In the dining hall of Bloodthirsty Camp.
The dining hall had extremely large space, with thousands of tables and chairs placed there, and it was divided into 40 zones which respectively corresponded to the 40 camps.
When Lin Xun dragged his numb body to sit down, his face couldn’t help but contort in agony and he felt sore and pricked all over.
Three hours’ unceasing fighting had made Lin use up all the spiritual energy, and in spite of his strong body, he had a feeling of exhaustion.
Were it not for the willpower to barely support himself, Lin Xun even might fall into a coma at any time.
Soon, Ning Meng came over with two portions of breakfast. Sitting face to face with Lin Xun quickly, Ning smiled, “Although the condition here is poor, the breakfast is quite good, even good enough to match the quality of a court banquet.”
Containing a bowl of porridge, four dishes, and ten steamed buns with meat fillings, the breakfast was indeed good.
The porridge was made of a kind of rare Green-jade Spiritual Cereal, with each grain of rice bright and translucent like jade, giving off fragrant smell. The four dishes, excellent in color, aroma and taste, were all cooked with various rare spiritual vegetables and meats. Even the buns with meat fillings, which were not only delicious, but also contained abundant spiritual energy, were made from the meat from the leg bones of the Bloody-pupil Leopards.
Without any words, Lin Xun wolfed down the meal immediately. The exhausted body was just like a bottomless hole, and was badly in need of being supplemented.
Ning Meng was starving clearly. While eating ravenously, he said ambiguously, “Lin Xun, I belittled you before. Your performance at the No.10 Training Field today deserves my appreciation.”
Lin Xun rolled his eyes. This guy always spoke in an arrogant tone, and with such a bad habit, he would definitely cause much trouble.
“By the way, I saw that Qi Can was directed against you today. I’ll find a chance to help you vent your spleen,” Ning Meng said without thinking.
Lin Xun was in a trance. Putting down his chopsticks, he curiously looked at Ning Meng sitting opposite, and said, “Why will you help me?”
Ning Meng felt unhappy, and said, “Have you forgotten what I said on the way to Bloodthirsty Camp? You’re my friend. If you are bullied by someone, I’ll be thoroughly discredited.”
Actually, this guy was worried about losing face….
Lin Xun felt upset at once, and said, “Eat your breakfast!”
While they were eating the breakfast, the dining hall became noisier and noisier. More than one thousand trainees from 40 camps were sitting at the different zones, and the scene was so spectacular.
The time limit for breakfast was half an hour. Except for the rule of forbidding fights, there were no other restraints, so it was a rare chance to relax.
The atmosphere was quite lively. All these trainees were juveniles, some of whom knew each other even before they came to the Bloodthirsty Camp. So, when they got together, they talked happily with each other.
The topics they were discussing were concerned with those trainees who had already got some fame before they came to the Bloodthirsty Camp.
It was normal. All of the trainees admitted to the Bloodthirsty Camp this time had been carefully selected through a special channel. Each one of them was talented and extraordinary. Besides, most of them had distinguished family backgrounds, and only a few of them came from poor families.
Not interested in these topics, Lin Xun immersed himself in breakfast.
But Ning Meng seemed to have heard something. He said seriously, “I never thought both Bai Lingshi, the eldest granddaughter of Jinghai Marquis, and Zhao Yin, the great-great-grandson of Bowang Marquis in the Forbidden City came.”
Lin Xun said without thinking, “Are you afraid of them?”
Ning glared at once, and said, “Are you kidding me? I have never been afraid of anybody!”
After a pause, Ning frowned, “But the two guys are tough to deal with. Both of them are extraordinary talents born with special gifts, so you have to be careful when fighting with them.”
Lin Xun felt tempted, “Do both of them have spiritual veins in their bodies?”
Shaking his head, Ning Meng said, “Spiritual vein is only one kind of talent properties. I have heard the talent property of Bai Lingshi is Starshine Eternal, which is a mysterious and rare spiritual talent. While the talent of Zhao Yin, originating in his root bone, is called the Purple Sun and is rare as well.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
According to Ning’s words, talent property, namely the cultivation endowments of practitioners, referred to the power of understanding, root bone, spiritual vein and other aspects.
Based on the evaluation of the empire, the talent property could be divided into nine levels, with the first level ranking the top, and the tenth level ranking the bottom.
The cultivation speed of those with rare talent property was several times faster than that of ordinary people. What was more frightening was that they were beyond the ordinary in comprehending and practicing martial arts.
They were nearly perfect whether in their bodies, spirits or the integrating degree of their properties with one year’s practice equivalent to years of tough practice for others. Especially the higher level they reached, the bigger advantage they could obtain, which would gradually distance themselves from the ordinary people.
Here was the most well-known example in the empire. More than three-hundred years ago, there were the twin descendants of Dongbo Marquis, of whom the elder brother owned the talent property of Leaktight, while the younger one, though excellent, didn’t have talent property.
