Chapter 24: Preparing for Battle [Volume 1 – Between Daybreak and Evernight]

At this point, Qianye came to understand Red Scorpion’s methods.

Every soldier had individual points, and each battalion had their own points. Missions could be completed for points, and those points were used to trade for all sorts of equipment and materials. Red Scorpion Corps’ headquarters was mainly responsible for preparing the most basic materials. To gather anything else, each battalion had to think of their own methods.

Despite being in Red Scorpion Corps together, the differences between each battalion could be enormous, just like they were between Tiger Scorpion and Blood Scorpion. This wasn't just a competition between quality of soldiers, even the abilities of commanders were compared.

Red Scorpion’s methods were very popular in the Empire, and many forces, especially special forces, liked to use this method of management.

Nan Batian brought Qianye into the Tiger Scorpion encampment, led him to his room, and said, “This is where you will be staying. We don't have a lot of people here, so it's very spacious. If you need anything, go find Old Bai, the logistics manager. Have a good night’s rest, for tomorrow is the start of your life as an army rookie!”

“Rookie.” Qianye chanted that word inwardly. He now knew what it meant.

Rookies were special existences in Red Scorpion Corps.

Although every corps would have new rookie soldiers, Red Scorpion was different. In Red Scorpion, young, newly recruited soldiers were considered rookies for their first two years. Only after two years would they be promoted to a Young Scorpion. Only then did they truly become a member of Red Scorpion and earn the right to independently take missions.

After Young Scorpion came Black Scorpion, Red Scorpion, then Scorpion King.

Rookies did not have status in Red Scorpion since they were just rookies. Older soldiers treated rookies as people to lecture and scold, but the position of rookie was also unique.

There was an unwritten rule in the Red Scorpion Corps that, if there was life threatening danger on the battleground, rookies would be the first leave, followed by the older soldiers, and the officers would be the last to leave. In any situation, the lives of the rookies were the first priority. Fresh blood had been used to establish this rule. In the history of Red Scorpion Corps, there was an instance in which, out of a hundred man troop that was killed, two rookies managed to escape.

From the second day, just as Nan Batian said, Qianye experienced how different army life was for a rookie.

In the next few months, Qianye only had a small amount of missions. The rest of his time was spent training. His first priority was to continue cultivating the Combatant Formula. Other than that, he needed to pass ten different classes, including learning how to drive almost all of the ground and air vehicles of the Empire.

Aside from that, there was also special equipment training. Qianye learned many secret things about the Empire, ranging from politics and economics, to things that had been cut from history.

Take the Yellow Springs Training Camp as an example.

The Yellow Springs Training Camp’s supporter from the shadows was the Empire’s Ministry of Military Affairs. It and three other training camps—Silent Flower, Swordrain Springs, and Great Way Range—were the secret, secure training grounds of the Empire. However, compared to the three other training camps, the Yellow Springs Training Camp was far superior than the other three in both scale and success. Even in the eyes of the Empire, against those deep, family-based organizations, it steadily remained in the top three.

The Yellow Springs Training Camp was an extremely special existence. Its approach was completely different from the normal military academies in that it put maximum effort into nurturing top tier killers who could survive under extreme conditions.

From the very beginning, many higher ups of the Empire believed that the method of awakening origin power could only show its true potential in life or death situations, successfully allowing one to become stronger.

During the era when the dark races ruled the world, the number of races that were subjugated and enslaved were in the hundreds. The human race was able to break free because they constantly walked the line between life and death, allowing their power to constantly awaken as they led generations on the path of strength and prosperity.

They believed that the lower levels of the Empire, especially the common folk, currently lived too peacefully and would lose their drive to improve as a result, decreasing the population and weakening the strength of their abilities. Even the Great Qin Empire would eventually fall to ruin because of that.

To remain glorious, explore, and expand, humanity had to survive in a crisis and improve in times of life or death!

This was the opinion of upper levels of the Empire, and it was especially popular at higher levels of the army. The Yellow Springs Training Camp was like a gathering of these type of people. The training camp kept every student in the shadow of death, making them struggle to survive, and allowing their potential to shine in the process.

Despite the high death and elimination rates in the Yellow Springs Training Camp and the objections from superiors, the students it nurtured were undeniably top tier talents.

Their true strength was far beyond numbers on paper. A single graduate from the Yellow Springs Training Camp could effortlessly take three to five soldiers from the Empire's army. Additionally, under complicated and extreme environments, the strength of the graduates of the Yellow Springs Training Camp could become even more terrifying.

