Chương 6: The Academy of Legends

Ch 6: The Academy of Legends The academy rose ahead of the carriage long before we reached its gates towering walls of white stone, engraved with centuries of sword marks left by generations of masters who'd trained and fought and, in some cases, died within them. Beyond the walls stood marble pathways connecting buildings that looked older than the kingdom itself, training arenas large enough to swallow a small town, and monuments whose plaques read like a history of the continent.

Every brick here had a story attached to it.

Most of them belonged to people whose names still meant something. Baskerville Academy didn't work like the schools Len Fan's memories compared it to. There was no fixed length of study a student could graduate in two years or spend twenty here, and no one would blink either way. Some trained every waking hour. Some disappeared into the library for months at a time. Freedom to train, to fight, to study, all of it belonged to the student, as long as they kept proving they deserved to stay.

Freedom didn't mean there were no rules, though. Every year, every student at Baskerville stood the same test the reason the academy stood above every other institution in the kingdom. The Legacy Trial. Each year, one of the academy's former Headmasters left behind a fragment of their inheritance sealed inside a purpose-built Legacy Realm, and every student who entered faced its challenges according to their own strength and will. Rare techniques. Legendary weapons.

Abilities that changed the entire shape of a cultivator's life. It was the kind of opportunity most students across the kingdom only ever dreamed about, and tomorrow, for the first time, it would be mine to attempt. Tomorrow was also the entrance ceremony the formal beginning of my time here. The sun dropped behind the distant mountains, painting the academy in long streaks of crimson and gold before giving way to morning.

When it came, I dressed in the ceremonial robes the academy had provided deep black fabric, silver thread forming sword patterns down the sleeves and collar, a golden crest resting over the left side of my chest. Even the clothing here understood its own reputation. I stepped out into a campus already full of students moving toward the Grand Ceremony Hall. Some walked with their families, admiring every corner of the grounds with open wonder. Others walked in loose groups, laughing, catching up after a long break.

For most of them, today marked the start of a dream they'd been chasing their whole lives. For me, it should have been simple. It didn't stay that way for long. Turning a corner toward the main courtyard, a shoulder slammed hard into mine, and something cold and sticky splashed across the front of my new uniform. The cheerful noise around me dropped into silence. I looked down at the stain spreading through the black fabric, then up at the person who'd caused it. Kalio.

His lips curled into something that wanted to be a smile and mostly succeeded at being a sneer, and the students behind him laughed on cue.

"Well, well," he said.

"So the bastard actually survived his first year." He looked me over, head to boots.

"Still wearing the uniform, huh? I honestly thought you'd have the shame to leave on your own." More laughter behind him. He folded his arms.

"You don't belong here. This academy was built for the elite for the children of families who'll rule kingdoms and lead sects. Not for trash like you. Why don't you save everyone the trouble and crawl back to whatever hole you came from?" I said nothing. Len Fan's memories filled in the rest Kalio, young master of the Nightsky Sect, one of the five strongest sects in the kingdom. Picking a fight here, in front of witnesses, wouldn't just cost me.

It would land on Mother, and on an uncle now carrying every responsibility Father had left behind. I brushed the liquid off my sleeve and kept walking. Kalio's smile disappeared. He stepped directly into my path.

"What? Lost your tongue?" His voice climbed, loud enough to be sure everyone nearby could hear it.

"Expected, I suppose, from a filthy brat born into a filthy family." He leaned closer, low enough now that only I could hear it.

"I heard your father died surrounded by nothing more than a bunch of worthless thugs." A short laugh.

"Pathetic way for a swordsman to go. If he's already dead, why don't you send that beautiful mother of yours to—" My hand had already closed around his face before he finished the sentence. The courtyard froze. Even Kalio didn't seem to understand what had happened for a full second. My vision had gone white at the edges, my mind entirely empty except for the sound of what he'd just said about my mother, and a surge of Qi tore down my arm and into my fingers before I'd consciously decided to move at all. I pulled.

RIIIP. Blood sprayed across the stone. Kalio's scream cracked through the courtyard as his cheeks split open at both corners of his mouth. Students stumbled backward. Some covered their mouths. Some simply froze. I didn't stop there. I grabbed his collar and drove his skull into the ground. BAM. BAM. BAM. By the tenth strike I'd lost count, and blood had already soaked into the white stone beneath us. Kalio's body had gone limp under my hands. That was when the pressure hit.

"Enough." One word, and every head in the courtyard bowed on reflex. A woman in academy instructor's white approached at an unhurried pace, black hair falling loose behind her, a saber resting at her hip, sharp amber eyes sweeping the crowd before settling on me. Professor Julian. A renowned saber master out of the Eastern Region, and one of Baskerville's most respected instructors, if Len Fan's memory served. She looked down at what remained of Kalio, then back to me.

