Chương 20: 'Acquiring' Training Materials

October 2026, Earth Nine weeks later, Leo caught his reflection in the simulator's glass panels and almost didn't recognize himself. Dr. Reyes had been right. The skinny kid who'd walked into Training Hall C was gone. In his place stood someone with actual muscle definition. But physical transformation was the easy part. Now came competition preparation, and Leo's lack of experience was starting to hurt. Leo stood at the center of Yale's Flying Combat Simulator, a space the size of a regulation CFL field.

Banks of NVIDIA TPUs and state-of-the-art holographic projectors lined the walls, ready to render full recreations of CFL matches for targeted, repeatable training.

"Begin scenario seven," the system announced.

"Two-on-one engagement with integrated flak support." The holographic opponents materialized. Gold Core level cultivators rendered in flickering blue light, their movements trained on large datasets of matches. Each armed with different spells, weapons, and tactics that were found in regulation play. And below them, the flak emplacements opened fire. Explosive rounds of compressed Qi screamed upward, detonating in spherical bursts designed to deny aerial space.

At least the flak gunners didn't incorporate additional skills. But even area denial required constant repositioning, constant awareness, constant adaptation. Leo lasted fourteen seconds. The first opponent closed while he dodged a flak burst, green blade slashing through his guard before he could recover. The second opponent caught him on the reset, punishing his predictable evasion pattern with a thrust that would have pierced his lung in real combat.

"Scenario failed," the system announced.

"Time survived: fourteen seconds. Average for a freshman: forty-two seconds. Recommendation: improve reactive maneuvering and spatial prediction." Three times worse than the average freshman. Leo's jaw tightened. He'd spent months training, fought real cultivators, survived things no freshman at Yale had ever faced. And a hologram just gutted him in fourteen seconds. Leo reset, breathing hard.

"Again." Twelve seconds. Worse. How was it worse?

"Again." Sixteen seconds.

"Again." A combination attack he never saw coming, both opponents reading his tendencies and converging simultaneously. Leo killed the scenario and stood in the empty simulator, sweat dripping off his face. The frustration sat in his chest. He knew what the problem was. In his extra practices in the Azure Profound Continent, he'd trained against Arthur, Mike, and Kevin. Foundation Establishment cultivators with predictable patterns he'd learned to read over weeks of repeated combat.

They fought fair, or at least, in the limits of human imagination. In the Collegiate Flying Aces League (CFL), combat was a completely different beast. Collegiate Flyers used custom Gold Core level lifebound weapons, each one unique, each one capable of techniques specific to its wielder. They augmented their attacks with spell arts that transformed simple sword strikes into area-denial weapons. They moved in ways that defied the physical limitations Leo had internalized during training. And the flak.

The endless, omnipresent flak. CFL-tier gunners trained for years to develop target-switching speed. They could track multiple Flyers simultaneously, predict evasion patterns, lead shots with inhuman precision, and even curve shots midair if the Flyer dodged. A competent Gunner could deny entire sections of the combat zone, forcing Flyers into killboxes where enemy cultivators waited to finish them. Leo's extra training at night had made him good at aerial combat. CFL required something else entirely.

He needed to stop flying his sword and start becoming his sword. The distinction seemed semantic but represented a fundamental shift in combat philosophy. Flying meant directing, giving commands, receiving responses, operating the weapon as a vehicle. Becoming meant unity, no separation between intention and execution, no lag between thought and movement, sword and body acting as a single entity that could will itself through impossible trajectories. Collegiate Flyers didn't dodge flak.

They simply weren't where the flak was aimed. They didn't parry attacks. They existed in positions where attacks couldn't reach. Leo understood the theory. He could picture it perfectly, the way a Flyer should move, the fluid anticipation, the total integration of self and sword. He had no idea how to practice it.

That night, Leo sat in their underground base in the Azure Profound Continent, laying out what he'd faced in the simulator. The room was carved from raw stone, lit by a single formation lantern that cast everything in pale blue. Arthur had dragged a table from somewhere, and the team gathered around it, cross-legged on stone chairs.

"You hit a wall," Mike said gently.

"Happens to everyone eventually."

"I need to train against real Gold Core opponents," Leo said.

"Real weapons, real spell arts. And actual anti-air suppression I can learn to read and evade." Arthur smirked.

"The Pond Gazing Sect has four Gold Core cultivators. We could arrange some... involuntary sparring sessions." Mike shook his head.

