Half a Year! Jiangnan No. 1 High School!

Inside the reception room, the air congealed in the silence.

Li Guangming looked at Chen Fan, the light of wisdom and a smile of appreciation mingling in his cloudy old eyes.

Chen Fan met his gaze. At last, the faintest ripple appeared on his youthful face, which had remained calm and untroubled throughout.

He said nothing. He simply nodded, solemnly and slowly, to the old principal who had devoted so much thought and effort to him.

That single gesture spoke louder than a thousand words.

"Hahaha! Good! That's my Chen Fan!"

Li Guangming could no longer contain his admiration. He burst into a hearty laugh from the bottom of his heart.

His laughter echoed through the spacious office, full of the satisfaction and pride of an old man deeply gratified.

His gamble had paid off!

The little fellow's breadth of spirit was far greater than he had imagined!

When the laughter died down, Li Guangming's expression grew graver than ever before.

Instead of sitting back down, he turned and walked over to the enormous star map that occupied an entire wall of the office. He reached out a thin finger and tapped the light screen.

Hum!

Light flowed across the screen. The vast galaxy disappeared, and a familiar blue planet rapidly enlarged, appearing clearly before them.

It was Blue Star, the Human Federation's home planet.

"Chen Fan, look."

Li Guangming's finger swept across the light screen, and Blue Star's map was instantly divided by four crisscrossing lines of light into four enormous regions, each a distinct color.

"The continent beneath our feet has been divided by the Federation into four major war zones, which are also four major educational regions: Jiangdong, Jiangxi, Jiangbei, and... the Jiangnan Region, where we are!"

His finger landed heavily in the center of the territory representing the Jiangnan Region.

In an instant, a point of light as brilliant as a star flared up, radiating a majesty that looked down upon all living beings.

"East Sea First High School is the heavens in East Sea City," Li Guangming said calmly, his voice carrying a power that saw through everything. "But in the Jiangnan Region as a whole, it doesn't even... rank in the top three."

He turned, fixing Chen Fan with a burning gaze, his voice suddenly deep and forceful.

"In the Jiangnan Region, there is one and only one true holy land in the hearts of all Martial Dao students!"

"Jiangnan First High School!"

The moment the words left his mouth, Li Guangming brought up a video file protected by the highest level of encryption.

The image flickered, revealing a huge indoor training arena filled with futuristic technology.

A group of youths about Chen Fan's age, and some even younger, were engaged in fiercely intense combat.

They held nothing back. Every punch and every kick came with a howl that tore through the air!

With every movement, their Qi and Blood surged like mercury, and the wind of their fists thundered like lightning!

What made Chen Fan's pupils contract even further was that two or three figures on the screen had a layer of pale red Qi and Blood flames covering their bodies, visible to the naked eye and condensed into substance!

That was... Qi and Blood armor!

It was the sign that the power of their Qi and Blood had grown strong enough to break through 100 calories, shatter the shackles of the flesh, and enter the realm of true martial artists!

They were already true martial artists!

"Jiangnan No. 1 High School is full of monsters," Li Guangming said at that moment, a hint of gravity in his voice. "Every year, many break through on their own and enter the martial artist realm before they've even graduated from junior high."

Click.

The video froze, and Li Guangming switched off the light screen.

He looked at Chen Fan, not a trace of humor left in his deep-set old eyes.

"Your victory in East Sea City, your record of sweeping everyone aside with a single punch, is enough to make you famous. But it isn't enough to make that holy land bend its rules for you."

"They only believe their own eyes."

Li Guangming took a deep breath and spoke the final, cruelest truth.

"Jiangnan No. 1 High School's real admissions aren't based on recommendations or any special recruitment contract. They're decided by a single independent entrance examination, held six months from now in Tiannan City, the capital of the Jiangnan Region, before the elementary school admissions season officially begins!"

"When the time comes, all the monstrous talents who believe themselves exceptionally gifted, all the trump cards hidden away by their families and sects, will gather there from all thirty-six cities across the Jiangnan Region."

"They'll compete for those precious few places, fewer than a hundred in all!"

Every sentence the principal spoke struck Chen Fan's heart like a heavy hammer.

In his mind, the youths clad in Qi and Blood armor, their fists striking like dragons, stood in stark contrast to his own Qi and Blood, which had reached 24.6 calories yet remained trapped at the bottleneck of a quasi-martial artist.

All this time, he had thought he was progressing quickly.

But only today did he discover that, in this wider world, there were people... progressing even faster than he was!

An unprecedented surge of urgency and longing erupted in his adult heart like magma beneath the earth.

Towering waves finally rose from the bottomless ancient well!

Fighting spirit!

An unprecedented fighting spirit became a fiercely burning flame in his deep-set eyes!

He looked at Li Guangming, and for the first time, a youth's sharpness and vigor, befitting his age, appeared on his young face.

In a tone more serious than ever before, he slowly spoke three words.

"I will go."

Half an hour later.

Chen Fan left the principal's office.

He didn't return to the classroom or pay any attention to the awed and worshipful gazes along the way. He went straight back to the special-grade resource cultivation room that belonged to him alone.

The heavy alloy door slowly closed behind him, shutting out everything beyond it.

He walked to the cushion in the center of the cultivation room and sat down cross-legged.