"Child," she said, calm in a way that made disobeying her feel physically impossible, "this is not a training ground. You know fighting is forbidden in certain sections of the academy. This courtyard is one of them." The rage draining out of me left my breathing unsteady. I said nothing, and stepped back without offering an excuse.

Professor Julian studied me a moment longer, and then her expression flickered the invisible pressure of her own Avatar brushing briefly against mine, searching, the way every cultivator's did on instinct when they met someone new. A second passed. Then another.

"... Interesting," she said, frowning slightly.

"I can't see your Avatar. Even with my Immortal Realm, First Leaf Avatar, I can barely sense it exists." A faint, almost amused smile crossed her face.

"Your Avatar is astonishingly small." I said nothing. There wasn't a version of the truth I could safely offer her. Behind us, Kalio pushed himself up off the ground, uniform soaked through with blood, lips torn badly enough that speech came out broken and wet. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"... One... week," he managed, spitting blood onto the stone.

"Training Grounds. I'll make you regret today." No one in that courtyard underestimated the threat despite how he looked saying it. Kalio carried an Immortal Realm, Third Leaf Avatar — a talent that let him absorb Qi nearly a thousand times faster than a Mortal First Leaf cultivator like me. Against someone like him, the version of me standing there should have had no real chance at all. I looked at him for a moment, then turned and walked on toward the Grand Ceremony Hall without another word.

Behind me, the whispers had already started, and they'd be everywhere in the academy before the ceremony even finished. By the time I arrived, the commotion had already begun fading behind the noise of thousands of students filling the largest hall I had ever stood inside. Stone pillars rose toward a vaulted ceiling like ancient sentries, each one carved with the names of graduates whose legends had outlived them.

Every first-year in the room carried the same silent ambition, whether they said it aloud or not the hope of one day joining those names in stone. I found a seat near the middle of the hall. A moment after I settled into it, someone took the empty chair beside me, and when I glanced over out of simple curiosity, the rest of the noise in the room briefly stopped mattering. Long silver hair fell over her shoulders, catching the light from the crystal chandeliers overhead like woven moonlight.

Her posture was flawless, her expression composed, and she didn't so much as glance at the thousands of students filling the hall around her as if none of it were quite worth her attention. I didn't recognize her face or the crest on her sleeve, but everything about her said she was someone whose name I probably should have known. Beautiful, I thought, before I could stop myself, and then curiosity took over from admiration.

Before I could dwell on it any further, a deep ceremonial bell rolled through the chamber, and every conversation in the hall died at once. The Headmaster's opening remarks were short, measured, and free of the kind of exaggeration most speeches like this leaned on talent meant little, he said, without discipline, perseverance, and character to carry it. A string of administrative announcements followed: new instructors, the year's competition schedule, the rules every incoming student needed to hear at least once.

The crowd's attention drifted through most of it, waiting for something worth remembering. Then the President of the Student Council stepped forward with a scroll bound in crimson ribbon, and the room went quiet again on its own.

"Our next announcement concerns the results of this year's Entrance Examination," she said, letting the silence stretch before continuing.

"We will now recognize the student who achieved the highest overall score among this year's new admissions." A ripple of anticipation moved through the crowd becoming Baskerville's top-ranked newcomer wasn't a small thing to claim.

"The student who ranked first in Swordsmanship... first in Cultivation... first in the Written Assessment... first in Combat Evaluation... and first in Overall Performance..." She let the pause hold a moment longer." Ellia Vortexian." The hall went still for one heartbeat before it broke into noise.

"First in every category?"

"From the Vortexian Family?"

"Who else could it have been?" Even a few of the instructors exchanged quiet, unsurprised nods. Beside me, the young woman rose without a flicker of excitement, every motion smooth and disciplined rather than triumphant, and walked to the stage as though the attention of the entire hall meant nothing at all. She accepted her medal with a simple bow.

"Thank you," she said, calm, unhurried, entirely without arrogance or false modesty as though excellence were simply what was expected of her, nothing worth commenting on further. Then she returned to her seat beside me and settled back into the same composed stillness as before, as if the ceremony had never involved her at all. No wonder she's considered a genius, I thought, and let out a slow breath. The rest of the ceremony passed without incident.

A handful of professors spoke about the values Baskerville had upheld for generations that the academy existed to forge leaders and scholars and protectors, not just strong swords. It was the kind of speech every prestigious institution probably gave, and it still carried a different weight, delivered beneath that ceiling, surrounded by thousands of students who'd each traveled a long way to hear it.

