The old teacher's samples

"The group assignments are up."

When Wang Shuo rushed into the temporary laboratory, Lu Yuan was staring at the fluctuating curve on the Soul Power meter. The room smelled of Soul Power grease and old wood.

Lu Yuan didn't look up. "Mm."

"Your opponent is Wu Gang!" Wang Shuo panted. "Iron-Arm Ape Martial Soul, level eight Soul Power, ranked in the top five among the regular students. He broke three of someone's ribs last semester!"

The curve rose slightly over a certain frequency range. Lu Yuan drew a circle around it on the recording paper with a charcoal pencil.

"Got it."

Wang Shuo froze. Staring at the back of Lu Yuan's head, he suddenly felt a surge of anger.

"That's all you have to say?" His voice rose. "The chief referee's been decided too. It's that old friend of Teacher Sun's, the instructor surnamed Chen! Everyone says he fights dirty and singles out work-study students!"

Lu Yuan finally turned around. The Soul Guidance Lamp on the workbench cast his face half in light and half in shadow, and his eyes were so calm they were unnerving.

"Would getting worked up help?"

Wang Shuo opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Two days earlier, in the same laboratory.

Zhou Chun had slapped a stack of yellowed recording papers onto the table, stirring up a thin layer of dust.

"Take a look." The old man's eyes shone, and his cuffs were stained with something unidentifiable. "I've collected eight years of data, and nobody can make sense of it."

Lu Yuan leafed through the pages one by one. They were covered in hand-drawn curves recording the Soul Power fluctuations of materials from low-level Soul Beasts, such as Bristle Rat quills and Wind Roe Deer hoof plates, after they were removed from the body. Normally, Soul Power should have decayed smoothly over time, but these curves jumped all over the place-some suddenly rose again, while others fluctuated in cycles.

He stopped at the seventh page.

"Here." Lu Yuan pointed to a section of the curve for Bristle Rat quills. "From the third to the fifth day, Soul Power intensity actually rose by 3.7 percent. It wasn't an error."

Zhou Chun slapped his thigh.

"Right! I measured it three times!" He leaned closer and tapped another spot. "Now look at the Wind Roe Deer hoof plates. Stored in damp, shady conditions, their fluctuation cycle was about twelve shichen. Strange, isn't it?"

Lu Yuan didn't answer. He pulled out a blank sheet of paper and grabbed a charcoal pencil.

The pencil scratched across the paper.

"There are three possible causes," he said as he drew. "Interference from the environmental Soul Power field, instability in the material's internal energy structure, or some kind of 'activity' inherent in low-level Soul Beast materials that lets them resonate with the outside world."

Zhou Chun's breathing grew heavier.

"You... go on."

Lu Yuan drew a simple block diagram.

"Design three sets of experiments. For the first, put identical materials in different environments and monitor the Soul Power field spectrum. For the second, grind the materials up to eliminate the influence of their structure. For the third, use a weak external force field to interfere with them in a specific direction and see how they react."

He paused.

"If the fluctuations are caused by the environment, stronger shielding will do. If they're an inherent property of the materials..." Lu Yuan looked up. "That means there's a blank spot in our understanding of Soul Beast materials."

The laboratory fell silent for a few seconds. The Soul Guidance Lamp hummed softly.

Zhou Chun suddenly laughed, showing several yellowed teeth.

"Good lad." He reached into his robes, pulled out a brass key, and slapped it onto the table. "The laboratory in the back is yours. Use whatever basic materials you like on the shelves, just don't touch the treasures I've marked with red tags."

Lu Yuan picked up the key. Its edges had been worn smooth, and it was warm from Zhou Chun's body.

"What about the academy...?"

"I hired you as my assistant." Zhou Chun waved a hand. "I'll take care of the entry and exit records. But there's one thing-we discuss the research results with each other first. Don't go spilling them to just anyone. These waters run deep."

He picked up the bowl of murky pick-me-up tea on the table and gulped down a mouthful.

"How does your brain work?" Zhou Chun wiped his mouth. "The academy doesn't teach any of these approaches."

Lu Yuan lowered his eyes and rubbed the teeth of the key.

"I was just thinking things over at random."

"Good. Think things over at random." The old man chuckled. "I like people who do that."

For the next two days, Lu Yuan practically lived in the laboratory.

It wasn't large, a little over ten square meters. An old-fashioned Soul Power meter probe was mounted on the workbench, and he pieced together a simple spectrum analysis module from scrap and basic rune plates. It wasn't very precise, but it was good enough.

