Beyond the Zenith

Shao Xuan could never have imagined that a recruit would have the guts to swindle him out of an energy core on their very first meeting.

“It’s alright,” he said, taking Han Qingyu’s words at face value. “Don’t be nervous. When we get up there, I’ll only defend; there’ll be no attacking. I’ll take three strikes from you. Just give it everything you’ve got.”

The warmly smiling Gold Erasers captain had no idea that one of his own men, Captain Qin, was about to be stuck, unable to claim a full blue crystal energy core as an official expense. His choice not to speak up in the moment meant that bringing it up later would only make things awkward. It would be far too easy for the platoon leader and the rest of the platoon to realize that he had actually chickened out, so Captain Qin had no choice but to swallow the loss.

With that, on the day before the Class of 1990 recruits graduated, at eight twenty on the morning of the recruitment briefing assembly, the combat arena hall of the Erasers’ combat training base welcomed the appearance of the Gold Erasers’ platoon leader.

Shao Xuan suited up in his maneuvering device, walked about a dozen meters to the staircase leading up to the platform, and made his way up.

Despite being the strongest fighter in the entire army, he didn’t make a flashy entrance by activating his device and leaping onto the arena.

The Gold Erasers were genuinely wealthy, and Captain Shao looked like the type who could casually toss a recruit an energy core and forgive a comrade’s old debts over three drinks. He had the air of a man of means.

In truth, though, he maintained frugal habits for source energy usage. He didn’t waste a drop.

***

Before the assessment, Han Qingyu handed the two medals he had just received and the unexpected bonus energy core to Wen Jifei for safekeeping.

“You really aren’t afraid of dying, are you?” Wen Jifei whispered in his ear.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Han Qingyu whispered back as he got ready to go up. “I was actually asking where the energy core reward for the medals was, but he misunderstood and gave me this. Since he offered it to me, I couldn’t resist taking it.”

“It’s okay, just go up there, swing a few times, and stop. Tell him you’re impressed and that you deeply admire him, then swear brotherhood with him,” Wen Jifei suggested from behind. “That’s what they do on TV. After that, we can eat his food, drink his drinks, and use his stuff.”

Han Qingyu smiled back at him.

When he turned to face the arena, though, his expression cooled, and his eyes gained an intense focus as he entered a combat state. He truly valued this opportunity to face the Erasers’ top fighter.

In this hidden world, strength was equivalent to life, and not just his own life, either.

Facing the ape-men at the Wipers’ base had made that point crystal clear to him. It also made the need to grow stronger seem all the more urgent.

If energy cores were the foundation of building one’s strength, then combat technique and experience were the floors built on top of it. Han Qingyu knew his foundation was solid, but he still wanted to climb higher. Much higher.

Hopefully, nobody is named Gao Lou. Sure, Yan Shu wrote about it centuries ago, but I hope no parents are irresponsible enough to name their kid that.[1]

***

The two men took their positions on opposite sides of the arena.

“Ready?” Shao Xuan asked.

“Yeah.” Han Qingyu nodded.

He intended to hold nothing back for these three strikes, except for his greatest secret and trump card, which was the simultaneous surge of liquid source energy and device source energy.

Both of them activated their devices at the same time.

Han Qingyu drew one blade into his right hand. The other remained on his back, over his right shoulder.

In truth, he had long been able to use source energy to launch the dead iron straight blade from his back, just like the veteran he had seen on Tradition Night back at the 425th Regiment. He had never done it that way, though. Every single time, he reached back and drew it by hand.

Shao Xuan also made a motion to draw from his back, but as his hand gripped the hilt, he paused to smile at the recruits in the stands. “You’ll all be a little disappointed if I keep things plain, won’t you?”

Then he drew the blade.

The crackle of something resembling electricity filled the arena. This wasn’t the typical scrape of a dead iron straight blade against the right-angle studs of a combat suit.

“Holy shit.”

The crowd went wild. The veterans clenched their fists in restrained excitement, while the recruits completely lost it. Four or five arcs of blue electricity ran along the sides of Shao Xuan’s dead iron straight blade, twisting and shifting along its surface.

This was the Ninth Army’s strongest fighter. His source energy control was truly terrifying!

