The training hall was wide and empty.
With a wooden sword in hand, Chen Qianyu cut cleanly through the alloy sandbag in front of her. The heavy bag toppled with a series of metallic thuds, then was dragged away to the rear. Moments later, a new alloy sandbag slid into place.
Qianyu, however, looked anything but satisfied.
She flipped the sword into a reverse grip, let the blade drag lightly along the floor as she took a few steps, and returned to her starting spot.
Talulah had left her only a few lines—just a handful of words, really. Yet somehow, those words had changed the way she understood the sword.
But no matter what she tried, she couldn't replicate Talulah's naturalness.
Back then, when Talulah swung that terrifying strike inside the Superdomain Test Grounds, Qianyu had been there. She'd seen it with her own eyes.
How should she describe that slash?
"Even heaven and earth lose their color" wasn't an exaggeration. The residual heat from that single strike lingered for hours before fading.
It was the kind of power you only heard about in old tales—some mysterious swordsman cleaving the clouds in half with one stroke.
Of course Qianyu wanted strength like that.
But she also knew she couldn't reach it. Not yet.
So she was imitating.
She wanted to capture the feeling of the moment Talulah raised her sword.
As if something clicked into place, Qianyu returned to her stance, slowly closed her eyes, and let her presence sharpen.
Her aura grew fierce—razor-keen to the point where even watching her made the eyes sting.
It wasn't that she couldn't control herself. This technique simply was like that.
Like an animal before a fight, she bared her most threatening edge—gathering everything for one decisive burst.
At the instant her momentum peaked, Qianyu vanished.
A single slash.
Even though she held only a training sword, a blade of intent tore across the alloy dummy, carving a clean, vertical mark from base to crown. The cut line gleamed faintly inside the metal like a mirror catching light.
She instinctively went to sheath the sword—then froze.
Her wooden blade was full of cracks.
It was coming apart in her hands. Fine chips of wood littered the floor.
"Clap, clap, clap."
Applause sounded behind her.
Qianyu whipped around—then relaxed completely the moment she saw who it was.
"…Ah. Teacher Bai Ling."
She let out a long breath, then bounced over to his side with a smile.
"That technique just now was very good," Bai Ling said. "It had your flavor."
Truthfully, Chen Qianyu was a genius—no, not just a genius, but the kind of genius people only hear about.
Talulah hadn't had time to teach her anything in detail. At most, she'd left a few comments.
And yet the strike Qianyu just used was unmistakably the one Talulah had unleashed in the Test Grounds.
The power wasn't comparable, of course—but the essence was.
Seeing a move once, remembering it, and reproducing it this quickly… that kind of learning ability was far beyond ordinary.
"…Huh? My flavor?" Qianyu tilted her head. Compared to the praise, that last phrase was what caught her. "What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like."
Talulah was a Drac—an almost extinct red dragon, with true dragon blood in her veins. Her swordsmanship wasn't merely refined; it was fused with terrifying Originium Arts, producing an overwhelming, brute-force beauty.
Qianyu didn't have that kind of raw power.
So she'd made the move her own.
She was fast—decisive, piercing, explosive.
Talulah's version crushed the battlefield with sheer pressure and inevitability, then rolled forward in broad, unstoppable arcs.
Qianyu's version was different:
Fast. Precise. Collapse on contact.
Same foundation—completely different expression.
Her charge time was shorter, her motion tighter, her range smaller. But the point-impact was arguably even more frightening than Talulah's—because it was so concentrated.
Hearing Bai Ling put it that way, Qianyu finally looked relieved.
"If you say that, Teacher Bai Ling, then I'm not worried anymore."
"Learning more is good," Bai Ling said, "but if you learn too many things without digesting them, you'll end up tripping over yourself, Qianyu."
There was something Bai Ling couldn't quite put into words.
Every time he watched Qianyu's swordplay, he felt a strange sense of a gap—like something was missing.
Not that her swordsmanship was bad.
