Ranked Martial Artist

The candlelight flickered in the martial arts manual pavilion, dust coating the three scrolls on the sandalwood shelves.

The black-robed instructor's withered finger traced the gilded spine of "Tiger Subduing Fist," his voice hoarse like a whetstone. "Yellow-tier, intermediate. Minor success in three months. It'll be no problem to split stone and break wood."

His fingertip then tapped the snake-patterned cover of "Spirit Snake Steps." "Yellow-tier, advanced. If you can master it, you can take a life invisibly within ten paces."

Finally, he stopped at the last, scorched blade manual. "As for this 'Thunderclap Saber Art,' Yellow-tier, low-grade. No one has mastered it since the Thunder Saber Sect was destroyed thirty years ago."

Chu Ning stared at the winding lightning patterns on the saber manual. He reached out to touch it, but the instructor suddenly grabbed his wrist. "Martial arts are divided into four tiers: Heaven, Earth, Black, and Yellow, with each tier further divided into high, medium, and low grades. Martial artists are ranked in ten stages, with the tenth being the lowest and the first being the highest. Although this saber art is low-grade..."

"Can it make me ranked?" Chu Ning looked up sharply.

"Naturally!" the instructor sneered. "The Hall Master himself achieved his rank with this very technique. But you don't have that kind of talent. I advise you to choose 'Tiger Subduing Fist.' Add fifty taels of silver, and I can teach you three killing moves."

The sound of tearing silk interrupted his words.

Chu Ning had already torn open the seal of the "Thunderclap Saber Art." Scorched dust rained down, revealing incomplete diagrams of saber stances within the pages.

The instructor's fingers, clutching coins in his sleeve, made a rattling sound. "As expected, a brute from the wilds."

At You hour, the medicinal pool in Courtyard A was filled with steaming mist. A thick, viscous black sludge settled at the bottom, emitting a pungent odor.

"He just joined the martial hall and is already coming to the medicinal pool. Can't tell he's got money."

"Doesn't look like it. Probably putting on a brave face."

"More accurately, he's probably sold everything he owns."

"Hahaha..."

"Young Master Wang Li has already given orders to report immediately if this brat dares to enter the hall."

Chu Ning ignored them. He figured the Wang Family wouldn't dare cause trouble within the martial hall. He poured the Bone Forging Powder into the pool, and the medicinal liquid instantly boiled like lava.

"Creak—"

The moment he stepped into the pool, his muscles felt as if they were being gnawed by ten thousand ants.

"Ugh!"

He grunted, his fingernails digging into the stone edge of the pool. The medicinal power of the Bone Forging Powder transformed into countless steel needles, piercing his muscles through his pores.

His skin first turned a burning red, then a strange blue-purple. The blood vessels beneath his skin bulged, as if earthworms were writhing madly within his flesh.

"Crack—"

His spine suddenly let out a crisp crack, each vertebra being hammered as if by a heavy mallet.

He vaguely saw himself as a piece of red-hot iron in a blacksmith's shop, repeatedly hammered by an invisible giant hammer.

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

The medicinal pool in Courtyard A was filled with steaming mist. When Chu Ning climbed out of the pool, his muscles were coiled like iron beneath his pale golden skin. He punched a stone lock, and the lock's body dented in response.

He gazed at the lingering rock patterns on his knuckles, a sign of his mastery of the "Rough Stone Hardening Technique," yet he still couldn't touch the threshold of "ranking."

"Pseudo-tenth stage is still pseudo," he muttered, grabbing the tattered remnants of the "Thunderclap Saber Art." The scorched pages shed dust under the candlelight.

Muffled thunder rumbled outside the window, overlapping with the sound of hooves from the Wang Family's thugs kicking down his door three months ago. His elder sister's cough from the corner of the kang pierced his eardrums. He suddenly clenched the saber manual. "I can't wait!"

The Chaos Divine Order exploded with blood-red light in his sea of consciousness:

[Current Order Master is attempting to rely on the Yellow-tier, low-grade technique: "Thunderclap Saber Art."]

