Ranked

Inside the Technique Pavilion, candle flames swayed, and three volumes of scripture on the sandalwood shelves lay beneath a thin layer of dust.

The black-robed instructor's withered finger slid across the gilded spine of Tiger Subduing Fist. His voice was hoarse as a whetstone scraping a blade. "Yellow-tier mid-grade. You can achieve minor mastery in three months. Splitting stone and chopping wood will be effortless."

His fingertip then tapped the snake-patterned cover of Spirit Snake Steps. "Yellow-tier high-grade. If you can train it to perfection, you can take a person's life silently within ten steps."

At last, he stopped before the final, charred saber manual. "As for this Thunderclap Saber Art—yellow-tier low-grade. Ever since the Thunder Saber Sect fell thirty years ago, no one has managed to master it."

Chu Ning stared at the winding thunder patterns on the manual. He reached out to touch them, but the instructor suddenly seized his wrist. "Techniques are divided into four tiers—Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow—and each tier has high, middle, and low grades. Martial artists have ten ranks, with the tenth at the bottom and the first supreme. Though this art is low-grade—"

"Can it let me become a Ranked Martial Artist?" Chu Ning abruptly raised his head.

"Of course!" The instructor sneered. "The Hall Master became a Ranked Martial Artist by relying on this very technique. But you don't possess that kind of talent. I advise you to choose Tiger Subduing Fist. Add fifty taels of silver, and this old man can teach you three killing moves."

The sound of tearing fabric cut him off.

Chu Ning had already ripped open the seal on Thunderclap Saber Art. Charred ash rustled down, revealing incomplete diagrams of saber moves on the inner pages.

The instructor clenched the copper coins in his sleeve until they crackled. "Just as expected of a reckless bumpkin."

At dusk, mist steamed over the Medicine Pool in Courtyard A. A viscous black sludge lay at the bottom, its foul stench piercing the nose.

"He just entered the martial hall and already came to the Medicine Pool. Who would've thought he was rich?"

"Doesn't look like it. He's probably just making a show of being wealthy after swelling his own face."

"More accurately, he must've sold everything he owned."

"Hahaha!"

"Young Master Wang Li has already ordered us to report it immediately if this boy dares enter the hall."

Chu Ning paid them no heed. The Wang family probably wouldn't dare cause trouble in the martial hall. He poured the Bone Forging Powder into the pool, and the medicinal liquid instantly boiled like magma.

"Creak—"

The instant he stepped into the pool, his muscles felt as though ten thousand ants were gnawing at them.

"Urgh!"

He grunted, his fingernails digging into the cracks between the stones along the pool's edge. The medicinal power of the Bone Forging Powder transformed into thousands upon thousands of steel needles, stabbing into his muscles through his pores.

His skin first flushed crimson like it had been scorched, then turned an eerie bluish-purple. Every blood vessel bulged beneath the skin, as though earthworms were madly burrowing through his flesh.

"Crack—"

His spine suddenly exploded with a brittle snap. Vertebra by vertebra, it felt as if his bones were being forged beneath a heavy hammer.

In a daze, he saw himself become a red-hot iron billet in a blacksmith's shop, pounded again and again by an invisible giant hammer.

Half an hour later, the pool water had turned murky as ink.

Mist steamed over the Medicine Pool in Courtyard A. When Chu Ning crawled out, his muscles knotted like iron beneath his pale-golden skin. He punched a stone lock, and the lock's body caved in with a bang.

He stared at the rock patterns that had yet to fade from his knuckles. This was the sign that Rough Stone Hardening Technique had reached great mastery, yet he still could not touch the threshold of becoming a Ranked Martial Artist.

"A false tenth-rank is false in the end." He snatched up the incomplete Thunderclap Saber Art. Ash rustled from the charred pages beneath the candlelight.

Dull thunder rolled outside the window, overlapping with the sound of the Wang family's henchmen kicking down the door three months ago. His elder sister's coughing from the corner of the brick bed stabbed into his ears. He abruptly tightened his grip on the manual. "I can't wait any longer!"