It was said that, in a certain combat exam, three Yellow Springs Training Camp graduates banded together to completely wipe out a mountain fortified by an imperial army!!

After that incident, the funds that the Yellow Springs Training Camp received increased five times over, and their yearly recruitment numbers of a thousand shot up to twenty thousand.

Furthermore, every twenty to thirty years, a shocking talent would appear in the Yellow Springs Training Camp. Such a person could change an entire influential force! As long as such a person appeared, the Yellow Springs Training Camp was able to ignore all criticism, and four such people have appeared in the past hundred years!

As a result, not only did the Yellow Springs Training Camp to exist, it also stayed strong. In the Empire, their faction was called the Ironblood Eagle Faction.

In the beginning, most recruits of the Yellow Springs Training Camp were common folk and orphans picked out from anywhere. However, after one success, many influential families started sending the children of their branches here.

Compared to the common folk and orphans, the children of powerful families had foundational supplements that increased their rates of success, and once they graduated, they received a status that far surpassed the one they were born into. Inspired by the successful graduates, many children from the branches of families started volunteering to enter the Yellow Springs Training Camp.

In the past three hundred years, the fame of the Yellow Springs Training Camp increased without end, getting even members of powerful families who had high positions to send children of their direct line there, to become a pillar of the family after intense training.

The Yellow Springs Training Camp made the appropriate adjustments to give those children a certain amount of care. This was mainly done to preserve their lives and have the girls to avoid attending the coming-of-age ceremony.

On a battlefield against the dark races, status didn’t matter. With the conditions and natural resources from their families, many children awaken their origin power to form the front lines of the army. Authority and responsibility were always equal.

After tacking on that they experienced life in the Yellow Springs Training Camp on their resume, the lives of these children were destined to go up. Regardless of whether they were seeking future prospects in the Empire or returning home, it would be smooth sailing.

Qianye did not expect that the Yellow Springs Training Camp he had spent a full nine years in had such a complicated and deep background. He also did not expect the scale of its background to be so large.

Only the hundred people from his class were by his side when he was there. Other than a few big exams where students were required to kill each other, he had rarely met students from another class. Even the hundred students that were with him would diminish, replenish, then diminish again. The number of familiar faces in Qianye’s memories was no more than fifteen.

That night, Qianye lay on his bed as his fingers fiddled with his last portion of Vermillion Countenance Blood. He knew that this precious medicine was most effective during the foundation stage of origin power. Once a person ignited their origin node, the effectiveness would slowly decline. This was one of the few possessions he took from the Yellow Springs Training Camp.

After that, Qianye started to learn the system behind the Empire. Only after coming here did he understand that even the rookies of the Red Scorpion Corps possessed great authority.

In the Empire, where hierarchy was extremely complicated, the authority of Red Scorpion soldiers was higher than that of lesser nobles of the Empire.

Just like that, the first few months in Red Scorpion were spent learning and training. Qianye scheduled a fifteen minute break every day and only spent four hours on sleeping. However, even as he slept, he spent half of that time soaking in bodily rejuvenation liquid to recover and strengthen his body. The medicine was one of the resources that the army provided to its elite corps soldiers.

The era of Vermillion Countenance Blood was over.

Only then did Qianye realize the true scale of Red Scorpion.

Including a thousand or so rookies, there were ten thousand official members in the Red Scorpion Corps. The annual rookie elimination rate was around twenty percent. Elimination here obviously did not mean death, but reassignment to another corps. Yet even soldiers that were eliminated from Red Scorpion would become top level members of another corps.

And behind these ten thousand Red Scorpion soldiers were twenty thousand logistical and support staff!

This was why the Red Scorpion headquarters felt just like a small city to Qianye.

After a few months, Qianye finally started to earn some authority and slowly lost the inexperience of a rookie. During this period of learning, Qianye's meticulousness, concentration, and patience received recognition. Some officials even saw all of it as borderline madness. Qianye could spend a few days focusing on a single thing without being distracted at all.

In return, Qianye received full marks on almost every subject. The only thing that hindered him was the cultivation speed of his origin power. On the rookie rankings, Qianye constantly remained around tenth place.

After the semester was over for the rookies, Nan Batian appeared in front of Qianye once again.

This person that resembled a giant started taking personal responsibility for Qianye’s combat ability and physical training, successfully branding him Tiger Scorpion’s symbol. Qianye's body became sturdier. If his delicate, beautiful face was excluded, he was definitely a strong, powerful soldier.

It was in this way that Qianye, on his fourth month as a member of Red Scorpion, welcomed the first mission that he would remember for a long time.