[Pre-payment Condition: Endure heavenly lightning tempering the body one hundred times on a stormy night.]

[Repayment Condition: Successfully split a three-zhang thick giant stone with one saber strike. After repayment, the next pre-payment effect will be unlocked!]

[Warning: For those whose physical bodies have not reached the ranked stage, forcibly pre-paying carries a seventy percent risk of meridian rupture.]

"I must reach the ranked stage. I have no other choice."

In an instant, lightning flashed and thunder roared in Chu Ning's mind.

Chu Ning gripped the rusty saber. The moment the saber was unsheathed, the first bolt of lightning struck its tip. Purple electricity surged up his arm into his heart meridian, instantly carbonizing his entire right arm.

"Ahhh—!"

He collapsed to his knees, the burning sensation instantly tearing through his sanity. His muscle fibers ruptured in the intense heat, his skin carbonized by the lightning, his flesh blackened.

The second and third bolts of heavenly tribulation followed in quick succession. The saber vibrated like a living thing in the electric light.

As the third bolt of heavenly tribulation pierced his shoulder blade, the rusty saber suddenly let out a sharp cry. The iron rust on its surface cracked like a spiderweb, revealing purple patterns resembling dragon bones within. Each lightning strike coated the bone with a layer of plasma. He staggered and unleashed a flawed "Cloud Splitting Style," but the saber light was now ten times more ferocious than before.

He staggered to his knees, his consciousness gradually blurring.

Illusions surfaced.

He saw his sister curled up in the corner of their dilapidated house, her cough accompanied by faint gasps.

He saw his father's figure, holding a hammer, repeatedly striking the red-hot iron bloom. His voice was low amidst the wind and rain: "A good saber must endure a thousand hammerings to be able to cleave heaven and earth."

"If I die here, what will happen to Elder Sister?"

"This world has no place for the weak."

Chu Ning's eyes snapped open, blazing lightning flickering in his pupils.

He gritted his teeth and stood up abruptly, facing the fortieth lightning strike.

When the forty-ninth lightning tribulation descended, the world suddenly lit up as bright as day. Chu Ning was sent flying by the blast wave, his back crashing into a rock pillar, shards of stone embedding themselves in his flesh and blood, yet he felt nothing.

"Again!" he roared, jamming his saber into a rock crevice.

The seventy-second lightning bolt coursed down the saber and into the earth's veins, causing the entire cliff face to tremble violently. Lava spewed from the cracks, and Chu Ning's left eye was blinded by lightning fire, his charred eyelid fusing into a hideous scar.

Yet, he was smiling, for he felt a strange, surging heat flow through his meridians. That power, like mist and lightning, turned his carbonized muscles back into jade wherever it passed, condensing into a fine network of lightning patterns beneath his skin.

When the ninety-ninth lightning dragon swooped down, Chu Ning was no longer human.

His right arm was bared to the bone, his left leg's muscles charred and curled, but he leaped into the air with the last vestiges of his clarity. The moment his rusted saber pierced the lightning dragon, thousands of purple bolts exploded within him. In his dantian, the Qi force of the Rough Stone Hardening Technique suddenly boiled. His internal energy, which had been as stagnant as bedrock, transformed into a surging thundercloud that coursed through his meridians.

All of this happened within Chu Ning's sea of consciousness; the other disciples in Courtyard A's medicinal pool knew nothing of it.

"This is..." Chu Ning opened his eyes. He tried to swing his damaged right arm, and a broken log thirty feet away was split in half by an invisible surge of Qi.

He didn't understand the intricacies of martial artist ranks, merely attributing it to the side effects of overexerting his techniques.

Chu Ning dragged his broken body out of the medicinal pool, each step leaving a lightning imprint on the floor. He didn't know that the lightning patterns on his jade-like muscles were the mark of a martial artist's "manifested Qi" upon reaching a rank; nor did he know that the thundercloud sea of Qi circulating in his dantian was the "tenth-rank phenomenon" that countless noble family disciples yearned for.

After walking through several corridors, he sensed an unusual atmosphere.

