RETURN OF THE DRAGON: Made 100 Trillon in A Day

Chapter 12: Testing the Zero

The Testing Plaza of the Hidden Dragon Academy was a vast, amphitheater-like space paved with cold, spirit-conductive obsidian. At its center sat the "Aptitude Stone"—a five-ton monolith of dense, pulsating granite. This wasn't just a rock; it was a spiritual barometer. To move it required a Rank-1 cultivation at minimum. To move it with your mind? That was the mark of the elite.

"Next! Lin Hao of the Lin Family!" the Proctor shouted, his voice amplified by a silver-trimmed megaphone.

A young man in a pristine silk robe stepped forward, his face a mirror image of Lin Xinyi’s—sharp, arrogant, and filled with a sense of inherited divinity. He looked at the crowd, then caught sight of me standing at the edge of the circle with Su Qinghe.

"Well, well," Lin Hao sneered, stopping just inches from the stone. "The 'Trash' has followed the scent of his own humiliation all the way to the Academy. I heard my sister kicked you to the curb, Qin Ming. I didn't realize you’d come here to beg for a job as a janitor."

"The curb was a bit slippery, Hao," I replied, my hands in my pockets. "But I think your sister is the one currently looking for a new career path. Possibly in the sanitation department."

"Shut your mouth!" Hao’s face reddened, his Rank-1 aura flaring. "You're a 'Zero.' You have no spirit roots, no core, and no future. Watch closely. This is what a real man looks like."

Lin Hao turned to the stone. He closed his eyes, his veins bulging on his forehead. A faint, green mist—the signature of the Lin family’s stolen cultivation—swirled around the base of the five-ton monolith.

Grind.

The stone moved. It was barely an inch, a tiny tremor in the dirt, but the Plaza erupted.

"An inch! He moved the Aptitude Stone an inch!"

"Prodigy! At his age, moving the stone even a millimeter is a miracle!"

The Proctor nodded, scribbling furiously on his clipboard. "Lin Hao. Rank-1 Peak. Potential: High. Pass!"

Hao wiped the sweat from his brow, a triumphant smirk plastered on his face. He walked past me, intentionally clipping my shoulder. "Top that, Zero. Oh wait, you can't. You'll be lucky if you don't break your neck just looking at it."

"Qin Ming! Step forward for the Aptitude Test!" the Proctor called, his tone dripping with bored disdain.

The crowd of silver-robed students leaned in, their laughter already bubbling.

"Is he going to try and push it with his hands?"

"Maybe he'll try to buy the stone a drink and ask it to move!"

I walked to the center of the obsidian circle. The stone loomed over me, cold and indifferent. I didn't close my eyes. I didn't strain my muscles. I just looked at it.

"Well?" the Proctor barked. "Are you going to start, or are we waiting for the sun to set?"

"I'm just calculating the cost of the repair bill," I said.

System, I thought. This stone is a bit heavy for my taste. What’s the price for a local gravitational anomaly?

[System: Targeted Objective: Aptitude Stone. Weight: 1,000 lbs (Spirit-Dense). Recommended Skill: Gravity Inversion (Local Area).]

[Cost: 50 Billion Spirit Coins. Proceed?]

Purchase.

[Transaction Confirmed. Balance: 13,399,000,000,000. Initiating Gravity Inversion...]

"He’s just standing there!" Lin Hao shouted from the sidelines. "He’s frozen in fear! Proctor, disqualify this clown and throw him out!"

"Qin Ming, if you do not—" the Proctor began.

I reached out a single finger and tapped the surface of the stone.

The sound was small, but the result was cataclysmic. The obsidian floor beneath my feet cracked in a perfect circle. A pillar of white, distorted air erupted from the ground.

The Aptitude Stone didn't just move. It didn't just slide.

It screamed.

The five-ton monolith shot upward like it had been fired from a railgun. It tore through the spiritual canopy of the Plaza, shredded the reinforced roof of the testing hall, and vanished into the stratosphere in a blur of grey granite and sonic booms.

The shockwave knocked the Proctor off his feet. Lin Hao was blown backward into a fountain, his pristine robes soaked in mud. The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the distant sound of the stone breaking the sound barrier.

I pulled my hand back and wiped a speck of dust from my sleeve. "I think I moved it. Do I pass?"

The Proctor scrambled up, his hat crooked, his eyes bulging out of his head. He looked at the gaping hole in the roof, then at the empty space where the "indestructible" monolith had sat for three centuries. He looked at me, his hands shaking so hard his clipboard snapped in half.

"You... you..." he stammered, his voice reaching a pitch I didn't think possible. "The stone... it's gone! It’s in the clouds!"

He lunged forward, grabbing a handheld Spirit-Scanner and thrusting it toward my chest. The device hummed, then began to smoke. The needle spun wildly before shattering the glass casing.

"The scanner... it broke! It can't even read you!" The Proctor backed away, his face turning the color of a sheet. "What... what Rank are you?! Are you a hidden Elder? A King Realm master?!"

I looked at Lin Hao, who was shivering in the fountain, his "prodigy" status currently as worthless as the mud on his face.

"I told you, Hao," I said, my voice echoing through the stunned silence of the Plaza. "In my world, there’s no such thing as 'heavy'. There’s only 'too expensive'."

As the Proctor fell to his knees in terror, the ground beneath the Plaza began to vibrate. A dark, jagged crack opened in the obsidian, and a black-clad figure emerged, holding a tattered scroll. "The Stone has been moved," the figure hissed, his eyes fixed on me. "The Prophecy of the Zero-King has begun. The Sect Leaders are coming, Qin Ming. And they aren't coming to test you—they're coming to execute you."

[System: Warning! Massive Spirit Signatures detected. 4 King-Realm Masters are descending. Survival Probability: 0.0001%. Would you like to spend 500 Billion to 'Unlock' the God-Body Phase Three: Sovereign Aura?]

I looked at the sky, where four streaks of fire were tearing through the clouds. "Secretary Su," I said, a dark grin spreading across my face. "Tell the Academy they're going to need a new roof. And a new board of directors."