Chapter 77: Rank is just a number

The grey light filtering through the high, narrow window found Lin Tian on the floor. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t need to. His entire world was the new landscape of his body.

Every meridian felt like a cracked glass pipe, throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. But inside that fragile network, a lake of power waited, deep and still and terrifyingly vast. He breathed in, and the spiritual energy in the cell shivered.

The black door slid open with a hiss of releasing seals.

Two guards in Azure Snow robes stood silhouetted in the doorway. Their auras were solid, Core Formation realm. They looked at him, a heap of blood-stained robes on the stone, and their expressions didn’t change.

“Up,” the one on the left said. His voice was flat, bored. “Your reflection period is complete.”

Lin Tian pushed himself to his knees. The movement sent jagged lines of pain through his chest and arms. He saw the guards notice the dried blood on his face, the way his hands trembled. They saw a broken candidate. They did not see the lake.

He stood, his legs holding, and walked out between them.

The corridor outside was a seamless tube of pale blue ice-stone, glowing with embedded light. They led him silently through a maze of identical passages. Lin Tian focused on his breathing, on containing the vast energy within his damaged frame. It was like trying to hold a tidal wave in a basket of twigs.

They emerged onto a high gallery overlooking one of the outer training courtyards. Morning mist clung to the frost-rimed stones below. A few early disciples were already practicing forms, their breaths puffing white in the air.

“You are released to your quarters,” the same guard said, stopping. “The disciplinary ledger is marked. Do not return to the Reflection Tower.”

They left him there without another glance.

Lin Tian leaned against the icy railing, letting the cold bite into his palms. The pain helped him focus. He looked down at his hands. The superficial cuts from the cave were mostly healed, but a network of fine, dark lines mapped the more serious meridian damage beneath his skin. They looked like cracks in porcelain.

He pushed off the railing and started the long walk back to the Outer Candidate Quarters. Each step was a calculation of weight and balance. The sheer power inside him wanted to explode into movement, to test its new limits. He forced it down to a crawl.

The main path was coming to life. Disciples nodded to each other, talked in low groups. They saw him, and the conversations stuttered. Eyes flicked to him, then away. The news had spread. The cripple-turned-candidate who’d been dragged to the Reflection Tower in chains. The one who’d thrown away his rank for a friend.

He saw the new ranking slab near the commissary. A small crowd was gathered. He didn’t need to push through to see. His name, Lin Tian, was now etched beside the number #30. A steep fall from the heights of #14. A murmur passed through the crowd as they noticed him standing there.

“Looks like the tower took the fight out of him,” someone muttered, not quietly enough.

Lin Tian kept walking.

He was almost to the arched gateway of his residential block when the air in front of him changed. It grew colder, sharper, like the prelude to a blizzard.

Three disciples stepped out from behind a frost-sculpted pillar, blocking the path. The two on the sides were familiar, bruisers from the Frozen Sword Faction he’d brushed past before. But the man in the center was new.

He was tall, with a lean frame that looked carved from glacier ice. His Azure Snow robes were of a finer cut, trimmed with silver thread that denoted inner disciple status. His hair was black and pulled into a severe topknot, his face all sharp angles and disdain. His eyes, a pale grey, swept over Lin Tian from head to toe, lingering on the bloodstains.

This was Ye Feng.

The leader of the Frozen Sword Faction didn’t smile. His expression was one of cold, academic disappointment.

“Lin Tian,” Ye Feng said. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the morning air like a razor. “The Rank thirty.”

He let the number hang there, an indictment.

The two flanking disciples smirked. A few other passersby slowed, sensing a confrontation.

Lin Tian stopped. He said nothing. He just looked at Ye Feng.

“I reviewed the trial records,” Ye Feng continued, taking a slow step forward. “A pity. You showed a spark of something in the caves. Cunning, if not honor. But this?” He gestured vaguely toward the ranking slab’s direction. “Throwing away your position for sentiment? Letting a weakling like Xu Wen play on your guilt? It’s… pedestrian.”

He shook his head, a master disappointed in a student.

“Feng Jian was a blunt instrument. I expected more from the man who broke him. But it seems the tower showed you your true level. Back where you belong. Lingering in the dirt with the other outer trash.”

The insults were deliberate, precise. Designed to provoke a reaction, to make Lin Tian flare his aura, shout, something.

Lin Tian felt the vast lake of power inside him stir. The cracked meridians twinged in warning. He breathed out, a slow, white plume in the cold air.

His hand moved to the hilt of the simple sword at his hip, the one his clan had given him, plain and unadorned. The motion was smooth, unhurried. The whisper of steel leaving the scabbard was the loudest sound on the path.

Ye Feng’s pale eyes narrowed slightly. A flicker of surprise, then cold amusement. “You would draw on me? You think rank thirty gives you that right?”

“You talk too much,” Lin Tian said. His voice was rough from disuse, but utterly flat.

It was the first and only sentence he offered.

He moved.

It wasn’t the explosive, blinding speed of his healthy self. It was something else. His body, for all its pain, was a conduit for the lake. He didn’t push power to his limbs. He simply let a fraction of it flow.

He closed the ten paces between them in less than a heartbeat.

Ye Feng’s amusement vanished. His own sword, a sleek blade of bluish ice-metal, appeared in his hand as if by magic. He brought it up in a perfect, defensive arc, frost qi crystallizing the air in its wake. A textbook Inner Disciple response.

Lin Tian didn’t aim for the blade. He aimed for the space Ye Feng’s body would occupy after the parry.

His plain sword changed trajectory mid-strike, not with a flourish, but with a simple, brutal adjustment of his wrist. It slid past the frosty parry like it wasn’t there.

The flat of his blade connected with a sickening crack against Ye Feng’s jaw.

Ye Feng’s head snapped sideways. A spray of saliva and blood painted the frost on the cobblestones. He stumbled back two steps, his eyes wide with shock and rage.

The two flanking disciples froze, their smirks wiped away.

“You dare—” Ye Feng snarled, the words garbled by his already swelling jaw.

Lin Tian was already on him.

He didn’t use a technique. He didn’t summon ice or fire. He used the overwhelming weight of his peak Elementary Realm power, focused through the point of his sword. He thrust, not at a vital spot, but at the center of Ye Feng’s hastily gathered frost armor.

The armor shattered like sugar glass.

The force of the blow didn’t pierce flesh. It transferred through, a concussive wave that slammed into Ye Feng’s chest.

There was a sound like a sack of grain hitting the ground. Ye Feng flew backward, his sword clattering from his numb fingers. He hit the frozen pillar behind him with enough force to crack the ice, then slumped to the ground, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.

Lin Tian walked forward, his steps measured. He stopped in front of the wheezing inner disciple. He looked down.

Ye Feng looked up, his face a mask of pain and humiliation. He tried to speak, to curse, but only a wet gasp came out.

Lin Tian reversed his grip on his sword. He raised it, the point aimed downward.

For a heart-stopping second, the onlookers thought he meant to finish it.

Instead, he drove the tip of his blade into the cobblestone, an inch from Ye Feng’s ear. The stone split with a sharp crack. The sword stood there, quivering.

Lin Tian leaned down, close enough for only Ye Feng to hear. His voice was still that flat, quiet rasp.

“Rank is just a number.”

He straightened up. He left his sword planted in the stone. He turned his back on the leader of the Frozen Sword Faction, on the stunned disciples, on the frozen audience.

He walked through the arched gateway and into the quiet of his residential block.

Behind him, the only sounds were Ye Feng’s ragged, choking breaths and the faint, persistent hum of the sword vibrating in the fractured stone.

End of Chapter 77

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep