Chapter 14: To Fight or Not to Fight [Volume 1 – Between Daybreak and Evernight]

Fang Minghui was instantly shocked. Before she could speak, a boy ran over and quickly said, "No! She's mine!"

Song Zining's face darkened as he said coldly, "The hell are you? You dare fight me for women?"

That boy's face instantly turned pale as he stammered, "B-but you already have two women."

"Two isn't enough," Song Zining coldly replied.

This statement left the boy speechless. Looking at Qianye indignantly, he slowly retreated.

That boy was in a group with a few of his friends. When he had run over, the others chose to stand still and watch.

One of the taller youths walked over and said with a deep voice, “Song Zining, you're going overboard. The few of us have always respected and indulged you. However, you cannot monopolize all the goods for yourself. Even more, I won’t let you bully my brother!”

Qianye recognized this fellow as Wu Jin. He ranked behind Song Zining; however, the difference between their scores wasn’t much.

Song Zining ignored the hidden threat in Wu Jin’s words and laughed coldly, “I just bullied your brother, so what?”

Killing intent radiated from Wu Jin as he narrowed his eyes and slowly said, “There isn't much of a difference between us, and now that I think about it, it's been a while since I fought you seriously!”

“That’s because you're too afraid to fight me, not that I was avoiding a match with you.” Song Zining laughed coldly as he straightened his body, his knife-sharp killing intent soaring through the air!

Exercising his joints, Song Zining laughed coldly. “Wu Jin, you shouldn't be so dumb as to believe in the stupid rankings? How about this? We'll go to the combat hall for a fight right now, and this time, I won't show any mercy. After this match, you can f*ck off with your shitty second place!”

Facing Song Zining’s challenge, Wu Jin's facial expression became uncertain. With a snort, he turned and left.

While facing Wu Jing’s back, Song Zining leisurely said, “Wu Jin, if you want to join forces with other people, do it quicker. I will ignite my second node in two more months!”

Rank two Fighter!

Wu Jin's body trembled as he turned to look at Song Zining with an expression of disbelief before leaving in a hurry, his previous aura completely gone.

The surrounding children were similarly shocked as their respect for him grew. Fang Minghui immediately changed her view of Song Zining and obediently walked to his side, speaking lightly, “I'll do whatever Brother Song wants me to, accompanying anyone is fine.”

Pointing at Fang Minghui, Song Zining spoke to Qianye, “Qianye, she's something you deserve. In this place, if you don't claim things that are rightfully yours, people will start to doubt and test you. Showing off a bit of your strength would reduce the amount of hassle you have to deal with.”

Qianye originally wanted to decline but he was stopped by Song Zining’s resolute gaze. He then had no choice but to let Fang Minghui follow him.

After returning to his bed, Qianye thought back to the incident earlier.

What Song Zining wanted to tell Qianye was that strength was everything. Without strength, against someone like Song Zining, one could only retreat and relent or be beaten to death.

Even the second ranked Wu Jin was humiliated and had to retreat when he faced against Song Zining. As for Fang Minghui, such a low ranking girl would follow any man without much care.

Qianye felt like he had understood what Song Zining was trying to convey.

Fang Minghui stealthily climbed up onto Qianye’s bed, but the Combatant Formula had tormented Qianye for an entire day, so he was completely disinterested in her. He only stroked her soft waist without doing anything else before quickly falling asleep.

For the following period of time, Fang Minghui followed Qianye around, and despite never touching her, Qianye did not have her leave. Among his batch of students, Qianye was ranked in front, staying around tenth place.

This was thanks to his extraordinary performance in every lesson, especially in some of the knowledge based classes like firearms and machinery, his performance being close to perfection. As for physical classes, he suffered slightly, but in classes where they had to do actual combat, he managed to stay around twentieth place thanks to his extraordinary viciousness.

Song Zining was right. With Qianye's combined rank, he indeed had the right to set his sights on a female companion. However, he never looked for one. Therefore, this was seen by others as a sign of guilt due to his lack of strength.

Life in the training camp was never boring.

One day, during machinery class, Qianye had used simple equipment to create a highly precise cartridge after ten failures. He was extremely satisfied with his own work. A single cartridge was very easy to make, but creating a high precision cartridge without meticulous equipment was difficult. One needed certain level of strength and control to accomplish such a feat.

This was a core maintenance skill in battle. With this ability, Qianye could repair broken firearms and other equipment in battle. Its significance was self-evident.

As Qianye was admiring his own work, a young girl’s voice suddenly appeared next to him, “How amazing!”

Turning his head, Qianye saw a young girl next to him currently looking at the cartridge in his hands.

