Old Calendar year 2046 — that is, year 60 of the New Calendar.
July 12th.
Blue Star. Xia Nation. Huguang Province. Wuling City.
Two in the afternoon. The midsummer sun hung like a great ball of fire in a cloudless sky, and apart from the passing traffic there was hardly a pedestrian on most of the streets.
But at the doors of one building along the avenue — five storeys, sprawling across an enormous lot, its facade all sleek high-tech trim — the cars were packed in bumper to bumper, and a steady stream of parents were braving the sun to usher boys and girls in training uniforms inside.
The plaque above the doors read Iron Mountain Martial Society in four large characters, with a line of smaller ones beneath: Xinjiekou Branch.
A dozen-odd brand-new posters were pasted up along one side of the entrance:
"《Summer Enrollment, New Calendar Year 60 — Huge Discounts》: For students in the Golden Age Bracket. Tuition 58,888 for 20 class hours. A Sky-Patrol Warrior in residence, elite warriors coaching one-on-one — the strongest possible boost for your sprint at a martial arts university!!"
"《'Parenthood Certificate' Sprint Class》: For adults under 30, in the Silver Age Bracket. Sprint successfully and you qualify to have a child — a bounty of a million for your first!!"
"《From a Bottom-Tier High School to the Strongest University: The Comeback》: A special lecture by Jiang Chenyi — elite student trained by this society, top scorer in the city's Year 59 entrance exam, distinguished student of New Moon Martial Arts University..."
...
On the fourth floor, in a martial arts hall of over five hundred square metres.
Thick specialist matting covered the floor. Sandbags, wooden dummies and weapon racks stood around the walls, and along the other side ran a row of instruments — punch-force testers, footwork testers, life-detection scanners.
Forty-odd middle-schoolers, thirteen or fourteen by the look of them, stood in matching training uniforms, holding their stances.
"Feet apart, shoulder-width, toes turned slightly in. Knees soft, not past the toes. Chest drawn in, back lifted, crown of the head suspended..." Fang Yu, in a coach's uniform, went patiently down the line and corrected every one of them.
He stood about one metre eighty-five.
Early twenties, with features that looked cut by knife and axe — not handsome, exactly, but carrying a hard masculine quality all their own.
"You're beginners on the martial path, so you'll all have heard it: train the fist and not the work, and when you're old you'll have nothing... and that work is your fundamentals, day in and day out."
"Stance work massages the organs from the outside in and scours the marrow. It draws the most out of every sinew-and-bone and blood-qi drug you take, raises your Life Tier as fast as it can be raised, and from there lets you awaken a Void Star Aspect."
"Good stance work is the cornerstone of making it into a martial arts university — and of becoming a Starry Sky Warrior one day," Fang Yu said.
At the words university and Starry Sky Warrior, a good many of the boys and girls — new to stance work, bodies already in agony — felt their spirits lift, and set their teeth, and held on.
Watching them, Fang Yu sighed to himself.
In an age of soaring technology, where the rat race tightened year on year, getting into a martial arts university genuinely did rewrite a life. That was exactly why so many parents poured resources into sending their children to martial arts classes this early.
And a Starry Sky Warrior?
Since the New Calendar began — since humanity set foot on the Moon and the first Starry Sky Warrior was born — who had never heard the legends?
Peerless warriors who crossed the starry sky in the flesh.
Pillars holding up the sky for an entire civilization!
In this age, what the young idolized was not some pop singer. It was powerful warriors.
"Youth. What a fine thing..."
Fang Yu looked at the young students he was drilling and seemed to see himself a few years ago, and his thoughts drifted. "A pity the entrance exam only comes once. I never awakened a Void Star Aspect in high school, so it was junior college for me, like it or not. And now, if I want the university, the transfer is the only road left."
He was a junior-college martial arts student.
And even as a very good one... his odds at the transfer were slim.
"If I'd awakened a Void Star Aspect back then, even a middling Aspect, I'd be pushing for Level 30 and High-Rank by now. Sky-Patrol might even have been in reach, someday." Fang Yu sighed inwardly.
