Before

On the rooftop of the Jun Cheng training facility, inside a sealed room, a massive machine roared and shook violently, as if it had reached its absolute limit, making one fear it might suddenly explode under such pressure.

Inside, a breathtakingly beautiful figure was struggling to endure.

That peerless, delicate face was enough to make anyone lose themselves.

The faint furrow of pain in those slightly narrowed eyes made one wish to take all their suffering upon oneself.

And yet, beneath the machine sat a man with messy hair, legs crossed, looking all too despicable — imprisoning a girl in the prime of youth, tormenting her so.

If righteous young men were to witness this scene, they would surely tear him to pieces.

What no one knew, however, was that this beauty was, in fact, a boy.

No matter how alluring his figure was, he was still a boy with… certain anatomy.

As the saying goes: “Nine out of ten flat-chested ones are lolis, the other one has three legs.”

Su Xuan happened to be that tenth.

It had already been four days — four days of training at the Jun Cheng trial grounds.

There were only twenty-one days left until the grand assessment.

Day after day of grueling training had quickly honed his control over energy, to the point where he could now focus entirely and channel energy into his limbs at will.

In these four days, there had been gains and losses.

The more his cultivation improved, the more drastic the changes to his body became.

Zhang Heng, that shameless old rascal, even teased Su Xuan, saying he was becoming more feminine by the day.

Su Xuan kept silent, unable to deny it.

In truth, he was embarrassed to refute, because he could clearly feel himself becoming increasingly closer to a female form.

The protein-rich “Hundred Insect Feast” seemed to have provided abundant resources for the mounds on his chest to rise, making Su Xuan even suspect Zhang Heng’s true intentions.

Those once-barren plains had now grown into adorable cherries, seemingly progressing toward tempting peaches.

This made Su Xuan avoid wearing anything tight or light-colored.

He now usually wore loose, oversized, dark T-shirts, sometimes even binding his chest to hide that place.

And that place had grown very sensitive — even the friction of ordinary clothes could bring a faint, indescribable shiver.

When the shower spray struck during bathing, the feeling was so beyond words it was both unsettling and… addictive.

This only deepened Su Xuan’s worry.

He even feared that when he eventually advanced to his initial form, he might no longer be a boy at all.

Every day after returning home, Su Xuan would, despite his exhaustion, still check on his “little brother” — Little Su Xuan.

It remained loyal, not abandoning him in such a critical time.

Little Su Xuan had become his only source of reassurance.

The two clung to each other, for Su Xuan felt that aside from his brain and Little Su Xuan, the rest of his body had already defected.

The rugged, masculine aura was gone, replaced completely by a soft, feminine beauty that showed in every detail.

Even Su Xuan himself sometimes found his own body alluring — so much so that, stripped bare, he hardly dared to look in the mirror.

The weather was too hot, and it was far too easy to get… overheated.

Down at the control console, Zhang Heng had been drinking bitter herbal tea lately.

Even though he sat every day in the cool air-conditioned room, the doctor still said he was “overheated.”

Not only overheated, but kidney-deficient as well — for five nights straight, he had fought battles until the early hours before falling asleep,
so much so that his wife began to complain.

Once or twice a week was fine, but every night?

How was she supposed to rest?

Zhang Heng insisted it really wasn’t his fault.

Who asked his student to be such a monster?

Both in cultivation talent and in appearance, Su Xuan was an exceedingly rare existence.

After sighing a few words, his gaze returned to the lever — already ninety percent of the way up.

Over these days of training, his most direct impression was just how terrifying Su Xuan’s talent really was.

If things continued like this, by the end of tomorrow’s training Su Xuan would have fully mastered energy control.

That was almost a full day faster than Zhang Heng had expected.

Such terrifying talent — even Lieutenant General Su Chen might be no better.

The final index was twenty, meaning the pressure produced by the suppressor at the end could reach twenty times the initial level.

In this process, the body’s raw endurance didn’t actually improve much — what mattered most was energy control.

Pure physical endurance might rise to about double, but the remaining tenfold increase came entirely from improvements in energy control.

The further it went, the greater the pressure, and the more energy stones it consumed.

In just three and a half days, they had already used up twenty stones — an enormous amount.

But it was nothing, really — if twenty energy stones could buy an early breakthrough for such a prodigy, any retired soldier would gladly make the trade.

Looking at Su Xuan’s faintly pained expression, Zhang Heng murmured, “Initial form isn’t the end. If it’s you, you must reach a higher level. The Dark Ones aren’t so easy to deal with.”

Zhang Heng was no nobody.

Even though he was now in his thirties, before his injury his combat strength had been very close to the second form.

But his overconfidence had led him to try to solve a problem alone, and in the end he became crippled.

That he could even stand today was thanks to modern medical skill.

His injury hadn’t happened recently — his last battle was about five years ago, in the midst of a great disaster.

Dark Ones of the Sun tier had appeared, and Moon tier Dark Ones were too many to count.

No one knew how they had suddenly appeared.

Had the two realms overlapped more and more, making it no longer so difficult to breach the barrier between them?

He still didn’t understand how that terrifying horde had come.

They had just appeared without warning — a colossal pillar of energy had shot into the sky, and then they were there.

No signs at all.

The squads sent to delay them were wiped out one after another, entire units annihilated.

If not for several third-form experts arriving at once, the entire Lingnan battlefront might have fallen into chaos.

Their power could not be countered by numbers alone.

That time, Zhang Heng had learned the hard truth — if you hadn’t awakened to a high form, you had no business playing the hero.

But even so, if given another chance, he would still charge out and stand in the doorway.

“Playing the hero… it’s not so bad,” Zhang Heng said to himself.

“At least they bought time for others to live.”

Looking again at Su Xuan’s calm face inside the machine, he smiled, then reached out to push the lever further upward.