"Their combat styles are ancient cultivation world garbage. Leo needs CFL-caliber opponents. Modern techniques, modern equipment, modern tactics. Those guys fight like it's still the archaic era."

"Lucky for us, I picked up an interesting little map during one of my recent adventures." Arthur reached into his storage ring and produced a rolled sheet of yellowed parchment. Kevin turned to Leo.

"He stole it. He means he stole it."

"I prefer the term 'liberated'." Arthur spread the map across the stone floor. A trading route snaked southeast through mountain passes, terminating at a city marked in faded red ink.

"Crimson Lotus City. Major trading hub, governed by the Iron Rhinoceros Sect. They keep the trade routes safe, collect taxes, maintain order. Six Gold Core elders for official defense, maybe a dozen more scattered across vassal families. Their sect leader is a Nascent Soul Lord, but he spends most of his time somewhere far away." Arthur tapped the red ink.

"More importantly, it's a trading city. They stockpile goods for resale. Somewhere in Crimson Lotus City, there's a warehouse full of Tier 3 weapons."

"You want to rob an entire city," Leo said flatly.

"I want to rob specific targets within a city. The weapon shop, maybe a few private collections from the wealthier families." Kevin looked a little worried.

"Six Gold Core cultivators isn't trivial, Arthur."

"Two La Ferrari Eclipses." Arthur gestured between himself and Leo, then drew his own from his dantian. The blade caught the pale blue lantern light. Kevin and Mike had pooled their earnings to help Arthur purchase it. Everyone wanted their own Eclipse, but Arthur got priority. After all, to be honest, Arthur's formation work was pretty shoddy and he was by far the slowest at earning money. Arthur's time was better spent helping Leo train. Arthur gave the blade an appreciative twirl and sheathed it.

"We outrun any Gold Core in this world." Mike rubbed his chin.

"We'll need a week to scout the city, identify targets, and map guard rotations."

"Too long." Arthur waved him off.

"We have two Eclipses. We find the weapon shop, pick what we like, and make a run for it. Smash and grab."

The plan, if you could call it that, fell apart within the first three minutes. The plan was simple: land on the roof of the weapons shop, breach the building, grab every Gold Core weapon they could stuff into their storage rings, and leave before anyone mounted an organized response. The first problem emerged when they reached the weapons shop.

"That's not a weapons shop," Kevin observed, hovering a hundred fifty meters above what their stolen map indicated should be their target.

"That's a brothel." The building below featured red silk banners, suggestive imagery carved into its facade, and a steady stream of male cultivators entering through its ornate front doors. Feminine laughter drifted up from open windows. The sign above the entrance read, in elegant calligraphy that only Leo could read: "House of Crimson Pleasures." Incredible. They'd flown all this way on a stolen map, and it couldn't even get the buildings right. Arthur remained silent, which was itself an answer.

"Can you read that?" Arthur pointed at a larger building three blocks east, its roof bristling with defensive formations.

"What's that one?" Leo squinted.

"Jade... Harmony... Bank."

"Banks have vaults. Vaults have valuables." Arthur already angled his Eclipse toward the new target.

"Change of plans. We hit the bank first, acquire capital, then purchase weapons legitimately."

"That's not what 'legitimately' means," Mike muttered.

"It's legitimate if we pay for them."

"With stolen money."

"Still counts." They descended toward the Jade Harmony Bank in a shallow dive, wind whipping past their faces. Leo swept the building with his divine sense, cataloging guard positions. Two Gold Core cultivators on the main floor. One in a back office. Seventeen Foundation Establishment guards distributed throughout. A massive vault door on the basement level, sealed with at least three interlocking formation arrays. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Leo's stomach tightened.

This was already more resistance than Arthur's "smash and grab" plan accounted for.

"I count three Gold Cores," Leo reported.

"Plus guards. We should probably plan how to..."

"I'll handle the Gold Cores." Arthur's hand rested on his Eclipse's hilt.

"You keep the Foundation trash off our backs. Mike and Kevin, you're on vault duty. Crack it open, grab everything portable, signal when you're done."

"We don't know the formation types," Kevin protested.

"Without analysis time..."

"Too late," Leo shrugged.

"He's already off." Arthur went through the ceiling rather than around it, his Eclipse converting to blade configuration mid-descent and carving a three-meter hole through tile, timber, and defensive wards. Debris exploded downward. Screams erupted from below. Leo followed through the breach, his sword igniting as he dived in. The bank's interior was lavish. Marble floors, silk tapestries, jade countertops where tellers had been conducting evening transactions.

