If Lin Xiao's one-punch defeat of Li Tianyi had dropped a bombshell into Cloud Creek Academy's outer court and stirred up towering waves,
then his subsequent feat of leading Yellow Class Nine in sweeping through the Merit Hall and squandering 220,000 merit points in a mere two hours was no different from detonating a nuclear bomb powerful enough to destroy everything! The shockwave it produced swept through every corner of the outer court with unprecedented force, leaving everyone in a long-lasting, speechless stupor of shock!
220,000 merit points!
For ninety-nine percent of the outer court students, that was an astronomical figure they might not accumulate even after three years of arduous cultivation!
Yet such a vast fortune, enough to change any ordinary student's fate, had been burned away before everyone's very eyes by Lin Xiao in the most extravagant, wild, and incomprehensible fashion!
What had he traded that money for, for his team whose average cultivation was merely at the Body Refinement Third Level?
Twenty-nine Profound Grade Spirit Artifacts! Over a thousand bottles of cultivation pills that would make even the elites of the Mystical Classes green with envy! Twenty-nine sets of rhinoceros-hide armor capable of withstanding a full-force strike from a Body Refinement Seventh Level cultivator! And over a hundred talismans of every conceivable kind, capable of turning the tide at critical moments!
When this terrifying "shopping list" spread throughout the academy through the mouths of students who had witnessed the miracle firsthand, everyone's first reaction was not shock, but absurdity!
This could no longer be described by the word "extravagant."
This was using a mountain of gold to arm a pack of beggars!
"He's gone mad! That Lin Xiao is absolutely, utterly insane! He's forcing seedlings to grow! Even if you gave divine artifacts to a bunch of trash at the third or fourth Body Refinement Level, how much power could they possibly unleash?!" "What a waste! Such a monstrous waste! If those resources had been given to our senior brothers in Heaven Class, they would have risen another step in strength! But now they've all been wasted on a bunch of trash!" "Just wait and see. I dare bet that within a month, those fools dazzled by resources will suffer setbacks in cultivation from unstable foundations, or even go berserk!"
For a time, beyond the initial shock, the entire outer court was filled with mocking scorn born of jealousy and contempt. Almost no one thought highly of Lin Xiao and his Yellow Class Nine. In their eyes, this was merely a ridiculous farce led by a nouveau riche, one destined to end in tragedy.
Yet Yellow Class Nine, standing at the very center of the storm, seemed utterly deaf to the winds and clouds raging outside.
Under Lin Xiao's orders, Yellow Class Nine's dormitory district entered a complete lockdown at the highest level. Everyone was forbidden from leaving, and all visitors were turned away.
A true hellish special training regimen, cut off from the world, quietly drew back its curtain in a corner unseen by all.
Yellow Class Nine's public training ground.
This was the most spacious place in the entire dormitory district, large enough to accommodate over a hundred people training at once.
At this moment, the twenty-nine students of Yellow Class Nine stood in formation at the center of the training ground, dressed in matching black martial outfits and wearing solemn expressions.
A trace of excitement and exhilaration still lingered on their faces. Inside their storage rings lay the top-tier resources they had never dared dream of possessing in the past. They could hardly wait to enter seclusion and turn those resources into the strength they had long yearned for.
Yet Lin Xiao's first order left every one of them rooted to the spot.
"From this moment onward, hand over all your storage rings."
Lin Xiao's voice was calm and cold, without a trace of emotion.
"What?"
They looked at one another, confusion written across their faces.
"Chief Instructor, th-this... why?" one student could not help asking. "Aren't we about to begin secluded cultivation?"
"Seclusion?" The corner of Lin Xiao's mouth curled into an arc that sent chills down everyone's spine. "Who told you that you were qualified to enjoy such a comfortable method of cultivation?"
He slowly walked before them, his sharp gaze sweeping over every face like a blade.
"I gave you the finest resources not so that you could hide in your rooms like wealthy old men and swallow pills in comfort! I gave them to you so that, through the most brutal and painful means, you would squeeze out every last drop of their medicinal power and fuse it into your sinews, bones, flesh, and blood!"
