Gravity Body Tempering

Meanwhile, inside the concealed ring-shaped main control room above the gravity well.

The heavy airtight door slid open to both sides.

An exceptionally tall officer strode in.

He wore a dark gray military uniform, his right sleeve missing entirely, replaced by a dark red heavy mechanical prosthetic arm.

Hydraulic lines and metal muscles emitted a cold, faint gleam with every movement, and a crossed-sword badge representing the chief examiner's identity was pinned to his chest.

"One-Eye, how's the quality of this batch of recruits?" The newcomer's voice was rough and piercing, like two pieces of raw iron grinding together.

Head instructor One-Eye turned his head, a rare hint of a smile flickering in his remaining eye. He didn't stand to salute—clearly the two were old acquaintances. "'Iron Wrist'? They actually sent a butcher like you to be the chief examiner. Looks like the front lines are desperate for fresh blood."

One-Eye paused, then pointed at the one-way glass below. "This batch is severely polarized. A few freaks from the capital's martial families, relying on their childhood medicinal baths, are genuinely impressive. But most are just cannon fodder to pad the numbers."

The examiner called Iron Wrist walked noncommittally to the massive holographic monitoring screen, his gaze sharp as he swept over the real-time footage from the deep well below.

By now, the gravity parameters had quietly climbed to a 2.0x extreme.

"Hm, that kid named Chu Lin isn't bad." Iron Wrist's dark red mechanical eye rotated slightly, locking onto a young figure at the center of the screen.

Under the terrifying 2.0x gravity, the young man named Chu Lin stood perfectly straight, his breathing long and steady, without even a single bead of sweat.

Iron Wrist evaluated coldly, "Extremely high gene optimization, a solid foundation. Good material."

Then his gaze shifted, landing on another figure at the edge of the screen.

That youth's muscles were taut, his bones creaking under the pressure in a teeth-grinding sound. His body trembled violently, yet he rooted himself in place like an ancient tree, his eyes filled with ferocity.

"And that one? His bones are grinding, and he's still stubbornly resisting, not even using Force Unloading. A reckless madman." Iron Wrist squinted.

"Shen Qing. Rumor has it his ancestors passed down ancient martial arts. He's holding on purely through sheer brutality and killing intent."

One-Eye casually pulled up Shen Qing's data panel. "At his current state, breaking into the top hundred among these thirty thousand recruits shouldn't be a problem."

Saying this, One-Eye's finger lightly swiped across the holographic screen, the image zooming in and freezing on an inconspicuous corner of the gravity well.

There stood a boy with a blank expression.

While those around him either knelt on the ground in agony, gritting their teeth with bulging veins, he appeared excessively calm.

The 2.0x gravity pressing down on him seemed no more than a slightly heavy coat.

"But compared to those young masters from the capital, I've been keeping an eye on this one lately."

One-Eye crossed his arms, a playful smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.

Iron Wrist frowned slightly, his gaze sweeping over Jiang Yue's steady breathing on the screen. His mechanical eye quickly completed a basic biological scan. "His body density is decent, muscle-twisting force is strong. Looks like he's almost at the threshold of the 500-kilogram quasi-martial artist."

"But old friend, in a pool of thirty thousand recruits like ours, that level of strength barely ranks in the top thousand. What's so special about it?"

"His name is Jiang Yue."

One-Eye grinned, directly pulling up an initial test report from ten days ago beside the screen and pushing it in front of Iron Wrist. "Ten days ago, when he first arrived on this Floating Land as a recruit, his initial punch force was only 286 kilograms, and his technique was a mess—utterly ordinary, even bottom-tier."

"Oh?"

Hearing this, Iron Wrist's dark red mechanical eye contracted slightly, and a hint of surprise finally appeared on his rugged face.

"Ten days, jumping from 286 kilograms to nearly the 500-kilogram quasi-martial artist threshold?"

Iron Wrist's gaze locked back onto Jiang Yue, now appraising. "Without family resources... this kind of physical adaptability and resource absorption efficiency is indeed interesting."

"So I want to see where his limit really lies."

One-Eye's single eye gleamed with undisguised anticipation. "I've already added him to the military's high-dimensional list—the observation list for the [Seed Sequence]."

"Seed Sequence?"

Hearing those four words, Iron Wrist let out a noncommittal snort. "That might be premature. You and I both know that sequence's slots are limited. Not just anyone can get in."

Iron Wrist raised his dark red mechanical right arm, tapping his fingers twice on the console, and said coldly, "Fast early progress doesn't mean he'll go far on the martial path. Don't forget, 'Skin Refining' is a chasm!"

"The 1000-kilogram physical limit is right there. If he can't forge a true membrane with his blood and qi to contain his strength, no matter how fast his progress, it's just a flash in the pan. The day his qi and blood go berserk, he'll cripple himself first."

With that, Iron Wrist's eyes sharpened, and he directly pressed the pressure-increasing knob on the main console.

"Since you're so optimistic about him, let's keep cranking it up. Let me see how far these so-called freaks and madmen can hold out."

Vwoom—!

With the chief examiner's command, the deep blue magnetic field inside the gravity well erupted in a blinding glare, and an even more terrifying gravitational force, like a tangible mountain, mercilessly crushed down on the thousand recruits below!

Down in the gravity chamber, within that suffocating deep blue magnetic field, Jiang Yue had no idea that he was being intently watched by the two senior instructors in the main control room above.

All his focus was completely immersed in the frenzied, surging blood and qi within his body, like a river bursting its banks.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

One after another, dull sounds of bodies hitting the ground rang out around him.

As the gravity broke past 2.0x, waves of recruits collapsed like cut wheat.

Beside him, Xu Bo gritted his teeth, his face pale as paper, his legs trembling as he struggled to hold on, refusing to give in even as blood began to seep from his nostrils.

Not far away, Shen Qing was even more ferocious. His capillaries were constantly rupturing under the pressure, turning him into a blood-soaked figure, his eyes bloodshot as he fought the invisible gravity purely with savage willpower.

Jiang Yue stood still as well, but his state was utterly different from everyone around him.

[Action: Breathing] — Trait [Smooth Breath] triggered!

Under this suffocating, all-penetrating high pressure, Jiang Yue's chest did not heave violently like the others. Instead, it rose and fell with an extremely minute, almost stagnant rhythm.

The visceral strain brought by the external high pressure was instantly locked down under the perfect rhythmic control of [Smooth Breath].

The core qi mechanism within his body achieved an exquisitely delicate balance, as if an invisible protective umbrella had been forcibly propped up around his fragile internal organs.

At the same time, Jiang Yue felt that the omnipresent gravity around him, far from crushing him, was instead like thousands upon thousands of iron hammers, madly pounding every inch of his body from three hundred and sixty degrees without a single blind spot!

"That's right. Under extreme external pressure, the tempering of the skin membrane will be far more thorough..."

This all-encompassing crushing sensation was many times more efficient than his own self-imposed training.

[Detected all-directional extreme high-pressure environment...]

[Action: Body Forging — [Tough Skin] trait responding, skin membrane absorption and conversion efficiency continuously increasing!]

[Blood Qi Oscillation Resistance activated, skin membrane undergoing deep restructuring under high-pressure crushing...]

[Current Status: +++]