Those tellers scrambled for cover, their Qi Refining cultivation wholly inadequate for the violence unfolding around them. The first Gold Core cultivator responded with impressive speed. A middle-aged woman in banker's robes flared her aura bright silver, drew a sword from a spatial ring, and lunged toward Arthur's descending form. Arthur's Eclipse swept toward her in a crimson arc. She parried. The impact sent her sliding backward across the marble, feet carving grooves in the stone, but she stayed upright.

Her eyes went wide. Then she opened her mouth and screamed. An alarm. The sound was spiritually enhanced, piercing through walls and formations, echoing across the entire district. Every guard in the building heard it. Every cultivator within three blocks heard it. So much for the quick grab. The woman retreated through a side door, still screaming, her voice somehow growing louder as she fled. Arthur lunged after her, but suddenly the main entrance exploded inward.

A massive rhinoceros covered in gray-black plate armor charged through the wreckage, a Gold Core cultivator in matching gray and black robes mounted on its back. The cultivator wielded a hooked spear that crackled with lightning qi, his face twisted in righteous fury.

"THIEVES!" he bellowed in Common.

"THE JADE HARMONY BANK IS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE IRON RHINOCEROS SECT! SURRENDER OR..." Arthur's Eclipse punched toward the rhinoceros's skull. The beast lurched sideways with surprising agility. The blade carved a furrow across its gray plate armor instead, sending up a shower of sparks. The rider swept his spear down, forcing Arthur to disengage or lose an arm.

"What's he saying?" Arthur asked Leo, circling for another angle.

"Something about an Iron Rhinoceros Sect. He's furious." The rider shouted something else, spear leveling toward Arthur's chest. His face had gone purple, veins standing out on his neck.

"He says we've made enemies of the Iron Rhinoceros Sect and their Nascent Soul Lord will..."

"Tell him it's only a game," Arthur said.

"Why's he gotta be mad?"

"I'm not telling him that." Arthur threw a formation-inscribed knife at the man's throat. The cultivator deflected it with his spear. In that moment of distraction, Arthur closed the distance... And the rhinoceros headbutted him. Two tons of spiritual beast slammed into Arthur's torso, launching him backward through a silk tapestry and into the wall beyond. Stone cracked. Dust billowed. The rhinoceros snorted triumphantly and pawed at the marble floor.

Arthur emerged from the rubble with his robes torn and his expression murderous.

"I'm going to make that thing into boots."

"Focus!" Leo parried a spear thrust from a guard.

"Mike, Kevin. Vault status?" No response from Mike. Kevin's voice echoed from below:"Working on it! The formations are more complex than..." An explosion shook the building.

"... expected," Kevin finished. Leo kicked the guard in the chest, sending him tumbling into two of his colleagues, and sprinted for the basement stairs. Behind him, Arthur and the rhinoceros rider resumed their duel, neither able to land a clean hit. The beast's bulk kept interfering with Arthur's angles, while the rider couldn't match Arthur's speed. The basement was filled with acrid smoke. Kevin stood before the vault door, which now featured a jagged hole approximately one meter in diameter.

Smoke rose from his robes. His eyebrows were mostly gone.

"Booby-trapped," Kevin explained.

"The third layer had a cascading destruct sequence. I contained most of it." He gestured at the hole.

"But I need another twenty minutes to widen this enough to get through." Twenty minutes. They'd been inside for maybe three, and the whole city already knew they were here.

"We don't have twenty minutes. Where's Mike?"

"Logged out. His kid woke up." Leo almost laughed. They were mid-heist in a city full of angry cultivators, and Mike had to go handle a diaper change.

"Of course." Leo peered through the hole into the vault. Neat shelves lined the walls, holding weapons, armor, jade slips, and a pile of spiritstones just sitting in the open. The ceiling shook. Dust rained down. The sounds of combat above intensified. Multiple voices now, multiple weapon impacts.

"Reinforcements," Leo said.

"We need to speed this up."

"Formation work cannot be rushed." Kevin's hands moved through a complex series of gestures, qi flowing from his fingertips into the vault's remaining wards.

"If I make a mistake on layer four, this entire basement will fill with poison gas." Leo shouted over.

"Just trigger it."

"What?"