The Chaos Divine Order erupted with a bloody radiance in his sea of consciousness:

The current order master is attempting to rely on the Yellow-tier low-grade technique: "Thunderclap Saber Art"

Advance payment condition: Temper the body with heavenly thunder one hundred times on a stormy night

Repayment condition: Cleave apart a three-zhang-thick boulder with one saber strike to succeed. After repayment, the next advance-payment effect will be unlocked!

Warning: Forcibly taking an advance payment before the physical body reaches ranked status carries a seventy percent risk of meridian rupture

"I must become a Ranked Martial Artist. I have no other choice."

In the blink of an eye, lightning and thunder flashed through Chu Ning's mind.

Chu Ning tightened his grip on the Rusty Saber. The instant he drew it, the first bolt of thunder struck the saber's tip. Purple lightning raced up his arm and into his heart meridian, instantly charring his entire right arm black.

"Urghhh—!"

He fell to his knees. The scorching pain tore through his reason in an instant. Muscle fibers split apart in the extreme heat, his skin carbonized beneath the lightning, and his flesh blackened and burned.

The second and third thunder tribulations arrived one after another, the saber trembling like a living thing amid the electric radiance.

When the third bolt of thunder pierced through his shoulder blade, the Rusty Saber suddenly released a shrill cry. Its surface rust cracked like a spiderweb, revealing purple patterns within that resembled a flood dragon's bones. Each lightning strike plated his bones in a layer of electric plasma. Staggering, he hacked out an incomplete Cloud-Splitting Style, yet the saber light was ten times sharper than before.

He staggered and dropped to his knees, his consciousness gradually growing hazy.

A hallucination surfaced.

He saw the dilapidated room, his sister curled up in a corner, her cough accompanied by faint, labored breaths.

He saw his father's figure, iron hammer in hand, pounding a red-hot saber billet again and again. His voice was deep amid the wind and rain. "A good saber must endure a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinements before it can cleave apart Heaven and Earth."

"What will happen to my sister if I die here?"

"This world has no place for the weak."

Chu Ning's eyes snapped open. Blazing lightning flickered in his pupils.

He gritted his teeth and rose, charging toward the fortieth bolt of thunder.

When the forty-ninth thunder tribulation descended, Heaven and Earth suddenly blazed as bright as day. Chu Ning was hurled away by the shockwave, his back smashing through a stone pillar. Shattered rock embedded itself in his flesh, yet he remained completely unaware.

"Again!" he roared, thrusting the saber into a crack in the rock.

The seventy-second bolt of lightning poured through the saber into the earth veins, and the entire cliff thundered and trembled. Lava sprayed from the cracks. Thunder Fire scorched Chu Ning's left eye blind, his charred eyelid fusing into a hideous scar.

Yet he was smiling, because he felt an unfamiliar current of heat surging through his meridians. That power was like mist and lightning. Wherever it passed, his carbonized muscles turned to jade anew, condensing beneath his skin into a fine network of thunder patterns.

When the ninety-ninth thunder dragon dove down, Chu Ning no longer resembled a human being.

The bones of his right arm were exposed, while the muscles of his left leg were blackened and curled. Yet he used the final thread of clarity to leap into the air. The instant the Rusty Saber pierced through the thunder dragon, countless bolts of purple lightning exploded within him. The qi of Rough Stone Hardening Technique suddenly boiled in his dantian. His originally stagnant, rock-solid inner force transformed into roiling thunderclouds that surged through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.

All of this occurred within Chu Ning's sea of consciousness. None of the other disciples at the Medicine Pool in Courtyard A knew what had happened.

"This is..." Chu Ning opened his eyes. He tried swinging his ruined right arm, and a broken log three zhang away was cleaved in half by an invisible force.

He did not understand the intricacies of martial ranks and assumed it was merely a side effect of overtaxing the technique.

Chu Ning dragged his ruined body out of the Medicine Pool, each step leaving a thunder seal scorched into the floor. He did not know that the thunder patterns on his jade-transformed muscles were precisely the sign of a martial artist's qi force manifesting externally upon reaching ranked status. Nor did he know that the thundercloud qi sea circulating in his dantian was the "tenth-rank phenomenon" countless scions of aristocratic families desperately sought but could never obtain.

After walking through several corridors, he sensed that something was amiss.

Voices seethed, footsteps raced about, and faintly, the sound of metal striking metal came from the distance.

