Black Steel Force

Lu Yuan seized the opening to rise and fall back, watching the black stone man warily from a distance while reaching for a drop of Moonstone Spirit Essence and swallowing it.

The essence's gentle warmth spread through him at once. Its healing energy circulated toward his abdomen and chest, and the searing pain that had been tearing at him began, slowly, to subside — replaced by a spreading, soothing heat.

*This guy is tough. But I'm not exactly weak right now either. I can outlast him.*

Before the stone man could close the distance again, he quickly pulled out a black-labeled bottle.

*Superior Defense Enhancement Serum.*

He drank it in one go, then immediately followed it with a speed enhancement serum and a strength-amplifying serum. All of them superior-grade. He worked through the bottles one by one, and a surge of spirit power flooded through his body.

The effects kicked in. His speed, strength, and defense — everything climbed by over thirty percent.

That drew a slight frown from Lu Yuan.

Superior serums used to boost him by around fifty percent. Thirty-odd was noticeably less than he'd expected. He supposed it was because his base stats had grown strong enough that the same serum effect simply looked smaller in relative terms. It made a certain kind of sense. *Still — thirty percent is enough.*

He turned and charged.

*This time, let's see you block it!*

His greatsword slashed out with a force sharper and more ferocious than anything before it.

**Clang!!**

The black stone man roared and met the strike fist-first.

Metal rang against stone across the hollow gray-white expanse. They traded blows across the pale ground, the peal of each clash rolling out into the emptiness. Lu Yuan's expression was set hard, his jaw locked — facing the storm of attacks, he could do little more than hold his ground, giving way step by step. Even fully boosted by serums, the stone man's strength and speed still outpaced him by a considerable margin. He wasn't dominating this fight. He was weathering it.

The black stone man seemed to feel nothing. Each time Lu Yuan beat it back, it let out a roar and hurled itself forward again as a black blur.

**Clang!!**

Sword light drove toward the stone man's throat. His Beetle Claw greatsword had taken serious damage with every exchange — notch after notch opened along the blade. The stone man's defense was extraordinary; even an elite-rank heavy sword was not coming through this unscathed.

But the stone man wasn't unscathed either. Fine hairline cracks had begun spreading across its body, concentrated most heavily on its hands from the constant punishment of the heavy blade.

Lu Yuan blocked a heavy punch and was hurled backward. He hit the ground, rolled, came back up charging. Before the stone man could close in again, he drained a few more superior-grade serums, sustaining the boost.

The battle ground on.

Over ten minutes passed. He paused once to absorb a Spirit Crystal — replenishing his nearly depleted spirit power. He would burn through more than a dozen before this was over.

The fight continued. Another ten minutes.

Lu Yuan's greatsword worsened with every exchange. The black stone man's hands, though, had taken the worst of the punishment — battered relentlessly against the heavy blade, they finally shattered entirely. It let out a roar and kept fighting on its legs alone, its footwork precise and refined, astonishing for something made of stone. It held on for a good while yet.

It wasn't enough.

Lu Yuan caved in its skull.

The black stone man crashed to the ground.

He exhaled, long and slow, and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

*What a brutal fight.*

Even burning through serum after serum, he had still taken real injuries. His sword had come within a hair of being destroyed. He glanced at the Beetle Claw greatsword in his hand — blade riddled with notches — and couldn't help a wry twitch of his mouth.

*To clear one floor of the Genius Trial, I burned through several hundred thousand yuan worth of serums.*

His heart ached just thinking about it.

But at least it was done. And if his stats had still been at their pre-trial level, the opening exchange alone would have ended him. He'd been lucky to have that enormous power boost beforehand. If his spirit power weren't effectively inexhaustible — if he'd been forced to rely purely on serums — he would have lost regardless.

He let out a slow breath.

Then the system spoke.

**"Genius Trial Level 1 cleared. Rewards: 100 drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence, Body Technique: Black Steel Force."**

Lu Yuan blinked.

*...Body technique?*

He was startled. Then stunned.

A hundred drops of Moonstone Spirit Essence materialized in the air before him, alongside a single white crystal stone.

*There's a body technique reward?*

He reached out and took the white crystal, curiosity piqued.

