Chen Chuan watched him charge forward. From the earlier fight and the field's feedback, he could sense that what this man excelled at most was likely seizing jin.
However, possibly because the coverage of his mutated tissue was relatively high, he also incorporated some other jin techniques.
With such a fierce and uncompromising fighting style, his opponent likely wanted to take everyone down before the training class officially began—Chen Chuan included.
Having seen through his opponent's intention, he did not back away. Instead, just as Yu Lie wanted, he stepped forward to meet him. Making no attempt to dodge the outstretched hands, Chen Chuan raised an arm to block. Yu Lie swiftly grabbed his arm, and in that instant, a surge of seizing jin penetrated inward.
Seizing jin could immobilize mutated tissue and sever the flow of blood and the movement of muscle. Even someone with greater overall jin than Yu Lie would find it difficult to withstand. Yu Lie had been brimming with confidence, yet this time, once his jin permeated the arm, he discovered that it had no effect whatsoever.
His eyes narrowed. "External conditioning?"
Only external conditioning jin could withstand his locking jin head-on, but even in this situation, he did not panic.
Tough as external conditioning was to break, human anatomy inherently had far too many vulnerabilities that could be exploited—such as fragile spots and joints. His seizing techniques could still work just as well.
What truly astonished him was that his mental power hadn't shaken his opponent in the slightest.
He could tell that Chen Chuan was already walking this path, but judging by the gleam in the young man's eyes, it couldn't have been for very long. Considering he was considerably older than Chen Chuan, his mental power ought to have been far deeper.
Yet he had overlooked one thing: only a sufficiently strong body could nurture sufficiently strong spirit. Chen Chuan had always prioritized raising his fundamentals, cultivating an exceptionally abundant reservoir of mental power. And now, having mastered calming the mind and the tempering method, he would not be shaken by such a simple mental impact even without relying on his Second Self.
Just as Yu Lie was about to switch tactics, Chen Chuan, entirely unfazed, suddenly closed the distance before he could exert more force. Chen Chuan's other hand came up, gripping Yu Lie's arm, and a wave of seizing jin seeped in as well.
Yu Lie was intimately familiar with seizing. While slightly surprised that Chen Chuan could use it too, knowing how to apply it naturally meant he knew how to defend and break free. Furthermore, he believed Chen Chuan's move was ill-advised.
If Chen Chuan had maintained his external conditioning, Yu Lie would have had to seek another way to break through, risking an entanglement he preferred to avoid. But now, his opponent had willingly entered his domain of expertise. Sneering, he shifted his mutated tissue to neutralize the force, pulling outward with both arms to reverse the hold on Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan relaxed his grip, moving with Yu Lie's force as his fingers slid upward to clamp firmly onto Yu Lie's shoulder. In an instant, his force shifted into grappling-and-throwing jin.
This sudden change caught Yu Lie completely off guard. Defending against seizing jin and countering grappling-and-throwing jin were two completely different matters. He hurriedly adjusted the mutated tissue within his body.
But it was already too late. Chen Chuan's other hand swept around his waist, and as the two forces intersected, Yu Lie froze stiffly. Then, with a mere effortless heave, Chen Chuan hoisted him clear into the air.
After a momentary pause aloft, he slammed him down violently!
With a resounding crash, even the specially treated floor and reinforced subfloor shook violently, ripples pulsing outward across the ground.
Because Yu Lie had been locked tight and unable to marshal any mutated tissue to resist, the impact shattered the majority of the bones in his body. He lay sprawled in a contorted heap, his face pressed flat against the floor, while the teeth and jawbone that had mostly recovered from earlier shattered all over again.
Though he hadn't lost consciousness, he was pinned there unable to budge, looking utterly wretched.
Chen Chuan looked down at him. "Major Yu, you can go back and rest for a few days too."
Only three minutes had passed since the fight began, leaving seven or eight minutes before the training class officially started.
Yet despite the violence of the brawl, not a single person had come over.
Everyone was in the same training arena; there was no way those in the back were unaware of what was happening here. Yet no one stepped in to stop them.
This was a training class, not the military. Outside scheduled class hours, Chen Bitong bore no responsibility for their conduct or personal safety.
Footsteps sounded from outside, and Fang Zhixin walked in. Glancing at the gruesome sight on the floor, he shook his head and sent a notice through his boundary credential.
Before long, medical personnel arrived in haste and carried the injured away on stretchers.
Chen Chuan said, "Assistant Fang, you anticipated this would happen today, didn't you?"
Fang Zhixin replied helplessly, "Yu Lie is just that kind of person—he stirs up trouble wherever he goes. But he has backing, and since Teacher Chen didn't turn down his application, there was no way I could bar him."
Though he said this aloud, he knew in his heart that Yu Lie had likely come because he noticed the people from the Special Action Committee keeping tabs on Teacher Chen, and had intentionally come to crush the four of them.
Precisely because of that, Fang Zhixin had been glad to let it play out.
