"This, this is impossible."
Eoric clutched his chest and half-kneeling on the ground, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth onto the floor. He stared in disbelief at Aaron, who looked relaxed and unbothered across from him, unable to accept that he had been defeated.
And it was a crushing defeat.
The other students around them were likewise stunned.
Eoric, relying on an ability that reinforced his physical defenses plus a pair of iron fists, had already crippled several classmates in the past.
Everyone had been worried for this curly-haired transfer student, but no one expected the sparring match to be over the moment it began.
After Duanmu Feng urged them to start, the two exchanged only one collision, and Aaron landed several precise punches to Eoric’s abdomen.
Even with his steel reinforcement, Eoric’s internal organs suffered contusions and he spat blood.
He could not even stand up, let alone counterattack. The defeat was humiliating.
"Don’t underestimate the gap between you and your opponent. Don’t be so arrogant next time."
Aaron said with a grin, then looked at Duanmu Feng, whose face had gone deathly pale.
That opening display had backfired, making him, the “instructor,” lose face.
"Have you trained specifically in fighting?" Duanmu Feng asked in a deep voice. "And it looks like military style."
Aaron tensed inwardly. He hadn’t expected Duanmu Feng to recognize it—he had indeed used the set of straight punches Dr. Dragon Soul had taught him.
Nearby, Zhao Ming thought to himself that if Duanmu Feng could tell Aaron’s boxing came from the military, then Duanmu Feng himself likely had a similar background.
"Since you’ve trained, I’ll test you personally." Duanmu Feng said, removing his coat and tossing it aside.
Underneath, he wore only a sleeveless green vest. His exposed shoulders and arms were densely scarred, prompting gasps from the students.
"These were left on the battlefield." Duanmu Feng touched the scars on his shoulder. "They remind me at all times that laxity equals death. That is something I want you all to remember!"
Zhao Ming frowned and was about to say something when Aaron, face alight with excitement, stepped forward and assumed a fighting stance.
"All right, Instructor Duanmu Feng, I’m looking forward to your teaching!"
Aaron possessed the Combat Instinct ability, which favored him when fighting strong opponents—allowing him to learn and assimilate an opponent’s moves into his own through the ability.
Under Dragon Soul’s training, he progressed rapidly and rose in the base’s close-combat rankings, defeating many Ascendants who specialized in close-quarters fighting.
Seeing Duanmu Feng also appear to be a melee expert inevitably stirred Aaron’s fighting drive.
They wasted no words and immediately engaged.
From the first exchange, Aaron fell behind.
He was shocked to discover that Duanmu Feng’s method was not slicing around but striking with lethal intent, each technique aimed at vital points like the throat and temples.
That put Aaron on the defensive. He had thought it would be a skirmish.
One side fought with killing intent while the other did not; even if their raw strength were equal, the latter could not match the former.
Moreover, Duanmu Feng’s close-combat prowess exceeded Aaron’s. Zhao Ming noticed that each of Duanmu Feng’s moves carried a kind of deep gray "energy."
It resembled the controlled flow of Mind Power he had seen in Shi Jingyi’s online lessons. That "aura" like Wei Hefeng’s was probably his ordinary exclusive ability, capable of attacking at range.
One of Duanmu Feng’s punches missed Aaron’s body by a hair, yet Aaron was struck by that "aura" and stumbled backward to his knees.
Duanmu Feng immediately pressed the attack, mercilessly.
Zhao Ming’s eyes narrowed and he activated his Thought Palace.
First he accelerated his thinking to enter a high-speed analysis state, then he switched on a branch ability he had been developing: probabilistic cloud computing.
By observing prior combat data and analyzing it during his accelerated thought process with probability cloud computing, he could achieve a special kind of "future vision."
In this mode he could simulate subsequent scenarios of Duanmu Feng versus Aaron. In the future frames his brain generated, within less than ten seconds the disadvantaged Aaron would lose his defense balance and be struck into severe injury by Duanmu Feng.
Zhao Ming immediately exited the Thought Palace and shouted, "Instructor Duanmu Feng, please stop at once! You’re a teacher—would you injure your student? This is a classroom, not a battlefield!"
His shout seemed to take effect. Duanmu Feng hesitated slightly, slowed his movements, and halted his attack.
Aaron panted heavily, having taken several hits, and his expression toward Duanmu Feng was no longer one of contempt.
There was no doubt he had made the same mistake as Eoric—he had belittled his opponent, and Duanmu Feng had belittled no one.
But a weak man could not have survived the brutal battlefields of Black Flag Country and then been sent to teach Practical Combat.
Duanmu Feng remained silent for a moment, put his coat back on, and said coldly, "Class ends for today. Get ready. Next time you must participate in the real drills!"
He said this to Zhao Ming, then strode off.
The students immediately crowded around.
"Impressive, you actually lasted so long against Instructor Duanmu!"
"Thanks to you two—Duanmu ended class early for the first time. We dodged a bullet today."
"What’s your name? Nice fight! Next time Eoric won’t be so cocky."
They praised the pair gratefully. After a few responses, Zhao Ming led Aaron away.
"There’s something wrong with Duanmu Feng, right?" Aaron asked once they were outside the training building, pointing to his head. "He actually tried to kill me back there!"
"You're right," Zhao Ming said.
"Huh?"
Aaron blinked; he had only been upset with Duanmu Feng, not expecting Zhao Ming to agree.
"I suspect he’s ill," Zhao Ming said calmly. "Very likely PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder from wartime trauma."
