Qiqi cast a small illusion on instinct, hiding her shape.The wolves didn't care. They hunted by scent. The five students in the squad she'd just heard, though—physical fighters, strong bodies, weak spirits—walked right past her without seeing. They fanned out, scanning. She held still until they'd passed, then let out a breath.Staying put was dangerous. She bit her cheek and pulled a potion from her pack, jabbed it into her arm. Pills and potions were allowed in the match. The bleeding slowed. She was still pale, but she could run.The wolves were closing. She stepped out of cover and walked straight through the middle of the squad. They didn't see her. The wolves, confused by her scent mixing with five strangers, locked onto the squad instead."Damn, there's too many of them," someone said. "Break out. Move now. Just hold on a little longer, the match ends—"The squad leader didn't waste a second. "Everyone transfer your points to Peipei. Peipei, when the fighting starts, you find

Duan saw Ethan's face and his mouth twitched.They lived so close to the bone that one drop of the liquid got diluted a thousand times before anyone touched it. Ethan, he hadn't seen the half of it, had obviously walked out with a fortune. That was the gap.He handed the bottle back. "Keep it close. When people offer to buy, don't sell on impulse. Every foreign power on the planet knows you have it by now. It's just as scarce abroad. Someone will approach you. Some of them won't be polite about it. Stay on campus. Don't wander."Ethan nodded and put the bottle away.Foreign powers. He wasn't losing sleep over them. They didn't have a single SSS-rank to send. They couldn't drop an S-rank into Federation airspace without starting a war, and the Federation wasn't weak—the rest of the world kept its head down these days. If they sent only S-rank or below, he could handle it.They talked a while longer. Ethan knew almost nothing about materials, so he took them out one by one and let Duan

"I don't really need anything right now," Ethan said, scratching the back of his neck. "You could just leave it on my tab. Or—if you've got a Secret Realm or special space I haven't seen yet, toss me in for a while. I could use a break."He genuinely meant it. Food, pills, cultivation resources—he had all of it. The Special Occupation Academy had gravity rooms, training grounds, and a faculty that ran from the sublime to the bizarre. Compared to what most Awakened in the Federation had access to, his situation was already ludicrous.Gordon Tang sighed. The lines around his eyes deepened, and he pressed two fingers to his temple like he was trying to push back a headache that had been living there for years."Every Secret Realm is dangerous," he said. "When we first opened them, we explored with bodies. Pure manpower. You're strong—I'm not pretending otherwise—but the danger inside isn't just monsters. There's terrain that kills you for standing on it, traps that no Class can read, dis

The warmth hit Tang the moment the pill touched his tongue.It spread fast. Not the slow, creeping heat of a recovery tonic but a flood—yang force moving through his meridians like a river in spate, straight for the dark, corrupting energy that had been eating at him for years.The two forces collided inside him.Tang had fought this thing for more than a decade. He'd pushed it back with every healing resource the Federation could scrape together, and every time it had come back stronger. Now it wasn't fighting. It was being devoured. The Nine Yang force didn't negotiate. It didn't chip away. It swallowed the corrupting yin energy whole, like a fire eating oil. The thing that had lived inside him for years, that had made him cough blood in private and lie about it, was simply gone.Then the pain started.The remaining pill force moved through his meridians, not healing them so much as rebuilding them from the inside out. Broken vessels knitted. Muscle fibers tore and re-knit. Toxins f

Tang's face changed. In a hundred and twenty years, no Walled City had fallen. Not since the walls were built. Not since the Aberrations had been driven out of human territory."Contact the Jiangnan command immediately," Tang said, his voice level now. "Get their forces moving. Li—organize reinforcements. We move now."Li turned to go."Wait." Ethan stood up. "Take me with you.""No," Tang and Li said together.Ethan was too valuable. One farmer, one Alchemist, one kid who could pull SSS-tier pills out of thin air. Losing him in a city-wide monster incursion was a cost the Federation could not pay."I think this is targeting me," Ethan said. "Or this year's cohort. The final round of the newcomer tournament is a team battle. The examiners can move the venue to Jiangnan. It's the perfect setup."He didn't know it for certain. It was a feeling. The kind that had kept him alive through five years in the wilderness."As for safety—we're all going to the front eventually. Better to find ou