I pulled on the second gauntlet and picked up my mace.
Tariq was clutching his ribs and practically steaming with rage. His mates weren’t exactly beaming with love either, and the whole bully crew, without exception, was staring at my mace. Bao Feng didn’t give a toss about the mace — he was glaring at Tariq like he was begging for a fight.
Well — not like. He was.
I let out a heavy sigh.
"Break it up!" I ordered.
No one moved.
"Guys," I gave the mace a casual wave, "you see any other assistant supervisor around here?"
Blank stares. They clearly didn’t get the point. I had to spell it out.
"You’ve got me outnumbered. That means I’ll have to use force — and I’m afraid someone’s going to get seriously hurt."
I shot Tariq a sharp look. He glanced away like a beaten dog and took a step back, wincing at the pain in his side.
"This little prick started it! Walked right into me, elbowed my ribs — I didn’t even touch him!" he whined, slurring the words.
I thought they were supposed to be good at growing their teeth back. Tariq seemed to be running short.
"I’ll deal with the little prick," I said. "Now all of you — piss off back to your rooms."
The bullies clearly didn’t want to back down, but the sting of their last beating was still fresh. I'd basically been rewarded for beating the shit out of them — plus there was that lingering threat of Liang Shi doubling their punishment.
"Right then!" I gave them my nastiest grin and swung the mace in a sharp arc, slapping the head into my left palm. The plastic made a dry clack — not quite the menacing sound I wanted, but good enough. It did the job. The whole bully lot backed off in sync.
"Alright, alright, man, we’re going!" said Kim — if I wasn’t mixing up names.
"Pussies!" Bao hissed after them.
"Shut your gob, hero," I told him. "I get it — you’re on a self-destructive streak, trying to prove to yourself that the world’s been cruel and unfair to poor little you." I rolled my eyes at the ceiling and raised my arms like I was pleading for answers from the heavens. Since Bao wasn’t making my job any easier, I saw no reason to go easy on him either. "Not on my time, mate. Save the theatrics for your daddy, then ask the family chef to fry you some crisps so you can cry into them. You’re no victim, Bao. Just a spoiled, rich little bastard with bad luck. Don't pretend it’s the world that failed you. What’s eating you alive is knowing you’ve fallen from your pedestal and landed among us mortals. That’s the real disgrace, right? Not the injury — the company."
He went tomato red with anger — a rather striking contrast to the blue hair.
Bao clenched his jaw and swung at me. He clearly wanted to beat the shit out of me, put everything he had into that punch — all his strength, all his rage — which made it slow as hell.
I deflected it with the mace. Nailed the strike — right on the wrist with the macehead.
"Shit!" Bao yelled, grabbing his injured wrist with his left hand, grimacing from the pain. "Aaargh!" he growled.
And instead of calming down, he tried to kick me. Not just a random kick, though — someone had clearly trained the lad. That answered a question — turns out they do have proper non-Qi martial techniques. When his brain finally switched off completely, reflexes took over. Bao pulled off a proper tornado kick aimed straight at my head.
I nearly hit the floor — dodged at the last second, and his shoe only scraped my cheek. Scraped it good, too. Rattled my head a bit, but I played it off like it was nothing.
The moment he landed, I slammed the mace into the outside of his left thigh.
Bao dropped like a tree. I gave him one more in the right thigh — for symmetry, and because the little bastard turned out to be far more dangerous than I’d expected. Gotta be careful with this one.
He howled in pain, and I stepped back, already calculating my next move. Living in the same room with this lunatic was going to be a bloody nightmare.
I looked around to see how big a crowd we’d drawn — and spotted the bullies watching Bao with a certain sweet satisfaction in their eyes.
"You lot still here?" I asked.
"We’re leaving, we’re leaving!" Tariq said, hands raised.
"Why aren’t you in the infirmary?"
"They let me out for a walk. Before the next round of treatment."Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"Right. Well, enjoy your stroll. Off you go." I waved him off and waited until the goon squad disappeared and Bao settled down.
He’d shaken off the initial shock and crawled over to the wall, propped himself up, and stood — though his legs were still shaky, so he stayed leaning.
"You know," I told him, "I broke six of his ribs in public, knocked out eight of his teeth — and he’s handling it way better than you."
"You ruined my life!" Bao shot back.
"Me?" I widened my eyes in mock surprise.
Bao looked away.
I laughed.
"Everyone’s to blame but you, yeah?" I said quietly, taking a step closer. It was a risk — if he lunged again, I might not dodge — but I didn’t want anyone overhearing this. "But I know what happened."
He looked up at me — surprised this time.
"You got greedy. You wanted to outpace everyone. So instead of just letting the Flow pass through you, you decided to take a little extra."
Bao blinked — that twitch of surprise, dead giveaway. Nailed it.
"No one ever told you that was impossible?"
"It is possible!" Bao snapped, fire in his voice — but he couldn’t hold my gaze, looked away again. "There are special techniques. They teach them in second year."
"In second year. Not during your first exposure to the Flow. Mate, do yourself a favour — just admit you fucked it up. It wasn’t someone else who shat your pants. It was you. Own it. And move on."