The twins used to practice together for many years. Though they grew up together, the elder one broke through realm and rose to the new level many times in a year, while the younger one rose only once within three years. When the elder brother reached the Tao Insight Realm, the younger one was still stagnating in the Gang Spirit Realm.
By the time the elder brother became a foremost figure in the local area and assumed hegemony, the younger one had sunk into oblivion.
Just because of the talent property, the cultivation gap between the twin brothers became larger and larger. So we could see how mighty and promising those guys who owned the talent property were.
The Starshine Eternal Bai Lingshi owned was a talent property of the fourth level, while the Purple Sun Zhao Yin got was of the seventh level.
Whatever the level was, as long as one owned talent property, he had, to a great extent, surpassed those ordinary practitioners at the starting line.
Till now, Lin Xun faintly realized the significance of owning the talent property. With multifarious thoughts surging in his mind, Lin Xun thought of his spiritual vein – “Devouring Abyss” which had been dug out and taken away.
So which level was it on?
“What a pity! In the entire Ziyao Empire, the number of the practitioners who own the talent property is too small. They are extremely rare.”
Ning Meng sighed with emotion, “If I own one talent property, even one on the lowest ninth level will enable me to rise head and shoulders above others and dominate the world.”
Lin Xun was silent. He felt the urge several times to ask Ning about “Devouring Abyss”, but controlled himself eventually.
He couldn’t speak, since it was the biggest secret of him.
At the moment, a laugh came from the side suddenly. Shi Yu came over, smiling, plopped down on the chair next to Ning Meng and cast a sidelong glance at Ning Meng, “Don’t brag! The stupid like you will achieve nothing even with the top-level talent.”
Ning pounded the table, and said in a rage, “You toy boy! Do you want to die?”
Shi Yu just ignored him, and continued, “I hear that not only Bai Lingshi and Zhao Yin, but also your deadly foe Zhangsun Heng have come.”
Zhangsun Heng!
Suddenly Ning Meng wore a fierce look, and looked extremely sullen.
This was the first time that Lin Xun had seen Ning with such an expression. Lin couldn’t help frowning and casting a glance at Shi Yu.
Shi stood up with a smile, and spoke to Ning Meng, “If you want to defeat him, you have to practice hard in Bloodthirsty Camp.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Ning gritted his teeth, and spoke in a low voice. With his hands clenching, he seemed to be tolerating something.
“I have no other choice. I can’t just stand by since you and I have been in the same camp now,” Shi Yu shrugged.
“What if you and Zhangsun Heng were arranged in the same camp?” Ning Meng stared at Shi Yu firmly.
Shi smiled and left, without saying any more.
“Is Zhangsun Heng your enemy?” Lin Xun asked.
Ning shook his head, and didn’t want to mention it.
...
When the breakfast was over, the twenty-eight trainees of Camp 39, including Lin Xun, got the notice that they had passed the training in the No.10 Training Field, and thus accumulated five points respectively.
Also at this moment, Lin Xun got to know their training in the first month should have been arranged in the training fields from number one to number nine, which had a relatively safer surroundings for fighting.
While the No.10 Training Field was for the combat training of the second month.
Lin Xun didn’t have any opinion about the arrangement. All he had to do was to obey orders, since it was useless to protest against such a lady as Drillmaster Young Ke.
Whatever, compared with other camps, Camp 39 definitely had the highest elimination rate in the first training day.
Fifty people checked in yesterday, but just 28 of them were left after only one day.
After the breakfast, the intense training began again.
Young Ke led all the trainees of Camp 39 into an open-air training field. Over their heads was the scorching hot sun.
What Lin Xun and other 27 trainees had to do was to restore spiritual energy and recover themselves to the optimum state within two hours.
Two hours later, Young Ke directed them to carry out the training of close combat. She made the trainees fight against each other bare-handed, with the winning side accumulating one point, while the failing side losing one point.
It was not until the noon that the lunch was served.
The five points Lin Xun got in the morning reset and were gained by Ning Meng. He couldn’t do anything about it, because he had been drawn to play Ning in the training of close combat.
Unfortunately, Lin Xun couldn’t match Ning Meng in cultivation. Even though he far surpassed Ning in combat techniques, he was suppressed easily by Ning and finally lost all combats, with the win rate of zero.
During lunch time, looking at Lin Xun who had been beaten black and blue by him, Ning Meng couldn’t help laughing complacently. Lin Xun was burning with hatred. It struck Lin Xun that Shi Yu evaluated Ning as an inborn idiot who deserved a good spanking when they first met.
In the afternoon, 28 trainees, including Lin Xun, were sent to an empty and enclosed room. A high test-bed, with a bronze coffin on it, was placed in the center of the room.
Shu Sanqi was standing in front of the coffin, with his body straight like a spear that could stick through the sky, and his face tough and cold like a stone, keeping his gravity.
His eyes seemed to be sharp enough to stick into the depths of one’s soul, so nobody dare make eye contact with him.
“Today you’ll learn how to know and understand your enemy.”
Shu’s words were as concise as before. With a wave of his hand, he opened the closely sealed coffin and a strange body was exposed.