Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 906: The Final Steps and the Pragmatism of Survival

The grey dimension felt less like an open expanse of stone and more like the crushing depths of an abyssal ocean at this point. The absence of Qi had transformed the endurance run from a test of martial foundation into an agonizing trial of flesh and bone.Only five figures remained moving across the endless horizon.

Li Yu maintained his steady rhythm, placing one foot in front of the other. His breathing was heavy and labored, his lungs burning as they fought to draw in the heavy air. Beside him the muscular talent of the main clan, Zhan Mingyu, ran with a face carved from granite. A few paces behind them, Vennia and Zhu Dawa pushed their limits. They were accompanied by a fifth, a recruit from a vassal clan whose entire body was currently trembling violently.

Outside the spatial portal the chief instructor’s eyes tracked the five survivors with intense scrutiny. They had been running under the Qi lockdown for an agonizing amount of time. They had proven their worth and trained their bodies to an acceptable degree today. It was time to see where they broke.

Lei Gang formed a sharp, single-handed seal and channeled it directly into the array’s control matrix. Inside the dimension, the final phase activated.

It was not a gradual shift in gravity. It was an executioner’s block dropping from the heavens. The pressure increased by a massive and staggering margin in a fraction of a second. The air itself seemed to solidify into metal.

The unnamed recruit at the back of the small pack did not even have the chance to gasp. The sudden weight slammed into their shoulders and instantly shattered their balance. Their knees buckled violently and slammed against the grey stone with a sickening thud.

The white teleportation light enveloped around and whisked them away from the dimension before their bones could snap. Next came Zhu Dawa who didn’t fare much better.

Only three remained now.

Vennia let out a sharp and ragged cry. The top-ranked female recruit felt her vision swimming with dark spots at this point. The sheer weight on her shoulders was forcing her toward the ground but her pride, forged through centuries of clawing her way to the top of her vassal clan, refused to let her simply collapse.

She poured every ounce of her remaining willpower into her right leg. She dragged her boot across the stone and was fighting the gravity for every single inch.

She took just one agonizing step forward.

As her foot planted, a sharp, warning ache flared through her bones. Her physical vessel had reached its breaking point. Vennia’s eyes rolled back, her legs gave out entirely and she plummeted toward the stone. The white light claimed her before she hit the ground.

A few paces ahead, Zhan Mingyu let out a deep and guttural roar.

The blood of the main Zhan Clan boiled in his veins. He refused to be bowed by a training array. When the massive pressure spike hit, Mingyu leaned forward, turning his body into a battering ram against the solid air.

He forced his left leg forward. One step. The muscles in his thighs bulged, threatening to tear themselves apart from the sheer exertion. He dragged his right leg forward. Two steps. Blood began to leak from his nose and the corners of his eyes. The pressure was suffocating and was attempting to crush his internal organs into paste.

With a final and explosive shout of defiance, Mingyu hurled his weight forward once more. Three steps. The momentum carried him but his physical foundation had completely drained.

The moment his boot hit the stone for the third time, his knees turned to water. The proud talent of the main clan collapsed forward, his vision fading to black as the white teleportation light wrapped around his massive frame.

And then, there was only Li Yu.

When the final pressure had slammed down, Li Yu’s instincts had screamed at him to adapt. The weight tailored to his dense foundation was astronomical. It felt as though an entire continent had just been dropped onto his spine.

Li Yu did not try to take a step like the others did, his instincts told him not to.

The moment the weight spiked, he abruptly stopped moving altogether. He planted his boots firmly into the grey stone, locked his knees and squared his shoulders. Li Yu shifted his posture into perfect alignment, allowing the weight to distribute evenly across his bones.

His plan was to wait. He wanted to stand completely still for a few moments, let his body adjust to the new baseline and then resume his run. He took a slow and agonizing breath while feeling his ribs groan under the pressure. He waited for the pain to stabilize. He prepared to lift his right foot to continue the drill.