"What’s the point?" Bao muttered bitterly. "I failed. Fell hopelessly behind. My family’s not going to waste valuable resources on me. I’ve got two younger sisters. Now they’ll focus on them."
"They won’t cut you off completely. And that’s already more than the average cadet can hope for. So pull your shit together and get to work."
"What work? I’m not even allowed to cultivate for another week!"
"Earn some points! I made four just this morning in the Fist Garden — two hours’ work. You might even start sensing Mace Qi while you're at it."
Bao froze, mentally calculating. His gaze had turned inward. Eventually, he nodded, pushed off the wall, and started walking toward the block’s exit.
Did I just give the little bastard a new goal?
"Wait!" I called after him and raised my hands apologetically. "You did attack an assistant supervisor. Plenty of witnesses."
Bao held back the incoming tirade and just nodded again.
"I think I can get that down to three penalty points."
He just waved a hand — whatever, do as you like.
I gave a quick summary in the chat, and Liang Shi confirmed the penalty without asking for details. I doubt Sun Hao was too thrilled about it, though.
The rest of the shift went without incident. By the end, I actually felt like I could handle two, maybe three more sessions in the Garden.
This time, I went back to Diego. Something about him made things easier than with Albert — and he usually assigned less work.
He assigned me to two chamomile beds and one violet bed, which should’ve earned me three points in total. I’d harvested chamomile before, and violets too — they didn’t detonate nearly as much as immortelle, so I got bold and asked for a full set of ten drones.
After all, they were doing the actual work.
I had to confess I’d cheated on him with Albert earlier and already worked with that many drones. Diego forgave me and sent the extra machines. The work went quickly — much faster than under the trees, since the beds had clear borders and the drones didn’t have to weave around trunks. The machines crawled smoothly, clipping flowers while the manipulators packed them into containers — and I could barely keep up, just sealing the boxes.
Violets turned out to be more troublesome than I’d expected. Maybe there was a specific reason. Maybe just bad luck. But one drone got shredded outright by a Qi detonation. Had to spend ages picking up the bits. Two more got minor damage, and I ended up composting half the flower.
The violets frayed my nerves a bit, so I asked Diego for permission to take a walk.
"Just... maybe no enlightenment this time?" he said.
"No promises!" I shook my head. "Kate thinks I’m a genius."
"A genius? Are you sure she didn’t mean bragger?"
"Doesn’t mean it can’t be both," I replied.
Long story short — I was granted the walk. But only for half an hour, and I wasn’t allowed to stray too far from the station. Shame. I’d been hoping to make it to the trees. Had to settle for the bushes instead.
With night approaching, the Garden was starting to empty. It was quieter: no drones running or flying around, and the plants cast strange, shifting shadows under the lamplight.
I picked up the pace a bit, just enough to make it look like I was headed somewhere on business — and began experimenting with the formation.
First — hypersensitivity mode.
It took about a minute to locate the control contour with my sixth sense. Then everything around me exploded into sensation.
Leaves rustled far too loudly. Every tiny stone underfoot vibrated up through the soles of my boots — armoured boots, mind you! The Qi in the Garden sharpened — like a heavy cloud of static clinging to the skin.
I considered approaching the nearest flowerbed to try picking out some residual Fist Qi from the petals… But I’d done that before. No point repeating.
I deactivated the formation — managed it a bit quicker this time.
The sensations settled back to normal. The world felt dimmer, muffled — as if someone had wrapped me in cotton. I could barely feel the wind or gravity. The pressure of Qi dropped, but didn’t vanish completely.
Alan had done everything right. Not that I doubted him.
I wandered for a bit, switching modes, getting used to the transitions. Found a target — an upper-period practising techniques on a nearby platform — but a message from Marlon distracted me. He was heading to dinner. Denis too.
I made one half-hearted attempt to sense the stranger’s technique without the formation.
Failed, of course.
Ah well. There’ll be other days.
I messaged Diego to let him know I’d wrapped up my walk and headed for the cafeteria — passing through the Armour Hall, obviously.
Marlon had already found a table and texted me the location. I spotted Denis by the dispenser machines — we grabbed our trays and went to find Marlon.
Before diving into the calories, we gave the food a critical once-over — your standard tray-lottery meal — and made a few swaps. All the sweet stuff to Marlon. Anything vaguely meat-flavoured to me. As for Denis… well, he had his preferences, but I hadn’t figured them out yet.
We started eating, chatting about whatever. Denis was moaning about his progress. Marlon told us he’d landed a job in the canteen — six to seven points per shift, two hours each. Seemed decent to me. Definitely better pay than the Garden.
Denis was about to start complaining about his shifts in the Meditation Hall… when Bao Feng silently sat down at our table.
He just appeared — like a ghost — set his tray down, and started eating without even looking up.
Marlon glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. Denis froze slightly mid-chew.
No one said a word.
Which suited me just fine. Maybe our ‘young master’ had finally got his head screwed on straight.
I kept chewing my meat-and-potato… thing — didn’t look like it, but that’s what it tasted like — and decided I’d had enough Bao drama for one day.
As usual, Denis was the first to speak — went straight back to complaining about work.