Lin Xiao's casual remark—"The previous medicinal baths were practically heaven"—was like a basin of icy water drawn from beneath the Nine Netherworlds, dumped over the heads of Yellow Class Nine, who had just been ecstatic over their collective breakthroughs, chilling them to the bone from head to toe!
Heaven?
That Ten Thousand Poisons Hell Soup which tortured them until they wished they were dead, making them feel as though every inch of skin and every bone in their bodies had been shattered and reforged, could only count as "heaven" in this man's eyes?!
Then what kind of terrifying sight would true hell be?!
For a moment, the wild joy and excitement that had just risen over the training ground vanished like smoke in the wind. In their place came a chill that seeped into their bones, along with an uncontrollable fear of the unknown.
Looking at the familiar devilish smile on Lin Xiao's lips, every one of them subconsciously swallowed, feeling cold drafts rising from the napes of their necks.
"Chief Instructor... what exactly is this 'special' care you mentioned?" one of the bolder students asked in a trembling voice.
The smile on Lin Xiao's face became even more "kind."
"Relax. It will definitely be a 'surprise' you'll never forget for the rest of your lives."
He did not explain further, but that deliberately mysterious tone stirred up more fear in their hearts than any bloody description could have.
Seeing their faces turn pale as paper in an instant, Lin Xiao nodded in satisfaction. This was precisely the effect he wanted! Only under extreme fear and pressure could a person's deepest potential be forced out!
"Now, you have the time it takes an incense stick to recover your strength and familiarize yourselves with the power you've just gained."
"Once the incense burns out, the second stage of special training officially begins!"
With that, he ignored them and walked by himself to a tall rock at the edge of the training ground. He sat cross-legged upon it, closed his eyes, and rested.
After a brief panic, the survival instincts of the twenty-nine students on the training ground instantly crushed everything else!
They did not dare slack off in the slightest. One after another, they scrambled out of the medicinal barrels, grabbed the blood-replenishing pills prepared for them long ago, and stuffed them into their mouths by the handful as though chewing beans!
No one wanted to be the unlucky soul who got to taste that "surprise"!
For a time, the entire training ground was filled only with the crunching sounds of people swallowing pills and the gusts of Spiritual Energy stirred up as they crazily circulated their cultivation techniques.
The time it took an incense stick to burn passed in the blink of an eye.
When Lin Xiao opened his eyes again, everyone on the training ground had returned to their peak condition.
Their auras were steady and heavy, their gazes sharp. Though there was still some nervousness on their faces, there was even more of the ferocity and resolve of starving wolves driven into a corner!
"Very good."
Lin Xiao leaped down from the tall rock and landed steadily before them.
"Now, we'll form groups."
He did not use methods like drawing lots. Instead, he stretched out a finger and rapidly pointed through the crowd in a way that seemed casual yet held deeper meaning.
"You two are a group." "You and her are Group Two." "..."
Very quickly, aside from Shi Lei and Su Yue, the remaining twenty-seven students were divided into thirteen two-person groups.
"Shi Lei, you're the leader of Group One." "Su Yue, you're the leader of Group Two."
"As for your Group Fourteen and Group Fifteen..." A playful smile curled across Lin Xiao's lips. "You two will fight alone."
"What?!"
The entire training ground erupted in uproar!
Shi Lei and Su Yue were both rooted to the spot in shock.
The two of them were the strongest people in Yellow Class Nine besides Lin Xiao! Shi Lei in particular—after half a month of hellish tempering and the enhancement of the Molten Rock gauntlets, his true combat strength was likely already enough to rival an ordinary Body Refinement Fifth Level Peak cultivator!
And now Lin Xiao was actually making him and Su Yue form their own one-person groups?!
This was simply unfair!
"Chief Instructor! This isn't fair!" Shi Lei was the first to lose his patience, craning his neck as he protested. "If the two of us are each alone, how can everyone else even fight?!"
"Fair?"
Lin Xiao laughed at that.
He slowly walked up to Shi Lei, his dark eyes calmly fixed on him.
"Shi Lei, tell me, what is fairness in this world?"
"Tell me, when you leave the academy in the future and step onto a real battlefield, facing enemies several times stronger than yourselves, will they talk to you about fairness?"
"Tell me, when your family and friends fall before your eyes and you can do nothing because you are too weak, do you have the right to demand fairness from the heavens?!"
Lin Xiao's voice grew harsher with every sentence, colder with every word!
Each word was like a thousand-pound sledgehammer smashing ruthlessly into the hearts of Shi Lei and everyone present!
That was right...
When had this world ever possessed absolute fairness?
The strong reigned supreme, and the weak were prey to the strong! That was the truest and cruelest law of this world!
Shi Lei's face instantly flushed red. He opened his mouth, but could not utter a single word in rebuttal.
"Remember!"
