Receive Spearhead

Xia Country, Northwest Province, Plateau City, Outer City, High School No. 8.

Winter had passed, and early spring held no chill. In the Training Hall that afternoon, sweat steamed in the air as over a hundred youths of Class Eight lowered their stances and held firm in horse stance, like rows upon rows of human posts. With a roar, they smashed out their right fists; with a shout, their left fists alternated. The unified sound of fists tearing through the air shook the four aluminum-and-iron walls.

No two punches were the same. Each extension and retraction sent sweat flying. Their feet seemed rooted to the ground; neither advancing nor retreating, they could hold half a day without falling once they lowered their stance.

Standing at the back of the group, Jiang Qiu clenched his teeth tightly. His lower body trembled like a lame man crossing a lone boat, and bead after bead of pea-sized sweat fell from his chin in a line of rain, pattering onto the concrete floor.

Smack.

A student to his left toppled over because his stance was unsteady. He simply sat down where he fell, bracing himself with both hands as his chest rose and fell like great waves. Between ragged breaths, he tipped back his head to steal a moment's rest, letting sweat wash over his face and soak the sleeves on his shoulders until he looked like a drenched chicken.

One after another, several more students fell at the sound. Sudden curses rose up, drowning out the whistle of fists through the air. "This is fucking exhausting! They said we'd study martial arts in senior year, but all we've done is lay foundations. From the day we were born until now, it's all been laying foundations!"

"Heh heh, laying foundations is good. When they teach us a few spear moves, we'll be able to charge straight onto the battlefield and slaughter Beast Monsters."

The self-mocking voices buzzed by his ears like mosquitoes. Jiang Qiu said nothing. A brighter gleam shone from his ink-dark eyes, while his gums trembled.

Time passed with the rolling drops of sweat. He had become a stiff crane standing alone among chickens, the muscles in his neck grotesquely engorged with blood, his cheeks hard as iron, his legs trembling like dragonfly wings.

"Ring-ring-ring!"

The dismissal bell rang. Those classmates who had spent the whole afternoon sitting on the ground airing out their sweat sprang up neatly, pulled long faces, and cursed all the way out the door.

Jiang Qiu let out a long breath and forced himself to support his aching lower body. He casually wiped the sweat from his face. While the students around him slung arms over one another's shoulders and left together, he stood silently, alone like a wooden stake beneath a raging flood.

The muscles connecting his calves and thighs felt as if they had been stretched to breaking. Moving even an inch sent a cramp of pain into his bones. He could only close his eyes and wait for the blood in his feet to surge upward, breaking through the pass of his knees.

When the Training Hall was empty, Jiang Qiu silently stepped out with his right foot, paused for a moment, then slowly walked toward the door.

After nearly eighteen years, he had long grown accustomed to the way of life in this world.

Not every high school in Xia Country pursued the college entrance examination. Yet studying martial arts and entering a martial arts university truly was everyone's dream. But this was Northwest Province. Here, martial arts meant killing and conquest; the college entrance examination meant war.

A hundred years ago, countless secret realms had emerged. Beasts turned into monsters and swept in like a flood, rendering most hot weapons obsolete as ordinary people suffered slaughter.

But along with the secret realms came humanity's awakening and breakthroughs. They defied heaven and struck down foreign races, keeping ten thousand kinds of Beast Monsters beyond the plateau. They were called martial artists.

And in the Northwest, the only institution capable of training martial artists was Northwest Martial Arts University.

Martial artists who graduated from Northwest Martial Arts University enjoyed lofty social status and privileges beyond ordinary people. They slew Foreign Races and guarded the borders of the nation.

It was precisely because of martial artists like them that human society had managed to recover from catastrophe and civilization had endured to this day.

Thus, martial artists were synonymous with status and strength, and the key to whether one could forge a future in Northwest Province. Jiang Qiu wanted to become a martial artist.

His reasoning was simple. Becoming a martial artist meant owning a house in the Inner City and eating Beast Meat at every meal. Even if he had to lick blood from a blade every day, he would not be among the first to die.

After all, all people were soldiers, and martial artists were generals.

After school, Jiang Qiu carried a pound of freshly bought pork and two small bags of vegetables as he strolled through Eighth Shanty Town in the Outer City.

Tin-sheet houses pieced together like broken cardboard boxes stretched out in rows, squeezing a narrow alley between them. Beneath his feet, broad patches of brick had cracked like spiderwebs, mud hidden in their black seams.

As he passed the public dry latrine, the foul stench of mingled piss and shit stung tears from his eyes. He wiped them away and hurried off.

Before long, he stopped in front of his own small brick house. The vermilion-bronze door had a little lock red with rust. The key slid in with a click. He twisted it with a clenched hand, pushed open the door amid a creak, and the smell of dust rushed at his face.

Three years ago, his parents had died on the battlefield as low-level temporary staff of some organization. He received compensation enough to keep him from starving for six years, as well as thirty years of ownership rights to this house. It was no longer a rental.

The house was flimsy and poorly ventilated. Its only advantage was that after living in it long enough, the smell became stuffy rather than foul. Therefore, his greatest dream was to enter Northwest Martial Arts University through the college entrance examination, become a martial artist, and move into the Inner City.

Click.

