The Grandmaster’s study smelled of drying ink, sheepskin parchment, and the bitter, astringent tang of dried camphor wood used to keep paper moths from devouring manuscripts.
Bookshelves built from thick, unvarnished elm stretched from the pine plank floor to the whitewashed ceiling joists, groaning under hundreds of cataloged scrolls, hand-bound ledgers, and copper-plated maps detailing the continental forestry reserves.
A narrow iron stove sat in the corner, its flue pipe venting through the northern wall, emitting just enough heat to cut the damp cellar-chill of the stone foundation.
The Grandmaster walked to the desk, pulled open a side drawer with a small brass key, and drew out a long object wrapped in dark red velvet.
“Take this,” he said, turning and laying it across Tang San’s small palms.
The velvet fell away to reveal a leather belt.
It was roughly three fingers wide, fashioned from dark, supple hide tanned to a deep midnight black.
Set along its length were twenty-four round, coin-sized jade stones, pale green as spring ice, each secured within an engraved silver rim that had been cold-riveted through the backing leather.
Tang San’s fingers brushed the surface of the stones.
Her jade hands were sensitive to energetic currents down to the micro-ampere level; the moment her skin made contact with the jade, her Mysterious Heaven Skill buzzed.
Each stone possessed an internal energetic singularity—a micro-cavity folded within the crystalline matrix of the mineral.
“A spatial dimensional storage tool,” she observed quietly.
The Grandmaster’s eyes showed a flicker of quiet satisfaction.
“Most children would have called it pretty jewelry.
It has been with me for thirty years.
Each of the twenty-four jades contains one cubic meter of isolated storage space.
The internal temporal decay is nearly zero for non-living matter; warm water will remain warm for three days, and iron will not rust.”
He pointed to the silver rivets holding the stones.
“To open an aperture, you need only inject a thread of spirit power into the corresponding stone.
Because you have Innate Full Spirit Power, your energetic frequency is already dense enough to anchor the attunement without an external seal.
I call it ‘Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges.'”
Tang San did not refuse.
In the Tang Sect, an assassin’s life depended on inventory management: three types of poison, eight types of mechanical triggers, spare bowstrings of boiled catgut, and dry rations that could not be permitted to rot in humid swamps.
To carry twenty-four cubic meters of concealed munitions without the physical profile of a canvas pack was an advantage beyond silver.
She wrapped the belt around her narrow waist.
It was too long, but she ran the tongue through the iron buckle and tucked the excess leather cleanly behind the third jade with the neat, functional efficiency of an Outer Sect scout.
“Thank you, Master,” she bowed.
“Disciple will not allow it to fall into an enemy’s hands.”
“Tools are for preserving life, not dying for,” the Grandmaster corrected her dryly, though his gaze lingered on the neatness of her tuck.
“The dean has already stamped your working-student registration scroll.
You are assigned to Dormitory Seven.
Your work assignment begins tomorrow morning: three hours of leaf-sweeping on the central athletic grounds before midday lectures.”
He reached behind his desk and picked up a set of folded gray garments—two standard-issue academy uniforms made of rough cotton, dyed dull slate gray with brass buttons down the left breast.
“Dormitory Seven houses the auxiliary scholarship students,” the Grandmaster said, his tone turning clinical.
“They are all commoners from surrounding rural counties.
Their families cannot afford tuition, and the noble students treat them as convenient punching bags.
Go, unpack your bundle, and rest your meridians.
Dawn after tomorrow, we depart for the Nuoding Hunting Forest to hunt your first spirit ring.”
“Yes, Master.”
Tang San took the uniform, gave a final forty-five-degree scholar’s salute, and stepped through the study door into the gathering dusk.
***
Dormitory Seven was situated in the furthest southwest corner of the academy campus, separated from the multi-story brick pavilions of the noble classes by a broad expanse of gravel courts and two rows of overgrown thorn-hedges.
It was a single-story barracks of rough river-stone and untreated pine boards, its whitewashed plaster peeling in long, scabby strips near the foundation.
From thirty paces away, Tang San could smell the unmistakable biological signature of male youth: sour sweat, dirty socks dried over unlit stoves, and the faint, sweet grease of fried flatbread.
The wooden double door hung loose on rusted strap hinges, slightly ajar.
Tang San paused two strides before the threshold.
Her footsteps made no sound against the gravel.
Her breath dropped into the quiet, rhythmic cycle of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, her sensory field expanding outward.
Inside the barracks, there were seven distinct respiratory rhythms.
Five were shallow and rapid—the breathing of young boys whose diaphragms were tight with anxiety or subservience.
One was heavier, deeper, carrying the steady, rhythmic friction of someone who possessed at least seven or eight ranks of spirit power.
And the seventh…
Tang San’s eyebrows twitched.
The seventh presence was strange.