Lin Xiao's gaze slowly swept over every person.
"The reason I arranged things this way is to make you adapt to this unfairness from now on! To make you understand that before absolute strength, every complaint and excuse is pale and powerless!"
"What you need to do is not beg for fairness!"
"It is to use your fists and your swords to become the ones who make the rules!"
"Do you understand?!"
"We understand!!"
Twenty-nine thunderous roars filled with shame and realization shook the heavens!
"Very good."
Lin Xiao nodded in satisfaction.
He slowly retreated to the edge of the field, his cold voice echoing above the training ground like the judgment of the Grim Reaper.
"Now, the melee begins!"
"Kill!"
The instant the word "begin" fell, the entire training ground exploded like a powder keg with a lit fuse!
The battle intent and viciousness suppressed for a full half month were completely unleashed in that moment!
"Clang! Clang!" "Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The ringing clash of weapons, the thunderous blasts of Spiritual Energy, and all manner of furious howls and roars instantly intertwined into the wildest and bloodiest symphony of war!
From the very beginning, the battle entered a white-hot state!
No one held back, and no one dared to hold back!
Because they all knew clearly that in this melee, even the slightest mercy might turn them into the unlucky soul destined to taste that "surprise"!
"Group Three! Join hands and take down Shi Lei first!" "Forget him! He's thick-skinned and tough! Take out Su Yue first—she's the biggest threat!"
Almost the instant the fight began, the other thirteen groups, excluding Shi Lei and Su Yue, reached an extraordinarily tacit agreement—first clear out the two strongest "bosses"!
At once, twenty-six figures surged from all directions like a tide toward the separated Shi Lei and Su Yue!
"Good timing!"
Facing what was practically an encirclement and extermination, Shi Lei showed no fear. Instead, a soaring heroic spirit burst from him!
The Molten Rock gauntlets on his fists blazed crimson! A scorching wave of air erupted around him!
"You want to touch me? Ask my fists whether they agree first!"
With an angry roar, he advanced rather than retreated, charging into the surging crowd like a fierce tiger descending the mountain!
Mountain Splitting Fist!
Bang!
As he threw a punch, the violent fist wind faintly carried a scorching, explosive force! The two students at the front only felt an irresistible force crash into them. Their weapons were instantly knocked flying, while their bodies were hurled backward like kites with snapped strings before they crashed to the ground in miserable heaps!
"So strong!"
Everyone besieging him was horrified!
They had long known Shi Lei was powerful, but they had never imagined that in merely half a month, he would become this outrageously strong!
Yet not a single person who had remained until now was a coward!
"Don't be afraid! He's alone! Get him together!" "Use weapons! Wear him down!"
After their brief shock, even fiercer attacks poured down upon Shi Lei like a raging tempest!
Flashes of blades and swords, fist winds and kicking force...
For a time, Shi Lei was driven back again and again by the airtight barrage, constantly teetering on the brink of danger! Though he possessed tremendous strength and astonishing defense, two fists could not defeat four hands. Faced with the siege of more than twenty people, he gradually began to feel overwhelmed!
Meanwhile, Su Yue's situation was even more dangerous than Shi Lei's!
As a swordswoman who excelled in speed and technique, what she feared most was being surrounded and trapped at close range!
At that moment, seven or eight students had her firmly blocked in a corner, leaving her no chance to use the advantage of her movement technique!
Tassel Sword Art: Starlight Sword Rain!
With a clear cry, the Tassel flexible sword in her hand transformed into a brilliant river of stars. Sword-light filled the sky, guarding every inch within three feet of her without a single gap!
But the students attacking her were clever as well. They did not clash with her head-on. Instead, they continually harassed and pressured her with their weapons from every tricky angle, gradually compressing the space in which she could evade!
"Su Yue! You have nowhere left to run! Just surrender!" A youth holding a massive axe sneered as he brought it down toward Su Yue's head with the force of splitting a mountain!
Su Yue's face turned pale. With a tap of her toes, she narrowly evaded the heavy blow! Yet the wall behind her was cleaved open by that giant axe, leaving behind a deep crack!
Before she could even catch her breath, another long blade stabbed out from beneath her ribs at a vicious angle, silent as a snake leaving its hole!
Danger!
Unprecedented danger!
At that critical instant!
A sentence Lin Xiao had once spoken to her suddenly flashed through Su Yue's mind.
"Your sword is too 'soft.' A true swordsman must not only possess the gentleness to protect companions, but also the sharpness to cut through everything!"
The sharpness to cut through everything!
Su Yue's gaze changed in an instant!
An unprecedentedly cold and resolute sharpness suddenly erupted from those autumn-water eyes that had once been gentle as water!
She no longer merely defended and evaded!
Facing the fatal attacks converging from all directions, she did not dodge or evade. Instead, she crazily poured all the Spiritual Energy in her body into the Tassel flexible sword in her hand!
