73: Chapter 73 The Thousand-Year-Old Flame-Bearer with a Fortune of Seven Hundred Million Begins to Scheme Against the Whole World

Training Grounds.

Lin Xiaoman stood at one end, Henry stood at the other.

The golden crystals on the twelve boundary markers cast a soft light, pinning their shadows to the stone bricks.

Lin Xiaoman rolled her hoodie sleeves up to her elbows, revealing a section of slender, fair forearms.

She clenched her fist.

"Pop."

A soft sound was squeezed out of the air around her fist.

She was stunned for half a second, looking down at her own fist.

The heaviest thing these hands had ever hit was the spacebar on a keyboard; now, with just a casual clench, the air could not even withstand it.

Opposite her, Henry handed his glasses to Liu Yuyan and loosened his shoulders.

His knuckles cracked three times, each one crisper than he expected.

The last time he had thrown a punch was in college, defending a classmate at a bar, only to be knocked down by one punch, his glasses flying two meters away.

That was forty years ago.

Su Chen stood on the sidelines, arms crossed over his chest.

"The rules are simple: one side admits defeat, or I call a stop."

Lin Xiaoman looked at Henry.

Henry looked at Lin Xiaoman.

1.52 meters vs. 1.78 meters.

Twenty-two years old vs. sixty-two years old.

Two people who had never fought before, now facing off in Tier 1 Extraordinary bodies.

Lin Xiaoman moved first.

The moment her feet pushed off the ground, a corner of the stone brick shattered; her body was like a projectile launched forward.

She covered fifteen meters in three steps, swinging her fist with no technique, relying purely on instinct.

The pressure of the wind made Henry's shirt collar flap loudly.

Henry turned sideways.

It was so fast that even he had not reacted yet.

His brain was still saying "It's too late," but his body had already completed the dodge.

The muscle reaction speed of a Tier 1 Extraordinary far exceeded his understanding of this body.

Lin Xiaoman's fist grazed his shoulder, the shockwave smashing into the boundary marker behind him, causing the crystal to hum.

Henry subconsciously raised his arms to block.

His two forearms crossed.

A dull thud exploded, shaking the golden light in the cracks of the stone bricks.

Both of them took two steps back simultaneously.

Looking down at their hands, then up at each other.

In their eyes was the same expression—what did I just do?

Lin Xiaoman: "...Professor, that block of yours just now was like an iron plate."

Henry flexed his wrist: "The wind pressure from your punch was enough to flip an operating table."

They paused for half a second.

Both moved at the same time.

For the next ten minutes, the sound of punches filled the Training Grounds.

Lin Xiaoman was small, agile, and had fast reflexes, but lacked power, and her attack rhythm was practically zero.

She would throw a punch and change direction, like a startled hamster scurrying in a cage.

Henry had a long reach and a stable center of gravity, but his brain kept giving commands based on a "sixty-two-year-old body."

The Tier 1 Extraordinary muscles would not listen, often using too much force, causing him to stumble half a step due to inertia after a punch.

Seven or eight stone bricks were shattered.

Liu Yuyan stood on the sidelines, the curve of her mouth growing wider.

She remembered her first strength test when she was Tier 1, shattering a stone target with one punch, which scared her into taking three steps back.

But she was different from these two.

Elena had held an iron rod since she was five, and until she fell on the battlefield at forty-three, she had spent her whole life swinging swords, raising shields, and charging.

The moment she passed the ancient tree trial, decades of combat instinct had been carved into Liu Yuyan's bones in the form of muscle memory.

That was why she could kill an E-Rank Exotic Beast at Tier 1.

It was not innate talent; the inherited sequence itself was designed for the battlefield.

The sequences of these two were not.

One was a craftsman, one was a healer.

Senior Lu Yan never fought an Exotic Beast with his own hands in his life; he relied on controlling beasts.

Seraphina spent her whole life thirty meters behind the front line; she relied on golden light to sustain lives.

What was passed on to Lin Xiaoman was not combat, but an extraordinary perception of machinery.

That was why she could "hear" the passivity of every node of the base's communication network the first second she awakened.

What was passed on to Henry was not combat, but an extraordinary perception of vital signs.

