High Martial: I Grind Professions

After receiving the principal’s concise yet firm, four-word reply—"Watch how things unfold"—the apprehension in his heart finally subsided a little.

Having completed his patrol and confirmed there were no new anomalies, Li Wen turned and headed for the underground fortress of Changning City.

He passed through the heavy alloy floodgates and entered the core defensive zone deep underground, where the festive atmosphere was just as rich.

The cold metal corridors were adorned with strings of auspicious red electronic lanterns, and the side walls were even, quite unusually, decorated with traditional, handwritten Spring Festival couplets.

The ventilation system simulated a cool winter breeze, and the aroma of food, along with sounds of laughter and cheerful chatter, drifted faintly from the direction of the mess hall.

When the fortress’s soldiers saw him, they all paused and warmly offered their New Year’s greetings.

"Captain Li, Happy New Year’s Eve!"

"Captain, Happy New Year! Thanks for your hard work!"

Li Wen nodded to each of them in turn, a gentle smile on his face. "The same to all of you, and thank you for your hard work. May you have a peaceful and healthy New Year."

He continued on his way to the detached courtyard reserved for the garrison captain, stepped into the study, and picked up the professional treatise he hadn’t finished reading the day before.

Six hours slipped by unnoticed as he absorbed the knowledge, the sound of pages turning the only melody in the quiet room.

Only when the electronic clock on the wall struck twelve noon did he close his book, rise, and head for the mess hall.

The mess hall was now a clamor of voices, and the aroma of the holiday meal was especially tempting.

When Li Wen’s figure appeared at the entrance, the din quieted for a moment, only to be followed by a wave of even louder greetings.

"The Captain’s here!"

"Captain, over here!" He was guided through the crowd toward the main table, where Vice-Captain Ling Feng was already seated in an adjacent spot.

"Captain," Ling Feng greeted him simply. Only in private would he call Li Wen ’junior brother’.

"Senior Brother Ling," Li Wen said with a smile as he sat down.

He looked around at the faces—some young, some resolute, but all of them now brimming with relaxed smiles.

Even here in this underground fortress on the front lines of humanity’s defense, the significance of the New Year festival still resonated in everyone’s heart.

The meal was lavish, the atmosphere harmonious.

After a few rounds of drinks, someone proposed a toast.

Everyone stood up in unison. Amidst the clinking of glasses, a powerful, unified cry echoed through the mess hall:

"To a peaceful and healthy New Year!"

"Victory to the Human Race!"

...

After lunch, Li Wen didn’t head straight to the training grounds to practice his blade techniques as he had in previous years.

An indescribable, faint premonition, originating from the depths of his Primordial Spirit, had been clinging to him like a silken thread for the past few days, refusing to dissipate.

This powerful Spiritual Sense, born from a Primordial Spirit at the fourth level of the Day Travel Realm, meant he dared not let his guard down.

Therefore, in addition to his inviolable morning patrol, he had deliberately added three more comprehensive scans of Changning City’s key nodes and peripheral areas—at noon, in the afternoon, and in the evening.

At this moment, he was silently sweeping through the borderlands between the city’s edge and the newly developed zone at a speed that nearly blended him with the wind.

His Primordial Spirit Power acted like the most precise of scanners, filtering every wisp of energy fluctuation and spiritual ripple.

Just as he passed over a newly built area that appeared peaceful and was mainly used for warehousing and logistics, an extremely faint, steady heartbeat—one that almost blended into the ambient noise—caught his attention.

The rhythm of this heartbeat was too regular—so regular that it didn’t seem like that of an ordinary person in a festive mood. It was more like the deliberate control exercised by someone on a deep infiltration mission.

Even more ingeniously, this person seemed to be carrying some sort of special device that could cleverly distort the weak energy flows around them, creating a natural optical and energetic camouflage layer that neatly evaded the city’s conventional monitoring systems.

If Li Wen’s Primordial Spirit Realm hadn’t already reached the Day Travel Realm, and if his soul’s Perception Power wasn’t so acute as to notice the slightest detail—combined with the powerful information-processing capabilities granted by his scholar profession—it would have been nearly impossible to isolate this barely detectable anomaly from the background noise.

’Huh? They still haven’t given up?’ Realization dawned on Li Wen. His figure froze in mid-air, and his gaze, sharp as lightning, locked onto the shadows on the roof of a large logistics warehouse below.

The spot appeared empty, but within his powerful Primordial Spirit perception, the clear outline of a humanoid figure emerged—crouched and perfectly blended with the surrounding light and shadows.

Without alerting anyone, an intangible yet immense and pure stream of Primordial Spirit Power surged from between Li Wen’s eyebrows.

This power wasn’t a crude assault but transformed into a strange ripple, containing a complex spiritual structure, that precisely enveloped the crouched figure.

The moment the ripple touched the target, it was like an invisible key sliding into a lock.

This was none other than one of the Primordial Spirit Secret Skills Li Wen had specifically cultivated after his Primordial Spirit broke through to the fourth level of the Day Travel Realm—the Illusion God Skill.

Its primary function was not to kill, but to achieve deep interference and control on a mental level.

Before the level of Li Wen’s Primordial Spirit Power, the target’s mental defenses were as flimsy as paper.

The spy’s body suddenly stiffened. His eyes instantly became vacant and blank, all his willpower shattered and remolded in a single moment.

Like a manipulated marionette, he mechanically rose from his hiding spot. Ignoring any normal path, his movements slightly stiff but his destination clear, he ran quickly toward Li Wen’s position.

Within the span of a few breaths, the spy was standing before Li Wen, his eyes dull and lifeless.

"Who sent you? What is your mission? Why have the infiltration attempts been so frequent lately?"

Li Wen’s voice was level, yet it carried a commanding, piercing quality that acted directly on the other’s chaotic sea of consciousness.

The spy’s lips moved, his voice flat and monotonous:

"Attached to the periphery of the ’Shadow’ Snake Division. Mission: Infiltrate and observe the troop movements of Changning City’s garrison, specifically Captain Li Wen’s patterns of movement and condition. The recent... frequent activity... is because... because..."

A flicker of struggle entered his words, as if he had touched upon some deeply encrypted core directive, but the power of the Illusion God Skill forcibly crushed this resistance.

"...because the Demon Race Royal Court has issued a war order. On January 27th, year 236 of the Galactic Calendar... which is today... New Year’s Eve... they will launch the first all-out offensive, codenamed ’Year’s End’."

"All Stargates... will be simultaneously hit by a maximum-scale invasion... The objective is... to tear through the Human Race’s defensive lines... The intelligence requirement... is to confirm the garrison details of each fortress... to provide guidance for the invasion force..."

New Year’s Eve! A full-scale offensive! All the Stargates!

Even with Li Wen’s current mental fortitude, when he heard this definitive news spill from the spy’s lips, his pupils contracted sharply, and a chill shot up his spine.

He instantly thought of the unusually frequent spy activity over the past month. ’It all makes sense now!’

He immediately used his implanted communicator to send the critical intelligence he had just obtained to the principal of Xinhuo University, using the highest level of encryption.