The road of starry-sky martial arts.
Awakening a Void Star Aspect was the first step... and if you never awakened one, forget the legendary Starry Sky Warriors — even reaching Level 30 and High-Rank in a whole lifetime was hard.
***
After half an hour of stance work, Fang Yu called, "Rest," and most of the class went limp on the mats.
Fang Yu smiled at the sight.
The Heavenly Circuit Star Stance — once you were through the door and the skill was in your body, half an hour of standing was nothing. Two hours, three hours, and there would be no ache in your back at all, only a whole-body ease, and at worst a little fatigue.
Stance work, after all, existed to integrate sinew and bone and remake the body. It was the bright, broad road of evolving life and reaching the divine through the martial path.
Martial training, done rightly, could be more addictive than pleasure.
While the students rested, Fang Yu stopped walking as well.
His hands rose sharply to brow level, then pressed slowly down to his belly, and he felt with natural clarity the condition of every part of himself — at the largest, the five organs and six viscera; at the smallest, every bone and every tendon of his four limbs and hundred joints.
"Hoo!"
He opened his mouth slightly, and one long breath went out of him like an arrow off the string, and hung a long time without dispersing.
"Hm?"
"Was that breath like an arrow?"
"Great Completion in Subtlety?"
"Coach Fang can actually do breath like an arrow? Last time our teacher at school demonstrated sinew and bone in unison he was awfully pleased with himself." The students, who had all been sagging with exhaustion a moment ago, sat up one after another, thrilled.
In this age, the whole population trained.
They were middle-schoolers, still growing, so most of them had only done flexibility work and the like rather than anything deep or overbearing — but Martial Path General Studies was a required course at school.
The Six Warrior Tiers and the Three Realms of Skill were common knowledge.
Breath like an arrow was the mark of Great Completion in Subtlety, the second Realm of Skill.
Outside the hall, the parents who had been watching through the glass, weighing up whether to sign their children on, saw the same thing, and every one of them was taken aback.
"That young man is good."
"A beginners' trial class, and the coach is at that level?"
"I saw how young he was and assumed Iron Mountain had dug up some junior-college martial kid to fob us off with."
"At Huguang Martial Arts University there can't be many students whose skill reaches that. His Life Tier has to be at least 25 — he could even be a High-Rank Warrior at 30."
"Iron Mountain, all right." The parents talked it over, thoroughly satisfied.
At most societies, beginners' classes were taught by Low-Rank Warriors of ten-odd levels; even a Mid-Rank Warrior in his twenties teaching one was rare.
Most martial arts students, after all, were only Level 20-something when they graduated.
As for a High-Rank Warrior at Level 30?
A warrior of that grade could walk into any number of large companies and conglomerates; at a martial society he would certainly be a senior instructor, with an hourly rate to make your eyes water. Why would he ever come and teach beginners?
***
Inside the hall.
With Fang Yu's eyes, the shifting expressions of the parents beyond the window were easy enough to read.
"So the breakthrough a few days ago — Great Completion in Subtlety — really is paying off... A fair few more of these parents should sign up. My commission should be safe." Fang Yu thought.
As an assistant coach, he handled part of the instruction for the beginners' class.
The base wage was low; most of the income came as a cut when parents signed up or renewed... Some assistants chose to chat the parents up after class, deepen the friendship, offer them a little off.
Others chose to show their strength in the teaching, and draw the parents in that way.
"I don't have the time or the energy to make small talk with parents one by one. If I want to earn more, I should play to my strength," Fang Yu thought. "And my strength is martial skill."
"I never awakened a Void Star Aspect, so however desperately I ground through three years of junior college, my Life Tier isn't high. But martial skill is part of strength too."
In martial training, in the evolution of life, Life Tier was the foundation.
Take those legendary Starry Sky Warriors, crossing the starry sky in the flesh, shrugging off the blast of a nuclear weapon — what kind of bodily might was that? Gods, near enough.
But martial skill mattered too.
Superb martial skill could make one measure of force do the work of ten.
"If the money's better."