It was that her swordsmanship felt incomplete.
A proper sword style should connect like a single thread. But Qianyu's style was like a bottle filled only halfway.
Her fundamentals lacked something, and she was compensating with talent—patching gaps by creating new moves on the fly, stitching them into place.
Yet even those stitched-in sequences looked strangely harmonious. You could tell some transitions weren't from her original system, but they still didn't clash at all.
According to Qianyu, she had taught herself from ancient manuals. She had a teacher, but that teacher mainly drilled her basics and gave little guidance on the improvised parts.
Meaning: this half-missing, self-assembled style… was what she'd built with her own hands.
Bai Ling wasn't a swordsman. But a gourmet doesn't need to be a chef to notice when a dish is unbalanced.
He could see the deficiency.
He just couldn't fix it for her.
"…I know," Qianyu said, grinning. "But that technique is so cool! Don't you feel it?!"
She was fully in fangirl mode. Bai Ling couldn't even bring himself to argue. In the end, he only sighed.
It wasn't her fault.
Talulah really was the kind of person girls tended to like.
If he thought back to Terra, he could name more than a handful of girls who'd been drawn to Talulah.
A beauty deserved a strong person—and she herself was the strong person.
…He wondered how she was doing now.
With the "future sight" he'd given her, would she be able to twist her fate, even a little?
Unlike Eyjafjalla, Talulah hadn't left behind anything to enable another summon.
"Teacher Bai Ling?"
Qianyu waved a hand in front of Bai Ling's face, pulling him back.
"…I'm fine," he said.
"…Good. Then—since you're here—can you look at a few new techniques I worked out?"
"Of course."
Bai Ling stepped forward, casually took a wooden sword from the rack, and grabbed joint guards as well.
His physique was ordinary. If he was going to spar with Qianyu, he wasn't about to gamble on luck.
As for why he dared to spar with her at all—because unless Qianyu went all-out, her pure physicality alone couldn't really overwhelm him.
"Then watch out, Teacher Bai Ling!"
The moment she finished speaking, Qianyu lunged like a bullet.
Bai Ling raised his wooden sword calmly, angled the tip up, and with a simple lift dismantled her opening kill move.
Qianyu didn't get frustrated. She only smiled, flowed into the next motion, and brought her blade down in a graceful arc—
—but Bai Ling had already started stepping back, nearly slipping beyond her striking range.
Qianyu realized something was wrong and tried to chase with the remaining sequence. Yet every follow-up was met, neutralized, or redirected.
Her flowing assault collapsed like water running into a wall.
When she confirmed she couldn't take him, Qianyu hooked her sword back at her waist and pouted.
"…Tch. In front of you, Teacher Bai Ling, my moves get read too fast!"
Bai Ling couldn't swordfight—but he could see trajectories.
To him, everything had a prelude.
For techniques like these, the "prelude" wasn't just obvious—it was practically shouting.
Right before Qianyu attacked, Bai Ling could even see which finger was about to tense, which muscle was about to fire, and in what direction.
From that, intent became easy to infer.
His reactions were only a hair slower than outright future sight.
With that kind of defensive reading, the only way to beat Bai Ling head-on would be brute force—overwhelming power—or wide AOE that left no room to dodge.
And that logic applied to monsters as much as it did to people.
"So unfair," Qianyu muttered.
Bai Ling ignored the complaint and instead asked, "That chain just now—did you refine it again?"
"Yeah. Not by much, but it feels smoother."
"…The flaws are less obvious now. You're impressive, Qianyu."
Before, Qianyu had been like a blade drawn without a guard—dangerous, sharp, and liable to cut the wielder as much as the target.
Now, it was as if she'd fitted her blade with a proper guard. Still sharp, still fierce, but safer—more complete.
At her age, that kind of bright, exposed edge was exactly what she should have.
"Ehehe…" Qianyu scratched her cheek, grinning at the praise.
Bai Ling looked at the "little dragon." Around him, she was goofy and easy. But that was a face only acquaintances ever saw.
