Volume One, Chapter Ninety-Four: The Broken Target

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With his eyes closed and all ten fingers extended, Morde pointed into the distance at the strange metal dummy target. The power within him began to circulate, driving his metal art to reshape the dummy.

A slight depression appeared on the once-smooth, flawless surface. But the unique memory property of the gleaming soft silver caused it to recover at once, mending the dent as though nothing had happened.

Morde was somewhat surprised that the strange metal’s regenerative ability was so strong. Truly, there were still far too many wondrous metals in this world that he had never seen before.

His outspread fingers slowly drew together, the joints of his hands bending like hooks, as though he had locked down every part of the strange metal dummy. Ten thin golden lines, simulated by his metal power, extended gradually from his fingertips, wavering as they flew toward the dummy.

This was also the first time Morde had condensed such long metal filaments from nothing. The farther they were from his body, the harder they were to control. Once the far end of the filaments latched onto the strange metal dummy, they rooted themselves deep inside it, joining forces with the broken metal power that had previously penetrated the dummy to steadily reinforce the strength of the golden threads.

After lightly flicking the hollow-air filaments and confirming that their strength was sufficient, Morde once again activated his ability to alter the appearance of the gleaming soft silver dummy.

The onlookers, Blue City and the many instructors, had all assumed that he was using the metal filaments to improve the efficiency of power transmission. Yet what happened next left them dumbfounded.

With his metal art driven to a frenzy, a huge crack surfaced across the body of the gleaming soft silver dummy. In terms of manipulation alone, shaping gleaming soft silver was far easier than forging that golden dragon coffin. The troublesome part was that even if its shape changed, the entire dummy would soon return to its original form.

Sure enough, as the enormous fissure spread diagonally from the dummy's left shoulder to its right abdomen, the strange metal around the wound began to press inward, trying to close and restore itself.

Blue City had not expected his junior brother's art to be so fierce that it could tear such a massive裂痕 into a B+ strange metal like gleaming soft silver.

But Morde's next move once again opened everyone's eyes.

With his palms flipped and his fingers pointed outward, Morde exerted force through his forearms, instantly drawing the metal filaments tight and taut.

Then, with a powerful swing of his arm and a sinking twist of his wrist, ten streams of deft force were sent along the golden threads into the strange metal dummy. Working together with the crack torn open by his art, they actually ripped the entire gleaming soft silver dummy cleanly in two!

Before the soft silver on the dummy's surface had even fully healed, it was violently pulled apart. The moment the single dummy split into halves, its surface had already gone dim and dull, no longer able to recover its former appearance.

Memory metals can indeed restore themselves to a preset shape to a certain extent, but if the impact is too great, or if the overall structure of the metal is destroyed, then that restorative property is lost as well. Only after the next hot reshaping can its original memory characteristic be recovered.

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The gleaming soft silver had lost its luster, and the target dummy had been severed in two. What had happened in the blink of an eye was beyond the instructors' understanding.

As for Morde, he walked up to the target and began studying the gleaming soft silver strange metal with great interest.

He again poured his power into the remains of the dummy, carefully sensing the structure of the soft silver as he tried to understand its healing and restorative memory property.

In the end, he only shook his head and put the remains back where they had been. He had intended to see whether he could master the refining method of this memory strange metal, but he discovered that its complexity far exceeded his imagination.

The strange metals he had tempered with Black Flame were completely different from the microscopic structure of this gleaming soft silver. No matter how much he refined those metals, he could never make them possess a memory ability like that of gleaming soft silver.

Sighing at the marvels of nature, Morde stood up. This test was indeed very easy. Because Feng Shichu's notes had clearly stated that as long as the target in this assessment was destroyed, one would receive an excellent score.

Turning back toward Blue City, he found the handsome man with the crew cut staring at him in a daze.

What was wrong? Could it be that using golden threads to assist in tearing the dummy apart counted as cheating?

"Does that not count as a pass?" Morde asked Blue City cautiously. If he had to rely solely on his ability to tear apart the strange metal dummy, then the difficulty would truly be rather high.

After all, the rate at which these gleaming soft silver bodies recovered was not much slower than the rate at which he destroyed them with his art.

"It... it passes. Xiao Zhang, take Little Brother Mo to the site of the final test. I need to use the restroom..." Blue City felt his throat tighten as he gave the order in a dry voice.

Xiao Zhang gave a numb "oh," then stiffly led Morde and the other instructors toward the huge training field.

Thinking of the final test awaiting him today, Morde could not help but feel a little headache coming on.

Among the three rounds of practical combat, the most outrageous test was this third one. Back then, he had wanted to ask Feng Shichu what exactly the third item meant, but that old fox had slipped away in secret and never gave Morde a detailed explanation.

He pulled the list from Su Ziwen's notebook and, after checking it once more, sighed and folded the paper before slipping it back into the last page of the notebook.

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"Keep running until the instructor tells you to stop."

That was all the third requirement said: just eight short words, yet it was terribly difficult to handle.

Morde was not sure what standard the instructors were using to judge him. He wanted to ask the people beside him, but found that each of them wore a wooden expression, silently moving forward as though a band of wandering corpses.

Too embarrassed to break the silence, Morde scratched his head and decided to simply do as Old Feng's paper said.

He only hoped the instructors would show a little mercy and call it off sooner.

...

Blue City hid in the restroom and spent a long time organizing his words before fully recounting to his teacher Morde's feat of tearing apart the strange metal dummy.

After hearing him out, Roddy frowned again.

Among the devices used for testing in the great evaluation, some were supplied by the military. The dummy targets specially made from B+ strange metal were advanced military equipment provided by the army.

Roddy had not expected that the little fellow would actually destroy an expensive gleaming soft silver dummy. It seemed he would need to raise his estimate of the boy's strength once more.

"As for the strange metal dummy, I'll handle it. You just keep watching the boy's next test," Roddy said flatly.

"Master Roddy... to tear and destroy B+ level strange metal while only at the Foundation Realm, such cross-level combat power is just too..." Blue City still found it hard to accept the fact that Morde had severed the gleaming soft silver in a single strike.

"The world is vast, and wonders abound. Each person has his own destiny and opportunity; some talents cannot be judged by ordinary worldly standards," Roddy took the chance to instruct his student, his voice still grave and steady, as though everything were already under control.