"And with the allowance Dad's about to give me, I can buy more Blood-Qi Compound and Bone-Strengthening Pills this summer. My odds at the transfer in the second half of the year go up a good deal." The thought ran through Fang Yu's mind.
In this society, junior-college graduates — academic or martial — were commonplace.
Huguang Province alone had a full twenty martial arts junior colleges, turning out a hundred thousand martial graduates a year, and its academic junior colleges turned out over a million... You could say that the man sweeping the street and the man pasting loan ads on the lamp posts might both be junior-college graduates.
University students were another matter entirely.
Huguang Province had only two true martial arts universities, admitting ten thousand students a year between them... set against a provincial population well over a hundred million, their standing spoke for itself.
"They all say a good junior-college student is no worse than a university one."
"Though for a transfer student the first qualification on record is still junior college. That doesn't wash the junior-college colour out."
"But if you could get into a university, who would want junior college?"
***
After the stance work, Fang Yu moved on to the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms, the introductory training the civilization's leadership had spread to the whole population.
An ordinary name. Not an ordinary effect.
"Drive off the foot, turn the waist, ship it out through the shoulder — one punch drives through nine layers of heaven... Don't power it with the arm alone when you practise. Use the strength of the whole body, and match it to the breathing method." Fang Yu talked them through it and demonstrated as he spoke.
Chest drawn in, back lifted, he simply stood there — and gave off the sense of a mountain that could not be shaken. Then his fingers closed together, and his whole spine became a great bow bent to its limit.
Both fists lashed out like arrows leaving the string.
"Bang—!" The air detonated.
As Fang Yu drilled — the side-step cross punch, the advancing straight punch, the overhead chopping fist — each one moved like a swimming dragon, flowing water and drifting cloud, with a beauty that was almost art, and each one whipped the air into gusts of hard wind.
Force rose from the four limbs into the great dragon of the spine, passing along layer by layer until the spine itself shook and rang, layer upon layer — sinew and bone in unison.
The students' eyes shone at the sight.
Most of them had seen plenty of videos of the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms online — but how could a video match the impact of seeing it with your own eyes?
"That's the stuff." Fang Yu sank into the training himself.
Level 16 warrior though he was, the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms could still stimulate every sinew, bone and muscle in his body a little, and leave it stronger.
Whether you were one of the privileged elite of the New Moon.
Or a slum child on the old soil of Blue Star: if you chose the martial path, then before you awakened a Void Star Aspect the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms were the finest body-tempering fist art there was.
They were what generation after generation of warriors had hammered out and gathered together since the Great Sky-Burning Era.
Two hours went by in a blink, and when he had worked through each of them with the class.
"You haven't been on the martial path long, so you can surely feel it: compared to stance work, the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms seem to stimulate the body far more." Fang Yu finished with this: "But I want you to remember — the stance is the root, the fist is the leaves. Deep roots, lush foliage. Shallow roots, withered leaves."
"Get through the door with your stance work, take gradual command of the force in your whole body, and when you go on to train the fist forms the effect will double."
"A training class teaches you the method. Once you're home, you still have to put your heart into the practice yourself," Fang Yu urged them. "All right. That's it for today."
"Goodbye, Coach," several dozen students said together.
The standard of teaching Fang Yu had shown might not be enough to make them idolize him, but it was enough to make them believe in him.
"Parents, I trust you've all seen the standard of our martial arts coaches... If you'd like to sign up for the summer class, scan the code and pay now and you'll get five percent off." Outside the hall, a burly, heavy-set salesman was calling out at volume.
Fang Yu had already gone into the changing room next door.
Two hours of class looked easy enough, but in fact Fang Yu had been controlling the sinew, bone, blood and qi of his whole body throughout — through the lecturing, the walking, the demonstrations — running marrow-scouring cultivation the entire time. Naturally he was soaked in sweat.
Never waste training time. That was a habit Fang Yu had built over years.
"If I ever reach Great Completion in the third Realm of Skill, Inner Vista, and gradually activate the cells of the whole body, I'll be able to lock down every pore — no sweat at all, if I don't want it." Fang Yu sighed to himself.
