Ten Heavenly Stems

Shizuku paused to think at his words, staring straight at Jing Yang as she asked, "What do you want?"

Jing Yang smiled. "If I win, you'll acknowledge me as your boss and follow me from now on. How about it?"

Shizuku thought about it again, though not for long. Feeling the tough Aura flowing from the boy's hand clasped in hers, she hummed and said, "Okay."

"Then, one, two, three—" Jing Yang counted. "Begin!"

In an instant, both their arms and hands were wrapped in a dense layer of Aura.

Aura was life energy, also known as the power of the spirit. It complemented and was inseparable from both the body and mind. Once a Nen User had gotten started, barring special circumstances, they would no longer engage in inefficient, purely physical training. Training Aura directly and using the enhanced Aura within one's body to nourish the flesh in return was the most efficient path.

Jing Yang had barely exercised his body since crossing over, but Nen Abilities were like a cheat code for training. After painstakingly raising his total Nen quantity to 6,000, his physical abilities had also been greatly enhanced.

He could not compare to someone like Killua, who had eaten poison like food and treated electrocution as a massage since childhood, but it was clearly impossible to judge Jing Yang's arm strength by his build.

The same went for Shizuku.

She was not the muscular type either, but by gathering a large amount of Aura in her arm, she unleashed an unknown number of tons of tremendous force... Yet even so, she failed to immediately force down the boy across from her. Instead, she felt the pressure growing stronger and stronger.

Is his strength greater than mine?

In this tremendous contest of brute force, Shizuku could even feel both their arms and Aura trembling... Gradually, ever-greater strength came from Jing Yang's side, becoming harder and harder to resist.

Shizuku frowned as her arm was pressed down toward the tabletop inch by inch...

Bang!

In the end, she could no longer hold out. Her right hand was helplessly forced down, the back of it striking the table.

"I lost..."

Shizuku said regretfully, lightly shaking her aching arm.

In fact, the onlookers were already dumbfounded—this was the first time they had ever seen someone hold out for nearly a full minute against this freakishly strong boy!

"That was insane... I think I just saw the table nearly crack! No, it already cracked..."

What kind of monstrously strong girl was this?!

The shady merchant in the crowd tearfully paid the person beside him.

"..." Shizuku rubbed her sore right arm.

Only then did she have the spare attention to gather Aura in her eyes with Gyo. She also happened to see that Jing Yang's left hand had indeed been using part of his Aura to cover the surface of the table since halfway through the match.

Jing Yang smiled. "If the table broke, we wouldn't be able to arm-wrestle anymore."

"You're really strong," Shizuku said.

Then she asked curiously, "I feel like I should be stronger than you. Why couldn't I beat you?"

"Fundamentals." Jing Yang raised his hand.

Shizuku focused Aura into her eyes and saw the evenly distributed Aura that had originally wrapped around him surge like flowing water toward his right arm and palm.

Jing Yang said, "Your total Nen quantity should be a little higher than mine, but my fundamentals in freely distributing Aura are better than yours. So I was always going to win!"

He was a Manipulator, while Shizuku was a Conjurer. They were equally far from the "berserker" type, Enhancers, so neither had an advantage in that regard.

Jing Yang estimated that Shizuku's total Nen quantity was a little over 7,000—stronger than his, but certainly not yet at the level she would reach four years later as an official member of the Phantom Troupe. However, Jing Yang's fundamentals were solid. If he had not needed to divert part of his Aura to use Shu to protect the table, he could have won this arm-wrestling match with Ko.

Ko gathered 100% of the Aura in one's entire body into a single point, maximizing both attack and defense at that point. But its flaw was obvious—the rest of the body would no longer have even a trace of Aura protecting it. If struck, one would either die or be seriously injured.

But arm-wrestling did not require defending the rest of the body. If Jing Yang used Ko, he would naturally be guaranteed victory.

"Oh..." Shizuku nodded as if she understood. Accepting her loss, she said, "I lost."

Jing Yang smiled. "So, I'm your boss from now on?"

"Mm."

"You have to listen to your boss."

"Mm."

"Alright, then let's go!" Jing Yang stood and told the surrounding spectators, "The show's over. Move along!"