That was why a light of healing could float in his palm the first second he awakened.

One an Extender, one a Healer.

Neither was a frontline combat force.

But both had to survive.

"Thump."

This sound was not the wind of a punch.

It was Lin Xiaoman swinging and missing, her body spinning a full circle and a half with inertia, her feet slipping, and she sat down on the broken stone bricks.

Her twin tails whipped across her face.

Henry instinctively reached out to help.

As a result, the reaching motion used the force of a Tier 1 Extraordinary.

The wind from his palm swiped over, knocking Lin Xiaoman's half-risen body back over.

Lin Xiaoman: "..."

Henry: "..."

Liu Yuyan's shoulders shook.

She turned her head, covering half her face with her silver shoulder guard.

"Stop."

Su Chen spoke.

Both bent over, hands on their knees, panting.

Half of Lin Xiaoman's twin tails were disheveled and stuck to her face, and two buttons on Henry's shirt had popped off.

"Do you see the problem?"

Liu Yuyan composed her expression and replied: "Physical fitness is enough, combat technique is zero. Strength distribution is uneven, attack-defense conversion is stiff, and stamina is wasted significantly."

Su Chen nodded.

But he was calculating something else in his mind.

The system panel unfolded in the corner of his vision.

"Current Points: 3700"

"E-Rank Crystal: × 1"

Three thousand seven hundred.

Enough to forge another Kindling and push one of them to Tier 2.

Su Chen did not act on this thought.

Lin Xiaoman and Henry had just stepped into the threshold of the Extraordinary, their foundations were unstable, and their cognition was incomplete.

If he poured Tier 2 power into them now, they would think advancing was easy, and that they could become stronger by just walking a few steps.

This kind of cognition would get people killed on a real battlefield.

The day the world-ending catastrophe arrives three years later, it will not be something you can survive just by stacking numbers.

He needed warriors who had experienced blood and fire and could still stand in desperate situations.

But they needed the capital to walk out of the battlefield alive.

Su Chen opened the system store in his mind and flipped to the armor column.

"Kindling Standard Combat Suit (E-Rank) × 2 — 2000 Points"

No flashy skills, no holy light special effects.

Just tough.

It could withstand E-Rank physical attacks and reduce weird erosion by thirty percent.

That was enough.

"Confirm purchase."

"Points deducted: 2000. Balance: 1700."

Su Chen looked up, watching the two people in the Training Grounds who were still rubbing their wrists.

"There is a mission next."

He called the two of them under the ancient tree. Liu Yuyan followed.

"I have sensed a relic of the Kindling ancestors; there are things we urgently need at this stage there."

Su Chen took two pendants from his windbreaker pocket, the same style Liu Yuyan had used in the Star Observatory ruins.

"Space displacement pendant. Five thousand meters per use, shatters after five uses. If you encounter danger, jump directly."

Lin Xiaoman took the pendant and turned it over to look at it twice. A silver-blue data stream flashed in the depths of her pupils.

Her extraordinary perception was already instinctively dismantling the energy circuits inside the pendant.

Su Chen's gaze sank by half a degree.

"Remember one thing. Cover your faces; the true identities of Kindling members must not be exposed."

Both nodded simultaneously.

Su Chen turned and walked toward the ancient tree.

He left them with his back.

After the two left, the altar quieted down.

Su Chen sat down on the stone steps.

He took off his mask and set it aside; his twenty-five-year-old face was weary yet clear under the golden light.

He spread the notebook on his knees, his pen tip hovering over the paper.

He did not write.

He looked at the panel first.

"Current Points: 1700"

"Current Authenticity: 3400 / 10000"

"System Level: LV2. Authenticity required to upgrade to LV3: 10000"

"E-Rank Crystal: × 1"

One thousand seven hundred.

He tapped his finger on the stone steps twice.

He had the strength of a Tier 3: Fire-Bearer, eight Space Cuts, five-thousand-degree flames, and five-kilometer teleportation.

But to break through to Tier 4, the prerequisite was for the system to upgrade first, and the only fuel for the system upgrade was authenticity.

Three thousand four hundred, still six thousand six hundred short.

