55: Chapter 55 One punch shatters a rock, and this is called F-rank?

Red alarm lights bathed the training ground in a blood-red glow.

The cold, mechanical female voice continued to repeat: "Error! Target undefined! No Class Core detected!"

The technician ran over clutching a portable terminal, checking the wiring three times while drenched in sweat.

"Director Wang, the equipment isn't broken."

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, the technician's expression was worse than if he'd seen a ghost. "The hardware is operating normally; it's even overclocking."

Examiner Wang Su slammed the electronic scoreboard onto the table. "Not broken? If it's not broken, why is it reporting a string of garbled code?"

"It's because... the target doesn't exist."

The technician glanced cautiously at Lin Qi, who was standing before the Light Gate. "The System's underlying logic shows that no 'Class Template' can be detected. In its judgment, the tested target belongs to... to 'environmental background with no interaction attributes'."

Like a stone by the roadside or a tree in a game.

The System didn't even deign to calculate its data.

A burst of stifled snickering erupted from the crowd.

"After all that, he's just an NPC."

"How did someone like this sneak into the special recruitment selection? What a waste of everyone's time."

Zhao Lei clutched his greatsword, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "Hey, Lin Qi, do you want me to lend you some mana so you can at least trigger a red light?"

Examiner Wang Su pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting a cold light.

He picked up a pen and drew a heavy, bright red 'X' behind that name on the scoreboard.

"F-rank."

Examiner Wang Su's voice carried no warmth. "Regardless of who recommended you, Dragon Fang doesn't need a bug that even the System doesn't recognize. Pack your things and get lost."

Standing in the crowd, Li Shaobai watched Lin Qi's somewhat thin back, a smirk playing on his lips.

This was right.

Without a data panel, one was trash; this was the truth of the world.

Lin Qi didn't move.

He was neither overcome with shame nor flying into a rage.

He simply turned his head, his gaze passing over Examiner Wang Su to point at a black mass in the corner of the training ground.

"Is that thing usable?"

Following his finger, they saw a black square stone standing in the corner of the wall.

It was covered in dust, clearly untouched for a long time.

Examiner Wang Su frowned. "That's a pure physical force-testing stone from the old era; it's long since been phased out. Which Awakened still tests physical impact force nowadays? What we look for is the Skill Burst Coefficient."

"Since the Light Gate doesn't recognize me, I must be given a chance to prove myself."

Lin Qi's tone was flat. "Don't you want data? I'll produce some data for you."

"What a joke."

Zhao Lei strode out and pointed at the stone. "That's Black Gold Rock; its physical defense is comparable to tank armor. With your panel where every attribute is only 5? You'll fracture your hand before a single speck falls off it."

He turned to Examiner Wang Su. "Director Wang, don't waste your breath on him. Just kick him out."

Examiner Wang Su looked into Lin Qi's eyes, which were excessively calm.

That kind of gaze made him very uncomfortable.

It was like a lion looking at a pack of clamoring hyenas.

"Fine."

Examiner Wang Su suddenly changed his mind; he wanted to see how this kid would lose face completely. "I'll give you one chance. One punch. As long as you can make the reading on that stone exceed 100, I'll take back that F."

100 points was the limit for an ordinary adult male.

For an Awakened, it was merely pocket change.

Lin Qi nodded and walked straight to the Black Gold Rock.

He didn't strike an imposing starting stance, nor did his muscles tense and veins bulge like Zhao Lei's.

He even kept his other hand tucked in his pants pocket.

Then, he casually raised his right hand and seemingly light-heartedly pressed a punch onto the stone's surface.

There were no light or shadow special effects.

There was no deafening roar.

Thud.

A muffled sound.

It was like slapping a thick quilt with a palm.

The Black Gold Rock didn't budge an inch.

The scale on top didn't even tremble; the needle remained stubbornly at the '0' position, playing dead.

The entire hall was silent for about two seconds.

Then, the burst of laughter almost blew the roof off.

"Hahaha! You're killing me!"

Zhao Lei laughed until tears came out, slapping his thigh. "This is your 'hard fist'? Were you afraid of hurting the stone?"

"I thought there would be some kind of twist, but that's it?"

"This is the so-called Ancient Martial Arts? Looks more like an old folks' disco to me."

The mage boy who had been glared at by Lin Qi earlier was now jumping the highest. "Director Wang, why keep someone like this? Hurry up and make him scram, don't lower the standards of Dragon Fang!"

Examiner Wang Su shook his head, feeling as though he must have had water in his brain to actually harbor expectations for this kid.

"Alright, stop making a fool of yourself."

Examiner Wang Su waved his hand as if shooing a fly. "The door is over there. Leave on your own."

Lin Qi ignored the noise.

He withdrew his hand and gently brushed off a bit of dust that had settled on his cuff.

"I'm leaving."

He turned around and stepped toward the line.

"Who told you to return to the line? I told you to get out of—"

Examiner Wang Su was only halfway through his sentence.

Crack.

An extremely crisp sound of fracturing abruptly cut through all the clamor.

Zhao Lei's exaggerated laughing face froze.

Li Shaobai's movement of adjusting his cuff stopped.

Everyone's gaze was involuntarily drawn by the sound, falling back onto the Black Gold Rock.

On the surface of the stone that was claimed to be indestructible, a thin crack had appeared at some point.

Immediately following that.

Crack crack crack crack.

A dense series of crisp snaps joined together.

The crack spread and branched out rapidly like it was going mad, covering the entire boulder in the blink of an eye.

It looked like a piece of porcelain that had been shattered but was being forcibly held together.

Crash—!

Under the watch of hundreds of eyes.

The Black Gold Rock, over two people tall, did not shatter into stones.

Instead, it collapsed like a sand sculpture.

Turning into black powder that covered the ground.

Every grain was as uniform as if it had been ground by precision instruments.

This was Penetrating Force.

It wasn't a thrusting force acting on the surface, but a shockwave that directly destroyed the smallest structural connections inside the object.

The hall was deathly silent.

The mage boy's mouth hung open, his jaw nearly dislocated.

Zhao Lei looked at the powder on the ground and swallowed hard, feeling as if he had swallowed a piece of burning coal.

Is this something a blank slate with all attributes at 5 can do?

If this punch landed on a person...

Zhao Lei shuddered, not daring to think further.

The electronic pen in Examiner Wang Su's hand fell to the ground, rolling to his feet without him even noticing.

He stared fixedly at the pile of debris.

As a fanatical believer in the data-driven school, his worldview suffered a certain shock at this moment.

The System hadn't alerted, there were no energy fluctuations, and there wasn't even a skill reading.

Yet the destructive power caused exceeded most A-rank skills.

Lin Qi stopped and glanced back.

"The quality of this stone isn't very good."

His tone was very sincere, as if giving a suggestion to the manufacturer. "It's as brittle as a biscuit; I suggest you replace the batch."

Examiner Wang Su took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the shock in his heart.

He didn't want to admit he had misjudged, let alone admit that data could fail.

"The first trial... consider it a pass."

Examiner Wang Su picked up the pen and gritted his teeth as he made a change on the scoreboard. "But my evaluation remains the same: with only brute force, you're just a moving sandbag on the battlefield."

He spun around abruptly, his robe whipping out in a sharp arc.

"Everyone, move to Field Two!"

"The next item is the 'Full-Coverage Evasion Test'. I want to see if you can still shatter the air in the middle of a seamless magic barrage!"