As Shi Lei's voice, filled with shock and self-doubt, softly echoed across the deathly silent rocky slope, the twenty-eight members of Yellow Class Nine behind him slowly recovered from the immense impact of that lightning-fast slaughter that could only be called "art."
They looked at one another's faces—still youthful, yet long since tempered by iron and blood and Killing Intent until they were as cold and hard as knife-cut stone—then at the seven Ironback Demonic Wolf corpses at their feet, each grotesquely slain without even the chance to let out a final cry...
An indescribable turmoil of unfamiliarity, excitement, and fervor burst through the defenses of their hearts, defenses honed into stone by more than a month of Hell Training, like floodwaters smashing through a broken dam!
"We... won?" "Seven Second-order Demonic Wolves... we just... we just slaughtered them?" "I... I snapped an Ironback Demonic Wolf's neck with my own hands! My heavens! I actually... did it!"
After that brief dead silence, the wild joy and excitement of surviving a disaster, suppressed for so long, finally erupted from the hearts of these boys and girls, whose average age was only sixteen or seventeen, like a volcano!
They embraced one another tightly in small groups, feeling each other's chests heaving violently with excitement and hearing the ragged breaths that had become choked with emotion!
They needed a sweeping, satisfying victory like this far too badly to prove themselves!
To prove that every drop of blood and sweat they had shed over the past month, every agony and torment that could have driven an ordinary person mad, had all been... worth it!
They were no longer the Yellow Class Nine from a month ago—the "trash" everyone looked down on, free to bully and mock at will!
They were true warriors, capable of tearing out an enemy's throat with their own hands!
Yet just as everyone was immersed in a wave of ecstasy powerful enough to wash away their reason, an icy voice devoid of all emotion poured down from above like a basin of snowmelt mixed with ice chips, instantly dousing the blazing flames that had just ignited in their hearts.
"Are you all very happy?"
Lin Xiao had appeared before them at some unknown moment.
He calmly swept his gaze over these companions, who had gone wild with joy over a "victory" that was insignificant in his eyes. His pupils were deep as ancient wells, without the slightest ripple; there was only bone-piercing disappointment.
"You're smug over a 'battle' that lasted merely ten breaths and killed seven low-grade Second-order Demonic Beasts that did not even have brains?"
"Is this ridiculous attitude, like children playing house, how you intend to face the hell I prepared for you?"
Lin Xiao's voice was not loud, but every word struck the hearts of every Yellow Class Nine member like a massive warhammer!
The flush of ecstasy vanished from their faces in an instant, leaving them pale as paper!
Everyone froze. The smiles on their faces stiffened as well.
An invisible chill, colder and more biting than the wind of the Black Wind Mountain Range, shot from the soles of their feet straight to the crowns of their heads!
Had they... done something wrong? Shouldn't they be happy after winning a battle?
"It seems you still have not clearly realized exactly how much you are worth."
Seeing the confusion and incomprehension in their eyes, Lin Xiao slowly shook his head.
He raised a finger and pointed at the seemingly impregnable steel shield wall formed by the Sharp Shield squad led by Shi Lei.
"Shi Lei."
"Here!" Shi Lei's heart clenched, and he instinctively straightened his back.
"Tell me, after receiving my order to raise shields, how long did it take you and the four members behind you to raise your shields and form that shield wall?"
"Reporting!" Shi Lei blurted out without hesitation, "One breath!"
There was even a faint, barely perceptible pride on his face. Forming a perfect shield wall within one breath, capable of resisting the full-force charge of seven Second-order Demonic Beasts! Across the entire outer academy, there was probably no second team with such reaction speed and execution!
Yet Lin Xiao's answer shattered that pathetic pride into pieces!
"Wrong!"
Lin Xiao's voice abruptly rose, exploding beside Shi Lei's ears like thunder!
"It was one point two breaths!"
"That extra two-tenths of a breath was your first fatal mistake!"
"If the ones charging you today had not been seven stupid Ironback Demonic Wolves, but seven highly trained deathsworn armed with armor-piercing awls, then because your reaction was two-tenths of a breath too slow, what would be lying on the ground right now would not be seven wolf corpses, but the five of you with your heads pierced through in an instant!"
Boom!
Lin Xiao's words were like a bolt from a clear sky, striking Shi Lei until he was charred inside and out, his mind utterly blank!
Two-tenths of a breath... For a time difference that anyone else would consider negligible, they... deserved to die?!
What kind of harsh, perverse demand was this?!