"The formation. Set it off. You'll die, sure, but you'll respawn in three days. We don't have twenty minutes."

"Catch." Kevin tossed his storage ring to Leo.

"You got ten seconds." Kevin took a deep breath and held it. Then he cast a spell art that created a barrier around the vault door, sealing it off from the rest of the basement. He plunged both hands into the formation matrix. Green gas erupted from hidden vents inside the door. The vapor flooded the containment dome in seconds, swallowing Kevin whole. The gas pressed against the walls of the spell art, probing for gaps, sliding along the curved edges. Leo was already moving.

He flew through the hole in the vault wall. Spiritstones first. He shoved the entire heap into Kevin's storage ring with one sweep of his arm. Kevin's containment dome was holding. Cracks spreading, but holding. Leo scanned the room with his divine sense and stuffed whatever T3 equipment he could find into his storage ring. He shoved in an expensive looking sword and spear. The giant tower shield took longer to maneuver, but hopefully it was worth it. The dome shattered.

Leo flew for the stairs as green vapor flooded the vault. His Eclipse carried him up the stairwell, the cloud pursuing him like a living thing, tendrils of poison reaching for his heels. He stayed just ahead of it. Barely A wisp caught his trailing sleeve. The fabric dissolved, leaving his forearm exposed to air.

Leo burst onto the main floor. Arthur stood at the center of a whirlwind of violence, his Eclipse carving through three Foundation Establishment guards who'd made the mistake of trying to flank him simultaneously. The rhinoceros lay on its side near the shattered entrance, its gray-black armor cracked and leaking blood from a dozen wounds. Its rider was nowhere to be seen. But new arrivals had joined the fight.

A woman in flowing white robes hovered near the ceiling, her hands weaving through a complex seal sequence. Ice crystals formed in the air around her, coalescing into spears that launched toward Arthur in a continuous barrage. Gold Core, Leo's divine sense confirmed. Peak Gold Core, probably. A second cultivator, male, heavyset, wielding a massive iron club, engaged Arthur directly, forcing the old man to split his attention between aerial bombardment and ground-level assault.

"We're leaving!" Leo shouted, sprinting toward the ruined entrance.

"Kevin's down, I looted the vault, we need to go NOW!"

"I'm AWARE!" Arthur parried the club, redirected an ice spear with his off-hand, and kicked the heavyset cultivator in the knee with enough force to shatter bone. The man went down screaming. Leo flew on his Eclipse through the entrance and into the street. The street was far from empty. At least thirty cultivators had gathered outside the Jade Harmony Bank, drawn by the alarm and the sounds of combat.

Most were Foundation Establishment, but three Gold Cores stood at the crowd's edge, their divine sense flaring as they assessed the situation. Leo's Eclipse blazed with it's signature Ferrari red as he flew above the crowd. Arthur erupted from the bank behind him, trailing ice shards and blood, some of it his own. The white-robed woman pursued, her hands still weaving, more ice spears forming with each gesture.

"North gate!" Leo called out.

"It's the closest! The city formation has sealed the sky!" They shot upward, breaking free of the street-level chaos and climbing toward the rooftops. Behind them, the three Gold Cores launched into pursuit. The white-robed woman followed as well, her ice spears tracking Arthur with uncomfortable accuracy. The north gate was a mile away.

Between them and escape lay a commercial district, a residential quarter, and the outer wall itself: a forty-meter barrier of spirit-reinforced stone topped with defensive formations.

"Incoming!" Arthur barrel-rolled left, evading an ice spear that would have taken his head. He answered with a burst of flame from his Eclipse, forcing the white-robed woman to break off her attack and shield herself. One of the pursuing Gold Cores, a young man in black robes with dual swords in hand, closed the distance with frightening speed. His cultivation base was solid mid-Gold Core, and his movement technique was exceptional. He reached Leo first.

The dual blades came in from opposing angles, a scissoring attack designed to limit evasion options. Leo twisted, his Eclipse flaring, and deflected the right-hand blade while ducking under the left. The young man's eyes widened. He hadn't expected a Qi Refining cultivator to read his technique so cleanly. Leo's months of agonizing divine sense training had refined his spiritual awareness and reaction speed far beyond what his cultivation base suggested.

He could see the moves before they happened, could feel the subtle shifts in qi that preceded each attack. But seeing attacks and having the physical capability to avoid them were different things. The left blade came around for a second pass. Leo blocked, but the impact sent shockwaves through his arm. His Eclipse's formations absorbed most of the force, converting it to heat that bled off, but the black robed man already pressed the advantage.