Buzzz—!
That originally incomparably soft long sword instantly drew taut and straight! A dazzling sword radiance, brilliant as a star, flickered from its tip!
Tassel Sword Art's ultimate secret—
Momentary Splendor!
Whoosh!
A circular sword-light, swift beyond measure and brilliant beyond measure, erupted from Su Yue as if a lotus of death had suddenly blossomed!
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Amid a string of dull impacts, the seven or eight students besieging her felt pain shoot through their wrists. The weapons in their hands were all severed cleanly in half by that terrifying sword-light!
Then, an irresistible force surged through those broken weapons, violently sending every one of them flying!
One sword defeated eight enemies!
When Su Yue stood gracefully in the center of the field with the long sword in her hand still humming.
The entire field fell silent.
Everyone stared blankly at this girl, who seemed to have transformed in an instant into an unparalleled female sword deity, their faces filled with incredulous shock!
Even Lin Xiao, standing in the distance, had a trace of imperceptible approval flash through his eyes.
Place oneself in death, then be born anew.
This girl had finally comprehended her own "sword heart" in the midst of desperate peril!
Su Yue's earth-shaking sword strike completely shattered the deadlock on the field!
It also instantly woke up the students who had been huddled together—their greatest enemies had never been Shi Lei and Su Yue!
They were each other!
"Not good! Su Yue is about to start harvesting!" "Forget her! Hurry! Take out the people beside you!"
The melee erupted once more!
But this time, there were no alliances of any kind!
Every person regarded everyone around them as an enemy!
The battle entered its cruelest and bloodiest "hunt" phase!
"Ah!"
One student had just knocked down his opponent when, before he could catch his breath, a spear silently pierced through his shoulder blade from behind!
Elsewhere, two groups had just been fighting side by side, only to turn on each other in an instant over the "head" of a fallen student, slaughtering one another!
Betrayal! Ambushes! Fighting many with few! Counterkilling in desperate straits!
One cruel scene after another, scenes that would only appear on a true battlefield of life and death, unfolded to the fullest at that moment!
Their moves no longer held any flourish or mercy!
Every strike went straight for the opponent's vital points!
They began learning to make use of terrain, pills, and talismans in battle!
At the instant a small-framed student was about to be defeated by his opponent, he suddenly scattered a handful of drugged powder at the other's face. Taking advantage of the moment his opponent's vision was blocked, he pressed a dagger to his throat!
Another student was cunning to the extreme! From the start, he had pretended to be outmatched and been knocked to the ground, lying motionless like a dead dog. Yet when a passing student let down his guard and walked by him, he sprang up like a venomous snake and eliminated him in one blow!
The most primal "evil" in human nature—the willingness to stop at nothing for survival—was completely stirred awake at that moment!
Upon the tall rock, Lin Xiao watched it all expressionlessly.
His gaze was cold and calm, without the slightest ripple.
He knew it was cruel.
But he knew even more clearly that if he was not cruel to them now, then when they stepped onto a real battlefield in the future, this world would be ten thousand times crueler to them!
What he wanted was not a flock of rule-abiding sheep!
He wanted a pack of starving wolves who could carve out a bloody path even through hell!
The battle lasted a full two hours.
By the time the last trainee collapsed from exhaustion, the entire training ground had become a complete mess.
Broken weapons, shattered stone slabs, and figures sprawled across the ground like mud, gasping for breath; even moving a single finger felt like an impossible effort.
Every one of them was covered in wounds. Blood and sweat had long since thoroughly soaked their black training uniforms.
Yet their eyes shone with a frightening brilliance!
It was something forged and settled within them after being tempered by blood and fire—something called "killing intent" and "tenacity"!
In the end, only three people remained standing.
Shi Lei, Su Yue.
And a skinny youth no one had expected, his face still carrying a trace of childishness.
He was the very youth who had been the first to break through to the Body Refinement Fourth Level during the medicinal bath!
Though his strength was not the greatest, he was the one who best understood how to preserve himself amid this brutal melee and seize his opportunities!
Lin Xiao's figure appeared in the center of the field like a ghost.
He glanced at the skinny youth, who was panting heavily but whose eyes brimmed with stubbornness and defiance, then slowly nodded.
"What is your name?"
"Reporting, Chief Instructor! My name is Monkey!" The youth straightened his chest and roared with all his strength.
"Very good, Monkey." A rare, heartfelt smile appeared on Lin Xiao's face. "From today onward, you are the third team captain of Yellow Class Nine."
Then he turned to look at those defeated trainees lying on the ground.
His smile vanished in an instant.
In its place was a chilling severity and coldness that made everyone feel as though they had fallen into an ice cellar.
"As for you..."
"Are you ready to welcome your 'surprise'?"
Before you continue