As for the fight spilling over to Chen Chuan—frankly, once Yu Lie went crazy, he was hard to rein in. Moreover, Fang Zhixin never believed Yu Lie posed any real threat to Chen Chuan, and had actually hoped this thorn in their side would suffer a setback of his own.
And indeed, reality had unfolded just as he imagined: Yu Lie was no match for Chen Chuan at all.
This was the best possible outcome.
As they spoke, Chen Bitong walked in. He didn't say a single word about what had just occurred, simply instructing Fang Zhixin to fill the vacant slots. Since there were people waiting outside every day for openings, a single word was all it took for replacements to immediately step in.
Seeing that the scheduled hour had arrived, he said to Chen Chuan, "Let's begin."
Chen Chuan nodded.
The surrounding scenery then began to shift. The training arena faded away, and once again, he found himself in the simulated Confluence.
Over the past few days, Chen Bitong had been teaching him how to deal with various creatures of the Confluence. The most troublesome among them was an entity situated somewhere between plant and animal known as "ghost vine root."
These things could lie dormant beneath the soil, completely invisible under normal circumstances. Yet once stirred, they erupted from the earth en masse, leaving nowhere to flee.
In that situation, one had to swiftly pinpoint the few with the strongest fields and destroy them to have any hope of escape.
Yet these things did not remain stationary, and their field fluctuations would wax and wane. He had to keep his mind focused on probing while constantly evading.
It was an immense test of both mental and physical stamina. The first time, he held out for two hours straight, but even by the time the simulation ended, he hadn't managed to wipe them all out.
After returning, he had pondered countermeasures repeatedly. It took three days before he could truly break out from their encirclement with speed and precision. Moreover, he felt that this training had significantly sharpened his ability to anticipate an enemy's intentions.
In that fight against Yu Lie, he had anticipated every move, predicting exactly what techniques his opponent would use and never letting Yu Lie fully unleash his strength from start to finish.
And this kind of growth could only be fostered by facing distinct, formidable enemies one after another. If Wuyi Academy focused primarily on honing his fundamentals, then the training class was meant to develop his practical combat capability and experience.
He only wondered what kind of opponent he would face today.
Just as he was thinking this, a burst of light appeared around him, and the previously coherent landscape suddenly seemed to fracture and blur into disarray.
His gaze sharpened slightly. He had seen this phenomenon before; it had happened when he clashed with that entity from the other side at the Convergence Boundary.
Chen Bitong spoke up: "In guarding the Ring of the World, our primary defense is against the infiltration of entities from the other side. Whenever the power of such an entity seeps through, the line between reality and illusion blurs.
"Whenever that happens, you must be careful. Often without realizing it, anyone whose consciousness is insufficiently steadfast and whose spirit is insufficiently cohesive will be corrupted by the entity from the other side.
"Among these, the most common and the most troublesome is a creature known as an 'Imprinter'—or you can call it an 'imprinter monster.'
"It has no physical form, but it can slip into a person's consciousness through cracks in their spirit.
"Unlike activation, it possesses full consciousness. Lurking inside a person's body, it subtly alters their perception and twists their thoughts, bending them to its will without their knowledge.
"It's just that ordinary people can hardly tell the difference. For instance, do you think the one talking to you right now is me... or an Imprinter?"
The first half of the sentence came from his mouth, but the second half drifted in from behind.
Chen Chuan turned his head to look. Another Chen Bitong was standing there.
Chen Bitong said, "As you can see, our strength is identical, our external appearance is the same, and there is no difference even in our tone and speech habits..."
Then the other Chen Bitong chimed in, "When even those closest to someone can't tell, how do you think you should distinguish between them?"
Chen Chuan considered this. Outside a simulated environment, it would actually be simple: the moment such an entity appeared, it would inevitably cause signs of derealization, allowing him to identify it immediately.
However, he also had to account for circumstances where corruption permeated everywhere; relying solely on his Second Self might make it difficult to locate the true source, which meant alternative methods would be needed to verify.
He turned the thought over and said, "I think that in such a case, we might be able to start with the activation index. Because, Teacher Chen, you once mentioned that a spiritual parasite cannot fully harmonize with a physical body in a short time, which inevitably creates discordance."
Chen Bitong nodded. "You've hit on the crucial point. An Imprinter's activation index always falls within the range of thirty to forty. That can indeed help you pinpoint the issue.
"However, you cannot rely entirely on that. After all, a detector is just an instrument—you cannot be certain whether what you're seeing is completely untampered with. Furthermore, if you fail to detect it at the start, once it achieves complete harmony, spotting flaws becomes even harder.
"So I need you to remember: when you suspect something is wrong with a teammate, there is one simplest method..."
He said in a slow, deep voice, "Explain the situation to your teammate, and then strike him decisively. If he resists, show no mercy—because in such circumstances, ensuring your own safety must always come first."
"But..." Chen Chuan looked up at him. "How do I prove to my teammate that there's nothing wrong with me either?"
Chapter 497