Barracks

His cloudy old eyes gleamed with the shrewdness of someone who had spent years navigating the martial world.

"An ordinary martial artist's qi and blood would have settled by the time he reached thirty. Just maintaining his current level without falling behind would be considered pretty good."

Chen An looked at Lu Zhen and clicked his tongue in amazement.

"But you're different, young brother. Just now in the courtyard, when you let your qi and blood surge, that furnace-like heat was more domineering than that of those green boys barely in their twenties!"

"A foundation this vigorous can't be brushed aside with a simple 'lucky coincidence.'"

The old Squad Leader raised his cup, a smile spreading across his face.

"It's truly a blessing for Third Station to gain a powerful ally like you, young brother. Come, let this old man toast you again!"

After three rounds of drinks,

Chen An set down his cup and wiped his mouth.

"We've had our fill of drinks. Business comes first."

He waved toward the door, calling over a runner.

"Old Li, take Brother Lu and Young Master Gu to the Logistics Department and get their badges and the Registry sorted out."

"Yes!" the runner replied respectfully.

Lu Zhen and Gu Yanzhi rose, clasped their hands in farewell, and followed the runner out of the private room.

The Garrison Bureau had its own bathhouse.

Steam billowed inside, and water splashed noisily.

After washing away the grime of the road, Lu Zhen stood bare-chested before a mottled half-length bronze mirror.

The yellowed glass reflected a body as solid as forged iron.

Lately, he had trained day and night without pause, swallowing down vast quantities of precious medicines and mutated fish meat.

On top of that, ever since he had entered Bright Force, the qi and blood in his body had ceaselessly coursed through him, day and night.

His once well-proportioned, scholarly-looking frame had now grown thick with bulging muscle.

His muscles rose in layers like piled rocks, and his taut skin resembled a layer of old oxhide, its surface gleaming faintly blue-black through the steam.

With the slightest breath, a deep rumble of thunder rolled through his chest and abdomen.

His aura was fierce, like a tiger lying in wait.

Lu Zhen picked up the clothes on a nearby rack.

They were the uniform reserved for Squad Leaders.

A dark, blackish outfit of patterned brocade, with red trim along the cuffs.

He put it on and cinched the wide leather belt tight.

The character "Garrison," embroidered across his chest in intertwined gold and silver thread, glimmered faintly in the dim yellow light.

Combined with his burly build and steady gaze,

he stood before the mirror with an imposing air that commanded respect without a word.

Nearby, Gu Yanzhi had also changed and came over.

He wore the standard uniform, gray with black trim. Since the two of them had arrived together, he had been assigned under Lu Zhen while they were handling their paperwork earlier.

"Let's go collect our weapons." Lu Zhen picked up the red-copper badge from the table.

"Sure."

The two walked one behind the other down the corridor toward the rear courtyard.

Third Station, Class A-6 Barracks.

Most of the men wore their gray uniforms unbuttoned, their expressions languid.

Beside the wooden table in the middle of the room,

a lean young man in his early twenties was desperately scrubbing an open-backed saber with a piece of rag.

He had ground the blade razor-thin, and it glinted coldly.

"Monkey, quit scrubbing it."

On the shared sleeping platform, a middle-aged man with a face full of pockmarks blew out a ring of dry tobacco smoke and drawled,

"What good is a shiny blade? Once you're outside the city and run into those thick-skinned mutated beasts, they'll snap it with a single slap."

"Uncle Old Pockmark, a sharper blade means a better chance of surviving if trouble finds us." The young man called Monkey didn't even look up, a restless glint in his eyes.

"I don't want to spend my whole life stuck at the bottom of this bureau. If I get a chance to earn a first-class merit and trade it for a profound cultivation method..."

"Heh."

A potbellied man nearby let out a cold laugh.

"First-class merit? With that scrawny build, you think you'd even make a decent toothpick for the beasts outside the city?"

The potbellied man sat up and patted the fat around his waist.

"In this world, keeping your head down is better than anything else. Listen to us old hands. When you go outside the city on patrol, just follow along and make yourself known. Do as much work as you're paid for."

"Exactly. A wife, kids, and a warm bed—what's the point of money if you're not alive to spend it?" Uncle Old Pockmark chimed in.

They were still chatting idly when—

Bang.

Someone flung open the barracks' wooden door.

A runner stuck his head inside, panting.

"Quit sleeping! Get yourselves in order! We've got a new Squad Leader coming. He'll be here any minute!"

The room fell silent.

The men exchanged glances, each straightening up.

Uncle Old Pockmark tapped out his pipe and asked with a frown,

"A new Squad Leader? What kind? What sort of person?"

"No idea where this river-crossing dragon came from." The runner wiped the sweat from his brow. "All I know is he's a Bright Force master. Just now, in the front courtyard, he lifted a five-thousand-jin stone weight with one hand. Never seen him before. Looks pretty young."

Young?

At those two words,

the middle-aged men in the room all changed expression at once.

They had long since lost the fervor they'd felt when first joining the bureau. In this grinding world, all their ambition had been worn away.

These days, all they wanted was to collect a little pay and make it home in one piece.

Now, a young, hot-blooded Squad Leader had suddenly been dropped on them.

Young men were full of fire. They'd surely be looking for a chance to earn merit, and they'd certainly stir things up.

And in a place like the Garrison Bureau, stirring things up meant danger.

It meant using the lives of low-ranking men like them to fill the gaps.

"This is going to be trouble..." The potbellied man's earlier composure vanished. He muttered with a grimace.

Uncle Old Pockmark gripped his pipe and sighed in silence.

