With life and death hanging by a thread, Yun Yishan gritted her teeth and threw caution to the wind: relying on the Emperor was worse than relying on herself. If she wanted to escape the Thousand-Jin’s crushing force, she would have to calculate the optimal jumping trajectory. That wasn’t hard her riding and archery tutor had taught her mathematics.
Clever as she was, she immediately began calculating the target distance, wind resistance, and initial jump velocity in her head, plugging them into the formula:
h = frac{v_0^2 sin^2theta}{2g}
After two breaths’ worth of calculation, she arrived at the height she needed to jump.
Um, it should be..
Hss, probably about…
Forget it, just run!
In the stands, Lu Feichen rested his cheek on one hand, his gaze fixed on that wretched figure on the field.
He couldn’t help closing his eyes and sighing deeply. What had he even been expecting? This? She didn’t even have basic combat instincts, and she was supposed to be a high-rank Sentinel? At best she was a Vase that could run. Some conquest mission this was a complete waste of time. He wasn’t going to stick around for it.
Lu Feichen, thoroughly bored, had just turned to leave when cries of alarm suddenly erupted all around!
“Look!”
“Ah!”
He whipped his head back.
On the combat platform, Yun Yishan had once again been driven to the edge by the Thousand-Jin, less than half a meter from the brink! Her back pressed against the cold railing, she gasped for breath, too exhausted to run any further. She swore to the ancestors of Yunhuang that this time she truly wasn’t acting, she had genuinely given it her all!
Yun Yishan kept comforting herself: failure really wasn’t so scary. Nothing in this world is difficult if you’re willing to give up!
The shadow of the boulder loomed overhead.
Yun Yishan squeezed her eyes shut in terror, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just an assessment, it wouldn’t actually kill anyone, right?
But that overwhelming, mountain-crushing force was so real, more suffocating than the blades of Beishuo’s iron cavalry, as if the next second she would be ground into paste.
…Houli Crab!
Was this really just an assessment?
The second before the Thousand-Jin came down was stretched infinitely long, and countless fragments of memory flashed before her eyes. Her past was filled with “duty, country, and the world,” with “loyalty, filial piety, integrity, and righteousness.” From childhood she had been indoctrinated to sacrifice for her family, to serve her lord with devotion, to lay down her life for her country… Everyone had taught her how to die nobly, but no one had ever taught her how to live for herself.
Yun Yishan’s eyes snapped open.
To hell with dying honorably!
To hell with duty and country!
This Palace wants to live!
The giant sphere came hurtling at her. Yun Yishan’s eyes darkened, and she kicked violently off the railing behind her, launching herself high into the air. She actually flipped over the top edge of the sphere against its momentum, dodging the crushing blow by the narrowest of margins, so fast she nearly left a white afterimage in the air.
The stands erupted in cheers, and she was given a score of 98.4, because there really was a little something extra.
“Such a tiny body, such explosive power!”
“Is this what they call gap moe?”
“S-Rank combat power, no doubt about it!”
Some cheered, some applauded. Only Lu Feichen, who had been about to leave, stopped dead in his tracks. His expression shifted slightly this was far more than a mere burst of potential. He had underestimated this Vase.
Meanwhile, the moment Yun Yishan landed, the ground tilted violently sideways once more. She had no time to dodge, the cold pressure was already against her back, and the enormous shadow had completely swallowed her!
Nowhere to run!
She spun around and instinctively thrust both hands forward to block!
The fatal crushing blow never came.