When the Headmaster closed the ceremony, the hall dissolved into noise and motion as students filed toward the exits. Almost every conversation I passed on the way out circled back to the same name. Ellia Vortexian. I stepped out into the courtyard afterward, sunlight warm on the old stone paths, the breeze pulling gently at the trees lining the walkways. Students scattered in every direction dormitories, the grounds, new friends eager to explore.

A flash of silver hair caught my eye a few paces ahead, moving with the same unhurried, untouchable calm she'd carried all through the ceremony. No one approached her. It was almost as if an invisible wall moved with her wherever she went. Should I congratulate her? The thought arrived before I'd decided whether I meant it. She had earned something worth respecting, family name aside, and we had spent the better part of an hour sitting beside each other without exchanging a word. It couldn't hurt.

I closed the distance and fell into step beside her.

"Excuse me." No response.

"I just wanted to congratulate you," I tried again.

"You really deserved first place." Nothing. She kept walking, gaze fixed ahead, as though the words had been carried off by the wind before they ever reached her. After a few more seconds, I let it go.

"... Guess that didn't go too well," I muttered, scratching the back of my head as she disappeared into the crowd without looking back. I couldn't really blame her for it. Someone born into the Vortexian family had probably spent her whole life fielding strangers who wanted something from her flattery, connections, curiosity. Compared to all of them, I was nobody. Just another student trying to make conversation.

By the time I reached my dormitory and shut the door behind me, the noise of the academy fell away completely the ceremony, the applause, every whispered conversation about Ellia Vortexian, all of it gone at once, leaving me alone with the one thought I couldn't put down. Kalio. One week. That was all the time separating us from the duel he'd promised me through a mouthful of blood. I lay back on the bed, hands folded behind my head, and stared at the ceiling.

How exactly am I supposed to beat someone with an Immortal Third Leaf Avatar? I turned the question over more than once and came up with nothing. Today's fight had only gone my way because he'd underestimated me completely hadn't expected me to strike first, hadn't imagined someone with an Avatar this weak would dare challenge him at all. An official duel would give him none of that same advantage. No surprise. No hesitation.

Just the plain, overwhelming gap between our cultivations, impossible to talk or trick my way around. An Immortal Realm, Third Leaf Avatar absorbed Qi at a pace my Mortal Realm, First Leaf couldn't hope to match, no matter how hard I trained. Two cultivators with identical talent and identical effort would still advance at entirely different speeds if one carried the better Avatar. That was simply how this world worked. Talent decided where the road began. Effort only decided how far you got from there.

Kalio had both.

"So brute force is out of the question," I said aloud, and let the thought settle. If cultivation alone couldn't close the gap, I needed another road entirely and fortunately, this wasn't my first life. Behind this body's ordinary eyes sat the memories of a man who had once stood at the very top of the sword: forms built for duels, techniques built purely to kill, footwork that turned a battlefield into a chessboard, and centuries of accumulated instinct. There was enough there to build a legend on.

The problem was simple, and it hadn't gone anywhere since the day I woke up in this body most of those techniques demanded a physique this one didn't have yet. Meridians too fragile. Qi flow too slow and thin to sustain what they required. Forcing them now wouldn't beat Kalio. It would cripple me before the duel even started. Still. Not everything I carried depended on cultivation. Technique. Timing. Distance. Reading an opponent, controlling the rhythm of a fight none of that lived in a meridian.

Those were skills, and unlike raw power, skills could still be sharpened through nothing but relentless repetition.

"If I can't become stronger," I said, "then I'll become better." Strength belonged to cultivation. Being better belonged to the swordsman. I'd crossed blades before with warriors who outmatched me physically in every way, and watched them lose anyway, because they leaned too hard on that strength and let the small details rot. A misplaced step. An impatient swing. A breath taken half a second too early. Against an ordinary opponent, mistakes like that meant nothing.

Against someone who knew what to look for, they meant everything. I got up, crossed to the practice sword leaning against the wall, and let my fingers close around the hilt. It lacked the balance of anything I'd once carried in my old life, and it still felt like coming home. My reflection caught in the window glass on the way out a young face, an inexperienced body, nothing remarkable to look at. No one seeing it would guess the soul behind it had once shaken kingdoms. Let them underestimate me, I thought.

The battlefield has always been the only place truth gets to speak for itself. Outside, the sun had gone down behind the mountains, and lanterns lit the stone paths in warm gold. Somewhere beyond the quiet, steel rang against steel in a steady, unhurried rhythm someone still training long after the rest of the academy had gone to rest. There was only one place that sound could be coming from. I turned toward the training grounds and started walking.

Sitting in my room wasn't going to make me any stronger, and if I meant to beat Kalio in a week, every hour from here on had to count.