Blue flames sprang from the iron core of the gas stove. Before long, the fragrance of oil filled the one-square-meter kitchen, and one meat dish and one vegetable dish were set on the small square table.

In the past, he had not dared eat meat so freely. But now that senior year had entered its second term and nearly every day consisted of high-intensity training, vegetables alone could not sustain him.

Though the training consisted of nothing more than stance work, punching, and push-ups, Jiang Qiu did not dare slack off. What tormented him was that the compensation instinctively conserved for six years would run out when senior year ended.

If he failed to enter Northwest Martial Arts University then, graduating from high school while still wanting to earn money and survive meant becoming temporary staff and dying on the battlefield, or hauling bricks for construction and dying at a worksite.

"Beep..."

Jiang Qiu was wolfing down his meal when the phone screen on the table suddenly lit up with a message.

[Class Eight Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: @All members, there are only three months left until the college entrance examination. Your foundations should be solid by now, but you have yet to learn spear techniques. I am now uploading the Instructional Video for the First Eight Moves of the Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique.]

[Class Eight Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: Prepare for the college entrance examination. Your attitude toward spear practice tonight will determine whether you can live well in the future!]

[Li Xueming: But Teacher, we only have one night to practice the Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique. How can we possibly show anything?]

[Class Eight Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: The Instructional Video has been sent. You have all practiced the fundamentals for seven or eight years, more or less. If you still cannot make your spear technique look decent, it means you have not worked hard enough. Why keep taking the college entrance examination? Why become martial artists? In the Northwest, hauling bricks can keep you alive for several more decades!]

[Class Eight Homeroom Teacher Wu Shan: Most Class One students can get the form down in one night. Are you really that inferior? I will inspect you personally tomorrow. Those who pass and have determination may Receive Spearhead after three days of practice and learn the complete Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique. Otherwise, you are not qualified to take the college entrance examination, sparing yourselves from throwing away your lives for nothing!]

Seeing this, Jiang Qiu froze. Meanwhile, in another private student group, curses were already pouring out in an unbroken stream.

Receiving a spearhead did not merely mean obtaining a sharp spear tip. More importantly, it meant receiving the school's recognition.

Students who received spearheads would be supplied with martial arts resources for free and taught the essentials of spear techniques. In short, they would be cultivated as key candidates for the college entrance examination.

Never had a student who failed to receive a spearhead been admitted to Northwest Martial Arts University. This was an iron rule.

And if someone registered for the college entrance examination without receiving a spearhead, teachers might even advise them not to throw their lives away, lest no one be left to haul bricks and rebuild the ruins of the Outer City.

"Rather than hauling bricks, drinking sweat, living to forty or fifty, and remaining at the bottom all my life, I might as well steel my heart, practice the spear, and gamble once on entering Northwest Martial Arts University to become a martial artist."

"The Northwest is not Jiangnan in the end. Those at the bottom all serve martial artists and die because of war."

Jiang Qiu shoveled down the food in a few mouthfuls, washed the dishes, casually wiped the water from his hands onto his waist, and fixed a blazing gaze on the Instructional Video of the First Eight Moves of the Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique on his phone.

In the video, the Six Harmonies Great Spear twisted in the hands of an old man dressed in black training clothes like a flood dragon about to soar into the sky. Yet move after move, it could never break free from that lean figure. Soft as a civet cat, tough as a crimson tiger, the spear shadow darted and shifted, cold gleams splitting the air.

The Eight-Style Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique was displayed in exhaustive detail. Unlike the petty tricks passed around online, it carried an intense killing intent, stamped with a watermark reading "Not for External Transmission."

Jiang Qiu pushed the tables, chairs, and clutter piled in the living room to the sides, squeezing out an open space less than three meters across. After watching the video, he propped his phone in the corner to replay it.

Holding a one-and-a-half-meter length of hard rubber tubing split at one end in both hands, he began to imitate it.

Bang, smack, tap.

The corner of the table shifted. A wooden chair overturned. Two fragments chipped off from the crack at the end of the tube.

His spear technique did resemble it by three parts, but each move was like a monkey's grandson dancing with an eel. The way his muscles exerted force was strange, the water pipe in his hands weak and limp, and its momentum not even as imposing as the simplest straight punch.

The video had no explanation of the crucial methods for exerting force or the essentials of gripping a spear. The form resembled it, but the spirit did not; it was riddled with flaws.

Jiang Qiu stared deeply at the shallow dent gouged into the small table's corner, gritted his teeth, and sank into horse stance. Even if he was learning to walk in Handan, as long as he could make it look right, he would have a chance to Receive Spearhead.

Whoosh—hum—huff—

After completing the Eight-Style Ancient Martial Arts Spear Technique, Jiang Qiu stood leaning on the water pipe and gasped out two breaths of stale air, then shook his forearm where he had strained the tendons and bones.

"How could anyone make these eight moves look decent in one night with only a video that has no explanations?"

"Could it be that I, too, am destined to be born at the bottom, scraping by for my entire life?"

Just as Jiang Qiu gave a bitter smile, his expression suddenly froze. A few lines of text had appeared in his vision at some unknown moment.

Ancient Martial Spear (Not Yet Initiated)

Practice once

1/100

After confirming that this was not his own hallucination, Jiang Qiu's brows relaxed and his face brightened. A faint smile appeared on his lips.