Experience

"Ahem... there's something I want to say."

After a brief silence, Maige curled his right hand into a fist, held it before his mouth, and cleared his throat.

Lu Yuan and Yang Ping looked over at him. Yang Ping asked with mild curiosity:

"What is it, Senior Maige?"

"I'll be graduating in a few days."

Maige said with a somewhat wistful smile.

Both Lu Yuan and Yang Ping were momentarily taken aback, then remembered that Maige was already in his sixth year — graduation really was around the corner.

Yang Ping glanced around the dormitory and said, "After Senior Si Tingfeng graduated, no new students moved in here. Now that you're leaving too, Senior Maige, it'll just be me and Yuan-bro left — and Yuan-bro is out half the time, so really it'll be me rattling around in this room alone."

At that, a small smile crossed Yang Ping's face. Honestly, that didn't sound too bad.

In the Talent Camp, students were few in number but dormitory buildings were plentiful, so a student living alone wasn't especially unusual.

Lu Yuan looked at Maige curiously. "Where do you plan to go after graduation, Senior Maige?"

Maige laughed. "I just got back in touch with Senior Si Tingfeng, actually. The plan is to join the Red Maple Guard first, get some field experience under my belt. My old man at home is still running things himself, so nothing there really needs me. He's on board with it."

Lu Yuan smiled. "That's not bad at all. Since you'll still be in the Imperial Capital, we can get together regularly."

Like Si Tingfeng — even after graduating, he still gathered with the group for meals fairly often. Of course, the Tong Menghan incident had put him under disciplinary restrictions lately, so he rarely got out, but Lu Yuan understood.

At their last get-together, Si Tingfeng had brought up how Tong Menghan had died after the Soul-Devouring Orb backlashed on her. He'd seemed low at the time. But from the look of him recently, he appeared to have moved on.

That had been a quiet relief to all three of them.

Yang Ping glanced at Maige, then smiled. "I'll be graduating in three years myself. Maybe I'll join the Red Maple Guard then too — having two seniors there to look out for me would be pretty nice."

Maige nodded, grinning broadly. "Don't worry. Three years from now, your senior here will definitely have a decent position. Looking after you won't be any trouble."

Neither Lu Yuan nor Yang Ping argued the point. It was entirely realistic.

Maige was already at Battle Venerable rank, which placed him squarely in the mid-tier management bracket of the Red Maple Guard's power structure.

Of course, he would still need to put in ground-level time when he first started. But his advancement would come far faster than the average recruit.

And the Talent Camp, after all, existed to cultivate elite talents for the Empire. In any official organization they joined, graduates could count on solid advancement channels.

Maige finished speaking, let out a long sigh, and turned to Lu Yuan with a smile:

"Too bad you went and joined the Night Watchmen, A-Yuan, and became an Honorary Elder. If you'd joined the Red Maple Guard, the four of us brothers could have been together again. The three of us could've been riding your coattails."

Hearing this, Yang Ping thought of something and laughed. "Didn't Senior Si Tingfeng say the exact same thing to you last time, Yuan-bro?"

Lu Yuan smiled as well. "The Red Maple Guard's management style is way too strict. You both know what I'm like — rigid environments aren't for me. At least with the Night Watchmen, I'm just an Honorary Elder. I'm basically free to do as I please."

Yang Ping and Maige both nodded. After three years together, they had a clear enough picture of who Lu Yuan was.

Maige didn't push the topic further. He smiled and said:

"When I graduate in a few days, let's call up Senior Si Tingfeng and get the four of us together."

"Will Senior Si Tingfeng be allowed out?" Yang Ping asked.

"We can try asking."

Maige didn't have a definite answer either.

The three of them chatted through breakfast, and before long the meal was finished. Then everyone went their separate ways.

Lu Yuan left the dormitory and made his way to Si Tingyu's residential building.

He knocked. The door was opened by Si Tingyu's AI household assistant.

"Welcome, Student Lu Yuan."

Lu Yuan stepped inside, swept a glance over the living room, and found Si Tingyu absent. He asked offhandedly:

"Where's my mentor?"

"The mistress is currently in the cultivation chamber."

Of course. He nodded and headed down.

Descending the stairs to the underground chamber, he found Si Tingyu seated cross-legged in the center of the room, Spirit Power surging around her in slow, steady waves.

At the sound of footsteps, Si Tingyu opened her eyes and looked up.

Those golden-red slit pupils gleamed like the most radiant of gemstones.

Her eyes brightened. She gave Lu Yuan a single nod, expression as composed and serious as ever:

"You're here."

