Sign-In System: Starting With Invincible Physique-Chapter 4: Fighting Back

Chapter 4: Fighting Back

They reached the edge of the western training field and Rhain assessed the space with eyes that catalogued everything.

The training field was already populated with dozens of outer disciples, stretching, sparring, and practicing basic Essence circulation techniques.

And across the field, It didn’t take long to spot a few familiar figures.

On the far side of the field, lounging on a stack of wooden training crates, was Fennick Graves.

He was a stocky, broad-shouldered youth with a cruel set to his jaw. At Essence Awakening Level 3, he possessed a modest amount of talent—just enough to survive three years in the sect by acting as the undisputed tyrant of anyone weaker than him.

Flanking him were his two usual lackeys, Joss Hale and Terran Moor, both at Essence Awakening Level 2, laughing at a joke Fennick had just made.

Rhain and Seris stepped onto the field.

It took a few moments, but eventually, two lackeys glanced up. They froze, their laughter dying instantly.

Their expressions were the confused blankness of people watching something that did not fit their model of reality.

Rhain Voss does not walk toward Fennick Graves. Rhain Voss walks away from Fennick Graves.

That was the natural order. That was how the world worked. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

One of them elbowed Fennick and pointed across the yard.

Fennick also looked up, squinting through the morning mist, his eyes locking onto Rhain.

For a split second, confusion flashed across his face.

Hadn’t he beaten this trash until his ribs cracked and his breathing stopped?

How could he be here now? Standing upright.

But the confusion quickly warped into an ugly, hateful sneer.

Fennick hopped down from the crates, cracking his knuckles. He nudged his two lackeys, and the three of them began swaggering across the training field, heading straight for Rhain.

Other outer disciples noticed the movement. Sparring matches halted. Conversations died.

A wide circle began to form as everyone backed away, anticipating the inevitable brutal beating that was about to occur. No one expected anything different. Fennick beat Rhain; the sky was blue, water was wet. It was the natural order of the outer quarters.

Seris tenses beside Rhain. Her hands balled into fists, and a faint, desperate surge of her Level 2 Essence flickered around her palms. She was ready to fight, or ready to drag Rhain away and run.

Rhain didn’t tense.

His breathing remained perfectly even. His expression was a frozen lake.

He reached out and gently pushed Seris behind him.

He could feel Seris visibly tense after seeing Fennick.

"Stay here," he said.

"Rhain —"

"Stay here."

He said it without looking at her. His eyes were on Fennick. His body was already moving — not hurrying, not creeping, just walking forward with the steady, measured pace of someone approaching a task that required attention but not anxiety.

The boy who had died last night would have flinched.

The man who wore his face did not.

"Well, well," Fennick’s voice carried over the morning mist, loud and dripping with arrogant amusement. "The corpse walks."

"Thought we put you down for good last night, Voss," Fennick laughed, cracking his knuckles. "Guess trash really doesn’t know when to stay in the gutter."

His two lackeys snickered, mirroring his stance.

Rhain kept walking, unmoved.

Fennick’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second.

Something was wrong.

The boy approaching him wore the same ragged clothes, but the aura around him was entirely foreign. The original Rhain would have been trembling by now, his eyes glued to the floor, begging for forgiveness for a slight he hadn’t even committed.

But this Rhain’s eyes were locked dead onto Fennick’s face.

They were a deep, abyssal grey that seemed to swallow the morning light. There was no fear in them. There wasn’t even anger.

There was only the cold, detached calculation of a butcher looking at a slab of meat.

"Deaf as well as stupid," Fennick sneered, stepping up to meet him.

He reached out with a thick, calloused hand, aiming to grab Rhain by the collar—his usual opening move to haul the smaller boy up and assert dominance.

His hand closed on the fabric.

That was his first mistake.

Rhain moved.

To Fennick, it was instantaneous.

CRACK!

The snap of bone was audible across the training field.

Rhain’s left hand locked around Fennick’s wrist — not catching it, not deflecting it, but seizing it with a grip that had no business existing on the frame of an Essence Awakening Level 1 cultivator.

His fingers closed like a vise and then... twisted.

Fennick’s wrist bent at an angle that human joints were not designed to accommodate.

The pain arrived a half-second after the damage — the nervous system struggling to process an injury that was supposed to be impossible.

"KAAAHH!"

Fennick screamed.

It was a high, raw sound, stripped of everything except animal agony. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide, and every pretense of dominance had evaporated in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Rhain didn’t let go.

He held the broken wrist for exactly one second — long enough for Fennick’s brain to register what had happened — and then drove his right knee into Fennick’s stomach.

BOOM!

The impact was precise, it lifted the stocky bully completely off his feet. The air was violently forced from Fennick’s lungs in a choked gasp, and he was launched backward, skidding through the dirt for three full meters before crumbling into a retching, twitching heap.

Joss and Terran’s body were froze.

Their mind knew they should move — Joss’s fist was half-clenched, Terran’s hand was on the hilt of a training sword at his hip.

But their minds were still processing what they’d seen, and the processing was taking too long.

A heartbeat ago, their leader was untouchable. Now, he was a broken mess on the ground.

Panic set in, quickly followed by the desperate need to retaliate.

They attacked from both sides.

One threw a wild, Essence-reinforced punch aimed at Rhain’s jaw. The other drew a heavy wooden training sword, swinging it in a wide arc toward Rhain’s ribs.

Both of them were at Essence Awakening Level 2. To the original Rhain, they would have been insurmountable walls.

To the new Rhain, they were moving in slow motion.

He didn’t retreat. He stepped forward.

Using minimal movement, he casually sidestepped the incoming punch. As the Joss stumbled past, carried by his own momentum, Rhain’s hand lashed out, grabbing the back of his collar.

With a sharp, fluid pivot, Rhain hurled Joss directly into the path of the Terran.

They crashed into each other, tumbling and rolling like a football.

Before either of them could untangle themselves or even draw a breath, Rhain was standing over them.

His fists flashed downward.

Two strikes. Right hand, left hand. Solar plexus, solar plexus.

The same precise targeting he’d used on Fennick.

Both boys folded, gasping, their eyes rolling back as their diaphragms locked.

They slumped into the dirt, gasping helplessly like fish pulled from water, entirely incapacitated.

Eight seconds. Start to finish.

The training field was silent.