High Martial: I Grind Professions

A clear, sonorous cry of a blade.

It rang out without warning in the void, a space already filled with the roar of energy.

Like a dragon’s roar piercing the Nine Heavens.

It instantly drowned out the roars of the mechanical puppets’ engines and the hum of their accumulating energy.

A brilliant flash of blade light, condensed to its absolute limit, suddenly flared, seeming to split space itself.

There were no flashy techniques, no wind-up. Only the purest of horizontal slashes.

It was a skill honed through countless trials, returned to its simplest, most essential form.

The blade light flowed like mercury, seeping into every crack. It was like a fleeting shadow, too fast for the eye to follow.

Spreading out at a speed that defied thought, it was silent yet utterly domineering.

In an instant, it covered all the charging puppets in a fan-shaped area before him.

SHRRIIIP—!

There was no earth-shattering collision, only a soft yet piercingly clear tearing sound.

For a moment, time itself seemed to freeze, held in place by an unseen force.

Then, whether it was the heavy melee puppets still in their charging stances,

or the ranged puppets in the rear, accumulating energy for a second volley of particle beams, all of them froze in place.

It was as if someone had pressed pause.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! ...

An unending series of explosions, like the sudden, rapid beat of a drum, replaced the brief, deathly silence.

Over a hundred mechanical puppets, forged from dark alloy and possessing formidable Defense Power, all at the same instant,

were utterly shredded and torn apart by that seemingly simple blade light, which contained the Law of Annihilation!

Their sturdy alloy shells were easily pierced and cut, as if they were fragile sheets of paper.

They dissolved into countless metal fragments that scattered and flew through the void.

A single slash!

The first section of the first layer, cleared in an instant!

A cold, synthetic voice immediately rang out, devoid of any emotion:

"Targets eliminated. Congratulations on passing the first section of the first layer. You will now proceed to the middle section of the first layer."

The fragments lingering in the void vanished without a trace, as if the recent destruction had never happened.

The space before the platform warped and rippled once more.

Mechanical puppets with discernibly stronger auras began to materialize.

The weapons in their hands glinted with a more dangerous light.

On the runic platform, Li Wen’s expression was as placid as still water, his deep eyes showing not the slightest ripple.

Even the wrist of the hand holding his blade did not tremble in the slightest.

It was as if that earth-shattering slash had been nothing more than him casually brushing away a speck of dust.

He didn’t pause. He didn’t even look at the new enemies materializing before him. He simply took a step forward.

His posture was calm, yet the step carried an unstoppable resolve.

He advanced to meet the burgeoning jungle of steel.

In the subsequent middle and final sections, the number, variety, coordination, and even individual strength of the mechanical puppets all increased.

However, before Li Wen’s long blade, all resistance was futile.

His movements were as smooth as flowing water. Every swing of his blade precisely struck the weakest point in a puppet’s defenses.

Every flash of his blade was accompanied by the disintegration and explosion of countless puppets, which turned into new fragments to be erased by space.

Soon, the few elite puppets in the final section of the first layer—those with special abilities that tried to activate their self-destruct sequence upon near-death to take the intruder down with them—

couldn’t even fully detonate their self-destruct energy.

A faster, colder flash of blade light completely annihilated them, cores and all, reducing them to the finest metal dust.

"Final section of the first layer passed. Congratulations on successfully clearing the first layer of the Heaven-Reaching Tower," the synthetic voice announced again, emotionlessly.

On the runic platform, Li Wen’s figure flickered slightly, like a ripple on water.

The next moment, he vanished from his spot.

He reappeared higher up, before a massive, heavy metal door engraved with complex runes that led to the second layer.

He was, without a doubt, the first among the nearly one hundred people in the second batch to enter the Heaven-Reaching Tower to clear the first layer.

The time he took was so short that it was likely a record rarely seen in the decades-long history of the Moluo Empire’s No. 7 Elite Training Base.

「Meanwhile, outside the Heaven-Reaching Tower, before a giant, ring-shaped light screen.」

The light screen clearly displayed the progress of the second batch of entrants.

Nearly a hundred dots of light, each representing a different Trial Taker, were densely clustered in the light band representing the first layer of the Heaven-Reaching Tower.

The light bands representing the layers grew darker in color from bottom to top, intuitively showing the layer number.

Below the light screen, a large crowd of new recruits who had either finished or were waiting for their test had gathered.

There were also many older members who had come to watch the show after hearing the news.

Everyone’s eyes were focused on the screen, assessing the potential of this new batch.

But the next second, a single, unremarkable dot of light in the first layer’s band suddenly shot up like the morning star in the night sky.

Under the astonished, bewildered, and disbelieving gazes of the crowd, it abruptly broke away from the cluster of stars in the first layer’s band.

It leaped up to the band representing the second layer.

And at that moment, it was the only point of light in that area.

"Huh?!"

An older member from a previous batch, who had a single, spirally-patterned horn on his forehead, abruptly dropped his folded arms. He leaned forward, a look of clear surprise on his face.