Lu Yuan smiled and nodded. "Mm. I feel like I've made some more progress on Heaven-Sundering Slash."

Si Tingyu gave a small nod, then said:

"You've broken through to Battle Sovereign. Shall we spar?"

Lu Yuan blinked and glanced at her with a trace of surprise. "Mentor — what kind of spar did you have in mind?"

A flicker of battle-intent lit up in Si Tingyu's eyes.

"Let's go to space. A real fight."

Seeing the focus and eagerness in her gaze, Lu Yuan thought for a moment, then smiled and nodded. "Alright."

He was fairly certain his current strength already far outstripped hers — but his mentor had made the request, and he wasn't going to refuse. He could always dial himself back a little, make sure she didn't feel completely outclassed.

The moment he agreed, Spirit Power surged around Si Tingyu, and fighting spirit rose with it.

Lu Yuan noted that his mentor's enthusiasm for combat put even Li Qinghe's to shame.

Si Tingyu looked at him, barely containing her impatience. "Use your spatial movement to take us out there — it'll be faster."

Lu Yuan had no objection. He placed his hand on her shoulder. Space rippled — and the two of them vanished.

The next instant, they appeared in the open void above Great Qi Star.

For Gene Warriors, reaching Battle King Rank was the threshold at which the continuous evolution of their genes, combined with engraved Transcendent Genes, became sufficient to sustain survival in the vacuum of space.

At Battle Sovereign level, as long as one avoided truly extreme environments — black holes, neutron stars, and the like — survival in space was no different from breathing open air.

Both Lu Yuan and Si Tingyu were Battle Sovereigns, and this posed no difficulty for either of them.

Si Tingyu knew Lu Yuan's spatial abilities were formidable. She took a quick glance around, found nothing out of the ordinary, and drifted away from him to a position several hundred meters out. The two faced each other across the void.

Golden battle armor materialized around her body. A massive spear appeared in her hand. Fine, spectral golden Scale Armor shimmered across the surface of her skin, making her look like royalty — a dragon princess descending from the heavens. Golden markings flowed and expanded around her, and the aura radiating from her was savage and unrestrained, nearly forming a spatial storm in the surrounding vacuum.

Si Tingyu's expression was serious and focused. She raised her spear, eyes fixed on Lu Yuan, and sent her voice directly to his mind:

"A-Yuan, don't hold back. I want to know exactly how strong you are right now."

Lu Yuan blinked. Then he smiled and sent back: "Understood."

Spirit Power stirred around him, and a faint shimmer of phantom stardust began to drift across his body. A complex, profound stellar pattern appeared on his forehead — utterly unlike the markings of the old Great Solar Spirit Body. Those old markings felt almost crude by comparison.

Out here in open space, wreathed in ghostly reflections of starlight, Lu Yuan looked like an emissary sent down from among the stars themselves.

As the Stellar Body activated, his aura surged dramatically beyond what it had been — a force that already eclipsed Si Tingyu's entirely.

Feeling that overwhelming pressure wash over her, a chill ran through Si Tingyu. Genuine shock flickered across her face.

She had known Lu Yuan was extraordinary. But for someone who had only just broken through to Battle Sovereign to radiate a threat that felt lethal at her core — that was still difficult to accept.

Then she recalled something Li Qinghe had mentioned in passing — that Lu Yuan's strength, even back at Battle King Rank, had already been no less than her own. Her expression eased slightly.

*He's probably still holding back even now... no, definitely. And quite a lot.*

The thought left Si Tingyu with complicated feelings — pride and a wry, helpless frustration all at once.

Meanwhile, Lu Yuan was quietly familiarizing himself with the stellar energy flowing through him. This was his first time using the Stellar Body in open space, and the amplification it provided was even stronger than he had anticipated.

What he was displaying right now was perhaps a tenth of the Stellar Body's true potential — and that was before accounting for his other Combat Techniques and their stacking effects.

This was a spar with his mentor. Lu Yuan figured showing just a bit more than her natural output was the right call — enough to feel credible, not so much that it became obvious he was restraining himself, and considerate of her pride.

While he was still calculating, Si Tingyu's voice reached him:

"A-Yuan — I'm coming."

He looked up.

The golden markings around Si Tingyu erupted like a storm made visible. She vanished from her position, the spatial disturbance of her passage tearing outward through the vacuum. Her spear, trailing cascades of golden dragon phantoms, drove straight toward him.

Lu Yuan made a show of dodging, then swept his greatsword in a broad horizontal arc and caught the spear head-on.