“Alright, that’s enough showing off. This is useful for breaking a Sharpie’s armor, but it’s actually quite a waste of source energy,” Shao Xuan explained with a smile.

The blue lightning on his blade faded, returning it to an ordinary state.

The entire arena hall settled into stillness as if to match the blade.

Shao Xuan held the blade angled toward the ground and glanced up at Han Qingyu.

Han Qingyu swept his blade back. Then he exploded forward.

There were no tricks or flourishes. Just speed. Pure speed.

He charged forward fast enough that the wind from his movements swallowed the sound of his soles scraping the concrete as he closed the gap in an instant. Even his straightforward downward chop actually shifted trajectory three times mid-swing.

Their blades collided with a clang.

Han Qingyu’s first strike only appeared plain but had actually impressed many of the veterans capable of following it. Shao Xuan’s counter, however, was truly plain.

Everyone in the arena, recruits included, could clearly see his movements and the path of his blade. He simply stood there, moving only his arm in an upward sweep. The unhurried arc of his blade met Han Qingyu’s descending edge with perfect precision.

Han Qingyu skidded back across the concrete, his soles scraping and grinding as they fought for traction. He barely managed to stop at the very edge of the arena.

Wow...This seems almost pathetically one-sided, thought nearly every recruit.

Up in the arena, though, Shao Xuan said seriously, “Not bad.”

“What’s not bad about that?” a recruit called out from below.

“He didn’t drop his blade!” a veteran answered.

That was right. Just holding onto his blade was already impressive. Shao Xuan’s counter had struck at the weakest point of Han Qingyu’s surge timing and momentum, cutting through the wave like a blade through a tide.

Han Qingyu’s surge, though, hadn’t been severed. If he hadn’t pulled back in time, both he and his blade would have gone flying.

Shao Xuan didn’t give Han Qingyu time to adjust. “Second strike.”

Han Qingyu charged again.

This time, he rushed to Shao Xuan’s right side, dropped low, and dragged his blade at roughly a sixty-degree angle toward Shao Xuan’s right flank.

Isn’t that just a basic offensive maneuver? the recruits thought.

All of them were familiar with this dragging slash. At most, Han Qingyu was just faster.

Gasps rippled across the crowd with his strike.

As Han Qingyu passed Shao Xuan, his right hand dragged the blade in a cut while his left hand completed a draw. The blade came out from over his right shoulder, and in one fluid motion, slashed toward Shao Xuan’s neck.

“Good,” Shao Xuan praised, stepping left and twisting his body to dodge.

“Third strike!” Han Qingyu called this strike himself. Before he even finished saying the words, he had already shot behind Shao Xuan. Still facing forward, he dug his heel into the ground and shot backward at full speed, both blades held flat, slicing from behind toward Shao Xuan’s left flank.

It was an inverted V-shaped rush. Han Qingyu had used this exact move to kill the defected first lieutenant in a single strike back at the Wipers’ hideout.

The recruits all rose to their feet. It took this third strike for them to grasp how powerful their fellow recruit was. This strike was beyond almost all of them in terms of ability, or even imagination.

“What a shame...”

Han Qingyu’s opponent was simply too strong. Shao Xuan showed only the faintest surprise before his right-hand blade followed the twist of his body to block both of Han Qingyu’s blades before taking a few steps back to place some distance between them.

The three strikes were done.

“Hm?”

At that moment, Shen Xuan noticed the whirring of a dead iron blade spinning through the air.

Han Qingyu wasn’t done yet.

The recruits remained in a dazed silence. This time, it was the veterans who stood up.

Han Qingyu was holding one fewer dead iron straight blade. Not many had seen when or how that blade had disappeared.

Their eyes were all fixed on it now, though. The blade spun through the air at tremendous speed, tracing a semicircle that curved behind and to the side, arcing toward Shao Xuan’s back,

It was just inches away from him.

1. 晏殊 (Yan Shu) was a Chinese poet, politician, calligrapher, and essayist of the Northern Song dynasty. The expression “独上高楼” or “climbing a tall tower alone” comes from one of his famous poems.

The joke here is that he hopes no one is named “higher” or 高楼 (gāo lóu) because even though it shows up in a poem, climb is also slang for doing the deed. ☜