Blood and Qi Recede

This profound Ancient Martial Arts Living Stance had been completely shattered by Jiang Yue, perfectly fused into the daily instincts of his walking and breathing.

Without showing his hand, he had carved the killing technique of balancing motion and stillness into his very marrow.

Jiang Yue lifted his head, gazing at the massive alloy gate at the end of the passage that led to the main examination arena. A long-dormant sharpness flickered in his eyes, then vanished.

Yet, Shen Qing, who happened to be walking from the other end of the passage, saw Jiang Yue in that instant, and his pupils abruptly contracted to pinpricks.

Shen Qing stared fixedly at Jiang Yue's footsteps.

To outsiders, Jiang Yue walked casually, normally.

But in the eyes of a true Ancient Martial Arts heir like Shen Qing, he was horrified to discover that every seemingly casual step Jiang Yue took now seemed to root his soles into the alloy floor.

There was no unnecessary sway in his waist or hips, but his spine maintained an extremely subtle, extremely fluid undulation as he moved.

It was like a furious dragon lurking at the bottom of an abyss—though it hadn't bared its fangs, the terrifying intent of containing without releasing, balancing motion and stillness, had been fully integrated into every single one of his movements!

He no longer needed to deliberately strike an All-Rounder Stance or think about how to walk.

As long as he was still breathing and walking, his body was constantly maintaining the state of the Roaming Dragon Stance!

"This guy..." Shen Qing swallowed a mouthful of saliva, forcibly suppressing the shock in his heart. He didn't dare to imagine what terrifying power Jiang Yue was suppressing within his body right now.

Jiang Yue passed by Shen Qing, merely nodding calmly without a word.

The Roaming Dragon Stance hadn't yet become a perfect instinct as natural as breathing; occasionally, during extreme shifts in force application, there was still a hint of awkwardness.

But it was enough to handle the upcoming battle.

A full month of hellish recruit training had finally reached its most brutal conclusion.

With a deafening roar of machinery, the four hundred-meter-tall special alloy gates surrounding the main square slowly rose.

Twenty thousand recruits in dark gray training uniforms, like a silent and oppressive black tide, poured into the square from four directions in orderly fashion, quickly forming into phalanxes.

In the air, the restlessness and fear of when they first enlisted were gone, replaced by a blood-soaked, pressure-tempered iron-blooded killing intent.

At the start of the conscription, there had been thirty thousand people standing here.

Now, only a little over twenty thousand remained.

The ten thousand who had vanished either had their bones shattered in the Gravity Well, were crushed into cripples in Alloy Puppet Alley, or completely broke down under the daily high-pressure drills and were sent to the sunless logistics mining areas.

After a month of life-and-death tempering, the surviving twenty thousand recruits had undergone a transformative rebirth.

Inside the high platform's Main Control Room.

Chief Examiner Iron Wrist stared at the large-scale holographic scan projected by the AI. His dark red Mechanical Prosthetic lightly tapped the table, a satisfied, savage grin spreading across his rugged face.

"Not bad. This month of hard training wasn't wasted."

On the holographic scan, among the twenty thousand recruits below, the vast majority emitted a dense, blazing deep-red thermal imaging glow from their bodies.

This meant that the baseline normal strength of these recruits had all crossed the 500-kilogram threshold, officially reaching the level of Quasi-Martial Artists!

Vast quantities of blood and qi surged within their bodies. Because they couldn't perfectly control it, the blood and qi leaked out, gathering above the square into a suffocating wave of heat.

"Quasi-Martial Artists are everywhere, but among this group, the ones who can truly be called monsters are still those few..."

Iron Wrist's fingers quickly swiped across the screen, zooming in on several areas at the front of the phalanx.

There stood Chu Lin, Zhan Feng, and a few other monstrous talents from top-tier noble families.

Horrifyingly, against the backdrop of ordinary recruits with their blood and qi flaring and muscles bulging, Chu Lin and the others showed no trace of blood and qi fluctuation at all.

They stood there quietly, their skin restored to a normal complexion, without any luster from high-intensity Body Forging.

Chief Instructor One-Eye's mechanical eye, glowing with cold red light, locked onto these few, a cruel appreciation curling at the corner of his mouth: "Qi and blood concealed, Skin Membrane without luster."

"The pores and subcutaneous fascia around their bodies have completed a perfect seal, achieving a flawless state where blood and qi don't leak."

One-Eye coldly spat out a few words, "These little monsters have officially crossed the limits of mortals, stepped into the true Skin Tempering Realm, and become true martial artists."

In just one month, crossing from Quasi-Martial Artist to true martial artist—this speed, even with the dual stacking of family foundations and military resources, was enough to prove their terrifying talent.

"Wait..."

Iron Wrist suddenly frowned, his gaze sweeping across a corner of the holographic screen, pulling up a data report from a marginal area.

"One-Eye, that commoner kid you were so optimistic about before, the one named Jiang Yue. What's going on with his data?"

Iron Wrist pointed at Jiang Yue's vital signs thermal imaging on the screen.

Among the crowd of Quasi-Martial Artists emitting deep-red blood and qi light, Jiang Yue's thermal imaging actually showed an extremely dim, icy blue!

His blood and qi fluctuations were so weak that, let alone comparing him to true martial artists like Chu Lin, even next to the ordinary Quasi-Martial Artists who had just crossed the 500-kilogram threshold, he seemed like a flickering candle in the wind.

"According to the AI's scan data, the blood and qi in his body seem to have declined."

Iron Wrist's rugged face was filled with shock and disappointment. "What has this kid been doing these past ten days? Could he have gone berserk from training a few days ago and damaged his internal organs?"

During the past few days of observation, Iron Wrist had also noticed Jiang Yue's bizarre state of tripping over himself even while walking.

Now, seeing this dismal data, he had almost sentenced Jiang Yue to death.

Instructor One-Eye, upon hearing this, strode over to the screen.

His remaining single eye burst forth with a sharp, piercing light, staring intently at the image of Jiang Yue standing in the corner, eyes lowered, looking like an ordinary recruit who had faded into the crowd.

After staring for a full half minute, One-Eye not only failed to show any sign of disappointment, but his chest heaved violently once, and he let out a low, spine-chilling sneer.

"Qi and blood in decline?"

One-Eye whipped his head around, fixing Iron Wrist with a piercing glare. "Iron Wrist, it's time you replaced that prosthetic eye of yours. Take another careful look at the way he's standing!"

Iron Wrist froze, then zoomed in on the image.

In the feed, Jiang Yue appeared to be standing casually, his shoulders relaxed.

But Iron Wrist keenly noticed that Jiang Yue's knees bore an extremely subtle inward curve—one that was by no means a natural standing posture.

"What... what kind of bizarre center of gravity is that?" Iron Wrist sucked in a sharp breath.

"He must be cultivating some special technique."

One-Eye's mechanical eye flickered wildly, his tone brimming with intense fervor: "He's drawing his qi and blood inward without releasing it. It seems his control over his body has improved considerably."

"Hard to say exactly how much progress he's made. We'll have to judge by what he does next."

He strode to the open-air platform of the Main Control Room, looking down at the twenty thousand recruits below.

"Now, it's time to test the mettle of these wolf cubs."