Calm Spirit

One in the morning.

The air inside the Honeycomb Barracks was foul, thick with the carbon dioxide exhaled by tens of thousands of people and the rusty smell of oxidized metal.

Snores rose and fell like a low thunderstorm, making the thin walls of the sleeping capsules tremble.

But in the shadows at the farthest corner of the barracks, a faint sound of bones grinding against each other could still be heard.

"Crack... crack..."

Jiang Yue was bare-chested, and sweat had soaked the alloy floor beneath him.

He was holding the Draw Bow stance, the first form of the Federal Basic Body Tempering Technique, but his posture had begun to fail.

His spine screamed in protest. The tendons that should have been taut as bowstrings were twitching and spasming beyond his control.

Every muscle fiber sent a warning to his brain that it was about to give out, as if it might snap like an old rubber band at any moment.

But Jiang Yue did not stop.

His gaze stayed fixed on the progress bar inching forward at the edge of his vision.

As long as it kept moving, he could not bring himself to stop.

In an age when even the air people breathed was rationed, progress he could see was intoxicating.

"Hey."

Just as Jiang Yue gritted his teeth and prepared to hold on for another five minutes, a panel on the capsule beside his slid open.

A pair of slightly puffy eyes appeared in the dark. "Come on, man, stop. Keep this up and you'll be wrecked tomorrow."

"Training harder isn't enough. We've got more training tomorrow, and if you don't recover, you could easily get eliminated."

Jiang Yue froze, and the stale breath he had been holding in his chest finally escaped.

His body went limp. He gulped for air, his chest heaving so violently that he could hear his overworked heart pounding.

The speaker was a recruit in the neighboring bunk. They had exchanged a few words on their way back to the barracks, but barely knew each other.

His name was Li Tai. He was short but sturdy, and Jiang Yue had heard that his family ran a small trading business in the Rim Galaxy.

They were hardly aristocrats, but compared with an orphan like Jiang Yue, they were well-off.

"Thanks." Jiang Yue smiled as he accepted it.

"Don't thank me. I was just giving you a heads-up."

Li Tai sighed and pulled a thumb-sized dark blue spray bottle from beneath his pillow. After a moment's hesitation, he tossed it to Jiang Yue.

"Catch. Blue Cloud Muscle Relaxant Spray. It's the cheap civilian version, but it's better than toughing it out."

Jiang Yue caught it by reflex, then paused at the cool touch of metal.

He knew what it was. Even this so-called cheap spray cost several hundred Federation credits a bottle on the black market, enough to cover his food for half a month.

"Why?"

Jiang Yue did not stand on ceremony. He pulled off the cap and sprayed his aching, swollen spine a few times.

A biting chill seeped into his flesh at once, suppressing the searing pain.

"Because you're ruthless with yourself."

Leaning over the edge of his bunk, Li Tai lowered his voice. "There are tens of thousands of people in this barracks. Hundreds did extra training just now, but you're the only one who pushed himself so hard he nearly crippled himself."

Li Tai tapped his temple.

"But that won't help. Brother, have you heard of genetic depletion?"

Jiang Yue stopped. "What's that?"

"A death sentence for the poor."

Li Tai gave a cold laugh, sounding mature beyond his years. "Without high-energy meat to replenish you or restorative fluid to soak in, the harder you train, the deeper the damage runs."

"It's like driving a sports car with no fuel. Floor the accelerator, and what you burn isn't gas. It's the engine."

"That's why so many talented commoners train themselves to death or end up permanently disabled."

Li Tai looked at Jiang Yue's narrow shoulders. "There's training tomorrow. Show up with all those hidden injuries, and don't think you'll make it through."

Jiang Yue fell silent.

He looked at the half-empty spray bottle in his hand and felt the pain in his back gradually ease.

Li Tai was right. This was survival wisdom Jiang Yue could never have learned in his isolated orphanage.

In this world, working harder did not always bring better luck.

"I'll remember that, Li Tai." Jiang Yue tossed the spray back and nodded earnestly.

"Jiang Yue."

That simple exchange of names was a silent understanding between two people struggling at the bottom of the same enormous meat grinder.

"Get some sleep, Jiang Yue."

Li Tai yawned and burrowed back under his blanket. "In this hellhole, sleeping is part of training too. The ones who can sleep live longer."

The barracks fell silent again.

Only the occasional hum of a patrol robot's engine in the distance served as a reminder that they were on a heavily guarded Military Floating Land.

Jiang Yue struggled back into his narrow, cramped sleeping capsule.

Every cell in his body screamed. The ache deep in his bones made even turning over difficult.

An ordinary person in that condition would never have fallen asleep. They could only suffer through the pain until dawn.

But Jiang Yue was different.

He lay flat, folded his hands over his abdomen, closed his eyes, and thought:

Sleep.

In the next instant, lines of data flashed across his vision.

[Current trait: Calm Spirit (White) active.]

[Effect: Enter deep sleep. Brain waves stabilize, growth hormone secretion becomes more efficient, and mental fatigue clears much faster.]

In that instant, Jiang Yue felt as though someone had pulled the plug on his brain.

There was no tossing and turning, no swarm of stray thoughts, not even fear or anxiety about tomorrow.

Darkness surged in like a tide and gently enveloped his consciousness.

Had anyone been monitoring him, they would have seen his heart rate plunge from ninety beats per minute to just forty-five in three seconds.

His breathing grew deep and steady, each inhalation lasting ten seconds.

Inside him, the tiny muscle fibers torn by overtraining, the knee cartilage on the verge of swelling, and the nerves stretched to their limit began repairing and rebuilding themselves at a speed far beyond normal under the power of the rule called Calm Spirit.

For an ordinary person like Li Tai, sleep was rest.

For Jiang Yue, sleep was evolution.

BEEEEEP!

At five in the morning, a piercing assembly whistle blasted through the entire Honeycomb Barracks.

"Ah... damn it..."

"My legs... I can't move my legs..."

"Someone help me up. I'm going to throw up..."

The once-quiet barracks instantly became a chorus of misery.

The near-torturous physical exhaustion of the night before had not faded with sleep. After a whole night of lactic acid buildup, it had turned into an even fiercer ache.

Even Li Tai hauled himself upright with a face twisted in pain. He rubbed his stiff neck and grimaced. "Fuck, I feel like a heavy truck ran me over all night... When does this end?"

He turned toward the neighboring bunk, wanting to see if the madman who had pushed himself so hard last night was still alive.

Then Li Tai froze.

Amid the groans filling the room, a figure silently swung down from his bunk.

It was Jiang Yue.

He moved lightly and landed without a sound. Not a single joint creaked.

Jiang Yue's eyes were clear, without a trace of red in the whites. His whole body radiated a startling calm and vitality.

The frailty that had left him on the verge of collapse last night was gone. In its place was a resilience like steel after tempering.

Jiang Yue rolled his neck with a crisp crack and felt at ease from head to toe, as though last night's self-destructive extra training had never happened.

Four hours of sleep should not have been enough, but he had slept deeply, so naturally he had recovered faster than the others.

"You..."

Li Tai was still holding the spray bottle from last night. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head, and his jaw dropped.

"Did you sleep last night, or did you spend the whole night soaking in a Medical Pod? Are you made of iron?"

He knew exactly how bad Jiang Yue had looked last night. He had been on the brink of collapse.

How could four hours of sleep leave him looking more refreshed than Li Tai, who had not even done extra training?

As Jiang Yue straightened the collar of his training uniform, he turned and gave Li Tai the faintest smile.

"Maybe I just sleep well."

With that, he slid open the capsule door and stepped into the cold steel corridor.

A new day had begun.