Suddenly, the heavy iron colored sky dissolved. The crushing weight vanished entirely, leaving Li Yu feeling as light as a feather. The endless expanse of grey stone faded away and was replaced by the familiar dirt and howling winds of the camp plaza.

Li Yu blinked, finding himself standing in the center of the gathering point.

Because Zhan Mingyu had collapsed, there was no one left in the dimension besides him, ending the test. The array had recognized that he was the sole survivor and automatically terminated the test, pulling him back to the physical world.

He had technically outlasted everyone, making him the last person standing but he hadn't taken a single step after the final pressure increase. Technically he didn’t prove himself to be better than the others.

A few yards away, Vennia and Zhan Mingyu were sitting on the packed dirt and were panting heavily as medics handed them pills. They looked up and saw Li Yu standing perfectly upright in the center of the plaza. He wasn't coughing blood and he hadn't collapsed.

Vennia's dark eyes narrowed into slits of frustration. She had forced herself to take a step under that hellish weight. She had felt her bones cracking to achieve it. Zhan Mingyu wiped the blood from his face with his expression an unreadable mask of intense focus. He had taken three impossible steps before his body gave out.

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From their perspective, they had physically progressed further under the final burden. But looking at the newcomer who was still standing, an undeniable sense of defeat washed over them. They felt they had lost, even if Li Yu hadn't moved forward at the end.

Lei Gang stepped up to the edge of the raised stone platform. The chief instructor looked out over the five hundred exhausted, sweating and battered recruits scattered across the dirt. His eyes lingered on Li Yu for a fraction of a second longer than the rest.

"The drill is over," Lei Gang's gravelly voice boomed, demanding instant silence. He looked directly at the top talents who were currently glaring at the newcomer.

"I see some of you comparing your steps. I see some of you measuring your pride against the person standing next to you," Lei Gang stated coldly. "I told you at the beginning, there are no winners or losers in this array. The weight was not even to begin with. The burden applied to the person on your left was vastly different from the burden applied to you. Taking steps under your specific weight does not make you superior to someone who took one."

Lei Gang paced along the edge of the platform. "The array reads your foundation and attempts to crush you based on your own potential. The only metric that matters is whether you pushed yourself past your own limits. The only gain here is the tempering of your own vessel. If you collapsed today, it means you found your ceiling. Tomorrow, your job is to break it."

He stopped and crossed his massive arms.

"There is a two hour rest period now," Lei Gang announced. "Get to the mess hall. Eat, recover your Qi and mend your muscles. The next phase of training will begin promptly after lunch. Dismissed."

The recruits groaned collectively as they slowly dragged themselves up from the dirt. The physical toll was immense but the camp offered no time for pity. They began the slow and shuffling march toward the dining facility.

The mess hall of the training camp was a cavernous structure of dark iron and rough-hewn timber. It was designed purely for utility. Long wooden tables stretched across the expansive room. The air was thick with the rich and savory aroma of roasted spirit beast meat, heavily spiced broths and medicinal teas designed to rapidly accelerate physical recovery.

Li Yu grabbed a large wooden tray from the serving line. Without him even asking, it was piled high with dense and nutrient-rich meats as well as a bowl of glowing amber broth. Everyone received the same but more can be asked, not less. For a body to be powerful, it had to eat powerfully. He navigated the crowded hall and found a seat at a table near the back. It was occupied by a few recruits he had not seen at the front of the pack.

He sat down across from a young man whose skin was covered in faint and overlapping stone scales. There was also a woman who possessed six small but vertically aligned eyes.

"Mind if I sit here?" Li Yu asked politely.

"Not at all," the scaled man replied while offering a tired but respectful nod. "I am Lobor. This is Rys."

"Li Yu," Li Yu introduced himself while taking a bite of the roasted meat. The flavor was incredibly robust and he could instantly feel the warm and restorative energy sinking into his aching muscles.

"We know." The six-eyed woman said with a faint smile. "Everyone knows. You are the talk of the camp."