To outsiders, she was a sharp, capable, mysterious elite operator.
Then, as if she remembered something, her expression tightened. She adjusted her face into something more serious before speaking.
"By the way, Teacher Bai Ling… Supervisor Perica already told you about the plan for you to join Valley Four's reconstruction, right?"
"Hm? What about it?"
Bai Ling's tolerance for repeated news was high. He'd already heard it once.
Qianyu hesitated, then lowered her voice.
"…That arrangement was decided earlier. But lately there's a rumor on the Dijiang… that you're… um… dating several girls at the same time…"
Her voice shrank to almost nothing. Bai Ling didn't even catch the end of the sentence clearly.
He only looked at her with a baffled expression.
"…Did you say something just now, Qianyu?"
"Ah! No!!!"
Qianyu yelped loudly, trying to drown the topic by sheer volume.
Bai Ling gave her a long, suspicious look but didn't pursue it.
His instincts told him she was definitely not thinking anything nice.
"Whew… Anyway, we've trained this long. We should eat something." Qianyu hurriedly changed the subject. "Cafeteria? My treat—payment for today's guidance!"
"Alright."
The moment Bai Ling agreed, the training hall door cracked open and a red-clad figure slipped inside. Seeing the two of them, she paused, then spoke quickly.
"Oh—Qianyu and Mr. Bai Ling. Are you still using this room?"
It was Qiu Li, an operator stationed on the Dijiang's combat side.
"We just finished sparring," Qianyu replied brightly, sounding like she had endless stamina. "We're heading to the cafeteria to refuel!"
Qiu Li nodded as if she believed it—but her attention stayed on Bai Ling.
Ever since Valley Four's incident, the Z7 action squad's training had been missing a critical component:
Bai Ling's Originium Arts guidance and combat capability evaluation.
Antar had been bringing it up constantly. Bai Ling's judgments were simply too authoritative.
Qiu Li opened her mouth. She clearly wanted to say something—then stopped.
Because lately, a strange rumor had spread across the Dijiang:
That Bai Ling was dating several girls at once, and had even moved into Valley Four during that time.
Qiu Li didn't believe it.
But… the gossip instincts of a girl were hard to kill.
She'd paid attention to the names involved—and those names were all far too famous, which made the rumor feel absurdly impossible.
For example: someone claimed they personally saw Ivon—the brilliant young scientist in Valley Four—helping Bai Ling renovate his temporary residence.
And in the ore-vein source zone, people claimed they saw Bai Ling with several stunning girls: Jelperta and Eldara, plus another unknown beauty who looked almost identical to Jelperta.
Just thinking about it—
Eldara, in Qiu Li's mind, was a top-tier scholar. Her professionalism spoke for itself. Even if she were with someone, she'd be talking about work most of the time. How could that be romance?
And Jelperta, as a courier, constantly traveled from the Dijiang to deliver messages across the world. How could she coincidentally keep appearing around Bai Ling?
As for the girl who looked like her—probably Angelina. Qiu Li had seen that whirlwind of a woman on the ship.
And a woman like that was even less likely to be "dating," because dating wasn't like delivering a letter—finish the delivery and it's done.
After eliminating every possibility in her head, Qiu Li looked at Bai Ling again.
She really wanted him to help the Z7 squad.
Because Z7 desperately needed a professional instructor—someone authoritative and with time.
In the end, what came out of her mouth was only a harmless line:
"I heard the cafeteria added new dishes today. You should try them."
"Mm. See you, Qiu Li," Bai Ling said.
He and Qianyu left the training hall.
Right before the door shut, Qianyu noticed Qiu Li's hesitant expression and instantly understood what she wanted to say.
"…Teacher Bai Ling…"
Qianyu started again—but the moment she saw Bai Ling's face, she clamped her mouth shut.
"Hm?"
"N-nothing, nothing… Shall we go?" Qianyu said quickly, smiling too brightly.
....
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