Yet Lin Xiao's cold "judgment" was far from over!
His gaze shifted toward the Fangs and Ghost Shadow squads led by Su Yue and Monkey respectively.
"Su Yue!"
"Here!" Su Yue's heart instantly leapt into her throat.
"Your Fangs squad was responsible for killing from the left flank. You launched ten attacks in total. Eight hit the target's vital points and killed with a single strike."
Lin Xiao calmly stated a flawless record that would have astonished any instructor.
Yet his next words instantly drained the color from Su Yue's face and those of the ten members behind her, leaving them as pale as Shi Lei.
"However!"
"Of those eight seemingly 'fatal' attacks, three had blade-entry angles that deviated by half an inch from the most vulnerable point of the demonic wolves' throats!"
"And five members behind you made the same mistake!"
"Half an inch!" Lin Xiao held up one finger, his gaze cold as ten-thousand-year black ice. "Because of that half-inch deviation, though your attacks still killed them, they were a full half-breath slower than scheduled!"
"The battlefield changes in the blink of an eye! Half a breath is enough for a demonic beast truly hardened by countless battles to tear your chests wide open with its claws before dying!"
"Stupid! Ignorant!"
"Monkey!"
Before anyone could recover from the immense shock of his words, Lin Xiao's gaze had already locked onto Monkey, who stood at the rear, like the sharpest hawk.
"You... the Ghost Shadow squad you led was responsible for finishing strikes and keeping watch from behind."
Under Lin Xiao's icy stare, every hair on Monkey's body stood on end. His once-clever face had long gone deathly pale, and even his speech became stammering.
"W-we..."
"You performed the worst of everyone!"
Lin Xiao's voice was like a freezing wind blowing up from the Nine Netherworlds, making everyone present shudder!
"As a Ghost Shadow squad responsible for surveillance and assassination, more than half of you failed to bring even the most basic Turtle Breathing Technique to its limit while lying in ambush!"
"I could even clearly hear your breathing, made unbearably heavy by nervousness!"
"If there had been a second or third wave of enemies lying in wait nearby, you useless fools would have exposed all our positions at once! You would have dragged us into a hopeless deathtrap from which there was no return!"
A ruthlessly cold debriefing—one that could only be described as picking bones out of an egg—had ended.
The rocky slope fell into deathly silence once more.
This time, there was no elation from victory, nor any excitement at surviving a disaster.
There was only a chill and lingering dread that came from the depths of their souls!
A layer of fine cold sweat seeped across everyone's foreheads.
Only now did they finally realize how many massive, fatal flaws had lurked within that seemingly "perfect" victory!
And that man, who had seen every last one of them with absolute clarity...
What kind of terrifying eyes did he possess?!
Gulp.
Shi Lei swallowed with difficulty. He was the first to step forward and drop to one knee before the seven wolf corpses, which had long since gone cold!
He savagely drove his massive tower shield into the ground and roared in a hoarse voice filled with shame and lingering fear, "Chief Instructor... I... I was wrong!"
Thud!
Thud!
As though the first domino had fallen, Su Yue, Monkey, and the remaining twenty-seven Yellow Class Nine members stepped forward after a brief but tremendous impact upon their souls, dropping to one knee in perfect unison!
"We... acknowledge our mistakes!"
Twenty-nine hoarse roars, brimming with shame and boundless lingering fear, merged into a torrent of iron and resolve that echoed across the blood-red rocky slope for a long while!
They finally understood.
What Lin Xiao demanded of them had never been "victory," but... perfection!
Absolute perfection that allowed not even the slightest mistake!
Because only then would they, this group of "trash" who had already lost to others in aptitude, be qualified to keep surviving down this road toward strength, a road strewn with thorns and death!
Looking at these "young wolves," finally hammered fully awake by his hand, Lin Xiao's cold face, which had remained taut all this time, finally softened slightly.
He did not tell them to rise. Instead, he turned and walked alone toward the seven wolf corpses.
He crouched down, dipped his hand into a trace of wolf blood that was still warm but already coagulated, and slowly smeared it across his cheek.
Then he raised his head and slowly spoke to the twenty-nine companions still kneeling behind him in a tone that was utterly calm, yet enough to drive anyone mad. "Remember the taste of this failure."
"Then throw away every last scrap of that ridiculous 'mercy' and 'pride' belonging to the weak!"
"Because from this moment onward..."
"Our true hunt..."
"Has only just begun!"
One hour later.
