Zhang Tie relied on his memory from his first visit and, key in hand, returned to the changing room. His head had been a little woozy the last time he was here, but now that he looked around carefully, he realized the Battle Hall occupied an astonishingly large area.
The Battle Hall's sixth floor alone stretched for more than two hundred meters. More than half of it was devoted to serving Level One customers. The largest area was a public training ground, packed with equipment Zhang Tie had never seen before. There were even two standard hundred-meter sprint tracks on the sixth floor. Aside from the staff rest area and changing rooms, the public training ground was the only place the staff could go. Captain Colin's words hadn't been empty talk. If Zhang Tie could find time to train there during his breaks, it really would greatly improve his strength and physical fitness. Compared to this place, the school's training ground was so shabby it looked like a farmyard threshing floor. At the sight of all that unfamiliar equipment, Zhang Tie nearly drooled. The machines here could work every muscle in a person's body. Forget strength—even just in terms of physique, if he had enough time, Zhang Tie was confident he could train his body into something filled with masculine beauty, like a sculpture, and take his fitness and stamina to a whole new level.
Beside the public training ground were a number of private training rooms. Supervisor Baker had said that some of them contained even more advanced equipment, but those were reserved for customers and utterly out of reach for a wage slave like Zhang Tie. He was intensely curious about what sort of equipment those special training rooms held.
The stairs and passageways from the first floor to the sixth were reserved for employees. Only customers and VIPs had the right to use the elevator. Speaking of elevators, this was the first time Zhang Tie had ever seen one. Though electricity no longer existed in this era, this means of transport inside buildings, supposedly invented by mankind before the Great Cataclysm, had been preserved, and even its name remained unchanged. Steam engines and boilers installed inside the building had replaced electricity as the elevators' power source. Each elevator also had a uniformed operator at the controls. It all seemed very high-class.
As he climbed from the first floor to the sixth, Zhang Tie kept hearing loud crashes and shouts from rooms throughout the building, despite the soundproofing. Some other noises seemed to come from underground, like great thunder rolling across the ground. The deep rumbling made the entire stairwell hum.
The sixth floor served Level One customers, the fifth Level Two customers, the fourth Level Three customers, and so on. At first, Zhang Tie hadn't understood why the Battle Hall had arranged things this way, but once he reached the upper floors, he suddenly got it. The higher the level, the greater the force and destruction involved in training, so the training grounds had to be placed on lower floors to minimize damage to the building. Training grounds above Level Five were already on the ground. The Battle Hall had several clusters of low buildings outside, but Zhang Tie wasn't qualified to know what was inside them yet.
The locker number Zhang Tie had been given was 613. The other side of the changing room connected to the showers, another perk of working at the Battle Hall. At least he could take a hot shower whenever he came in, and the bathing area was quite nice and looked luxurious. If he didn't have to get beaten up afterward, being able to come here for a shower every day would have been a wonderful thing.
There weren't many people in the changing room when Zhang Tie arrived. Only one man was there, a burly fellow in shorts with bulging muscles, sitting on a chair and struggling to rub some kind of substance onto a badly bruised patch on his back. The moment Zhang Tie saw him, the man seemed familiar. Then Zhang Tie remembered that this was probably the fellow who had roused him the last time he passed out.
When he saw Zhang Tie, the man grinned amiably and held up a brown bottle. "Hey, kid, it's you. Give me a hand!"
Zhang Tie walked over and took the bottle. It smelled like medicinal liquor, though he had no idea what it was made from. It seemed to be for treating bruises. Zhang Tie rubbed his hands together to warm them, poured some of the liquid into his palm, then pressed it to the man's bruised back and rubbed hard.
"By the way, you were the one who woke me up last time. I never got to thank you," Zhang Tie said as he rubbed.
"No problem. I'm Arno. What's your name?"
"Zhang Tie!"
"Hua Clan?"
"Yeah!"
"Your Hua Clan people aren't known for being especially strong. It's rare to see one come in as a sparring partner!"
"Who says? I'll keep getting stronger!" Zhang Tie retorted.
"Stubborn kid," the big man muttered.
When he figured he had rubbed the medicine in enough, Zhang Tie capped the bottle and handed it back. Arno took it and stood up as if he were about to get dressed. Then, without warning, he threw a punch. It was powerful and lightning-fast. Zhang Tie didn't have time to react before the man's fist was already in front of his face. A gust of wind from the punch made the fine hairs on his cheeks sting. As the thought flashed through Zhang Tie's mind—would that fist smash his head like a watermelon?—Arno stopped it less than a centimeter from his face. Only then did Zhang Tie's face turn pale with fright.