"Here. A gift from your boss."

Walking side by side... Well, they were not quite side by side for now. As they walked through the neon-lit amusement park at night amid the crowds, Jing Yang handed the Blue Moon Pearl to Shizuku.

Shizuku did not refuse. She truly liked jewelry, and after accepting it, she examined it carefully. Behind her glasses, her pale violet eyes, which usually revealed no emotion at all, seemed to hold a different kind of light.

Jing Yang said, "I'm planning to start a little organization for fun. It'll be called Dawn. The Hunter Association has the Twelve Zodiacs, so we'll have the Ten Heavenly Stems. As the boss, I'll take the designation 'Jia.' You're the first member I've recruited, so you'll be 'Yi'!"

Only then did Shizuku take her eyes off the glittering Blue Moon Pearl. Looking at Jing Yang, she asked curiously, "Aren't you a member of the Hunter Association? You want to establish another organization?"

"What does that matter?" Jing Yang said as he walked. "Being a Professional Hunter is only one identity. Plenty of Professional Hunters have other real professions too—elite lawyers, chief justices of entire countries, top doctors, and so on... We're just a small group. It won't interfere with anything."

"Oh." Shizuku nodded in understanding.

Jing Yang smiled and knowingly asked, "What did you want my Hunter License for?"

"I saw a Ferris wheel over there," Shizuku said. "They said only people with Hunter Licenses could go in..."

She had come here to wander around because of the guidance of the two crows Jing Yang controlled. Of course Jing Yang knew why she wanted a Hunter License.

"Is that it?"

Jing Yang pointed at the Ferris wheel not far ahead. In the nighttime amusement park, that Ferris wheel alone appeared dim and dark. Since no one was riding it, it naturally had not been started.

"I've never ridden one either. Let's check it out together."

Shizuku put away the Blue Moon Pearl and followed after him with light steps.

"This is... a Hunter License, no mistake..."

At the Ferris wheel entrance, two Blanche Company staff members carefully inspected the Hunter License Jing Yang handed them, hardly daring to believe their eyes.

There was actually such a young Professional Hunter?

The only publicly available information about Blanche Company's founder, one of the world's wealthiest tycoons, aside from his name, was that he was a Professional Hunter. Though these two ordinary employees did not know much about their hidden boss, they had heard enough to know that Professional Hunters seemed to be a group of strange, extraordinary people. Nothing that happened to them seemed worth finding surprising...

Thus, after confirming the authenticity of the Hunter License, which could not possibly be forged, the staff let Jing Yang and Shizuku enter.

One led the way while the other went to start the Ferris wheel.

Buzz...

In the night, the enormous Ferris wheel, like a windmill in the darkness, suddenly began to move from its standstill.

Shizuku looked up at it curiously, only to see that after the gigantic Ferris wheel began turning, only one of its roughly thirty gondolas lit up.

Jing Yang looked at the staff member beside them. The man explained, "For certain reasons, only that one gondola is available for visitors."

After a pause, he added with a smile, "Usually, there aren't many people who come to ride it with Hunter Licenses anyway."

"Fair enough." Jing Yang nodded.

He and Shizuku waited together until the illuminated gondola rotated down, swayed to a stop before them, and the staff member opened its door. Only then did they enter one after the other.

Buzz...

The Ferris wheel continued turning, but after stepping into the gondola and closing the door, Jing Yang and Shizuku both let out a soft "Huh?"

Their gondola slowly rotated upward into the night...

In the light, Shizuku could be seen looking at her hands and body in confusion.

Beside her, after looking around the gondola, Jing Yang suddenly stepped back a few paces and lowered his head to look at the floor, wearing an expression of sudden realization.

Jing Yang felt his Aura being nourished as it rapidly recovered. Looking down, he saw strange black characters covering the gondola floor, like an array woven from peculiar runes.

When Shizuku and Gon arm-wrestled in the manga, there was a close-up of Aura naturally drifting upward from their hands... So for now, it could be assumed that neither of them had used Aura to enhance themselves then, and they had purely competed with muscular arm strength. Here, Jing Yang and Shizuku had added Aura to the contest.