The air was filled with clamor, footsteps were chaotic, and he could faintly hear the clash of metal from a distance.

Chu Ning paused slightly, following the sound. He saw that the training grounds ahead were brightly lit, with many apprentices gathered in a circle.

"So they're conducting the ranking test."

His eyes flickered, and his steps unconsciously drew him towards the training grounds.

The training grounds were ablaze with torches, and Chu Ning's steps were steady. The shadows of the onlookers twisted on the bluestone like dancing demons.

Instructor Zhou's saber was planted in the ground, its blade three inches deep in the stone. "Today, whoever can withstand three moves from this old man will be considered ranked!"

On the high platform, the Hall Master Lei Wanjun slowly stood up, his gaze fixed on the disciples in the field.

Everyone exchanged glances, only Chu Ning stirred with eagerness.

When Chu Ning stepped into the arena, dragging his purple-patterned saber, laughter immediately erupted.

"Him? He dares to challenge Instructor Zhou?"

"Instructor Zhou is a ranked martial artist; his sword Qi can cut through metal..."

"This kid... he has a familiar aura." Lei Wanjun looked at the young man in the field.

The dull thud of his scabbard hitting the ground silenced the mockery.

"Please, guide me." His hoarse voice sounded as if it had been fished from a furnace.

Instructor Zhou narrowed his eyes and drew his saber. The dragon's roar of the unsheathed blade had not yet faded when Chu Ning lunged like a hungry tiger.

Before the saber light arrived, the lightning Qi struck first. The thirty-foot distance was shrunk to a single step by the purple lightning.

The moment the blade sliced through the air, Instructor Zhou's pupils constricted. This move should have aimed straight for the throat, but the damaged saber inexplicably turned in mid-air.

"Clang—!"

Instructor Zhou hastily defended, and the two blades collided, erupting in blinding sparks. Instructor Zhou retreated seven steps, smoke rising from his cuffs, while Chu Ning's saber pressed down, the incomplete "Mountain Breaker Style" carrying the momentum of wind and thunder, plowing a three-foot-deep gully in the bluestone.

The surrounding apprentices were all aghast, unable to believe their eyes.

"Second move." Instructor Zhou's voice deepened, and his Goose Feather Saber suddenly glowed with a green light. "It's my turn."

The saber light poured down like a waterfall. The Qi of a ranked martial artist condensed into substance, transforming into nine green saber shadows that sealed Chu Ning's vital points.

But Chu Ning smiled.

Though his movements appeared chaotic, a crisp "crack" was heard, and the nine saber shadows shattered simultaneously like glass.

"Impossible!" An apprentice knocked over a brazier.

Instructor Zhou's astonishment froze on his face during the third move. Chu Ning's saber was, at some unknown time, three inches from his throat.

It wasn't speed, but cunning!

The saber's momentum seemed to predict all his counter-moves, like a thundercloud locking onto its prey.

"Boom!!!"

The two sabers shattered and flew apart, slicing the training ground's gong in half. Instructor Zhou's hair and beard stood on end as the formidable Qi of a ranked martial artist erupted. The ground's bricks and stones flew like waves, and the onlookers were thrown about by the blast.

When the dust settled, everyone saw a sight they would never forget.

Chu Ning knelt on one knee, his saber tip three inches deep in the earth. The lightning patterns on his body flickered like breathing.

"Rank achieved. You can register with the authorities anytime." Instructor Zhou threw a bronze token, his hand trembling slightly within his sleeve as he turned away.

The gilded plaque "Thunderclap Martial Hall" trembled in the blast wave. Hall Master Lei Wanjun crushed an iron gall and roared with laughter, the sound shaking off roof tiles: "Thirty years! The Thunder Saber Sect has finally found its successor!"

In the distance, Instructor Zhou's gaze turned sinister. He quietly retreated into the shadows and whispered to a man in black robes.

"The Wang Family's bounty has been delivered. Make sure you do it cleanly."

The man in black robes sneered, "Don't worry. 'Crimson Scorpion Powder' has been prepared in the medicinal pool. A mere ranked martial artist dying in the medicinal pool will just be an accident."