The next morning, Jun Jie returned to the training field of the Iron Blood Body Sect, and for the first time since waking in this world, he saw it without the haze of disgrace hanging over his name.
It spread across the inner grounds like a forge built for flesh instead of steel. Rows of black iron pillars stood buried deep in the earth, their surfaces dented from years of fists, elbows, shoulders, and knees crashing against them. Several disciples hammered those posts in rhythm, each impact carrying a dull metallic boom through the air. Others ran with thick stone weights chained to their waists. A group farther to the left stood half-buried in dark medicinal sand up to their knees, driving punches forward while sweat poured down bare arms and steamed in the cool morning air. There was no elegance anywhere in it. No drifting sleeves, no graceful sword arcs, no refined atmosphere. Only breathing, strain, bruises, and the blunt, ugly honesty of a body sect.
Jun Jie liked it immediately.
'This is more like it.'
The field noticed him in pieces.
One disciple missed the rhythm of his punches and took a jarring hit against his wrist. Another lowered the iron log he had been carrying across his shoulders. Conversations did not stop at once, but they frayed. Heads turned. A few pairs of eyes held surprise. Others carried caution now, and that was new. Yesterday they had watched him defeat Qin Zhen in front of the entire sect. No amount of whispering could scrape that out of their memory overnight.
Some still looked unconvinced.
Good. Those were usually the most entertaining.
Qin Zhen stood near the center platform, bare-armed, already sweating through a fresh round of body drills. Purple bruises still marked his ribs and shoulder from the duel. He was striking a suspended iron plate with short, vicious bursts of force, each one cleaner than the last. When Jun Jie entered the field, Qin Zhen stopped.
The space around him changed before a word was spoken.
Jun Jie almost smiled.
'He really does take training seriously.'
[Unlike the previous owner of this body, who treated exercise like an insult.]
Before he could answer, a heavy presence pressed across the entire training ground.
Elder Ren had arrived.
The old training elder strode onto the raised stone platform with the same energy as a boulder dropped from a mountain. He was massive, thick through the chest and shoulders, his dark training robes unable to hide the frame of a man who had spent a lifetime beating weakness out of bodies.
"Enough."
The field obeyed at once.
His voice rolled over the crowd like a blunt strike.
"Yesterday, all of you saw the young master defeat Qin Zhen."
No one spoke.
Elder Ren turned his head slightly, taking in the gathered disciples one by one. "Some of you think it was a fluke. Some think Qin Zhen underestimated him. Some think the young master hid his strength for years and only revealed it now."
A faint ripple moved through the field. Nobody dared answer.
Elder Ren's expression hardened.
"You're all wrong."
That drew them in harder than a shout would have.
He lifted one broad hand and pointed directly at Jun Jie.
"What he did after the duel was worth more than winning it."
The training field went still enough to hear cloth shifting in the wind.
Elder Ren's next words dropped with brutal clarity.
"The young master corrected the Iron Blood Tyrant Body Art."
For half a breath, the disciples simply stared.
A few frowned as if they had misheard him. One outer disciple near the back almost laughed from pure disbelief before the pressure in the field strangled the sound in his throat.
Jun Jie could feel it spreading already. Confusion first. Resistance next. A body sect's inheritance was not a thing some spoiled heir rewrote in his room between naps and shameful hobbies.
Elder Ren gave them no time to sort themselves out.
"Jun Jie," he said, "show them."
Jun Jie stepped forward.
The stone beneath his boots carried the memory of years of training, years Arthur had barely touched. He climbed onto the platform without hurry, every disciple in the field fixed on him now.
Most were expecting some grand display.
Jun Jie gave them the opposite.
He inhaled, rooted his stance, and began.
The opening movement of the Iron Blood Tyrant Body Art was familiar to everyone present. That was why the first reaction was disappointment. His posture looked close enough to the sect's usual form to confuse the inattentive. The angle of the legs, the drop of the shoulders, the gathering of force into the waist, all of it resembled the art they had practiced since entering the sect.