Its pulse was unnervingly fast—nearly one hundred and forty beats per minute—yet the breath was soft as thistle silk, light and buoyant as a dry leaf dancing on a thermal updraft.
It felt less like a human nervous system and more like the frantic, coiled vitality of a wild animal crouched behind a briar bush.
*A beast-soul cultivator?* she analyzed.
*Or something with an anomalous circulatory threshold.*
She pushed the door open. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The room was forty feet long, containing fifty narrow iron-framed cot beds arranged in two neat rows.
The mattresses were thin straw ticks covered with coarse hemp sheets; more than half the frames were bare wire, covered in dust.
In the center of the open aisle between the beds stood seven boys.
The largest of them appeared eleven or twelve years of age, nearly five feet tall, with broad, thickset shoulders, cropped black hair, and hands calloused from farm work.
He wore the gray working-student uniform, but the sleeves were rolled up past his forearms, displaying corded muscles that were remarkably developed for his age.
The other six younger boys stood half a step behind him, their postures tense, watching the doorway with predatory curiosity.
“A new working student?” the large boy barked, stepping forward with his chest pushed out, his heavy boots clattering on the untreated floorboards.
“Hold up your certification scroll!”
Tang San stopped just inside the doorway.
Her left hand held the gray academy uniform and her burlap bundle; her right hand hung loose at her hip, two inches from the first jade of Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges.
Her gaze swept over the large boy with absolute, unblinking calm.
“I am Tang San,” she said, her voice clear, light, and completely devoid of nervousness.
“A working student from Holy Spirit Village.”
The room went dead silent for two heartbeats.
The six younger boys blinked, their mouths hanging slightly open.
Holy Spirit Village had not sent a working student in six years; that was not what froze them.
What froze them was the sight of her face.
In the dim light filtering through the western paper windows, the girl’s skin had an eerie, moon-washed clarity that seemed out of place among the dust and rusted iron of the barracks.
Her black hair, tied back with a simple grass stalk, framed a jawline of unnatural, balanced elegance.
Though her patched hemp clothes were identical to the rags worn by their own village sisters, her shoulders were set with a monastic balance, and her dark blue-tinged eyes carried a quiet, ancient depth that made the hair on the large boy’s forearms bristle.
“A…
a girl?” one of the smaller boys whispered from the back, tugging at the leader’s sleeve.
“Boss Wang Sheng, they sent a girl to Dormitory Seven?”
Nuoding Academy rarely segregated working students by gender; the dormitory was simply an open barracks for whoever could not pay for private rooms in the south quadrant.
Yet across the last three cohorts, female Spirit Masters among the peasantry were so scarce that Dormitory Seven had been an exclusively male enclosure for nearly four years.
Wang Sheng cleared his throat, his face flushing slightly before hardening into a scowl of established authority.
He took two heavy steps forward, stopping four paces away from Tang San, planting his boots wide.
“Girl or boy, the rules of Dormitory Seven don’t change,” Wang Sheng declared, puffing out his thick chest.
“I am Wang Sheng, sixth-year working student, martial soul: War Tiger, Spirit Scholar rank nine!
In Dormitory Seven, we get beaten like dogs by the noble scum in the teaching halls every single day.
If we don’t stand together like an iron fist, they’ll steal our meal vouchers and kick our teeth in during the night!”
He raised his right fist, flexing the knuckles until they made a dry, popping sound.
“The rule of this room is simple: whoever has the hardest fist is the Boss.
The Boss protects the dormitory from the noble bullies, and everyone else obeys the Boss’s orders!
You want to put your bundle on a bed?
You have to spar with me first!”
Tang San looked at his fists.
*Footwork: wide, unstable, seven inches too far forward on the right heel,* her mind registered with mechanical speed.
*Center of gravity is elevated; his lumbar rotation relies purely on spinal torque rather than hip drive.
If I step into his right flank at forty-five degrees and deliver a palm strike to the floating ribs, his diaphragm will spasm for twenty-four seconds.*
“Is physical combat mandatory for entry?” she asked, her voice calm, polite, almost inquiring.
“It’s the dormitory law!” Wang Sheng barked, feeling an inexplicable, prickly irritation at her lack of panic.
“Don’t worry, I won’t use my spirit power to hurt a little girl.
Just throw three punches so I can see if you have any backbone!”
Tang San sighed—a tiny, imperceptible breath through her nostrils.
In her first life, corporate hierarchy was established through bureaucratic maneuvering; in the Tang Sect, status was determined by the speed of one’s assassination darts.
Here, in this crude rural academy, children settled things like wild dogs in an alley.
“Very well,” Tang San said, setting her burlap bundle and gray uniform down onto the nearest empty cot frame.
“Please instruct me, Senior Wang Sheng.”
Wang Sheng grinned, stepped forward, and threw a straight right punch toward her left shoulder.