His voice suddenly rose, exploding beside every ear like thunder!
"With me, there is no such thing as 'secluded cultivation'! There is only 'purgatory'!"
"For the next three months, your bodies, your wills, everything you are, will be under my control! I will smash you to pieces completely, then remold you! The process will hurt—hurt so much that you will feel death itself is a release!"
"Now, I will give you one final chance to choose."
Lin Xiao's gaze turned incomparably cold.
"Those who cannot endure it may leave now. Keep every resource I distributed earlier; consider it my farewell gift to you."
"But!" His tone abruptly shifted, and a terrifying killing intent instantly enveloped the entire field! "Once you choose to stay, that means you have placed even your lives in my hands! From then on, whoever dares disobey a single one of my orders, do not blame me for cleaning house!"
Silence.
The entire training ground sank into a deathly stillness.
The excitement on every student's face had long since vanished, replaced by unprecedented solemnity and an uncontrollable trace of fear.
Looking at the Chief Instructor before them, who seemed to have transformed into an asura in an instant, they finally understood what kind of terrifying trial awaited them.
Yet not a single person chose to leave.
The fear in their eyes gradually turned into resolve!
Fortune was sought amid danger! They had been a group of bottom-tier students with nothing at all. Lin Xiao had given them a chance to dare defy fate! Now that chance stood before them; even if a mountain of blades and a sea of fire lay ahead, they would never retreat a single step!
"We swear to follow the Chief Instructor unto death!"
No one knew who was the first to roar those words out hysterically.
Then came the second, the third...
"We swear to follow the Chief Instructor unto death!!"
Twenty-nine roars filled with resolve and fanaticism gathered into a steel torrent that rang through the heavens!
Watching these team members, whose fighting spirit had now been completely ignited, Lin Xiao finally revealed a satisfied smile.
"Very good."
"Then now, Hell Training officially begins!"
"First item!"
His voice turned cold once more.
"Everyone, run one hundred laps around this training ground while carrying weights! Those who fail to finish do not eat!"
With that, he took out a large pile of heavy weight vests and leg guards forged from black iron from his storage ring and threw them onto the ground.
Each one weighed a hundred pounds!
This was only the beginning.
When the people of Yellow Class Nine put on those weights, enough to crush a person, and began their first day of training, they finally understood what the "hell" in Lin Xiao's mouth truly looked like.
Before dawn each morning, they had to complete a ten-kilometer cross-country run under extreme weight.
In the morning, they underwent the most brutal strength training, repeatedly lifting and lowering boulders weighing a thousand pounds until they collapsed unconscious from exhaustion.
The afternoon was for sparring. Lin Xiao personally entered the field, facing all twenty-nine alone and knocking every one of them to the ground again and again with the most direct and savage methods, showing no mercy!
And at night, when they dragged their bodies, seemingly fallen apart at the seams, and believed they could finally rest, the true nightmare had only just descended.
Thud! Thud!
Thirty enormous wooden barrels had long been arranged at the center of the training ground. They were filled with pitch-black, strange medicinal liquid that gave off a pungent stench.
"Get in." Lin Xiao's voice was like an evil whisper.
None of them dared disobey. One by one, gritting their teeth, they jumped into the barrels.
"Ah—!"
Heart-rending screams instantly tore through the night sky!
That was not a medicinal bath meant to ease fatigue at all!
It was the Ten Thousand Poisons Hell Soup, concocted from dozens of body-tempering spirit medicines with tyrannical medicinal properties, mixed with the essence blood of First Order Demonic Beasts—something potent enough to corrode even steel!
The moment their skin came into contact with the liquid, it hissed as though sulfuric acid had been poured over it, and waves of piercing agony drilled straight into their bones!
The violent energy in the medicine was like billions of steel needles drilling madly into their bodies, brutally tearing apart their muscle fibers and battering their meridians and bones!
"Circulate the Body Tempering Art I taught you! Whoever dares stop, I will personally force him back in!"
Lin Xiao's cold voice echoed beside everyone's ears like a deathly curse.