The collision was soundless — as everything was in the void — but the shockwave it sent rippling through space was ferocious. The two figures flashed and darted through the vacuum, trading thousands of blows in the span of moments.

In terms of raw power, Lu Yuan had completely outclassed his mentor. But he discovered — to his genuine surprise — that when it came to combat experience, and to the precise application of Spirit Techniques and Body Techniques, Si Tingyu, who frequently trained in the Upper Layer of the Land of Origin, had a clear edge over him.

Fighting at just slightly above her output level, Lu Yuan found he simply couldn't suppress her. It was more troublesome than expected.

He could understand why. His cultivation time had been short, and he'd survived precious few battles that truly qualified as life-or-death. Along the way, his opponents had rarely been powerful enough to push him anywhere near his limits — many hadn't even required him to go all out.

By the standards of equal-rank combat, Lu Yuan's battle experience was simply lacking.

*That's a problem.* That Aberration Feral Beast would almost certainly match or exceed him in fighting power — it wouldn't hand him the kind of easy advantages his opponents so far had. If he faced it right now, even throwing every trump card he had, he wasn't confident he'd win.

What had started as a casual exercise to accompany his mentor had turned into something genuinely useful. Lu Yuan steadied his focus, calibrated his output with care, and committed to the fight with full attention.

The sparring went on for a long while, until Si Tingyu's Spirit Power began to flag. They withdrew from the exchange by mutual unspoken agreement.

Si Tingyu looked at Lu Yuan — not a hair out of place, not the slightest shortness of breath — and a new layer of complexity settled into her expression.

She transmitted to him: "Let's head back."

Lu Yuan understood what she meant. He nodded, moved to her side, and rested his hand on her shoulder. Space rippled — and the two of them disappeared.

Underground cultivation chamber, Si Tingyu's dormitory building, Talent Camp.

Space folded, and Lu Yuan and Si Tingyu stepped back into existence.

Once back, Si Tingyu let out a quiet breath. The Gene Armament around her dissolved, leaving her in her original loose martial arts clothes.

From the intensity of the fight, the fabric was completely soaked through with sweat and clung close to her body.

Lu Yuan retracted his own Gene Armament — and quietly stole a few glances.

A flush crept across Si Tingyu's cheeks. Somewhat self-conscious, she reached up and covered herself.

The corner of Lu Yuan's mouth twitched. *So mentor really is aware of just how... striking she is in that department.*

"I'm going to shower," Si Tingyu said.

"Sure. I'll wait here."

He caught the sharp, pointed look she gave him and promptly fell into line, nodding with exaggerated compliance.

Si Tingyu retreated into the washroom and changing area adjoining the underground chamber. Lu Yuan settled onto the floor and let his mind drift back through the fight.

There was no denying it — the spar had done him genuine good. Against an opponent at his mentor's level, a Battle Sovereign with real experience, his raw strength was enough to overwhelm her completely. But in an equal-rank engagement against someone just as powerful, that experience gap would be a serious liability.

He turned over his shortcomings in his mind. Before long, the washroom door opened and Si Tingyu stepped out in fresh white martial arts clothes — the loose fabric restoring all her usual composed severity and concealing what had been briefly, accidentally visible.

Noticing the look on his face, she reached up and tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear, baring the refined, pale line of her profile. She settled cross-legged in front of him and said:

"You're thinking about the fight just now?"

Lu Yuan came back to himself and nodded. "Yeah."

Si Tingyu was quiet for a moment.

"Your true strength is probably far beyond mine at this point. As for the experience — we can spar more going forward. We could even invite Qinghe to join us. It'll come with time."

A slightly awkward look crossed Lu Yuan's face.

So his mentor had already seen through the fact that he'd been holding back.

But her suggestion wasn't bad. Both she and Li Qinghe had seen far more real combat than he had. Regular sparring with them would yield results.

Of course, ideally he would find a Battle Saint of comparable strength to train against. But Battle Saints simply didn't exist on Great Qi Star — and practically speaking, Battle Sovereigns and Battle Emperors weren't meaningfully different as training partners from where he currently stood.

Seeing him lost in thought, Si Tingyu sat quietly for a moment. Then something seemed to occur to her. A trace of color rose in her cheeks.

"By the way — my ancestor wants to meet you."

Lu Yuan blinked and looked at her with an expression of surprise. "Mentor — are you talking about Old Man Si Qi?"

Si Tingyu gave a small nod. The flush on her face deepened noticeably.

Lu Yuan was puzzled. What could the old man possibly want with him?

Still, he had no reason to refuse. He smiled and nodded. "Of course. When?"

"Now, if that works."

Si Tingyu thought for a moment, then said.