A few disciples exchanged glances.
"That's just the body art."
"Why does it look strange?"
"His breathing..."
"Did Elder Ren really stop all of us for posture correction?"
Jun Jie heard every word and continued.
He shifted into the second sequence.
That was where the differences began to bite.
Force did not leak upward too early. His shoulders stayed loose. His spine aligned like a drawn iron rod, but the power flowed through it instead of crashing into it. His breath sank deeper. Every transition fed the next one. No wasted tension, no rough blockage in the torso, no familiar stiffness in the upper frame that every disciple of the sect had spent years accepting as normal.
The murmurs changed tone.
One disciple at the front frowned hard enough to hurt himself. Another took an unconscious half-step forward.
Jun Jie drove a fist into empty air.
The sound that followed did not resemble the ordinary art.
A dense, low tremor rolled out from the strike and stirred dust off the stone platform. Several disciples' expressions shifted immediately. They knew that sound. They had chased it for years and only touched fragments of it. What came from Jun Jie did not feel like the same art pushed harder.
It felt like the same art finally standing upright.
Qin Zhen moved before anyone else.
He had been motionless until now, arms at his sides, jaw set, watching with the concentration of a man standing at the edge of something he had wanted his entire life without knowing its shape.
Now he stepped forward.
Jun Jie flowed into the next sequence, each movement cleaner than the last, and Qin Zhen's face changed with brutal speed. The disbelief went first. What replaced it was sharper and far more dangerous.
Recognition.
He knew.
He knew exactly what he was seeing.
By the time Jun Jie finished and the last pulse of force faded into the morning air, the field had gone utterly quiet.
No one mocked him now.
No one even seemed willing to breathe first.
Qin Zhen climbed onto the platform.
Every disciple on the field watched him.
He stopped three paces in front of Jun Jie, cupped his fist into his palm, and lowered his head.
The whole training field broke.
"What—"
"Qin Zhen bowed?"
"He made a respect vow—"
"To Jun Jie?"
"What did the young master show him?"
"Was that really the Iron Blood Tyrant Body Art?"
Qin Zhen did not lift his head.
"Young Master," he said, voice tight with the force he was using to keep it steady, "please teach me."
That shook them more than the vow itself.
Qin Zhen was the strongest disciple of their generation. The kind of man who would rather break a tooth than ask for help in public. Yet here he was, bowing on the training platform and asking Jun Jie to teach him in front of everyone.
Jun Jie folded his arms and stared down at him with all the solemnity he absolutely did not feel.
"Of course," he said. "Clean my room once a week, and I'll consider it."
Qin Zhen froze.
It happened so quickly it was almost beautiful.
His shoulders locked. His head lifted a fraction. The entire field stared at him as if someone had cracked a mountain open and found embarrassment inside.
Jun Jie held it for one breath.
Two.
The corners of his mouth finally gave way.
"I'm joking," he said. "Relax."
A rough exhale escaped somewhere in the crowd. Someone at the back choked on a laugh and tried to murder it before Elder Ren heard. Qin Zhen straightened slowly, the tips of his ears faintly red with a humiliation he was enduring through sheer force of discipline.
Jun Jie clapped him once on the shoulder.
"You're too stiff."
Qin Zhen replied through his teeth, "You enjoy this far too much."
"Only a healthy amount."
Elder Ren snorted from the side of the platform, crossed both thick arms over his chest, and gave Jun Jie the field.
Which was exactly what Jun Jie wanted.
He turned toward the gathered disciples of the Iron Blood Body Sect.
A few still looked stunned. A few looked hungry now. Some carried doubt, but it had become the kind that watches closely instead of laughing from a distance. Iron pillars stood silent around them. Chains lay against the ground. Sweat, breath, and morning light hung over the field like a promise.
Jun Jie let them wait one beat longer and spoke with the authority he had ripped out of the sect's throat yesterday and no longer intended to give back.
"All of you," he said, voice cutting clean across the field, "positions."