Although it was only seven o'clock, Zhao Cheng wasn't in the habit of showing up right on time. He arrived at the gymnasium more than ten minutes early.
Since it was Friday, school was already out, so there was no one unrelated hanging around.
The enormous gymnasium blazed with light. Zhao Cheng first went to the locker room to change, then carried his wooden sword and walked unhurriedly toward Area Zero.
The gymnasium had ten areas in total, numbered from Zero to Nine. Area Zero was at its center and was also the largest.
On ordinary days, unless there was a major event, such as the school's opening ceremony, it was rarely used.
Zhao Cheng wasn't the first to arrive. Three boys had already gotten there ahead of him.
All three were tall and well-built. As for their looks, two weren't particularly handsome, but they were the sort with pleasant, regular features. Combined with the spirited bearing that came naturally from years of sword practice and reaching a certain level of skill, they made quite a striking impression at first glance.
That was only natural. It was hard to find an ugly person among those who practiced swordsmanship year after year.
As time went by, their bearing and their bodies were both refined; they all grew more pleasing to the eye.
Only the one at the head of the group stood out, his looks a cut above those of ordinary people. He was beyond just another passerby, with something of a romantic drama's leading man about him.
He was also about ten centimeters taller than the other two boys. It wasn't a huge difference, but it certainly made him more eye-catching.
When Zhao Cheng approached, the three boys were chatting quietly. Though the place was wide open, it was still a public space, so they kept their voices low, showing a certain degree of restraint.
Swordsmanship was like that. Once you had practiced for a long time and grasped its true essence, your nature would grow more tolerant and broad-minded—unless you were pursuing some crooked path.
The students practiced the purest, most upright version of the 17th Edition Basic Swordplay. Tempered by such swordsmanship, only someone born bad could turn an art so fair and balanced into an evil technique. Otherwise, as their swordsmanship deepened, their hearts would grow purer and more upright.
On the outside, this showed itself as kindness, courtesy, and calm.
A thousand years of swordsmanship—especially Yanhuang swordsmanship—had carried within it the essence of a thousand years of Yanhuang culture.
In modern times, it had taken modern thought as its guiding principle and framework, then blended in the rich cultural essence of Yanhuang's long history, preserving the best and discarding the dross. Only after countless revisions had the final form of Basic Swordsmanship emerged.
It seemed basic, but it was the very root of Yanhuang!
That was also why the Panel couldn't assess this sword art's quality.
It was a sword art that could be explored ever more deeply.
Generally speaking, the higher a sword art's quality, the greater the demands for entering it. This one, however, had no entry requirements.
Its quality would keep rising according to what each practitioner grasped from it.
Everyone who came here at this hour was from the Kendo Class. Their swordsmanship was at least lv4—proficient—and had already begun to grow more refined. Naturally, the process also tempered their character.
When the three saw Zhao Cheng, they didn't know him, so they merely nodded politely instead of greeting him as if they were old friends. Zhao Cheng nodded back in response.
After that, Zhao Cheng went straight to a somewhat secluded corner and sat quietly with his sword laid across his knees. He adjusted his breathing, and with each breath in and out, the wooden sword on his knees trembled faintly, as if responding to him.
As he breathed like this, Zhao Cheng's somewhat constrained heart settled down.
His character wasn't yet resilient enough; he still needed more tempering. Facing what was about to happen, he had actually found himself feeling a little nervous.
It was somewhat like how he'd felt in his previous life, just after graduating, when he was about to face an interviewer—only not as intensely.
Later, after he'd gone to enough interviews, he'd gotten used to them and stopped feeling nervous.
But some people were so confident, their hearts so steadfast, that they could remain calm in any situation, even when facing it for the first time.
That was the difference in the depth of one's inner cultivation.
At that moment, Zhao Cheng understood where he fell short, but he didn't feel vexed about it.
No one was born immensely powerful, but as the years passed, even scrap iron could be forged into fine steel through a hundred refinements.
Cultivating the heart meant seeing yourself clearly, then surpassing yourself.
You didn't grow smug over your own strength, nor did you brood over your own weakness.
Holding to this thought day after day, one day dust would gather into mountains, and drops of water would flow together to form lakes and seas.
Time passed. People continued to arrive, one after another. Zhao Cheng kept breathing steadily, but his eyes were open now as he sat watching people gather in groups of three or five and come and go.
To Zhao Cheng, every one of them was a stranger.
Though the Kendo Class held a special place at Qingyuan, aside from a few exceptional students—like the top student in the whole school—who would pay attention to ordinary students, let alone find out what the others looked like or who they were?
It was like how, in his previous life, he'd never seen anyone go out of their way to find out who was in their school's Olympiad class, even though they were all candidates for top universities like Tsinghua and Peking.
As for the entire Kendo Class, the only person Zhao Cheng recognized was the boy among the three who had arrived first. He thought his name was Qin Tailai.
He knew about him because he was good-looking, and his swordsmanship was good, too.
Mostly, it was his looks that had made him famous; his swordsmanship was just a bonus.
While scrolling through posts on the school forum, Zhao Cheng had come across quite a few about him. Most had been written by young girls, saying things like, "I ran into him, and he's so handsome!" or "He looks so cool!" They even included photos.
Most of the posts had been like that.
There were other boys with good swordsmanship, of course, but none of them had drawn nearly as much attention.
In this world, being good-looking really did win you more affection.
Still, from Zhao Cheng's hazy impressions over the years, Qin Tailai had never been involved in any gossip. His social circle was clean and simple, making him a textbook sunny boy.
Perhaps it was precisely because his heart was so pure that his swordsmanship had reached such a high level. His skill was among the best in all of Qingyuan; it just didn't attract young girls as much as his looks did.
As for having a wealthy family with a big business, that wasn't all that appealing to young girls in their school years, especially before college.
Handsome! Handsome! The key was still to be handsome!
If you were handsome enough, you were "brother." If you weren't, you were probably just "a really impressive guy."
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