After eating and drinking his fill, Shi Tiexin paid no further mind to those long-term meal tickets and walked out of the cafeteria, beginning to circle the track. The Essence Cultivation Technique had six postures in total. Performed individually, they looked rather strange, but his outstanding realm was already enough to simplify them into fitness poses that looked odd at first glance, yet somehow seemed profound and professional upon closer inspection.
Quite a few students were out on the field digesting their meals at this hour. Seeing Shi Tiexin performing movements as he walked, they stopped curiously to watch. With an air of "you amateurs wouldn't understand even if you watched," Shi Tiexin continued cultivating the Essence Cultivation Technique on his own, ignoring the students peeking at him.
Merely watching the stances of external martial arts could never teach one the Essence Cultivation Arts. Just as merely studying Chinese and Mathematics could never cultivate Nianqi.
The very beginning of martial cultivation required an enlightenment, a spiritual seed. In that world, martial arts had begun with the Origin Sage a century ago. The Origin Sage had enlightened all living beings and scattered spiritual seeds far and wide, causing a tremendous shift in the evolutionary path of all humanity. The Origin Sage had laid down the rules: enlightenment for all, martial arts for all, equal opportunities for all; the extent of one's achievements depended solely on perseverance and character.
Thus, regardless of social class, enlightenment itself was widespread in that world. Even orphans from the Orphanage could receive martial enlightenment at the age of five and embark upon the path of cultivating mind arts and force arts.
The Origin Sage's enlightenment had also marked the boundary between the old and new eras.
But here, Shi Tiexin had yet to encounter anyone showing any trace of martial cultivation. Even the Essence Cultivation Technique required a mental method to accompany it. Simply copying the external movements could at most strengthen the body and prolong one's life; it was impossible to grope one's way into refining Primal Vital Energy.
So Shi Tiexin had no worries whatsoever about leaking secrets.
After another round of circulating his technique, three cycles of cultivation once more refined three wisps of Primal Vital Energy from nothing. Feeling the Primal Vital Energy drift and coil in his lower abdomen, Shi Tiexin truly felt as though he had found a winning lottery ticket on the street. Never mind anything else—at this rate of Essence Nurturing, if he could really stay here for two years, perhaps he could successfully break through to Sharpness!
Refining essence energy into sharp energy and breaking into the second stage of force arts—what had once seemed infinitely far away now actually lay within sight!
Still, the most urgent matter was to cultivate mind arts first. The Destiny Mission was sitting right there. The benefits after completing a Destiny Mission might be invisible and intangible, but they truly existed and absolutely could not be overlooked.
He looked up at the sky. Evening self-study was about to begin, and darkness had already fallen, dim and murky. Shi Tiexin looked left and right, and his gaze suddenly turned sly.
No, he couldn't go back to the classroom and waste time again. While it was dark, he needed to scout the place out. Who knew what was going on with that Zhou Nan? He had searched high and low but couldn't find him anywhere. Still, he couldn't rely on him alone. If Zhou Nan could find a way to sneak out and buy cigarettes, then with a careful search, Shi Tiexin might not fail to find an exit himself.
After all, Fengming First High School was not some isolated floating city. What blocked the students was nothing more than a wall. He didn't even need to find any breach. As long as the wall was a little lower, a little more concealed, or had something to step on, that would do. Once he climbed over the wall and ran, could the security guard at the gate really catch him?
Thus, Shi Tiexin simply slipped away without saying a word to his homeroom teacher, carrying the perfectly justified bearing of a bad student from the Trash Class skipping school.
Night fell quickly, while Shi Tiexin focused on poking into the secluded, hidden nooks and crannies of the school grounds. He looked east and west, his thief's eyes gleaming brightly. Yet paired with that dignified, imposing face, even those thief's eyes carried the air of a leader inspecting the grounds.
You wouldn't know unless you looked—Fengming First High School truly had quite a few hidden corners. Old schools with long histories all tended to have places like this. Some delinquents lurked in those corners, squatting in the shadows and shielding the light with their hands to keep the flickering red glow of their cigarette tips from being noticed.
Shi Tiexin strode past in great sweeping steps, looking around with an air of commanding majesty, startling a flock of gulls and herons into flight. Quite a few delinquents shuddered, hurriedly snuffing out their cigarettes, thinking some new leader from the disciplinary office had come to inspect the place.
Ignoring those weaklings, Shi Tiexin looked around and discovered a very pleasing fact—this world seemed not to have even a single surveillance camera!
He had wandered around for so long without seeing a single camera. It was nothing like that other world, where stringent surveillance measures were everywhere and the image quality was absurdly clear. He didn't know whether Fengming First High School alone was conservative and retro, or whether the entire world was like this.
In any case, wasn't having no cameras simply wonderful?
A place without cameras was a place without law or restraint, a place of freedom and ease!
Climbing the wall had become even easier. Shi Tiexin searched carefully and found a secluded spot. Mm, this place was good. The wall was not too high, and on the other side lay a quiet residential neighborhood, making it unlikely anyone would spot him.
This was the place!
After marking the spot, Shi Tiexin felt his pockets and found no money. He decided to remember the location, go back for cash, then return and charge back here. As he walked back, Shi Tiexin suddenly heard some commotion. Curses rang out without pause, accompanied by the sounds of blows not far away.
It sounded like someone was fighting.
But what did that have to do with me? Shi Tiexin had no intention of meddling in other people's business and lifted his foot to leave. But at that moment, several relatively loud and clear curses reached his ears, making Shi Tiexin prick them up at once.
It was the voices of those four idiots.
"Fuck your mother! Run! Go on, run again! If you run again, we'll beat you to death!"
"You bastard, if you hadn't egged us on, how would we have ended up like this?"
"Still fucking hiding? You think you can hide from us? At noon you were fucking acting tough, saying you'd teach us a lesson. Go on, teach us another one now!"
"I'm telling you, Zhou Nan, even if your brother were here today, I'd still beat you until shit bursts out of you!"
Zhou Nan?
Was he the one getting beaten? No wonder I searched for him all afternoon and couldn't find him—he had been hiding here. But from the sound of it, Zhou Nan and those four fellows seemed to have some history.
Shi Tiexin's expression darkened, his eyes narrowing as he strode toward the site of the group beating.
In an open space behind a row of old, rundown buildings, the four fat boys were ganging up on Zhou Nan. Blows rained down in a crackling storm, and Zhou Nan screamed miserably as he was beaten until he cried for his father and called for his mother.
From the instant Zhou Nan saw Zheng Kaiming openly shielding Shi Tiexin, he had sensed that something was seriously wrong and immediately greased the soles of his feet to make his escape. He had wanted to find somewhere to hide for a while. If that failed, he would go to his older brother for help, lie low until the storm passed, then try to mediate things.
But however large Fengming First High School was, it had its limits, and however many suitable hiding places it had, there was still a finite number. Which delinquent from the Trash Class didn't have a map stored in his head, knowing these treasured spots like the back of his hand?
He had thought he had found a fine hiding place, only for the four of them to block him here and subject him to an inhuman beating.
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