A pity Inner Vista was still some way off.
He had only just come to Great Completion in Subtlety. Once he had been circulating blood and qi a while longer, he would be able to control that circulation almost perfectly, hold a breath of air inside him, and seal his pores to a degree — just not for long.
***
Washed and changed, Fang Yu came back to the martial arts hall to find it empty.
"Brother Fang, you're really something. Great Completion in Subtlety already." The burly, heavy-set salesman walked in.
He gave Fang Yu a thumbs-up from a distance and waggled his eyebrows. "Once the manager hears, he'll have to give you a raise. Plenty of the permanent coaches don't have skill like yours."
"Bighead, quit the flattery. How many paid?" Fang Yu said with a laugh.
Bighead's real name was Xu Chenyang, a high-school classmate of Fang Yu's; the two of them got on well.
He looked burly, but he was in fact a student at an academic junior college, not a martial one, and he had come to work sales part-time at the society on Fang Yu's recommendation.
"Thirty-three," Xu Chenyang said at once.
"Not bad." The corner of Fang Yu's mouth curved up.
The summer beginners' class ran twenty days and cost 28,888 Star Coins, which covered the training and some ancillary drugs — cheap, comparatively, next to the 58,888 of the high-school sprint class.
But in Wuling City, where the average wage was a little over seven thousand Star Coins and the median lower still, it counted as a serious sum.
For a single trial class to sign more than seven in ten counted as doing well.
The poor take up letters; the rich take up the fist.
In this age, the New Moon and the old soil of Blue Star alike encouraged the martial path, and everyone knew it was the road to the top.
But unless your talent was extraordinary enough to get you into a martial arts university and the state resources that came with it.
Buying every kind of training drug yourself and paying seniors of the martial path to guide you was more than an ordinary middle-class family could carry.
The warrior's road is paved with gold. That was no empty saying.
"Great Completion in Subtlety means you can circulate blood and qi. Brother Fang, you've got a real chance of reaching Level 20 before you graduate," Xu Chenyang said. He was no martial student, but he knew the basics.
"Mm." Fang Yu nodded lightly.
"Level 20. That's a Mid-Rank Warrior." Xu Chenyang sighed. "Qualified to go up to the New Moon, and in with a chance at the big conglomerates."
Fang Yu said nothing.
Level 20 was genuinely respectable on the old soil of Blue Star; a post paying a few hundred thousand a year after graduation would not be hard to find. But... that was not where Fang Yu's sights were set.
He turned his head slightly towards the window, and seemed to see that one bright star beyond the sky.
"The New Moon."
"That is the holy land of warriors!"
***
He signed with the finance office, confirming a commission of just over nine thousand Star Coins from the recent trial classes.
Fang Yu was about to leave the society with Xu Chenyang when he was stopped by a pretty girl with a folder in her arms, wearing a little black suit, long stockinged legs below the hem.
Fang Yu recognised her. The manager's secretary.
"Coach Fang, the manager would like you to go up and see him," the pretty girl said with a smile.
"All right, I'll go now." Something stirred in Fang Yu, and he added, "Bighead, why don't you head home first?"
"No need, I'll wait for you here." Xu Chenyang shook his head.
...On the fifth floor, Fang Yu went straight to the manager's office. The door stood wide open. The office ran to nearly a hundred square metres, decorated with real extravagance, and even had a training floor and testing instruments of its own.
"Manager Huo, you wanted me?" Fang Yu looked at the powerfully built middle-aged man standing by the window, apparently sunk in thought.
The Iron Mountain Martial Society came under the Iron Mountain Group, a warrior conglomerate of no small size with its headquarters on the New Moon... Even at a single branch inside Wuling City, the manager's power was considerable.
"Mm."
"Fang Yu, there's something I have to tell you." There was a look of regret on Manager Huo's face, and he sighed. "Your application to move from assistant to permanent staff — it seems it didn't pass, over the qualification requirement... By head office's rules."
"We have to let you go."