He stared intently at the solitary speck of starlight hanging in the second layer on the screen, his tone laced with intense disbelief.

"That fast?! How long has the second batch been in there? Two minutes? No, it doesn’t even feel like two minutes! This guy... is that much faster than the kid from the Holy Radiance Race?!"

He subconsciously glanced at another screen nearby, which displayed the clear times for the first batch.

The name Keynes Huiyao was prominently displayed, followed by: First Layer Clear Time - 2 minutes 58 seconds.

"He’s on the second layer already? Who in the second batch is capable of that? Could it be Lorne Meck from the Meck family?"

Someone next to him immediately guessed, their voice full of doubt, as they anxiously searched the second batch’s list for the light dot corresponding to Lorne.

"Definitely not him." An older member who was well-informed and seemed to know a lot about the new batch immediately shook his head and denied it, his tone exceptionally certain.

"Lorne’s strength is decent, sure. He reached Master 6-Star in the Extreme Combat Arena, so he’s one of the best in the second batch.

"But he’s still clearly a step below Keynes Huiyao from the Holy Radiance Race in the first batch.

"It took Keynes almost three minutes to clear the first layer, and that’s the fastest record among the new recruits so far. It’s impossible for Lorne to be faster than him!"

"Then who could it be?" The crowd grew even more confused, their eyes scanning the lists that matched the light dot numbers to their corresponding names.

"Besides Lorne, who else in the second batch has that kind of ability? Is it that guy from the Flame Race who’s always on fire? He didn’t look that fast..."

"Wait." Suddenly, a thought flashed like lightning through the mind of an older member standing in the corner. He spoke hesitantly, his voice soft but dropping into the conversation like a stone into a still pond:

"You guys think... could it be... the one with a bone age of forty?" He was referring to Li Wen.

The results of the bone age test had already spread quietly through the crowd.

"That Blue Star Human, Li Wen, with the special grade bone age?" The chatter stopped, and everyone’s gaze subconsciously refocused on the light dot number representing Li Wen.

But almost immediately, expressions of "impossible" and "you’ve got to be kidding" appeared on everyone’s faces as they shook their heads.

"What kind of intergalactic joke is that!" a burly older member with muscles as gnarled as rock scoffed decisively. His voice was loud and carried an undeniable note of negation.

"Reaching the peak of the Venerable Realm at a bone age of forty, and also meeting the minimum skill requirement for the trial, is already a miracle that happens once in a blue moon. Even in our Moluo Empire, people like that are as rare as a phoenix’s feather!

"And his combat power is this heaven-defying on top of that? Clearing the first layer more than twice as fast as the genius from the Holy Radiance Race? Absolutely impossible! It’s a complete fantasy!"

He glanced around as if to convince everyone, "A monster like that, forget about our Moluo Empire, even in the high-tier empires that rule the Alka Supercluster, he’d be considered a top-tier genius!

"He would’ve been snatched up long ago by the Source Net headquarters or one of those legendary sacred lands or super-factions to be a core legacy disciple.

"How could he possibly end up assigned to a base under our Moluo Empire? To be tested and ranked alongside us?"

"Exactly! It’s too ridiculous!" another older member agreed emphatically, adding, "A special grade for bone age is already a miracle of miracles. For his combat power to be this exaggerated on top of it is completely illogical.

"It’s probably just someone from the second batch whose strength we underestimated, or someone who was deliberately hiding it. Like that kid from the ’Shadow Race’ who’s been keeping a low profile. Maybe speed is his specialty."

Everyone nodded in agreement, forcibly suppressing this shocking, sense-defying speculation.

They were more inclined to believe it was some low-key dark horse or someone with a special ability.

However, unlike these older members who could still maintain a calm analysis,

for the members of the first batch, who were from the same class and had just completed their own tests with varying results,

the shock and impact of seeing this were much more intense.

It also directly challenged the confidence and understanding of the rankings they had just established.

After all, they would be competing with this person for rankings later.

Pato Ironscale’s reaction was the most intense.

His vertical pupils stared fixedly at the solitary dot of light on the second layer of the screen. When someone nearby mentioned, "could it be that Blue Star native," his already gloomy face instantly turned uglier, as if he had been gravely insulted.

"Hmph!" Pato snorted a puff of hot air from his nostrils. His grating voice, like metal scraping against metal, was loud and filled with disdain and forced belittlement:

"Him, the first to reach the second layer? Ridiculous! With his ninth-grade bloodline, it’s questionable if he can even make it to the 3rd Layer."

Keynes Huiyao’s reaction, however, was completely different from Pato’s.

When Keynes Huiyao’s gaze caught the point of light on the screen—the one representing a member of the second batch, and the only one to have ascended to the second layer—

the handsome, proud, and confident smile he had constantly maintained on his face vanished without a trace, revealing his true shock and coldness underneath.

An indescribable astonishment and a bone-chilling sense of crisis suddenly washed over him.

’Three minutes...’ Keynes thought to himself, reciting his own time for clearing the first layer—2 minutes and 58 seconds.