On the secondary platform on the western side of the drill ground, a figure was sent flying.
Thud.
His back slammed into the wooden frame along the platform's edge, snapping two slats. He tumbled through the gap and hit the ground, rolling twice before he stopped.
Yi Zhanzhi.
The seventeen-year-old lay curled among the splintered wood. Half the front of his black, gold-trimmed hall uniform had torn open, and his right arm bent at an angle no arm should. Between his elbow and shoulder blade, his tendons bulged in blue-purple ridges. Those were not ordinary bruises, but traces of blood pooling beneath the skin after his tendons and bones had been deliberately twisted apart by external force.
His left leg was ruined too. His kneecap had caved inward, and dark red blood seeped through his trouser leg. The entire limb lay crooked on the ground, like a boneless strand of noodle.
Yi Zhanzhi's mouth hung open. Broken, breathy sounds squeezed from his throat, but he could not form a complete word.
His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Tears mingled with blood, running from the corners of his eyes toward his temples.
A young man stood on the platform.
He was eighteen or nineteen, tall and slender, with fair skin and exceptionally handsome features: sword-like brows, star-bright eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips pressed tightly together. Simply standing there, he carried the distinctive air of lofty privilege belonging to a scion of an aristocratic family.
But what lay beneath that privilege sent a chill down the spine.
He held a long spear with a bronze-colored shaft. Blood stained its tip, the crimson liquid running down the ridges of the blade and dripping onto the sand, where it spread into small, dark circles.
The young man planted the spear beside his