Upon hearing this, how could they dare slack off in the slightest? One by one, they endured the inhuman pain and frantically circulated their cultivation art, guiding that violent medicinal power to temper their bodies, which had already been pushed beyond their limits.
During the process, people constantly fainted from being unable to bear the agony.
But whenever someone passed out, Lin Xiao would walk over without hesitation, drench him with a bucket of cold well water to wake him, then force him to continue cultivating!
No chance to catch their breath, no road of retreat!
Either transform amid pain, or be destroyed amid pain!
When the first day's training ended, not one of the twenty-nine students walked back to the dormitories on his own feet. Nearly all of them had to be supported by their companions, or even dragged, before they barely made it back to their rooms.
When the assembly bell rang on the second day, more than half of them failed to arrive on time because their entire bodies ached.
Lin Xiao's punishment for them was simple and direct.
Their training load doubled!
On the third day, everyone arrived on time.
The fourth day, the fifth day...
The days passed one after another in such a cycle of inhuman cruelty.
Yellow Class Nine's dormitory district had completely become an isolated asura battlefield. Every day, all kinds of shrill screams and agonized howls emerged from within, making even passing students shudder and turn pale with fright.
Gradually, rumors that "Lin Xiao was abusing his fellow students, and Yellow Class Nine had become a madhouse" spread through the entire outer court without wings.
Yet no one knew that within this "madhouse," which everyone treated as a joke, a group of true monsters was quietly taking shape at a terrifying speed!
Half a month later.
Late at night, during the medicinal bath.
The barrels still contained that pitch-black medicinal liquid, enough to make one wish for death.
But unlike half a month ago, although the twenty-nine young men and women soaking in the liquid were still filled with pain, not a single one let out another scream.
Their eyes had become as tenacious and fierce as those of hungry wolves!
They even began actively absorbing the violent medicinal power that had once terrified them beyond measure!
Pfft!
At that moment, the thin youth sitting cross-legged beside Shi Lei suddenly shuddered, then spat out a mouthful of black, congealed blood!
Immediately afterward, an aura far more powerful than before erupted explosively from within him!
Body Refinement Fourth Level!
He had broken through!
This breakthrough was like a signal, a switch.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Over the next brief span of an incense stick, breakthrough auras erupted continuously from the crowd like bamboo shoots after the rain!
Body Refinement Fourth Level! Mid Body Refinement Fourth Level! Peak Body Refinement Fourth Level!
When the final person's aura stabilized at the Body Refinement Fourth Level, the entire training ground fell into such silence that a pin drop could be heard.
Everyone wore expressions of utter disbelief as they felt the unprecedentedly surging power within their bodies, then looked at their companions beside them, who had undergone the same rebirth-like transformation.
An uncontrollable wave of wild joy and excitement gradually welled up in their eyes!
Half a month!
Only half a month!
Their "trash class," whose average cultivation had merely been at the Body Refinement Third Level, had actually all broken through to the Body Refinement Fourth Level!
What a terrifying rate of improvement was this?!
"How does it... feel?"
Lin Xiao's calm voice came from the side.
"It... couldn't feel any better!" Shi Lei was the first to recover from his shock. He abruptly rose from his barrel, feeling the explosive power in his body as though he could punch a bull to death, his face flushed red with excitement as he howled toward the sky!
"Chief Instructor! We... we succeeded!"
"Succeeded?" Lin Xiao slowly shook his head, a mysterious smile appearing on his face. "No. This... has only just begun."
He clapped his hands, drawing everyone's attention.
"Starting tomorrow, your training will enter its second phase."
"I will divide you into fifteen groups for unrestricted melee battles!"
"Other than not being allowed to kill, you may use any means—weapons, pills, talismans... to defeat your opponents!"
"Every day, the group ranked last will receive some especially 'special' attention."
The corner of Lin Xiao's mouth once again lifted into that demonic smile that made everyone's scalps go numb.
"Believe me, that 'special' attention will make you feel that the medicinal baths before this were practically heaven."
Before you continue