He hadn't used any Mana in that punch.
He had relied solely on his body, tempered by Mana and far stronger than others at the same stage, while precisely controlling his strength to mimic the burst of qi and blood from a Body Tempering Realm martial artist.
"Bang!"
A thunderous, weighty boom—deeper than any before it—erupted across the clearing!
The metal Puppet, which had stood utterly motionless until now, jolted backward under Zhou Xuan's punch!
The laughter across the grounds cut off abruptly.
Everyone's eyes widened as they stared fixedly at the crystal embedded in the Puppet's chest.
After sitting dull and gray for a second, the crystal suddenly blazed with a brilliant white light!
It shone so fiercely that it was almost blinding!
In the heart of that dazzling glow, an ancient-looking numeral, crisp and clear, edged with a faint golden sheen, slowly and steadily appeared.
Five!
Fifth Layer of Body Tempering!
It was as though the whole world had been muted in that instant.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Everyone stood frozen, as if struck by a body-binding spell. Their faces shifted from gloating to bewilderment, then disbelief, and finally utter blankness.
"Fifth Layer of Body Tempering?"
Someone—no one knew who—stammered the words in a trembling, dreamlike voice.
Boom!
The whole place erupted!
"How is that possible? Am I seeing things? Zhou Xuan? Fifth Layer of Body Tempering?!"
"This has to be fake! Is the Puppet broken? Three months ago—no, a month ago—I saw Li Ergou, who was only at the Third Layer of Body Tempering, chasing him around and beating him!"
"How could he have jumped straight to the Fifth Layer of Body Tempering?!"
"Is this guy a monster?"
The crowd went wild. Every gaze fixed on Zhou Xuan was filled with shock, horror, and a trace of barely concealed envy.
None of them knew what had passed between Zhou Xuan and the lofty Saintess Candidate, Liu Ruyan.
All they knew was that the man before them, whom they had treated as a good-for-nothing for years, had found a way they couldn't begin to understand to slap every last one of them hard across the face!
"Cheating! He must have cheated!"
After a brief, stunned silence, someone in the crowd let out a shrill shout, instantly setting everyone's emotions ablaze.
"Right! He definitely cheated! How could he possibly reach the Fifth Layer of Body Tempering?!"
"Investigate him! Chief Steward Wang, you have to investigate!"
"He must be hiding a Great Strength Talisman on him, or he secretly took some kind of forbidden drug!"
A servant who had only barely passed the Fifth Layer of Body Tempering test, his face still pale, pointed at Zhou Xuan with bloodshot eyes.
He'd worked himself to the bone for seven or eight years just to reach this level. How could Zhou Xuan, the good-for-nothing everyone had mocked for years, catch up in a few months? It wasn't fair!
"Exactly! A month ago, Li Ergou beat him until he was crawling on the ground, and Li Ergou was only at the Third Layer of Body Tempering! This is impossible!"
"He must've used some underhanded trick!"
"If someone like him passes, it's completely unfair to those of us who've honestly put in the work!"
Doubt, insults, and envious howls swept toward Zhou Xuan like a tide.
Those who'd just been laughing at him now seemed to turn into champions of justice, indignantly demanding that this cheater be punished.
They couldn't accept it, and they absolutely refused to believe that a good-for-nothing they'd always trampled underfoot—someone who'd served as their punchline and a source of their smug superiority—could suddenly soar to the heavens.
It was more painful than being killed!
Zhou Xuan stood where he was, calm and composed, as if the piercing abuse were no more than the buzzing of flies, beneath his notice.
Beneath the shade of a tree, Chief Steward Wang, who'd been lounging in his Grandmaster Chair, slowly sat upright.
His perpetually narrowed eyes gleamed with shrewd insight—and naked greed.
Cheating?
He scoffed inwardly.
These fools don't know the first thing about it!
A Great Strength Talisman?
Those cheap, worthless Talismans produced an obvious Mana fluctuation when activated. And they only boosted brute strength; they couldn't possibly imitate the surging qi and blood, the force running through the whole body, of a Body Tempering Realm martial artist.
That punch had condensed qi and blood and unleashed tremendous force. It was absolutely the real thing—a punch only someone at the Fifth Layer of Body Tempering could deliver.
And pills?
Every pill that could forcibly raise someone's cultivation in a short time was a potent, vicious medicine.
They all came with terrible side effects. After taking one, your qi and blood would grow unstable, your face would turn green, and you might even damage your foundation.
But look at Zhou Xuan. His breathing was steady, his complexion ruddy, and he stood there like a mountain. Did he look like someone drained by a pill?
Chief Steward Wang's gaze slid back and forth over Zhou Xuan like a venomous snake.
Even if he granted, for argument's sake, that the boy had somehow gotten hold of a top-grade pill that perfectly concealed its side effects, or a Great Strength Talisman capable of imitating qi and blood—
So what?
Pills and Talismans were nothing but external aids.
To forcibly raise a good-for-nothing at the First or Second Layer of Body Tempering to the Fifth Layer would take pills and Talismans worth more than three Qi Gathering Pills!
Did this kid have that kind of money?
And even if he did, to unleash the strength of the Fifth Layer of Body Tempering, he'd need a foundation of at least the Fourth Layer!
In just a few months, he'd gone from a good-for-nothing who could barely hold on at the First Layer of Body Tempering to the Fourth—or even Fifth.
Chief Steward Wang's heart began to pound uncontrollably. A searing excitement surged from his Dantian straight to the crown of his head!
An incredible stroke of fortune!
This damn well has to be a heaven-defying stroke of fortune!
He immediately thought of Zhou Xuan's strange behavior at the Miscellaneous Affairs Department some time ago.
He'd taken on all the work by himself and acted mysterious day after day.
Back then, Chief Steward Wang had thought the kid had given up, thrown in the towel and stopped caring. Now it was clear that wasn't it at all!
The boy had unearthed some earth-shattering treasure in the garbage heap at the Miscellaneous Affairs Department!
A stroke of fortune that could make a Five Elements Waste Spirit Root's cultivation soar in just a few months!
Chief Steward Wang's breathing grew ragged.
He knew his own circumstances better than anyone.
His cultivation was at the early stage of Foundation Establishment. That was enough to lord it over the Chore Servant Courtyard, but climbing any higher was harder than reaching the heavens.
His talent had never been anything special, and he'd established his Foundation late. His potential was long exhausted. Without a heaven-defying stroke of fortune, this was as far as he'd ever get.
But what if I could get my hands on Zhou Xuan's stroke of fortune?
Golden Core Formation!
Once I form my Golden Core, I can get out of this damned job as a chore servant steward and land a cushy post as a manager or elder in the Outer Sect—or even the Inner Sect!
Then Spirit Stones, pills, female disciples... wouldn't they all be mine for the taking?
Compared with that life, being the petty emperor of this dump was like night and day!
At the thought, Chief Steward Wang no longer looked at Zhou Xuan as a servant. He looked at him like a fat lamb, laden with treasures and ready for slaughter!
"Shut the hell up, all of you!"
Chief Steward Wang slammed his hand down on the armrest and bellowed with the force of a thunderclap, instantly drowning out every other sound.
A trace of the pressure from a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator swept across the grounds, and the whole place fell silent. The servants who'd been shouting all clamped their mouths shut, not daring to utter another word.
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