The Newcomer Assessment was held in the Verdant Basin Sect's eastern training ground.

  It was a flat stone plaza embedded with measurement formations that recorded power output, technique efficiency, and energy stability.

  Every new arrival in the Torrent took it within sixty days.

  Pass, and you received a Residency Seal: the right to stay, trade, and cultivate within Verdant Basin's territory. Fail, and you were expelled.

  Chen Xi stood in line with Su Yiran, Little Abacus, and twenty other newcomers. Wu Zheng watched from the spectator area, holding a thermos of broth.

  The assessment had three stages.

  Stage One: Power Output. Step onto the measurement formation. Release your full energy output. The formation records the number.

  Stage Two: Technique Demonstration. Perform a combat technique against a reinforced practice dummy. Scored on efficiency, precision, and damage.

  Stage Three: Stability Test. Maintain steady energy output for sixty seconds without fluctuation.

  The first two were manageable. The third was a problem.

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  Chen Xi's quantum core did not DO steady. It oscillated between Gate Ten and Gate Twelve.

  The assessors would see a cultivator whose power flickered wildly — the exact opposite of stability.

  He could game it. Time his assessment to coincide with a Gate Twelve collapse, hold it for sixty seconds if the probability was favourable—

  Or he could take the test honestly and see what happened.

  He took it honestly.

  Stage One: the measurement formation registered his output and paused. Registered again. Paused.

  The assessing elder frowned at the formation's readout, which was showing two numbers where there should have been one.

  Stage Two: he deployed a harmonic cascade against the practice dummy. The dummy's defensive formation shattered in 1.3 seconds.

  The elder's frown deepened.

  Stage Three: he stood on the stability formation and maintained output for sixty seconds. The readout oscillated. Gate Ten. Gate Twelve. Gate Ten. Gate Twelve.

  The formation had never recorded anything like it.

  The assessing elder — a Core Formation cultivator named Ren Jia, with the weathered patience of someone who had evaluated ten thousand newcomers and been surprised by fewer than a dozen — walked to Chen Xi and studied him for a long time.

  "Your core is in superposition," she said.

  "Yes."

  "That should not be possible."

  "And yet."

  "How?"

  "Rotational compression of a dynamic energy system within a shattered dantian. The core formed as a ring rather than a sphere, and the tension between compression and rotation produces quantum-state oscillation."

  Elder Ren Jia blinked once. Slowly.

  "You pass," she said. "I will be watching your career with considerable interest."

  Residency secured.

  First permanent foothold in the Torrent.

  Chen Xi filed it in the column marked necessary and sufficient. For now.

  Outside, Wu Zheng offered the thermos.

  The broth was still warm.

  It tasted of relief.