Chu Ning paused slightly and followed the sound with his gaze. Ahead, the training ground blazed with light, and numerous apprentices had gathered in a circle.

"So they're conducting a ranked-status test."

His eyes flickered, and his feet unconsciously carried him toward the training ground.

Torches whipped in the wind across the training ground. Chu Ning walked with steady steps, while the watching apprentices' shadows twisted across the blue bricks like demons dancing wildly.

Instructor Zhou's saber stood planted in the ground, its edge sunk three inches into the bricks. "Today, anyone who can receive three moves from this old man will be considered a Ranked Martial Artist!"

On the raised platform, Hall Master Lei Wanjun slowly rose, his eyes shining as he gazed at the students in the field.

Everyone exchanged baffled looks. Only Chu Ning was itching to act.

When Chu Ning dragged his purple-patterned saber into the field, mocking laughter instantly erupted.

"Him? He dares challenge Instructor Zhou?"

"Instructor Zhou is a Ranked Martial Artist. His Sword Qi can sever metal."

"This boy... has a vaguely familiar aura." Lei Wanjun looked toward the youth in the field.

The dull thud of a saber scabbard hitting the ground cut off the jeers.

"Please instruct me." His hoarse voice sounded as though it had been dredged from a furnace.

Instructor Zhou narrowed his eyes and drew his saber. Before the dragon's cry of the unsheathed blade had faded, Chu Ning had already pounced like a starving tiger.

Before the saber light arrived, Thunderous Force struck first. The three-zhang distance shrank to a single step beneath the purple lightning.

The instant the blade cleaved through empty air, Instructor Zhou's pupils contracted. This move should have gone straight for his throat, yet the ruined saber strangely twisted in midair.

"Clang—!"

Instructor Zhou hurriedly raised his guard. The two blades collided, bursting with dazzling sparks. Instructor Zhou retreated seven steps, scorched smoke rising from his sleeve, while Chu Ning's blade followed through with downward pressure. The incomplete Mountain Severing Style, wrapped in the force of wind and thunder, plowed a three-zhang furrow through the blue bricks.

All the watching apprentices were stunned, unable to believe their eyes.

"Second move." Instructor Zhou's voice deepened. The wild-goose saber suddenly glowed with azure light. "My turn."

Saber light poured down like a waterfall. The qi force of a Ranked Martial Artist solidified into substance, transforming into nine azure saber shadows that sealed all the vital points around Chu Ning's body.

Yet Chu Ning smiled.

He seemed to move without any pattern, but with a crisp crack, the nine saber shadows shattered simultaneously like glass.

"Impossible!" An apprentice knocked over a brazier.

Instructor Zhou's astonishment froze at the third move. At some point, Chu Ning's saber had already stopped three inches from his throat.

It wasn't speed. It was uncanny!

That saber momentum seemed to predict all his changes, like thunderclouds locking onto their prey.

"Boom!!!"

The two sabers broke and shot away, cleaving the training ground's bronze gong in half. Instructor Zhou's beard and hair flew wildly as the majestic qi force of a Ranked Martial Artist erupted. Bricks and stones flew like waves, and the spectators were tossed about by the shockwave.

When the smoke cleared, everyone saw a scene they would never forget.

Chu Ning knelt on one knee, his saber blade sunk three inches into the earth, thunder patterns flickering around him like breathing.

"You've successfully become a Ranked Martial Artist. You can register at the authorities whenever you wish." Instructor Zhou flung over a bronze token. When he turned, the palm hidden in his sleeve trembled faintly.

The gilded plaque bearing the words "Thunderclap Martial Hall" trembled in the shockwave. Hall Master Lei Wanjun crushed an iron gall in his hand and laughed so loudly that roof tiles shook loose. "Thirty years! The Thunder Saber Sect has finally awaited its successor!"

In the distance, Instructor Zhou's gaze turned gloomy. He quietly withdrew into the shadows and whispered to a black-robed man.

"The Wang family's reward has arrived. Make sure you leave no traces."

The black-robed man sneered. "Don't worry. The Crimson Scorpion Powder is ready in the Medicine Pool. A mere Ranked Martial Artist will die in there. It'll be nothing more than an accident."