The images of those youths clad in Qi and Blood armor echoed through his mind again and again, along with the six-month deadline Li Guangming had spoken of.

A long time passed.

Chen Fan slowly opened his eyes.

In the darkness, his gaze was sharp as a blade, as if it could pierce the empty space before him.

He clenched his small fists, his knuckles turning slightly white with the effort.

A clear, resolute voice, edged with a hint of madness, rang out softly in the silent cultivation room.

"Six months..."

"Within six months, I have to make the most of my time and improve myself!"

Half a year slipped quietly by, like sand through fingers.

A thin layer of dust had settled on the heavy alloy door of the special-grade resource cultivation room, and its cold metal surface had lost its shine.

Only the small green indicator on the access system continued to blink steadily, proof that the immense energy supply inside had never been interrupted.

In the principal's office, just one wall away, Li Guangming quietly watched the scene inside the cultivation room through a specially made one-way light screen.

Over the past six months, he had spent several hours sitting here almost every day.

His initial excitement and anticipation had long since settled, through days of watching, into a bottomless shock that bordered on numbness.

For this great gamble, he had exercised his highest authority as principal, directing all the top cultivation resources the school had stockpiled for the next three years toward Chen Fan alone.

If he succeeded, East Sea Martial Arts Elementary School would soar into the heavens.

If he failed... they'd deal with that later!

In any case, Chen Fan was only eight. At worst, he could go back a grade and study for another year. With Chen Fan's talent, another year would give him a one-hundred-percent chance of entering Jiangnan No. 1 High School.

And East Sea Martial Arts Elementary School hadn't had a student admitted to Jiangnan No. 1 High School for more than ten consecutive years.

Inside the cultivation room, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was so dense it had nearly liquefied, flowing slowly like a milky-white fog.

At the center of the fog, a figure sat cross-legged.

Chen Fan stood a little taller than he had half a year ago. The contours of his young face had grown more defined, shedding some of a child's softness and gaining a hint of a youth's sharpness.

His eyes were tightly shut, his whole person as tranquil as a bottomless ancient well.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

There was no earthshaking aura, only a calm that reflected all things in his deep-set eyes.

He slowly rose to his feet.

"Crackle..."

A series of fine, crisp pops, like beans being stir-fried, came from within his body. His muscles and bones were undergoing a transformation at the deepest level, nourished by his Qi and Blood.

Chen Fan lowered his waist and set his stance.

He adopted the most basic Five Elements Stance with effortless ease.

The moment he settled into the stance, the flow of spiritual energy throughout the cultivation room abruptly changed.

The dense fog of spiritual energy, which had been flowing slowly, seemed to have found a king to pour itself toward. It formed a miniature vortex visible to the naked eye, centered on Chen Fan.

Every breath he took was perfectly synchronized with the intake and release of spiritual energy.

Every minute adjustment of his muscles matched the optimal path of flowing power.

Perfectly harmonious, a whole unto itself.

It was as if he had been born to assume this posture, as if the stance had been tailored for him.

This was unmistakably the Five Elements Stance at the perfection level, having reached the realm of consummate mastery!

But in the next second.

Chen Fan moved from stillness into motion, his stance transitioning seamlessly into fist technique as he threw an utterly ordinary straight punch.

There was no outward release of Qi and Blood, no terrifying sonic boom.

Where his fist passed, the air ahead instead warped ever so slightly, strangely rippling like water.

In the office, Li Guangming's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks!

He saw it clearly!

Within that punch, a trace of metal's sharpness cut through space, a touch of earth's heaviness suppressed all directions, and there was also a hint of fire's heat, water's agility, and wood's vitality...

The embryonic forms of five entirely different, even mutually conflicting intents had been perfectly blended into that single punch by an invisible force!

"Clatter."

The teacup slipped from Li Guangming's hand and fell to the floor. Tea brewed from his own privately treasured Cloud Summit Spirit Bud, worth ten thousand gold, spilled everywhere, but he didn't notice.

He stared fixedly at the light screen, his lips trembling as he murmured in a daze, in a voice only he could hear:

"Beyond perfection... this is... Peak Perfection!"

"He actually... managed to touch the threshold of intent!"

Inside the cultivation room.

Chen Fan withdrew his fist and stood still.

He could clearly feel the surging power of Qi and Blood within him, as if it might burst his body apart at any moment.

But at the same time, he also felt an invisible, indestructible membrane.

That membrane bound all his power tightly within his flesh. No matter how he struck against it, he couldn't make the power of his Qi and Blood truly emerge from his body and become the protective aura of a martial artist from the legends.

He knew he had reached the limit of what a quasi-martial artist could attain.

The road ahead had come to an end.

The only way forward was to break through that membrane.

Chen Fan walked over to the military-grade Qi-Blood Detector in the corner of the room and calmly extended his index finger, pressing it against the device.

"Beep!"

A deep blue light screen lit up.

Without the slightest pause, the number on it soared wildly at a speed that would terrify any Martial Dao instructor out of their wits!

Every jump of the number was like a heavy hammer striking Li Guangming's heart outside the door.

At last, under Chen Fan's calm, untroubled gaze, the wildly leaping number gradually slowed, then settled firmly into place.

It settled on a value infinitely close.

[Qi and Blood: 56.8 calories]