Strike after strike, each one heavier than the last, each one forcing Leo to give ground. Every parry rattled his bones. His arms burned.

"Little thief!" The black robed man's voice was calm, almost conversational.

"Your treasure is impressive. I'll be sure to treat it well after I've removed it from your corpse." Leo wasted no breath on a response. He dove, angling toward the rooftops below, using the architecture to break line of sight. The young man followed, but the move bought Leo two seconds. Enough time to change direction and rocket toward a narrow alley between two warehouses. The alley was tight. Too tight for comfortable combat.

The young man hesitated at the entrance, unwilling to sacrifice his advantage in cultivation. Leo burst out the other end and immediately climbed, his Eclipse screaming as it pushed toward maximum speed. Wind tore at his robes. His qi reserves drained faster than he liked, feeding the sword's hungry formations. Arthur caught up with him a hundred meters later, the white-robed woman falling behind as the old man's Eclipse outpaced her movement technique.

Blood dripped from a gash on Arthur's forehead, and his left arm hung at an angle that suggested the shoulder had been dislocated.

"Two more behind us," Arthur reported, still accelerating.

"What's the plan?"

"Right there. We'll need to punch through the gate formation."

"What tier?"

"Hopefully tier three." Arthur's expression darkened.

"We'll manage. These formations are usually much better at keeping things out than in." The residential quarter passed beneath them in a blur of tiled roofs and walled gardens. Cultivators emerged from their homes, drawn by the commotion, but none joined the pursuit. This was Gold Core tier combat. No sane Foundation Establishment cultivator would involve themselves. The wall loomed ahead, its stones glowing with embedded formations.

The north gate was a massive arch sealed by a shimmering barrier of translucent energy. Guards stationed on the wall's top had already spotted them; crossbows loaded with formation-enhanced bolts tracked their approach.

"I'll open the gate!" Arthur said.

"You keep them off me."

"On it!" Leo spun, orienting himself backward while maintaining his momentum. The pursuing Gold Cores had consolidated into a loose formation: the young man in black, a heavyset woman with a war hammer, and an elderly figure whose aura felt slippery and indistinct. They were a quarter mile back and closing. Leo raised his Eclipse, the blade converting to ranged configuration. Fire gathered at its tip, compressing into a fireball. He released.

The projectile screamed across the gap and detonated between the three pursuers. They scattered, the young man diving left, the heavyset woman right, the elderly figure simply vanishing. The explosion bought ten seconds of chaos. Enough for Arthur to reach the gate. Arthur's Eclipse slammed into the barrier. The impact produced a sound like a mountain splitting. Cracks spiderwebbed across the translucent surface, spreading from the point of contact in fractal patterns. Arthur struck again. And again.

The third blow shattered the barrier entirely. Shards of crystallized qi exploded outward, scattering like glass, and the gate stood open.

"GO!" Arthur plunged through the gap. Leo followed, twisting to avoid a crossbow bolt that would have pierced his lung. The bolt passed close enough to tear his sleeve, and then he was through, outside the city, the wilderness spreading before him in moonlit expanse. Behind them, alarm bells began to sound. The city's main formation would activate soon, a dome of protective energy that would seal Crimson Lotus City against external threats.

Anyone inside when it activated would be trapped until the authorities stood down. Anyone outside would be free to disappear.

"Two miles to the logout point," Leo called, checking his mental map. They'd scouted a safe spot earlier, a dense forest near the city. The pursuing Gold Cores burst through the gate seconds later. Arthur's voice cut through the wind as they raced over the darkened forest canopy.

"You got the goods, right?" Leo patted his storage ring.

"Tens of thousands of spiritstones. Maybe more. I didn't have time to count. Plus a couple Tier 3 Gold Core artifacts. A spear and a shield, at least." Arthur's bloodied face split into a grin. Blood from his forehead wound had run into the creases around his eyes, giving him the appearance of a man wearing a red mask.

"Good job." Something sailed through the air toward Leo. He caught it reflexively: Arthur's storage ring. Arthur already turned, his Eclipse pivoting in the air, orienting himself toward the three Gold Cores who had just cleared the city wall.

"Arthur..."

"Catch you offline." Arthur grinned and reset his dislocated shoulder against his sword, racing to intercept their pursuers.