Chapter 46: Lucian’s Foolish Step

Lucian moved.

He didn’t glide forward like some immortal phoenix, nor did he charge like a rabid lion.

He simply lunged ahead in a wide, slightly uneven sprint. There was nothing refined about it. His stride looked almost desperate, like a street kid sprinting through muddy alleys with gang enforcers hot on his heels. His upper body swayed with every step, shoulders dipping and twisting with raw, unpolished athleticism.

Pshew! Pshew! Clack!

At the ten-meter mark, two horizontal lasers suddenly dropped across his path.

Lucian didn’t attempt some graceful duck or textbook maneuver.

Instead, he let out an exaggerated grunt of surprise and dropped into an awkward slide. His boots skidded against the floor, sending him sliding low as the red beam swept past his collar by less than an inch.

A faint hiss followed.

The laser had singed the synthetic fibers of his jacket, leaving behind the sharp smell of burnt plastic.

"Look at that footwork!" a teacher in the stands chuckled. "He’s sliding on his shins! Completely unrefined!"

But down on the catwalk, the chief examiner’s eyes remained fixed on Lucian’s boots.

He slid... but his center of gravity never broke.

The veteran general’s fingers tightened around the railing.

That wasn’t a slip. His weight stayed perfectly balanced on the outer edge of his right sole. He knew the beam was coming before it even dropped.

Clack-clack-clack!

Lucian’s eyes sharpened. To the spectators, he looked panicked. He threw his arms out wildly, twisting his torso in what appeared to be a desperate, spastic lurch to the right.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Two rubber rounds missed his ribcage by a fraction of an inch, the wind from their passage ruffling his loose shirt.

The third round was aimed directly at his right hip—an unavoidable trajectory given his awkward momentum.

An ordinary student would have taken the hit, accepted the fifteen-point penalty, and stumbled.

Lucian, however, did something that made every experienced Martial Artist in the observation boxes narrow their eyes.

At the absolute last possible millisecond—when the rubber round was less than two inches from his skin—Lucian’s right hip suddenly twitched backward by an unnatural, microscopic margin. It was a micro-displacement of pure muscle control pulled directly from the core stabilization arts of the Floating Pagoda Mysterious Skill.

The high-speed projectile brushed harmlessly against the loose fabric of his trousers, carrying zero kinetic transfer, before slamming into the alloy wall behind him with a loud crack!

"Missed?!" Eric gasped from the paddock, his jaw dropping. "How the hell did that miss?!"

Lucian didn’t stop. He scrambled forward, his strides looking messy, hurried, and full of frantic urgency.

He bobbed. He weaved.

Ahead of him, three pneumatic cannons snapped into position. Their barrels tracked his movement for a fraction of a second before unleashing a rapid volley, the projectiles tearing toward his chest and abdomen.

He had slipped, certainly, but his centre of gravity held firm. The veteran examiner gripped the railing harder. It was no error; Lucian had his weight perfectly set on the outer edge of his right sole, having known where the beam would fall before it even came down.

Clack-clack-clack!

Twenty-five meters in and three pneumatic cannons opened up in quick succession, their vertical fire driving rubber projectiles straight for Lucian’s midsection. The margin for error was non-existent.

Lucian’s eyes glowed with a little more intensity.

However, in contrast to this, most of the people observing the event perceived Lucian as being completely out of control. He flailed his arms wildly outward and turned his upper body all the way to the right while twisting at the waist, which made it appear to be almost entirely a frantic spasm instead of an intended avoidance motion.

Whoosh Whoosh! Whoosh!

There were Two additional rubber projectiles moving rapidly toward Lucian’s ribcage area. The distance separating each projectile from Lucian’s torso was measured in mere inches.

The next projectile was very different.

It was coming straight at Lucian’s right hip and based upon the uneven momentum that Lucian created, he seemed to have no viable method of avoiding it.

An average martial arts student would have likely absorbed the impact of the projectile, would have taken the penalty for missing (fifteen points) and possibly been knocked off balance due to the force of the projectile.

Lucian did something different instead.

After seeing what happened, all of the experienced martial artists in the observation stands narrowed their eyes.

The moment the rubber projectile was merely inches away from hitting his right hip, Lucian caused just enough separation between his body and pants for the projectile to travel through. Through an extreme precision over the functioning of the core and muscle groups, this was consistently done. Namely, this is parallel to the principle contained within the techniques for stabilising one’s centre according to the mysterious skill of the floating pagoda.

To everyone’s eye, there just seemed to be no difference between where the projectile went and where Lucian’s body actually was... The projectile merely missed him, and so Lucian continued on. To any observer this was just a fortunate dodge in public opinion. But everyone who is an expert knew this.

The projectile in actuality only brushed lightly against the upper layer of the fabric of Lucian’s loose pants before continuing onwards and crashed loudly into the steel plate right behind him!

Lucian quit running to keep on walking down the track path. He walked in a way that looked intentionally sloppy and hurried; one would think this was a person trying to survive instead of someone using confidence to get through the course.

Whenever a laser threatened to box him in, he executed a clumsy, last-second stumble that miraculously carried him through the blind spot. Whenever a barrage of rubber rounds blanketed the corridor, he threw himself into an awkward sideways lurch, letting the projectiles whiz past his ears, his shoulders, and his shins by millimeters.

It looked for all the world like a man stumbling blindly through a hailstorm and miraculously failing to get struck by lightning.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!