Aaron’s face registered shock. "Zhao Ming, are you saying... if that’s true, isn’t it too dangerous for him to be a teacher?"
"It is." Zhao Ming nodded. "We need to report our findings to the research office immediately and request Duanmu Feng be suspended from teaching.
A PTSD patient cannot be an instructor, especially not for Practical Combat. It would endanger students and every training session would force Duanmu Feng to relive battlefield scenes, worsening his condition."
.....
Elsewhere, upon arriving in New Covenant City, Tianci’s first impression was that the city had become a fortress.
War machines that Suroma had once deployed only during combat were now patrolling the streets in large numbers.
Electronic scanning beams formed a giant covering grid; anyone trying to enter the city core could not avoid it.
That was the visible layer; how many covert surveillance and defense devices lay hidden, Tianci could not guess, but combined they had effectively armed the city to the teeth.
Tianci thought this was likely thanks to Shadow’s lone-operator attacks some time ago.
Still, in his view, even without Guan Tong, Suroma would have eventually taken the mechanized route it chose; Shadow’s actions and the previous rule’s content simply accelerated that process.
Not just New Covenant City—Suroma’s major future urban clusters would likely be transformed into fully mechanized fortresses.
Walking New Covenant’s streets, Tianci felt a peculiar fear because there was not a single person to be seen.
There used to be many people on the streets; even if some were robots, they at least gave the appearance of life when indistinguishable.
Now not even those pseudo-people remained. Whether Suroma stopped producing them or gave up the pretense altogether, society had emphatically sprinted into deep cybernization.
At that moment a flying craft descended, and a fully mechanized pilot—unclear whether a cyborg or a robot—climbed out.
"Get in. I’ll take you to the Hall of Halls."
Tianci knew he had long been detected and obediently boarded the craft.
He glanced at the pilot in the cockpit and hesitated, asking, "Are you an Ascendant cyborg, or a robot? When I last came to New Covenant, it didn’t look like this."
The pilot didn’t answer and silently piloted the craft.
Tianci regretted asking and didn’t press further.
The craft landed before the Hall of Halls, where two people came to receive him. They had human faces, which made Tianci somewhat more at ease.
"I wish to meet His Majesty King Bruce," he said. "I have an important document to deliver to him."
"You have no authority to meet him. We will deliver the document," they replied.
Tianci refused. "No. The document must be handed to King Bruce personally."
At that moment Bruce’s voice came from one of the two men: "I have no time to meet you. Give the documents to them."
Tianci was shocked and looked at the two. "You’re not human?"
Their faces were expressionless; Tianci felt only unease.
He could no longer tell whether these human-faced beings were cyborgs or robots.
Whatever they were, they were clearly directly controlled by Bruce and could serve as his "eyes" and "mouth" to receive and relay information.
Tianci could only hand the documents to them and was told to wait where he stood.
As the documents were transported to the Hall of Halls’ underground laboratory, Bruce stood with Dr. Haisen before a wall of large screens.
Each large screen was composed of dozens of small screens, each showing a different room. The content was highly uniform: ongoing modification experiments.
Dr. Haisen said, "With the aid of the new Cerebral Wake Number One developed under the rule’s guidance, our modification success rate has greatly improved. Moreover, when Ascendants remain fully conscious throughout the procedure, their adaptation to mechanical bodies is significantly enhanced."
Bruce leaned on his scepter with both hands and nodded slightly.
The scepter, intact at Wensilisa Castle, had reappeared here, though it looked somewhat shorter than before.
"In addition, the prototype anti-Mind Power invasion armor is not yet complete." Dr. Zhao Ming pulled up another set of images.
The screen displayed a bright silver suit of armor standing upright on the ground.
An Ascendant generated a wind blade with Mind Power to attack the armor. The wind blade vanished the instant it touched the bright silver armor, as if it had never existed.
"The armor’s principle is essentially a Mind Power conversion device," Dr. Haisen explained. "It doesn’t resist Mind Power attacks per se. It converts them into discrete Mind Power.
It’s like a bullet hitting a specially made shield. That shield doesn’t stop the bullet by thickness; at the moment of contact it restores the bullet into metal casing and gunpowder, so the bullet’s attack power disappears."
"So it restores converted Mind Power attacks back to their primitive form?" Bruce asked. "How do you achieve that?"
"The core relies on an exclusive item belonging to an Ascendant in Suroma. That item can restore anything it contacts back to its initial state.
I then used another Ascendant’s encapsulation ability to encapsulate the exclusive item’s effect into the armor... In short, through multiple combined techniques we realized this effect."
Dr. Haisen sighed. "During the previous rule, using Emergence Acceleration, I attempted various methods to copy the armor, but all failed. That shows Mind Power has characteristics that cannot be replicated... therefore this armor cannot be mass-produced, only manufactured in small quantities."
"Quality over quantity for good things," Bruce said. "Equip only elite forces; a few units are enough."
"I agree. Commander, we can form a lightweight elite assault team wearing this armor, combined with the most powerful single-soldier weapons. That should pose a major threat to top Ascendants like Shadow."
Bruce nodded slightly. At that moment, the document Tianci had brought was delivered.
Bruce took and opened it, then handed it to Dr. Haisen, hinting, "Look at this. Intelligence from within Beixing. Maybe we can base our plan on it."
Dr. Haisen took a moment to read and then understood Bruce’s implication. The objects mentioned in the document did indeed seem to improve the odds of success against Shadow.