial Artists from Northwest Martial University enjoyed sublime social status and privileges beyond those of ordinary people. They slew the Alien Races and guarded the nation's borders.
It was precisely because of these Martial Artists that human society was able to recover from the catastrophe, allowing civilization to continue to this day.
Therefore, being a Martial Artist was synonymous with status and power, and it was the key to securing a future in the Northwest Province. Jiang Qiu wanted to become a Martial Artist.
His motives were simple. If he became a Martial Artist, he could get a house in the Inner City and eat Demon Beast Meat at every meal. Even if he had to live dangerously every day, he wouldn't be the first to die.
After all, in a world where every citizen was a soldier, the Martial Artists were the generals.
...
After school, Jiang Qiu walked through the Eighth Shantytown District in the Outer City, carrying a pound of pork and two small bags of vegetables he had just bought.
Rows of tin-sheet shacks, patched together like broken cardboard boxes, lined the narrow alleyway. Underfoot, large sections of the brick path were shattered like spiderwebs, the dark cracks filled with mud.
As he passed the public latrine, the foul, sharp stench of feces and urine made his eyes water. He wiped them with the back of his hand and quickened his pace.
Soon, he stopped in front of his own small brick house. It had a vermilion-painted door and a small, rust-red lock. The key slid into the lock with a CLICK. He gripped and twisted it firmly, pushing the door open with a CREAK as the smell of dust hit him in the face.
Three years ago, his parents, who were low-level contract workers for some organization, had died on the battlefield. He had received a death benefit—enough to keep him from starving for six years—and was given thirty years of ownership of this house as compensation, so it was no longer a rental.
The house wasn't sturdy or well-ventilated. Its only redeeming quality was that after living there a while, the stuffy smell was merely musty, not foul. This was why his greatest dream was to pass the entrance exam, get into Northwest Martial University, become a Martial Artist, and move to the Inner City.
CLICK.
A blue flame leaped from the gas stove's burner. In just a short while, the fragrant smell of cooking oil filled the one-square-meter kitchen. Soon, one meat and one vegetable dish were placed on the small square table.
He wouldn't normally dare to eat meat so extravagantly, but it was now the second semester of his senior year, and the training was high-intensity nearly all day. He couldn't sustain himself on vegetables alone.
Though the training was just stance-holding, punching, and push-ups, Jiang Qiu never slacked off. The bitter reality was that the death benefit, meant to last him six years, would be gone by the time he graduated.
'If I fail to get into Northwest Martial University then,' he thought, 'and I still want to make a living with only a high school diploma, my only options will be to become a contract worker and die on the battlefield, or haul bricks for construction projects and die on a work site.'
"BEEP..."
Jiang Qiu was shoveling food into his mouth when his phone screen, sitting on the table, suddenly lit up with a new message.
[Class 8 Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: @All Members, there are only three months left until the entrance exam. Your foundations should be very solid by now, but you have yet to learn any Spear Technique. I am now uploading a tutorial video for the Eight Forms of Ancient Martial Spear Technique.]
[Class 8 Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: Prepare for the exam. Your attitude toward practicing the spear tonight will determine whether you live well in the future!]
[Li Xueming: But Teacher, we only have one night to practice the Ancient Martial Spear Technique. What can you possibly tell from that?]
[Class 8 Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: I've sent the video. You've all practiced your fundamentals for seven or eight years. If you can't get the Spear Technique to look halfway decent, it just proves you're not trying hard enough. Why even bother with the entrance exam? Why dream of becoming a Martial Artist? In the Northwest, you can live for decades as a brick hauler!]
[Class 8 Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: Most of the students in Class One mastered the forms in a single night. Are you all really that much worse? I will personally inspect you tomorrow. Those who are qualified and show determination will, after three days of practice, be designated a Spear Leader and learn the complete Ancient Martial Spear Technique. Otherwise, you're not qualified to take the entrance exam, and you'll spare yourselves from throwing your lives away for nothing!]
Jiang Qiu stared at the message, his expression frozen. Meanwhile, in a private student group chat, a string of profanities and curses had already erupted.
This "becoming a Spear Leader" wasn't just about receiving a sharp spearhead; more importantly, it signified recognition from the school.
Students who became Spear Leaders were given free Martial Arts Resources by the school and taught the essentials of the Spear Technique. In short, they were groomed as priority candidates for the entrance exam.
No student who hadn't become a Spear Leader had ever been admitted to Northwest Martial University. That was an ironclad rule.
Moreover, if a student who hadn't become a Spear Leader tried to register for the exam, the teachers would probably advise them against throwing their life away, lest there be no one left to haul bricks and rebuild the ruins of the Outer City...
'Rather than haul bricks and sweat until I'm forty or fifty, living my whole life at the bottom, I'd rather bet everything on practicing this spear and fight for a chance to enter Northwest Martial University and become a Martial Artist.'
'The Northwest isn't Jiangnan, after all. The lower class exists to serve Martial Artists and die in the war...'
Jiang Qiu shoveled down the rest of his meal in a few bites, washed his bowl, and wiped his wet hands on his pants. His gaze was fiery as he stared at the tutorial video for the Eight Forms of Ancient Martial Spear Technique on his phone.
In the video, an elderly man in a black training uniform wielded a Six Harmonies Spear. In his hands, the spear twisted like a Flood Dragon about to take flight, yet each and every move remained bound to his slender frame. His movements were as supple as a wildcat and as tenacious as a red tiger. The spear's afterimage flickered, its cold glint slicing through the air.
The Eight Forms of Ancient Martial Spear Technique were displayed in exhaustive detail. Unlike the amateurish tricks found online, this technique was heavy with killing intent and bore a watermark: "Not for Distribution."
Jiang Qiu pushed the cluttered tables and chairs in his living room to the walls, clearing out a round space just under three meters in diameter. After watching the video through once, he propped his phone in a corner and set it to replay.
He gripped a one-and-a-half-meter-long, cracked plastic pipe in both hands and began to imitate the movements, a clumsy copy of the master in the video.
BANG, CRACK, THWACK.
He knocked the corner of a table, overturned a wooden chair, and chipped two more pieces from the cracked end of the pipe.
His technique bore a faint resemblance to the video, but his every move was as clumsy as a monkey trying to handle an eel. He engaged his muscles strangely, the plastic pipe in his hands was flimsy, and he had less presence than if he were throwing a simple straight punch.
The video, of course, had no annotations on the principles of power generation or the essentials of a proper spear grip. The form was there, but the spirit was not. His movements were riddled with flaws.
Jiang Qiu glanced at the fresh dent in the corner of the small table, then grit his teeth and sank back into his stance. 'Even if this is just a clumsy imitation,' he thought, 'as long as it looks convincing, I have a chance to become a Spear Leader.'
WHOOSH—HUM—HWUFF—
After running through the Eight Forms of Ancient Martial Spear Technique, Jiang Qiu leaned on the plastic pipe to support himself. He let out a great gasp of air and shook out his strained forearm.
'How could anyone possibly learn these eight forms properly in one night just from an unannotated video?'
'Am I really doomed to be born at the bottom and scrape by my entire life...'
Just as a bitter smile formed on his lips, Jiang Qiu's expression froze. Some text had appeared in his field of vision.
[Ancient Martial Spear (Uninitiated)]
[Practiced Once]
[1/100]
After confirming it wasn't a hallucination, Jiang Qiu's brow smoothed and his expression cleared. A faint smile touched his lips.