A higher rank could crush a man to death. No matter how unwilling they were, there was nothing they could do.

Guided by the runner, Lu Zhen and Gu Yanzhi first went to the Internal Affairs Pavilion in the Logistics Department.

The building was dimly lit.

A strong smell of rust and gun oil hung in the air.

"New recruits collect their gear first. That's the rule." The one-eyed old man in charge of registration rapped on the desk.

He pointed to a row of weapon racks on the left.

Those were the weapons issued to ordinary gray-uniformed members. They were all made of hundred-fold-forged iron, with blades, spears, swords, halberds, and all sorts of other weapons.

They were sharp enough against ordinary people, and convenient enough for hacking apart low-tier mutated beasts outside the city.

Gu Yanzhi stepped forward and looked over the weapons on the rack.

He chose a horizontal saber.

It had a thick spine and a straight blade. It was heavy, perfect for delivering powerful chops in the thick of battle.

"Squad Leader, this way, please."

The one-eyed old man treated Lu Zhen with noticeably greater respect and led him to another rack deeper inside the building.

There were fewer weapons here, but they looked much more finely made.

A Squad Leader's weapons were different.

Ordinary hundred-fold-forged iron couldn't withstand the violent qi and blood or the force released by a Bright Force Martial Master. The moment one channeled strength into it, a slight shake would be enough to shatter it.

The weapons issued to Squad Leaders were specially forged with Black Gold Sinking Sand mixed into them.

The material was extraordinary, with remarkable resilience. It could withstand the shock of tens of thousands of jin of force without breaking.

Lu Zhen's gaze swept over the rack.

He stopped before a long saber in its scabbard.

He gripped the hilt and slowly drew it.

There was no dazzling flash of cold light. The blade was long and narrow, with a slight curve, its color a dark, oppressive gray-black.

It was extremely heavy.

This saber alone must have weighed around fifty or sixty jin.

But in Lu Zhen's hands, it suited his terrifying strength perfectly.

"I'll take this one." Lu Zhen slid the saber back into its scabbard.

Once he had chosen his weapon, the one-eyed old man bent down and took two thin booklets from a locked cabinet, then slid them across the desk to Lu Zhen.

Squad Leaders who had attained a rank could also choose a cultivation method. That was one of the Garrison Bureau's ways of attracting powerful fighters.

"The bureau's rule is that a newly advanced Bright Force Squad Leader may take one internal cultivation method and one combat technique."

Lu Zhen lowered his head and opened the first booklet.

The internal cultivation method was called the Three Yang Breathing Technique.

It was an introductory method designed for martial artists who had reached Bright Force, used to guide their qi and blood deep into their five internal organs.

Its progress was extremely slow, but it was balanced and steady, making it unlikely to lead to a deviation.

The other booklet contained a combat technique suited to a long saber.

It was called Army-Breaking Eight Slashes.

Lu Zhen tucked the booklets close to his body and picked up the long saber.

"Let's go."

They left the Internal Affairs Pavilion and followed the long corridor farther in, soon arriving at Class A-6 Barracks.

They pushed open the wooden door.

Creak.

The room was rather dim, filled with a sour stench of cheap dry tobacco and sweaty feet.

The middle-aged men who had been lounging on the shared sleeping platform or wiping down their blades by the table looked up at the noise.

When they saw Lu Zhen's black brocade uniform with its red trim and the gold-and-silver "Garrison" character on his chest,

they all straightened up at once, their expressions restrained.

Lu Zhen's gaze swept across the room.

Including Gu Yanzhi, who had just joined the team, there were ten men in Class A-6 Barracks.

None of them were old, weak, sick, or disabled, but aside from the young Monkey, whose eyes were lively, the rest of the veteran soldiers all carried the world-weary air of old hands.

Lu Zhen walked to the table in the center of the room.

His long saber, scabbard and all, slammed down onto the tabletop with a heavy thud.

The sound made the men's eyelids twitch.

"My name is Lu Zhen. I'm your new Squad Leader."

"I don't care who you followed before or how you used to slack off. Under me, there's just one rule."

He paused, his gaze sweeping across their faces one by one.

"When we go outside the city and run into trouble, you follow orders. If anyone pays lip service while defying me and holds us back, don't blame my blade for showing no mercy."

"As long as you keep your heads down and do your jobs,"

"I'll make sure you get every bit of the pay you're owed and every chance to survive. You'll come back alive, just as you left."

The old hands in the room exchanged glances.

The potbellied man was the first to react. He forced an ingratiating smile and clasped his hands.

"Don't worry, Squad Leader! We brothers know the rules. Wherever you point, that's where we'll strike!"

Uncle Old Pockmark and Monkey hurriedly joined in with one agreement after another.

"We'll absolutely follow your orders."

"If you tell us to go east, we won't go west."

Their words came out crisp and loud.

But inside, they were all unconvinced.

The potbellied man lowered his eyelids and silently curled his lip.

All talk and no action. This hot-blooded young Bright Force master is counting on his strength, eager to earn first-class merit and climb the ranks.

When we run into a high-tier beast outside the city, won't he still use low-ranking men like us to fill the hole and take the fall?

Uncle Old Pockmark gripped his pipe. His face was respectful, but inwardly he could only sigh.

Just get through the days. In this world, you take each day as it comes.

When we get out into the wilderness and run into a death sentence of a mission, everyone can just run for their lives. Who cares about your rules?

Watching their expressions, Lu Zhen hadn't expected a few empty words to make these slippery veterans risk their lives for him.

He glanced out the window.

The sky had already darkened.

"There's no assignment today. You're all dismissed. Muster in the courtyard first thing tomorrow morning."