Her appearance could only be described as ordinary, but she had quite a good figure and was already over 1.7 meters tall. This girl named Mimi was one of the few girls in class who did not need to rely on someone else. Her ranking was even higher than Qianye’s at a stable rank six.

“I was just lucky.” Qianye casually tossed the cartridge aside.

Picking it up, Mimi carefully inspected it before speaking to Qianye, “I'm rather interested in you. With you in a team, the team would not have to worry about broken firearms in battle or insufficient bullets.”

“I’m not that much better in maintenance than you.” He remembered that Mimi’s scores regarding firearms were not too low from his.

“There can never be too much of such abilities! I can tell you're not interested in that Fang Minghui, so why not become partners with me?” Mimi straightforwardly invited him.

Qianye furrowed his brows. “Partners? In that aspect?”

“No, in battle.” Mimi suddenly moved closer to Qianye as she whispered, “You seem to be disinterested in women, and I am conveniently disinterested in men. Our battle styles compliment each other, and our partnership will be very compatible. In the future, we can join battles as a team!”

Qianye was rather moved at this suggestion, and nodded as he said, “Let me think about it.”

In the next few months, Qianye and Mimi grew closer together, the time they spent with each other gradually increasing. On the other hand, Fang Minghui was rudely chased away by Mimi.

Song Zining did not have any opinion on this. Rather, he only wanted Qianye to have a female partner. Whoever it was was not important. And Mimi was obviously stronger than Fang Minghui.

In this period of time, Mimi and Qianye battled regularly against each other in combat class. Mimi’s fighting style was like an expert's, her defense smooth and steady while her attacks were unpredictable. Her combat capabilities were stronger than Qianye’s. Song Zining had privately mentioned that Mimi seemed to have had already set her foundation for fighting before entering the Yellow Springs Training Camp.

Qianye naturally did not use a berserker’s style of fighting against her, so as a result, he lost more matches. But battling with Mimi in this way for so long allowed his combat skills to rapidly increase.

Just like that, toward the middle of the year, the children welcomed their first survival exam that was truly significant.

The students of all ten classes were thrown into a vast, primitive mountainous region along with hundreds of various dark race warriors.

The students needed to think of a way to survive in this vast and complicated mountain area for ten days, and within that time, their enemies not only included the various dark races but also the other students, which they had to be on guard against. It was because in this exam, killing students and any dark race warrior yielded the same amount of points.

The exam itself was extremely simple. One would instantly pass by killing one dark race warrior or student, and furthermore, the top ten killers would receive additional bonus rewards.

If one didn't have the ability to kill, they would have to hide well. When there were only six hundred students left or when ten days had passed, the exam would end.

Each student was allocated a single normal dagger, the only weapon they were allowed in this exam.

When dusk came, a whistle as sharp as an owl's cry was heard, signaling the start of the examination.

Qianye entered the forest quickly and hid himself, only coming out when night fell to carefully move forward.

Hiding himself in the dark, Qianye moved very patiently while he observed his surroundings. His actions were extremely slow and he did not create a single sound. The knowledge he obtained from his field survival class were being put to good use. Qianye meticulously moved in a stealthy manner, occasionally changing his movements according to the terrain.

After passing a large tree, Qianye suddenly stopped in its shadow. About ten meters away, two students suddenly appeared and started fighting intensely the moment they met. In just a few minutes, the result was determined. In the blink of an eye, one of the youths collapsed and died after receiving consecutive stabs!

Despite winning, the youth still did not seem as though he had completely vented his anger. Only after stabbing the corpse on the ground several more times did he pull off the special whistle from the waist of the corpse. He proceeded to curse loudly after inspecting the marks on it.

The surviving youth had a few blade wounds on his body as well. After taking care of his wounds in a simple manner and stopping the bleeding, he took out his whistle and prepared to blow it. This whistle was specially made such that upon blowing it with origin power, the sound it produced would be able travel several kilometers. After hearing the sound, the instructors patrolling the examination grounds would rush over instantly and verify the results of the battle. Then, they would take the one who passed the exam out of the examination grounds.

The whistle was already placed in his mouth, but he no longer had any energy to blow it. At his throat, the tip of a dagger suddenly appeared.

The youth turned around in shock, but was no longer able to speak. He could only point at Mimi who appeared from deep within the forest as he slowly fell.

Walking over to the youth’s corpse, Mimi pulled out her dagger and searched the two corpses, taking their daggers and whistles. These whistles were all specially made and labelled with the identification number of the participating students.

When the exam ended, their rankings would be determined by the number of whistles each person held. For those that lost their whistles, even if they survived, they would be ranked at the bottom.

Inserting the daggers in the leather sheaths at her waist, Mimi suddenly sensed something, looked up and stared in Qianye's direction, bellowing, “Who’s there! Come out!”