"Let me go?" A flicker of shock crossed Fang Yu's face, as though it had never occurred to him that Manager Huo might say such a thing.
"Mm."
"The fault is mine as well. At the end of June head office issued the latest Recruitment Standards for General Coaches, and it requires an assistant seeking permanent status to be a university graduate, with a Life Tier of at least Level 18." Manager Huo sighed. "I should have submitted your application a month earlier. It might have gone through."
"And now I don't know how to explain myself to Brother Dong." Manager Huo's face was all vexation.
Fang Yu watched him perform.
"Manager Huo, then what am I to do?" A trace of anxiety showed on Fang Yu's face, and he could not help asking, "If I'm not made permanent, I can't stay on as an assistant?"
"You can't."
"The joint declaration of the Blue Moon Alliance and the eight great martial groups is explicit about it. An assistant coach is an internship post, and an internship runs one year at the most; past a year the holder must be converted to a permanent coaching post without conditions, with full statutory benefits." Manager Huo shook his head. "You've been an assistant a year now. If I keep you on as an assistant, the city head office will..."
Fang Yu sneered inwardly. Every second sentence out of the man's mouth was city head office — he was clearing himself of responsibility.
"So what should I do?" A trace of panic showed on Fang Yu's face.
"Don't worry, I'll settle your base wage and your commission for this month down to the last coin," Manager Huo sighed. "And to make it up to you, I'll have finance compensate you with another month's pay."
"The summer holiday's about to start anyway, so you get a rest. And come the fourth-year recruitment fair you might sign directly with one of the eight great groups — better than being made permanent here. How does that sound?" Manager Huo looked at Fang Yu.
"Only one month?" A flash of grievance crossed Fang Yu's face. "Manager Huo, when you were discussing Supervisor Gao's severance with him last time, he got rather more than one month... I ought to go and ask Big Brother Dong about it."
At the words Supervisor Gao, a chill went through Manager Huo's eyes, so faint it was almost invisible.
But Big Brother Dong made his heart sink all the same.
"There's no need to trouble Brother Dong, he's got his own pile to deal with."
"Xiao Fang." Even the form of address had changed, and Manager Huo's voice was warmer now. "Let's do it this way. I'll pay you at the rate we compensate a permanent coach on dismissal — N plus 2. You've been here just a year, so that's three months of average pay... only, you'll have to meet a permanent coach's exit requirement as well, and sign a confidentiality agreement."
Something stirred in Fang Yu.
An assistant's base wage was very low, but average pay included commission, which was not small at all; three months of it together came to a very respectable sum.
Fang Yu knew this was not the man's floor. Squeeze a little harder and he could probably get more.
Except.
The moment he actually said out loud what he had overheard, he would have made an enemy of the man for good.
Leave it unsaid, and there was still room to manoeuvre.
The man was not just the manager of the Xinjiekou branch, he was a High-Rank Warrior at Level 30 himself. With the little bit of dirt Fang Yu held, even telling Senior Brother Dong would not bring him down.
And if you could not finish an enemy off, then quit while you were ahead and leave room on every side — that was what his father, Fang Ping'an, had always taught him.
Besides, there was nothing in it for Fang Yu if the story got out.
"All right."
"Then thank you, Manager Huo." A flicker of gratitude crossed Fang Yu's face, and he went on, "And don't worry, Manager Huo. Next time I see Big Brother Dong I'll tell him I resigned myself, to focus on preparing for the exam."
"Mm." Manager Huo's expression eased considerably.
Neither of them needed to say the rest out loud.
Soon enough.
Fang Yu signed a confidentiality agreement. It was a simple document, mostly about not disclosing what he had learned of the society's operations during his employment — nothing to do with the martial path — with a confidentiality period of one year.
At the same time, a bank notification arrived on Fang Yu's comm device.
"Account credit +48,211.60 Star Coins. Account balance 71,622.72 Star Coins."
Fang Yu was in a good mood.
Under normal circumstances he would have had to work part-time for several months to earn that much... and this time all it had taken was choosing to resign a week later than he might have.
Resign of his own accord, and he would not have seen a single coin of compensation.
***
Manager Huo watched Fang Yu go downstairs.
Hoo!
A lean, tall figure in a coach's uniform came to Manager Huo's side like a ghost, soundless, and spoke very quietly, with a rasp in the voice. "Manager, are you sure he heard our conversation?"
"Not sure." Manager Huo shook his head.
"Oh? Then why give him that much compensation?" The lean figure frowned slightly. "How about I lean on him a little, put a scare in him, see whether he actually knows anything? A rookie of ten-odd levels — we can push him around however we like. On the Primordial Star I'd have swatted him flat."
"Old Gao."
"This isn't the Primordial Star, it's Blue Star. Don't reach for force so easily. If the Warrior Regulatory Department catches you at it, you'll lose a layer of skin even if it doesn't kill you." Manager Huo threw him a glance.
At the words Warrior Regulatory Department, the lean figure felt his chest tighten in spite of himself.
Strong warriors were, every one of them, appallingly destructive. A High-Rank Warrior in his thirties had a single-arm punch force in the tens of thousands of kilograms as a matter of course, and an Earth Warrior of Level 40 and up was more frightening still — they could run at subsonic speed. Land-walking immortals, near enough.
But!
On the New Moon and on the old soil of Blue Star alike, warriors who possessed real power did not lightly reach for it, not even when dealing with ordinary people.
Why?
For one thing, the education and messaging they had absorbed since childhood.