When Yellow Class Nine set out once more, the entire group had undergone an earth-shaking transformation in temperament!
If they had once been a sharp new recruit's blade that still carried traces of immaturity and youth, then after Lin Xiao's supremely cold baptism of their souls, they had become peerless weapons of slaughter, born to kill!
Their eyes had grown colder, their footsteps quieter, and their coordination more seamless and deadly!
They no longer spoke a single unnecessary word. There was only absolute obedience, like the most precise machines!
In this way, like a pack of ghosts that had truly melded into this bloodstained mountain forest, they slowly advanced deeper into the Black Wind Mountain Range!
And their "prey" soon appeared again.
It was a larger patrol squad consisting of fifteen Ironback Demonic Wolves! Among them were even two elite demonic wolves, visibly a size larger than their kind, whose strength had reached the middle grade of the Second Order!
When this "hard bone," enough to give any elite team from the Heaven Class an enormous headache, appeared before them, not a single Yellow Class Nine member showed the slightest fear. Instead, their eyes revealed a nearly cruel bloodlust and excitement!
"Sharp Shield! Thrust forward! Fangs! Pierce through the left flank! Ghost Shadow! Encircle from the right!"
Lin Xiao issued his cold, concise orders once more!
Roar!
This time, Shi Lei reacted far faster than before! Almost at the instant Lin Xiao's voice fell, he and his four teammates had already roared as they launched a death charge at the fifteen Ironback Demonic Wolves!
With only five people, they forcibly withstood the frontal impact of fifteen Ironback Demonic Wolves!
Meanwhile, the teams led by Su Yue and Monkey were like two black scythes of death that had waited long in silence, viciously cutting into the weakest points on either side of the wolf pack!
Splat! Splat! Splat!
Battle erupted again! This battle was even more brutal and even more efficient than the last!
Every Yellow Class Nine member had branded Lin Xiao's cold teachings deeply into their souls!
Every block was precise to the utmost limit! Every slash targeted only the enemy's most fatal weak points! Every stealthy movement suppressed their presence to a terrifying state that was nearly "nothing"!
In the end, when the final Ghost Shadow squad member expressionlessly withdrew his blade from the eye socket of a middle-grade Second-order elite demonic wolf, this encounter, which had lasted only thirty breaths, came to a close with Yellow Class Nine's perfect record of zero casualties!
Seeing the sixteen wolf corpses strewn across the ground and his companions, each with faces calm as deep water as though they had merely crushed sixteen ants, Lin Xiao's face, cold as ten-thousand-year black ice, finally curved into a faint smile of gratification.
He knew it. The wolf pack he had personally forged from hell had finally begun to take shape!
Just as they began rapidly cleaning up the battlefield, dozens of figures dressed in uniform sky-blue martial outfits silently emerged like ghosts atop the rocky slope behind them, which had long been dyed red with blood.
At their head were Zhao Wuji, who had previously been humiliated beyond all recognition by Lin Xiao in the Mission Hall, and Wu Tianxiong—the true number one of the outer academy, whose aura was even more terrifying and domineering than Zhao Wuji's!
When they saw the seven wolf corpses sprawled across the ground, each killed in an exceptionally miserable manner, even their pupils could not help contracting sharply!
"Killed in one strike... Every one of them was killed in one strike!"
After carefully examining all the wolf corpses, an elite member of the Heavenly Martial Society said in a trembling voice full of shock and disbelief.
"And judging from the traces at the scene, the battle absolutely lasted no more than twenty breaths from start to finish!"
Upon hearing that conclusion, all the Heaven Class geniuses present could not help sucking in a breath of cold air!
Seven Second-order Demonic Wolves wiped out within twenty breaths?! Even the elite teams of their Heavenly Martial Society could never achieve something so clean and decisive!
Zhao Wuji's expression became incomparably ugly.
Only Wu Tianxiong slowly crouched down, dipped a finger into a trace of dried blood, and gently brought it to his nose for a sniff.
Then a savage, bloodthirsty grin appeared on his face.
"That's right..."
"This is the scent..."
"A pack that tasted blood for the first time and thinks it can challenge a lion's majesty..."
"Laughable young wolves!"
He slowly rose to his feet, his hawk-sharp eyes gazing toward the deepest reaches of the Black Wind Mountain Range.
"Pass down my order!"
"Everyone, abandon concealment!"
"It is time for us to let these prey, who do not know the height of heaven or the depth of earth, experience the..."
"Fear of the hunters!"
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