Body Forging Entry

[Action: Body Tempering]

[Status: Extreme High Pressure! Blood and Qi Reorganizing!]

[Current Progress: 97%... 98%... 99%...]

The progress bar at the edge of his retina flickered violently before grinding to a dead halt at ninety-nine percent.

Jiang Yue lay sprawled on the alloy deck, slick with sweat and blood, his lungs heaving violently.

The ordinary high-pressure strikes had already reached the threshold his current physical body could withstand and convert.

One thread short.

Just that final, decisive external force was needed to shatter this invisible barrier.

Jiang Yue pressed his hands against the icy floor.

His left ribcage was swollen high, his internal organs throbbed with dull pain, and every muscle fiber screamed in tearing agony.

For any normal person, even moving a single finger would be a luxury at this point.

But Jiang Yue did not stop.

The grating sound of bones grinding echoed in one corner of the dead silent plaza.

Under the horrified gazes of the surrounding recruits, and within Shen Qing's abruptly constricted pupils, that blood-soaked, thin figure once again swayed, slowly straightening its torso.

No provocative words. No arrogant taunts.

Jiang Yue merely raised his arms calmly, dragging his slightly cramped left leg, and once again set the textbook-rigid "Gate Sealing" stance firmly before Shen Qing.

Shen Qing's breathing grew completely ragged.

He stared at Jiang Yue's eyes—utterly calm, filled only with extreme focus—and felt a flicker of anger.

"You still intend to stand?"

Shen Qing's voice was hoarse to the extreme, his eyes bloodshot.

The instinct of a martial fanatic stirred a trace of reverence for this kind of extreme purity, and the best way to express reverence was an unreserved, lethal strike.

"This last fist, I'll squeeze out all my blood and qi. It's still not too late to dodge now!"

Shen Qing sank his waist and planted his stance.

Hum!

The blood and qi around him, which had already begun to decline, were forcibly drawn and compressed in an instant.

On his right arm, that faint red glow instantly solidified, even distorting the air into a scorching ripple.

"Armor-Piercing Awl!"

His entire form turned into a blur, his right fist like a high-speed rotating heavy drill, carrying a piercing sonic boom as it blasted straight toward Jiang Yue's right shoulder!

This single punch drained all of Shen Qing's physical energy.

In Jiang Yue's pupils, that point of red light rapidly expanded. He did not close his eyes, nor did he retreat. Instead, he actively pushed his right shoulder forward an inch, meeting the deadly fist.

A dull impact and a crisp bone-cracking sound exploded simultaneously.

Jiang Yue's right shoulder instantly collapsed. That violent spiral hidden force tore through his flesh without resistance, viciously drilling deep into the bone.

The immense kinetic energy sent Jiang Yue flying. Like a torn cloth sack, he crossed over ten meters through the air, slammed heavily into the railing at the plaza's edge, then tumbled to the ground, completely still.

His vision plunged into utter darkness.

His brain's protective mechanism began forcibly severing pain nerves.

But in the last second before his consciousness was about to sink, the progress bar stuck at 99% on Jiang Yue's retina finally emitted a crisp sound, like ice cracking.

[External Extreme Force Infusion! Threshold Breakthrough!]

[Stagnant Essence Fully Reorganized! Dermis Undergoing Qualitative Change!]

[Action: Body Tempering]

[Status: Trait Unlocked!]

[Current Trait: Tough Skin (White)]

[Description: Tempered a thousand times, skin gives birth to a tough membrane.]

[Your dermis's microscopic structure undergoes dense reorganization, becoming highly resilient. Resistance to external blunt force and blood and qi shock increases. Each time you endure a heavy blow or actively circulate the body tempering technique, the dermis's efficiency in absorbing and converting blood and qi and energy improves slightly.]

Done.

Lying in a pool of blood, Jiang Yue couldn't move even a single pinky. His fractured right shoulder and dislocated internal organs made every breath carry the taste of blood.

Jiang Yue could clearly sense the violent hidden force from Shen Qing's punch still lingering inside him, originally meant to continue ravaging his vitality.

But now, that newly formed, invisible, dense membrane was decomposing and absorbing those scattered hidden forces at a highly efficient rate.

This improved conversion efficiency meant that from now on, every time he took a beating, every time he stood in stance, his gains would far surpass his peers.

"I concede."

Using the last shred of his strength, Jiang Yue squeezed two words from his throat, then completely released his grip on consciousness and fell into a coma.