For another, the Blue Moon Alliance's unprecedented reach in policing its own territory. Even a Level 50 Sky-Patrol Warrior, who could fly through the sky and burrow into the earth, would be arrested if he dared break Alliance law.
Warriors were powerful, and the Blue Moon Alliance granted them a great many privileges.
But the Alliance's enforcement was stronger and more terrifying still.
The warrior's battlefield was the Primordial Star.
"This Fang Yu is clever, and I like dealing with clever people," Manager Huo said softly. "What he asked for was inside the range I can allow... and beyond that, Dong Xin was the one who recommended him."
"I don't want to disturb Dong Xin."
"Dong Xin?" A trace of wariness crossed Supervisor Gao's eyes.
They were both High-Rank Warriors — but Dong Xin was only in his twenties, and next to men like them, past fifty, the concept was entirely different. His standing inside the society was not to be spoken of in the same breath either.
"And the most important point."
"I've just had word. This Fang Yu's martial skill has already reached Great Completion in Subtlety," Manager Huo said quietly.
"Great Completion in Subtlety?" Supervisor Gao's pupils contracted. As a High-Rank Warrior he understood exactly what a level of martial skill like that meant.
Even among High-Rank Warriors in their thirties, plenty had not reached Great Completion in Subtlety.
Before the Great Sky-Burning Era, so-called Great Completion in Subtlety was a Hidden Force warrior — and once such a man circulated blood and qi to a profound degree, he was entitled to be called a master of the art.
In the New Calendar era the martial path flourished, life evolved, the strong rose in droves, and skill at Great Completion in Subtlety had become common enough.
But in a junior-college student who had not even started his fourth year, it was still rare.
"Isn't he only Level 15?" Supervisor Gao could not help asking.
"That's what surprises me too." Manager Huo sighed. "If he'd awakened a Void Star Aspect early, with a Life Tier past 20 and a strong spirit, sensing the sinews, bones and muscle bundles of his own body would come far more easily... then Great Completion in Subtlety would be perfectly normal."
"But he's only Level 15, and by the information I have, he hasn't awakened a Void Star Aspect at all."
"There's nothing for it but to say his understanding really is out of the ordinary," Manager Huo said with feeling. "And there's still a chance he awakens one of the Hundred Void Aspects. If we can avoid making an enemy of him, better to avoid it."
Supervisor Gao understood what he meant.
With Fang Yu at Great Completion in Subtlety, even without a Void Star Aspect, circulating blood and qi would carry his Life Tier into a period of rapid growth... And true, the older a warrior got, the lower his odds of awakening a Void Star Aspect, and the lower the grade of Aspect he was likely to awaken.
But on the other hand, the higher a warrior's own Life Tier, the better his hope of awakening one.
Warriors of thirty awakened Void Star Aspects from time to time... and with Fang Yu's talent for skill, once he awakened an Aspect — even a Lower Aspect — he would draw Star Force into his body, and his hope of becoming a High-Rank Warrior would be considerable.
The way Manager Huo saw it, since Fang Yu knew how to take a hint, spending a few tens of thousands of Star Coins to make the trouble go away was better than manufacturing a larger problem.
"Enough. Fang Yu doesn't matter. Even if he heard us he has no direct evidence, and now he's left and signed a confidentiality agreement... Go and check the next batch of drugs over properly." Manager Huo shook his head. "Don't let anything slip."
"Relax."
"Our supply's sound, it comes from a licensed manufacturer. All we do is put the eight great groups' labels on it," Supervisor Gao said. "Half a year and more, and not one student has had a bad reaction."
"Don't get careless," Manager Huo told him.
***
"Brother Fang, how did it go? Did the manager raise your pay?" Xu Chenyang came up smiling; he had waited outside the finance office on the third floor.
Fang Yu glanced at the manager's secretary a little way off, a broad stretch of smooth white skin showing at her chest, a professional smile on her face.
"Let's go home first. I'll tell you on the way," Fang Yu said simply.
The secretary had certainly been given her orders — otherwise there was no way she would still be waiting here... And having taken the money, Fang Yu would keep to the rules.
"Sure." Xu Chenyang agreed without understanding why.
As the two of them reached the second floor.
"Beep!"
"Thump. Thump." Faint sounds carried out of a training room not far from the stairwell, and both of them felt a flicker of surprise.
Every room in the Iron Mountain Martial Society's premises had been built with reinforced soundproofing — how else could it take the bursts of force a warrior put out in training?
For any sound at all to come through that soundproof glass, what kind of strength did that take?
Bear in mind that the society had several High-Rank Warriors on staff as coaches... but those coaches mostly trained in the basement, and the second-floor martial arts rooms were generally for VIP students.
"A student with that kind of strength? Who?" Curious, Fang Yu and Xu Chenyang both went over to the window.
Through the glass, they saw at a glance a short-haired young man in a black-and-red martial uniform standing in front of a punch-force tester in the room, hammering the target pad at his leisure.
"Thump. Thump. Thump." With each low, heavy sound, a string of numbers surfaced on the display at the top of the tester.
"6,432 kilograms. 6,247 kilograms. 6,533 kilograms..."
The string of terrifying numbers made Fang Yu's eyes narrow.
"It's him! Jiang Chenyi. I recognise him." There was a thread of envy in Xu Chenyang's shocked voice. "Brother Fang, that's the one on the poster outside — Wuling City's martial arts top scorer last year. He got into the strongest one, New Moon Martial Arts University."
"Casual punches, and that's the force behind them. His Life Tier has to be past 25."
"That strong in his first year."
"A university student, all right!"