He had held back his spirit power as promised, intending merely to shove her backward onto a mattress to prove his point.
The strike was heavy, carrying fifty pounds of momentum behind a twelve-year-old’s weight.
Tang San did not step backward.
The moment the fist entered the space eight inches before her chest, her right foot slid forward half a pace, executing the first pattern of the *Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track*.
Her slender frame seemed to blur, turning paper-thin in the draft.
Wang Sheng’s heavy leather knuckles struck empty air, whistling past her right ear without grazing a single strand of her hair.
*What—*
Before Wang Sheng’s mind could register the miss, Tang San’s left hand rose.
*Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon: Leading the Current.*
She did not resist his fifty-pound punch; she welcomed it.
With a subtle flick of her carpal bones, she accelerated his forward momentum by twelve percent, pulling his arm downward while her left hip bumped lightly against the outside of his right knee.
Wang Sheng felt the earth vanish beneath his boots.
His massive body pitched forward in an uncontrolled arc, soaring over the cot frame and crashing face-first into a pile of dry straw ticks with a tremendous, dusty *WHAM*.
Dust puffed three feet into the air.
The six younger boys stood frozen, their eyes bulging, their mouths hanging wide enough to swallow walnuts.
“Boss!” one of them shrieked.
Wang Sheng rolled over in the straw, coughing, his hair full of dried wheat chaff.
He scrambled to his feet, his face crimson with embarrassment and shock.
“You…
what kind of footwork was that?!”
“The ground here is uneven,” Tang San replied smoothly, standing in the exact same spot with her hands folded behind her back, her breath completely untroubled.
“Senior seemed to have lost your balance on the floorboards.”
Wang Sheng’s pride was stung, but he was not an idiot.
He had trained in basic combat under the academy instructors for five years; he knew the difference between slipping on wood and being thrown by a master of kinetic redirect.
“You’re not an ordinary kid,” Wang Sheng growled, his eyes narrowing as he stepped out of the straw.
“Fine!
Let’s see how you handle—”
“Excuse me.”
A voice, bright, clear, and ringing like silver bells struck in a mountain stream, cut through the dusty gloom of the barracks.
Everyone turned toward the open doorway.
Framed against the twilight stood a figure.
It was a boy who appeared roughly Tang San’s age, slender and supple as a young willow branch.
He wore a clean, slightly faded pink tunic over white trousers, with soft cloth shoes that looked completely unsuited for the muddy streets of Nuoding.
His dark brown hair was unusually long for a peasant boy, plaited into a thick, glossy scorpion-tail braid that hung straight down past his buttocks, swaying gently with every breath.
His face had the soft, delicate contours of childhood, with enormous, luminous black eyes that darted across the room with intense, mischievous curiosity, and two small, sharp canine teeth that slightly indented his lower lip when he smiled.
In his slender arms, he carried a large, fluffy pillow stuffed with white goose down, along with a bright red cotton quilt.
The boy blinked, looking at Wang Sheng covered in straw, then at the younger boys standing with their fists up, and finally at Tang San standing poised in the center of the aisle.
“Is this Dormitory Seven?” the boy asked, his voice melodic, carrying a playful, uninhibited warmth.
“I am Xiao Wu.
A working student from the south.”
Wang Sheng groaned, rubbing the dust from his face.
“Another one?
And wearing pink…
Hey, new kid!
Drop the pillow!
In Dormitory Seven, before you get a bed, you have to spar with—”
Wang Sheng glanced at Tang San, swallowed hard, and pointed a thick finger at her.
“—with her!
She is the new Boss of Dormitory Seven!”
Tang San’s eyebrows rose slightly.
*A classic deflection of authority to avoid loss of face,* she observed.
The boy with the scorpion braid—Xiao Wu—tilted his head.
His large, dark eyes locked onto Tang San.
A sudden, sharp gleam flashed in his pupils—not the calculated analysis of a scholar like the Grandmaster, nor the brutish aggression of Wang Sheng, but the untamed, instinctive challenge of a wild creature marking its territory in the brush.
“You’re the Boss?” Xiao Wu smiled, displaying his tiny canines.
He tossed his fluffy goose-down pillow casually onto the nearest cot.
“I don’t mind who’s in charge.
But my mother told me that if someone wants to tell me what to do…
they have to be able to catch me first!”
Before his last syllable had fully died, Xiao Wu moved.
*Fast.*
Tang San’s pupils contracted into two obsidian points.
This boy’s speed was completely unnatural for a six-year-old human vessel; his bones were light, his ligaments possessed terrifying elastic rebound, and as his soft shoes kicked off the floorboards, he crossed ten paces of open floor without making a single sound.
A high-speed kinetic strike, aimed directly at her collarbone.
Tang San’s hands rose, her skin turning jade-white in the dusk:
“Come.”