In the arena.

Shen Qing, having thrown the final punch, felt his knees go weak and dropped to one knee on the deck.

He gasped for air, his entire body drenched in sweat.

He stared fixedly at Jiang Yue lying collapsed in the distance. Clearly, he was the one still standing at the end. Clearly, this had been an utterly one-sided, uncontested rout.

Yet deep in Shen Qing's heart, a chill and a sense of defeat he couldn't put into words rose up.

He felt like a hammer that had just helped a stubborn piece of iron ore knock off its hardest impurities.

"Monster..." Shen Qing murmured under his breath.

On the high platform.

The one-eyed instructor watched it all coldly.

The entire square's live combat drills had devolved into multiple brutal brawls.

The instructor took a deep breath, channeling his surging blood-and-qi power into his throat, and let out a thunderous low shout that struck like a physical force:

"Everyone, stop!"

The sound wave shook the entire field. All the fresh recruits, their eyes bloodshot from killing, felt their eardrums sting and instantly froze in place.

Dozens of spherical medical puppets glided silently onto the field, their mechanical arms extending with precision to scan and drag away the heavily wounded recruits sprawled on the ground.

The instructor's gaze crossed the crowd and landed on Jiang Yue, who was being carried off by a medical puppet.

He tapped on the military data tablet in his hand, removing Jiang Yue's name from the "expendable mediocrity" category and dropping it into a separate document labeled "Observation Target."

"Extremely ruthless, and even more ruthless with himself. If he can survive, this blade might prove very sharp."

The instructor withdrew his gaze, his voice cold as it carried across the entire field:

"Live combat is over. The severely wounded will be sent to the bottom-level medical pods. The Federation needs living soldiers. Basic treatment is covered by the military for free."

"But remember! There are only nine days left until the first assessment!"

"The time you spend lying in a medical pod is time your martial arts stagnate. Nine days from now, if your physical conditioning doesn't meet the standard, even if you're in a wheelchair, you'll be rolled off to a mining planet for labor!"

Late at night, Military Floating Land No. 17, fresh recruit medical zone.

Rows of transparent medical pods, like a honeycomb, lined the walls.

Each pod was filled with cheap green basic repair fluid.

This kind of repair fluid could only keep a wounded soldier alive and accelerate bone knitting, but during the process, the soldier had to endure the intense itching and stabbing pain of muscle tissue regenerating.

Jiang Yue floated silently inside one of the pods.

His right shoulder was fixed by a mechanical brace, and a breathing mask was clamped over his mouth and nose.

According to the medical puppet's initial diagnosis, with this level of comminuted fracture and internal organ shock, even soaking in the repair fluid, he would need at least half a month just to barely get back on his feet.

And there were only nine days left until the fateful ten-day assessment.

For an ordinary recruit, this was equivalent to a death sentence.

Because he had fallen into a state of absolute unconsciousness, the panel automatically took over his body's basic functions.

[Behavior: Sleep] triggered.

[Current entry: Calm Spirit (White)].

Jiang Yue's brainwaves instantly dropped to freezing point.

His heart rate slowed to an extreme, and his body diverted all the energy normally used for maintaining consciousness—one hundred percent—toward physical repair.

In this deep sleep state, his cell division rate was forcibly doubled.

At the same time, the airflow beneath his breathing mask began to shift subtly.

[Behavior: Breathing] triggered.

[Current entry: Smooth Breath (White)].

[Behavior: Body Tempering] passively triggered.

[Current entry: Tough Skin (White)] activated!

The repair energy absorbed through his skin membrane, as it reached the severely injured areas of his right shoulder and left ribs, was precisely intercepted by the newly evolved [Tough Skin].

The essence of the repair fluid that would otherwise have been lost through leakage was locked tight by the skin membrane.

At the broken bones, granulation tissue wove together at a visible rate; the torn muscle fibers, guided by [Tough Skin], regrew denser and thicker.

In the silent medical room, only the ticking of instruments echoed.

The green liquid inside the medical pod, as time passed, was turning transparent and clear at an abnormal rate.

That was a sign that the effective medicinal power had been completely drained.

Jiang Yue floated inside the pod, and a large patch of dead skin began to peel off his body surface.

The new skin exposed to the medicinal fluid was no longer the pale, thin appearance it had been before, but faintly showed a bluish-black luster, like cold-forged refined steel.

In a short span of time, his injuries had already recovered by more than half!