He was not sure if a Level 3 system would open the production permissions for Tier 4 Kindling.

If it did not open, his growth would be stuck here.

He had gone over the sources of authenticity countless times.

The first path: killing Exotic Beasts.

The higher the level and the greater the number, the higher the authenticity.

That battle in the War Zone, three E-Ranks and one D-Rank, netted him nearly 1500 authenticity in one go.

The efficiency was astonishing.

But the drawback was fatal—he had to wait.

When Exotic Beasts would crawl out of the cracks was not up to him.

No invasion meant no income.

Passive waiting was the most extravagant pastime for the poor.

The second path.

Su Chen looked down at the line he wrote in his notebook — "Civilization does not extinguish, Kindling burns forever."

Creating history.

Build authenticity with history, build authenticity with hope.

Let the whole world personally dig out the "thousand-year-old ruins" of Kindling,

Let archaeological experts stamp and confirm with carbon-14 dating,

Let intelligence agencies of various countries lock one top-secret report after another that says "Kindling indeed exists" in their safes.

Every person's "belief" was feeding the authenticity.

And the most critical chess piece on this path — was currently sitting on a military flight at 30,000 feet, flying to the Middle East.

Section Chief Han Zheng.

Su Chen's pen tip landed on the paper.

After the Star Observatory ruins were unearthed, he knew the authorities would not stop.

Someone like Section Chief Han Zheng, if you give him a loose thread, he could dismantle the entire sweater.

So, while Su Chen was creating the Star Observatory ruins, he used the system to bury several other energy beacons globally.

Weak spatial fluctuations, the frequency was exactly the same as the Star Observatory ruins.

They were not buried deep, but they were very widely distributed.

Once the official detection equipment scanned these fluctuations, they would excitedly send out archaeological teams to dig them up one by one.

For the one in Europe, Su Chen deliberately left it empty.

Let Section Chief Han Zheng make a wasted trip, make him anxious, but not to the point of despair.

This one in the Middle East could not be empty again.

If a dog chases a bone and cannot catch it, it will give up.

You have to toss one every now and then.

Su Chen drew a circle in his notebook and wrote "Middle East Ruins" at the center.

He drew three lines from the center.

The first — the physical ruins.

Broken stone steles, remaining murals, sections of underground tunnels. Kindling totem combined with ancient seal script, the aging degree matched two thousand three hundred years.

This was bait for the archaeological team.

The second — the core item.

An ancient compass.

Su Chen's pen tip drew a circle around these three words.

The function was simple: sense spatial fluctuations, roughly record the type of invasion. Not high precision, limited range, but a hundred times more useful than any detection equipment the authorities currently had.

As for Wang Hao's bronze piece, it had other uses later; using it solely for sensing was too wasteful.

This was a sweetener for Section Chief Han Zheng.

With this thing, the authorities would have a primary means of monitoring weird invasions.

They would protect it like their own life.

And every time they used it, it was equivalent to acknowledging the authenticity of the Kindling ruins at an operational level.

The more they used it, the deeper they believed.

The deeper they believed, the faster the authenticity would rise.

Long-line fishing for big fish.

The bait on the hook was something the fish took itself.

The third — the standard combat suits for Lin Xiaoman and Henry.

Placed in a secret room deep within the ruins. Let them take them away in the name of "recovering ancestor relics."

Take them away before Section Chief Han Zheng arrived.

The time difference was key.

Su Chen closed the notebook.

"System, begin construction of the Middle East Kindling ruins."

"Coordinates confirmed. Ruins generating..."

"Content: Broken stone stele × 2, mural fragment × 1, underground tunnel section, ancient compass × 1, secret room × 1."

"Total consumption: 1000 points."

"Balance: 700."

Seven hundred.

Su Chen stared at the number for three seconds.

The golden light of the ancient tree fell on his shoulders, shattering into fine spots of light.

The newly grown golden leaves rustled in the windless space.

Every leaf was a person's belief.

Liu Yuyan's, Lin Xiaoman's, Henry's.

The three of them had carved the slogan he wrote into their bones.

Su Chen opened his eyes and reopened the notebook.

The pen tip landed on the last blank space.

He wrote eight characters.

"Using their hands to build my city."