Li Yu simply nodded with a smile as he figured as much. He focused on his meal and was content to listen to the ambient chatter echoing throughout the massive hall. Cultivators did not possess quiet voices and with their senses, every table was an open book if they focused on it.

The narrative regarding the mysterious late arrival had shifted significantly since the morning.

A few tables over, Chen Kaito was sitting with a group of standard vassal recruits. He was nursing a cup of tea and his arms were still trembling slightly from the run.

"I watched him from the middle of the pack," a recruit with pale green hair whispered to Kaito. "He didn't even use a breathing technique during the Qi lockdown. He just ran like it was nothing. Maybe the rumors are wrong. Maybe he didn't just get in because of his noble background."

"Background doesn't keep you standing like that. It can help but it doesn’t define you." Kaito replied while taking a slow sip of his tea. "He is quite strong. That is an undeniable fact. A pampered noble would have been crushed in the first hour."

At another table closer to the center of the hall, Vennia was viciously tearing into a piece of meat. Her vassal clan allies sat around her and were offering sympathetic murmurs.

"I heard he didn't even take a step at the end." One of her allies grumbled while trying to appease her. "You moved forward. Mingyu moved forward. He just froze in place. It isn't a true victory for him."

Vennia shot her ally a sharp and silencing glare.

"He froze in place but he didn't collapse," Vennia corrected coldly. She was furious but she was not blind. "I felt my bones cracking just to take a single step. Whatever weight the array had placed on him, it was enough to make him stop but his vessel held the burden. He didn't break. Do not underestimate him just to make me feel better."

Near the front of the hall, the heavyweight brawler Zhu Dawa was laughing loudly as she downed an entire pitcher of medicinal broth.

"He's tough meat!" Dawa announced to her table while being completely unbothered by the camp politics. "I thought he would snap but he just stood there like a mountain. I cannot wait for the sparring phases. Hitting him is going to be incredibly satisfying."

Zhan Mingyu sat silently across from her. The main clan’s talent ate his meal with methodical precision like he did everything else. He did not engage in the gossip or the speculations. He simply reviewed the events of the grey dimension in his mind.

Zhan Mingyu had felt the crushing gravity and he knew the agony required to take those three final steps. He recognized that Li Yu stopping was not an act of surrender but an act of something else. Mingyu offered a subtle and almost imperceptible nod toward the back of the hall. He had recognized a potential peer.

Li Yu finished his broth and wiped his mouth. He listened to the shifting tones of the conversations.

While there were still a few recruits who remained unconvinced of his merit and were stubbornly clinging to the belief that he possessed a hidden artifact, the overall hostility from the previous night had vanished. No one approached his table to give him a hard time. No one threw insults or attempted to provoke him.

These were not foolish or impulsive beings here. The recruits in this camp had lived for centuries and they had survived the brutal culling of their respective realms as they climbed to where they are now. They possessed a pragmatic intelligence forged through the realities of the cultivation world.

They had seen Li Yu endure a physical trial that broke hundreds of them. They had seen him stand shoulder to shoulder with the elite talent of the Zhan Clan even though it wasn’t that kind of test. They had also all seen that he was given special treatment. All in all, he was not someone to mess with.

The unspoken rule of the cosmos was simple: respect strength and avoid unnecessary conflict. They understood that creating an enemy out of an unknown variable who possessed that level of foundation was incredibly unwise. If they could not be friends with the mysterious newcomer, they were smart enough to ensure they were at least not his enemies.

Li Yu appreciated the silent truce of those that were here. He exchanged a few polite words with Lobor and Rys about the quality of the beast meat before excusing himself from the table. Li Yu could tell that his presence there made the two feel a bit uncomfortable so he left to let them relax.

He walked out of the mess hall and back into the dusty courtyard. The two hour rest period was flying by and his muscles were fully saturated with the restorative energy of the meal. He rolled his shoulders and was feeling the pleasant ache of a true physical workout.

He was eager to see what the next phase of training would entail even though he wasn’t too impressed with the first training class. He just hoped the afternoon session would offer a bit more technical instruction rather than just pure endurance.