Volume Two: The Youth of a Thousand Faces, Chapter Forty-three: Parkour in the Sky

In the afternoon, Huo Ye first negotiated with the editorial department about the new book launch event. He also mentioned that a journalist from the campus newspaper would be conducting an interview. The editorial department, naturally, would not refuse such free publicity, especially given Huo Ye’s status—they dared not refuse even if they wanted to.

Afterward, Huo Ye decided to continue training himself.

Training in abilities and combat was essential, but those would be covered in class. Huo Ye was not impatient for results; what he needed was to strengthen himself.

Speed, explosive power, reflexes, flexibility, resilience, adaptability, even accelerated recovery from injuries—these were all aspects he needed to sharpen through physical training. With the help of his subgrade stem cells, he would achieve twice the result with half the effort compared to ordinary ability users.

Huo Ye changed into a tight athletic outfit and sat cross-legged atop a tall, imposing building, eyes closed in meditation.

Inky lightning surged and receded with each breath, crackling with a harsh, electrifying sound, as though the God of Thunder himself had descended to the mortal realm.

Suddenly, a sound like a searing iron plunged into cold water—a strange rush of air—filled the air. The lightning around Huo Ye’s body vanished. In its place, a fierce whirlwind raged atop the roof.

He exhaled heavily, his breath mingling with white vapor, making his every inhalation visible. Both his hair and palms ignited with black flames, yet his body remained unharmed.

The flames extinguished in an instant. From where Huo Ye sat, a thin layer of black ice spread across the wide rooftop and even climbed the walls.

He punched the air, and the force of his blow left a deep fist mark in a distant wall, as if he’d struck through a mountain.

“Lightning, wind, fire, ice, space—all good. Everything’s normal. Keeping these hidden for so long is suffocating,” he muttered.

Dark Compatibility—Huo Ye’s innate talent and his greatest trump card—a power unheard of among humans. He once trained freely at home, able to wield seven elemental attributes without restraint in the training grounds. But now, at the academy, he had to masquerade as an ordinary wielder of darkness, like a dancer left bedridden for two months, muscles stiff and aching for movement.

“Club Wars, two months from now—it’ll be then,” Huo Ye decided. That would be the best time to reveal his Dark Compatibility. If he wanted to claim first place in the Club Wars, he had to defeat Tan Xiao. Tan Xiao’s strength was roughly equal to his own. Among those he’d gathered so far—himself, Alice, Shangguan Yudie, Leilimi, Jiang Feng, and the enigmatic Kazama Ruri—excluding Kazama Ruri, only Huo Ye could stand against Tan Xiao, and even then, only by going all out.

“Abilities checked and fine. Time to train the body,” Huo Ye stood, exhaled deeply, and sprinted toward the edge of the rooftop, into the vast sky.

As his foot touched the last inch of the rooftop, Huo Ye exploded into motion, leaping high across the wide street below, heading straight for the building opposite.

High-altitude parkour—a sport on the knife’s edge between life and death, demanding both exceptional mental resilience and agility. It was Huo Ye’s most familiar and exhilarating way to push his limits.

Back in the slums, when Alice’s beauty drew unwanted attention, Huo Ye, as her older brother, never tolerated harassment. After violent confrontations, being chased by gangs became routine.

If the pursuers were ability users, that would have been one thing. But most ability users from the slums left the squalor behind as soon as they awakened, seeking a better life elsewhere. Those who remained were the dregs—lifelong loafers without ambition.

But even pests were still ordinary people. The law forbade ability users from engaging in any violent conflict with ordinary people, except in legitimate self-defense. If an ability was used and someone was injured or disabled, the user could face criminal charges.

So, at most, Huo Ye could only use martial arts to subdue a few thugs. Unable to go further, he had no choice but to run.

Practice makes perfect. The more Huo Ye ran, the more he realized that climbing to the rooftops meant no one could catch him—he was simply too agile. So, he developed the habit: whenever he saw a rooftop, he wanted to climb up and look around.

On the street below, a couple was sharing an ice cream cone. A gust of wind blew by, and the boy looked up, saying, “The weather’s great today. The wind is so wild.”

The girl agreed, “Yes, the sky is so—”

She stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide, as she saw a figure leap decisively from one tall building.

“Oh my god, someone’s jumping!” the boy shouted.

Yet, when everyone on the street looked up in shock, there wasn’t even a bird in the sky—only a clear, endless blue.

The couple, who had seen it all, exchanged bewildered looks as passersby glared at them. Why on earth was someone leaping between buildings like that?

How fast was Huo Ye? He’d never tested it, but without any ability enhancement, his top speed was thirty-six kilometers per hour—exactly ten meters per second.

After all, he was out in public, so Huo Ye hadn’t used his Gale Dash technique. Otherwise, he could have gradually merged his abilities with his cells to further enhance his physical prowess—a secret technique of the Holles family.

Eddie, back in the slums, had lost his father early. After finally awakening as an ability user, he barely scraped by. He was always hungry and skinny as a rail. Had he not learned to use his powers to bolster his body, he might have died of starvation on the streets long ago.

When trapped with no way out, one must forge their own path. That was how Eddie clawed his way from hell to his current position.

The wind howled in Huo Ye’s ears, scenery blurring past. He suddenly realized his vision could barely keep up with his running speed. It wasn’t the first time this had happened—whenever he used Gale Dash, it was the same.

Gale Dash involved stimulating muscles and nerves with lightning, enabling blistering speed. Wind abilities further reduced air resistance, pushing speed to extraordinary levels. But ever since developing this technique, Huo Ye’s eyes had never caught up with its speed.

Every time he used it, he relied on momentary recall of his surroundings to complete attacks within seconds. Each use was a massive drain on his power, since he had to unleash maximum speed to counter the ever-changing battlefield. Yet, in truth, Gale Dash could be used with much less energy.

This was the technique’s flaw, and not even Eddie could help, for only Huo Ye had ever awakened Dark Compatibility. No one else could advise on dual-attribute ability use.

“I need to train my brain’s reaction speed—and my dynamic vision.” That was Huo Ye’s training objective for the afternoon.

He leaped onto another rooftop, and just then, a flash of light shot before his eyes. Huo Ye flipped backward to evade. Where he’d just paused, a deep crack now marred the ground.

He turned to the source of the attack and saw a woman in Han-style dress calmly watching him.

Her face was expressionless, her eyes as limpid as autumn water—revealing no emotion. Her nose was high, her lips delicate, the air of ancient elegance surrounding her as if she’d stepped from a classical painting.

Huo Ye recognized her immediately: the current president of the Radiant Sanctuary society, the eldest daughter of the prestigious Huo family—Xialan Huo.