He started with Bristle Rat quills.

He divided quills from the same batch into four groups and placed them in a metal box, a wooden box, a stone box, and an open tray. Beside each group, he set an improved monitoring slate to continuously record changes in the environmental Soul Power field's spectrum.

It was tedious, but solid work.

Whenever he left, his hands were stained with charcoal dust and Soul Power grease. But Lu Yuan's eyes shone. Behind those chaotic curves lay some pattern that had yet to be articulated. They were like scattered beads, missing only a thread.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, the data came in.

The quills in the metal box had the steadiest Soul Power fluctuations, followed by those in the wooden box. The stone box and the open group fluctuated violently, with pronounced spectral peaks appearing particularly at midnight and noon.

Lu Yuan stared at the recording paper, his fingers tapping lightly on the table.

It wasn't simple environmental interference. The peaks appeared at intervals too regular, as though something were periodically "awakening" the Soul Power remaining in the materials.

That was when someone knocked on the door.

Wang Shuo rushed in, his face deathly pale, bringing news of Wu Gang and Instructor Chen.

"What do we do now?" Wang Shuo crouched in the corner, hugging his knees. "How about... pretending to be sick? Missing the assessment will cost you points at most. That's better than getting beaten up on the platform."

Lu Yuan didn't answer. He walked over to the workbench and gathered up the recording papers spread across it.

The curves on those papers still circled in his mind. The abnormal fluctuations in Soul Power decay and the malicious arrangements for the practical combat assessment-two seemingly unrelated things, joined beneath the surface by the same root.

Knowledge was taboo; power made the rules. Anyone who wanted to cross that line had to be ready to be knocked down.

"Teacher Zhou warned me," Lu Yuan said suddenly.

"Warned you about what?"

"He said that old friend of Teacher Sun's fights dirty." Lu Yuan folded the recording papers and tucked them into a cloth bag. "Now it looks like it's more than that."

They were making it clear they intended to teach him a lesson.

Wang Shuo looked up, bewildered.

"Then you're still..."

"When's the assessment?" Lu Yuan interrupted.

"The morning after tomorrow."

Lu Yuan nodded. He picked up the cloth bag and blew out the Soul Guidance Lamp on the workbench.

The laboratory sank into gloom. Only a little daylight filtered in through the window, illuminating the silent specimens and materials on the shelves.

"Let's go," Lu Yuan said.

The two went out, one behind the other. The corridor was long, and their footsteps echoed.

When they reached a fork, Wang Shuo couldn't help asking again, "What exactly are you planning?"

Lu Yuan stopped.

From the distant training ground came the shouts of students practicing, mixed with the muffled blasts of Soul Skills. The setting sun dyed half the sky orange-red, and thick clouds hung low.

"Going back to sleep," he said.

Wang Shuo was left speechless.

Lu Yuan had already turned and was walking toward the dormitory. His figure was thin and small, but his steps were steady, as if he hadn't heard any of the bad news at all.

The wind blew, sweeping up the fallen leaves on the ground.

Wang Shuo stood where he was, watching for a long time. Only after Lu Yuan's figure disappeared around the corner did he scratch his head and mutter to himself.

"Weirdo."

That night, Lu Yuan didn't light a lamp.

He sat with his back against the wall. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the outline of the window lattice. Every now and then, the footsteps of an instructor on night patrol sounded in the distance, drawing nearer before receding again.

Two things were turning over in his mind.

The first was the day's data. The peaks at midnight and noon most likely corresponded to the tidal cycle of the environmental Soul Power field-perhaps Soul Power in this world rose and fell like seawater. It was simply too faint to measure by conventional means.

The second was the practical combat assessment the day after tomorrow.

Level two Soul Power against level eight, Blue Silver Grass against Iron-Arm Ape. The gap was absurdly wide. In a normal fight, he wouldn't stand the slightest chance.

But the assessment wasn't a fight to the death. It had rules.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes and recalled the provisions in the academy handbook concerning practical combat assessments. There were three ways to determine the winner: one side conceded, one side lost the ability to fight, or the referee judged one side to have a clear advantage.

The referee was Instructor Chen.

His fingers traced unconscious lines on his knee, as though working something out.

After a long while, a very faint exhalation sounded in the darkness.

The clouds outside the window shifted slightly, letting moonlight through to cast a small, deathly pale patch on the floor.

Lu Yuan opened his eyes. The patch of light fell squarely on his palm.

He slowly clenched his fist.

The light was snuffed out.