The Razor Canyon didn't look like a school. It looked like a prison built for giants.
The wind howled through the jagged black rocks, carrying the smell of sulfur and old, dried blood. Massive iron chains, each link thick enough to crush a man's torso, hung from the cliff faces, suspending rusted metal platforms over a foggy abyss.
Wuxu and Luo Yi stood at the end of a line of two hundred hopefuls. These weren't the pampered nobles of the Azure Cloud Sect; these were bandits, disgraced mercenaries, and desperate men. They had scars, missing fingers, and the eyes of wolves waiting for a scrap of meat.
"Brother..." Luo Yi whispered, his face pale as he pointed a shaking finger. "Look at the gate."
There was no registration desk. No elder checking names. There was just a massive archway of black iron. Suspended in the center of the arch was a square block of solid granite, bound in chains. Underneath the block, the ground was stained a dark, permanent red.
"Next!" roared the Gatekeeper. He was a mountain of a man, shirtless, his skin branded with the sect's emblem—a cracked skull.
A burly man stepped forward, flaring his aura to reveal a solid Qi Condensation Layer 4 cultivation.
"Lift," the Gatekeeper ordered.
The man braced his shoulders under the stone. He grunted, veins popping on his forehead as he channeled his Qi. The stone moved, lifting perhaps two inches.
"Weak," the Gatekeeper spat.
He kicked the man's knee.
CRACK.
The leg buckled. The concentration broke. The 3,200-kilogram block slammed down with a sound that resembled a melon being stepped on by a horse. The scream was cut short instantly, and blood sprayed across the Gatekeeper's legs.
"Clear the trash!" the Gatekeeper yawned, watching two disciples drag the flattened corpse to the cliff edge. "You need Layer 6 strength to enter this gate! Or are you all waste?"
Luo Yi grabbed Wuxu's sleeve, hyperventilating. "Wuxu... your body is strong, but that's over three tons! We need a pill! We need—"
"It's just physics," Wuxu said calmly.
Before he could step forward, the crowd parted in terror. A young man walked through the gap, wearing blood-red robes and dragging a massive Zhanmadao behind him that scraped sparks against the stone.
Guo Jincheng. The Butcher.
He didn't even look at the hopefuls. As he passed a candidate who was too slow to bow, Guo flicked his wrist. The massive saber blurred, and the candidate's head slid off his neck. Guo stepped over the corpse without breaking stride.
"Is the Pit stocked, Uncle?" Guo asked the terrifying Gatekeeper.
"Young Master Guo! Yes! We are just filtering out the rats."
Guo turned, his bored eyes scanning the line of terrified men. He was looking for fear. He fed on it. But his gaze stopped abruptly on a figure in grey rags standing next to a fat merchant.
The boy wasn't bowing. He wasn't shaking. He was looking at the execution block with a cold, mathematical detachment, radiating a dense, compressed aura of Artificial Layer 5.
Guo smiled, a predator spotting a new toy.
"You," Guo pointed his saber at Wuxu. "The stiff one. You're next."
Wuxu stepped out of the line. He walked past Guo Jincheng without glancing at the saber and stood directly under the massive, blood-slicked stone block.
The Gatekeeper looked down at him, sensing the aura.
"Layer 5?" The Gatekeeper sneered. "You have a solid foundation, boy, I'll give you that. But this stone requires Layer 6 force. You're 1,000 kilograms short. Go home before you become paste."
Wuxu looked up. His eyes measured the distance. The stone was hanging two meters above his head.
His Domain extended 3.3 meters. The stone was already inside his world.
"Drop it," Wuxu said.
The Gatekeeper blinked. "What?"
"I said drop it," Wuxu repeated, his voice flat. "I don't lift heavy things. I move them."
"Arrogant brat!" The Gatekeeper snarled and pulled the lever.
The chains rattled. The 3.2-ton block plummeted.
The crowd screamed. Luo Yi covered his eyes.
But Wuxu didn't brace himself. He didn't channel Qi. He simply watched the stone fall through his airspace.
[Law: Inertia = 0.]
THUD.
It wasn't a crash. It was a dull, heavy stop.
The massive stone block froze in mid-air, a foot above Wuxu's head. It didn't hover; it was simply denied the physics required to fall further. Wuxu stood casually with his hands behind his back, his fake aura flaring to mask the mechanism of his power.
"Is that heavy?" Wuxu asked.
He raised one hand and tapped the bottom of the stone.
[Law: Gravity Inversion (-20 Gs).]
BOOM.
The 3-ton block didn't just go up. It shot upward like a mortar shell.
It smashed into the heavy iron chains above, snapping them with a screech of tearing metal that shattered eardrums. The block flew twenty feet into the air, cleared the archway entirely, and crashed down behind the gate with an earth-shaking impact that sent dust billowing into the canyon.
Silence descending on the canyon. Absolute, terrified silence.
The Gatekeeper's jaw dropped. "Telekinesis...? No... that was raw force! He repelled it!"
Wuxu lowered his hand, dusted off his grey robes, and looked at the stunned Gatekeeper.
"I passed."
He walked through the empty archway, leaving the stunned crowd behind.
As the shock wore off, chaos erupted. Luo Yi, shaking with adrenaline and greed, scrambled toward the betting clerk who sat paralyzed behind a wooden table.
"ALL OF IT!" Luo Yi screamed, slamming a heavy bag of spirit stones onto the wood. "Put every single stone on the kid in Grey to survive the Pit!"
In the shadows near the cliff, a small girl with soot on her face watched the scene unfold. She clutched a pair of worn daggers, her eyes narrowed. She had seen the impact. She had felt the wrongness of it. He has a Layer 5 aura, she thought, but that impact... that was at least Layer 8 force. He is hiding a monster.
Inside the gate, Guo Jincheng watched Wuxu disappear into the holding area. The boredom was gone from his eyes, replaced by a twisted, burning excitement. He leaned close to the Gatekeeper.
"Uncle," Guo whispered. "Put him in Sector 4. That's where I'm starting. I want to be the one to open him up."