Arno ignored Zhang Tie's terrified expression, shook his head, lowered his hand, and demonstrated two moves in front of him. "The first of the three most basic moves for a sparring partner is to protect your head with both arms when you duck. Never offer your head up for someone to hit. This move has to become instinct..." Arno quickly demonstrated it twice.
"The second move is to protect yourself if your opponent accidentally attacks your lower body. The Battle Hall doesn't allow customers to attack like that, but in a real fight, it can happen by accident. So, your right leg..." Arno patted his thick right thigh. "Never put all your weight on your feet. That'll slow your reactions by half a beat. Like this..." Arno swiftly raised his right leg and turned sideways. "That way, if your opponent accidentally attacks your lower body, the blow will land on your thigh and buttocks, where you have the most muscle. Your body can take it!"
"Third..." Arno bent forward slightly and demonstrated another move. "Let your spine curve naturally and tense your muscles. The natural arch formed by a curved spine and tight muscles lets your back withstand harder blows without damaging your bones or internal organs. It also protects your spine. If you really can't avoid a blow, try to guide it toward parts of your body that can take a harder hit, like your shoulders, back, or chest... Got it, kid?"
Zhang Tie, recovered from his shock, nodded. He hadn't expected the seemingly rough-and-ready Arno to be so helpful, and he felt a little moved, unsure what to say. Arno only grinned, patted him on the shoulder, and said, "I'll be waiting for the day you get stronger!" Then he got dressed and left.
After practicing the moves Arno had demonstrated a few times in the changing room, Zhang Tie nodded to himself and opened his locker. Inside were two sets of training clothes, a clean towel, and a clean pair of socks. They had prepared everything very thoughtfully. Zhang Tie quickly stripped naked, took the towel, and went to enjoy a hot shower. He had just changed into one set of training clothes and the socks when a Battle Hall employee came to tell him to get ready and wait in Room Four.
The next room over from the changing room was a special equipment room. As soon as Zhang Tie entered, two staff members quickly brought over a well-fitting set of protective gear and helped him put it on.
"Kid, try not to get knocked out again this time. We don't want to carry you back!" one of the fellows who had strapped on Zhang Tie's complicated gear said with a shameless grin. After finishing, he patted Zhang Tie twice on the back to show he was ready to go.
"Think this kid will get knocked out again?"
"I bet he will. Knocked out within ten minutes. Twenty copper coins!"
"I bet he'll be out in five!"
"Deal!"
Hearing the two bastards behind him making bets on his expense, Zhang Tie gritted his teeth. This time, no matter what, he was going to hold out.
Zhang Tie had been waiting less than three minutes in Room Four, arranged just as it had been last time, when the door opened. Mary walked in with a brat around twelve or thirteen whose nose was stuck in the air. Seeing the sneer on Mary's face, Zhang Tie thought, Damn, that woman really holds a grudge.
The brat looked Zhang Tie up and down with a swagger. "Mary, is this the piece of trash you told me about?"
"That's him!" Mary confirmed with a nod.
"What if I knock him out?" The smug brat glanced at Mary's ample breasts and swallowed hard.
Mary said nothing. She simply bent down with a coy smile, stuck out her tongue, and licked the brat's ear. She whispered a couple of words to him, and he grinned smugly.
Zhang Tie watched the two of them coldly. Mary's coquettish act in front of him and the brat's arrogant swagger made a fire flare up inside him once more. Even Zhang Tie didn't know whether it was anger or lust.
"My name is Zhang Tie. I'm pleased to serve you!" Following Supervisor Baker's instructions, Zhang Tie mechanically said to the brat, who was approaching with a sinister grin and cracking his knuckles. At the same time, he gave Mary, standing proudly at the edge of the training ground, a cold glance.
Through the thick protective helmet, all anyone could see of Zhang Tie were his two black eyes. Below them were several rows of air holes. When Zhang Tie turned his head and gave her a cold look, Mary suddenly felt that the helmet seemed to radiate an indescribable air of menace and coldness. She shivered, and the smugness on her face instantly froze.
"If you had any sense, you'd kneel down right now, apologize to Mary, and slap yourself ten times. Then I might let you off today without beating you too badly!" the brat said brazenly as he walked up.
Damn, why are rich brats always such a pain in the ass?
Zhang Tie said nothing. He simply curled a finger at the brat in contempt, as if beckoning a puppy or pet. "Kaman, you coward!"
"You're asking for it!" The brat flew into a rage and lunged at him, kicking viciously toward Zhang Tie's stomach with a ruthlessness that belied his age...