Information flooded into his mind. His eyes went wide.

**[Black Steel Force]:** *Inherited body technique of the Shiman Civilization. Only geniuses of the Shiman race are qualified to cultivate it. Through mastering each of the body's force groups and unleashing them in unison, the practitioner generates power that transcends the body's own physical limits.*

*Divided into four levels:*

*Level One — Master the core force groups of the body and release them simultaneously. Increases strength by fifty percent.*

*Level Two — Master the core and major force groups and release them simultaneously. Doubles strength.*

*Level Three — Master all force groups throughout the body and release them simultaneously. Triples strength.*

*Level Four — All force groups amplified and released together. Quadruples strength.*

He stared at the final entry.

*...It can quadruple a body's strength?!*

That was insane.

He swung his greatsword once, still processing.

*Wait.*

A thought struck him, and he went still. He recalled the black stone man's movements — that fluid, effortless combat style, the combinations, the precision — and something clicked into place.

*Could it be... that the stone man's raw physical strength was never actually greater than mine? That it was only using Black Steel Force — and that's what made it so overwhelmingly powerful?*

That would explain everything.

*No wonder it was nearly crushing me.*

He'd been fighting something that had taken a decent base and multiplied it by four.

He was stunned all over again.

*And this isn't even a Gene Battle Technique. It's a* body technique.

Just that fact alone was extraordinary. Compared to Military Body Fist and Military Body Killing Sword, this was on a completely different level.

*Worthy of a civilization's inherited legacy — and one reserved only for geniuses at that.*

He read through the limitation carefully.

There was a catch, of course. If the practitioner's physical body wasn't strong enough, forcing the amplification would backfire and injure them. For a spirit-type or elemental-type Gene Warrior, reaching Level One would already be a struggle, and pushing to Level Two might leave them seriously hurt. Those were the builds with the weakest raw physical frames of all — the farthest from what this technique demanded.

In that sense, Black Steel Force might as well have been custom-made for Guardian types and Assault types. Of all Gene Warrior paths, those two were the strongest in terms of pure body toughness. Even his own Black Iron Body couldn't quadruple his defense at its current stage — and yet Level Four of this technique could quadruple raw strength outright.

*This is built for Guardian and Assault warriors. Tailor-made.*

He thought through what that meant in practice.

Training Black Steel Force didn't just add raw power — it honed precise, fine-grained control over one's own strength, allowing a practitioner to draw out close to one hundred percent of their physical capability. For an ordinary Gene Warrior to reach that level of force control without systematic guidance would take a very long time. This technique handed it to you directly.

He already had two body techniques — Military Body Fist and Military Body Killing Sword, corresponding respectively to unarmed combat and sword technique. Both were considered extremely precious in their own right. The Red Maple Empire issued warnings when it distributed them: keep them strictly confidential, do not let them spread. They lacked the enhancement magnitude of a Transcendent Gene inscription, but they were invaluable nonetheless.

Black Steel Force made them both look modest.

*If he could train it to Level Four... at that point, it would be on par with the combat techniques contained in a boss-tier Transcendent Gene.*

Lu Yuan let out a slow breath.

*A free technique. An absurd power ceiling. Who in their right mind wouldn't want it?*

Then a more complicated feeling settled in.

He'd just barely scraped through Level 1 of the Genius Trial, and only because he'd essentially thrown everything he had at it — serums, Spirit Crystals, Moonstone Spirit Essence, every advantage in his arsenal. Even then, the result had been that he and the stone man traded blow for blow until something gave out. He hadn't outclassed it. He'd outlasted it.

He thought back to how confidently he'd been walking around lately.

*I thought I was pretty talented.*

He laughed quietly at himself.

*And in the end, I only cleared Level 1 by basically cheating my way through.*

*This is what a Genius Trial is.*

He filed that away and straightened up.

A pity that the Shiman Civilization was gone. The fact that ruins had appeared here at all meant nothing of it remained. Still — they'd left behind something extraordinary.

He smiled.

*I'll only keep getting stronger. My Black Iron Body hasn't finished evolving. And if I get Black Steel Force to Level Four — that's a free boss-tier combat technique appearing out of thin air.*

*Powerful technique. Freely gained. Who wouldn't love that?*