Chapter 707: When Going Out, Maintain Your Dignity (2)

There was a story Qing had heard so many times during her army days that it had worn grooves into her ears.

The strength of a soldier comes from the soles of the feet, and the march is the very flower of training.

“So, aren’t we doing any marching or anything?”

Of course, Qing did not actually carry around some firm creed like “marching above all,” nor was she a devotee of her homeland garrison’s doctrine.

As always, she just... didn’t really have any particular thoughts.

It was just a bit of idle chatter she tossed out for no reason in the middle of a meal.

“Oh my, Heavenly Flower Sword. Marching, you say. This academy is not a military garrison, you know? Such training is for moving a body of troops efficiently under tight control. We merely bestow instruction on would-be chivalrous warriors who dream of someday serving the orthodox factions.”

“Mm. Is that so?”

Since it wasn’t some “we absolutely must do this!” conviction, just something she’d said without thinking, Qing simply went, oh, okay then, and accepted it right away.

Sima Chunbong did not.

Recently, Qing had become a bit suspicious in her eyes—but even so, wasn’t she still Heavenly Flower Sword, the one and only rival under heaven, versed in both the civil and the martial?

Surely, if she was insisting like this, there must be some reason. Surely this was not something she’d just blurted out without thought.

That was the harm of overestimating someone.

“Hehe, Heavenly Flower Sword. Since you brought it up, why don’t we hear your lofty opinion in more detail? This ‘marching’—we, being an academy, might call it a procession—and this procession training, what advantages were you intending to argue for?”

“Huh? Uh. Well, first off, comradeship, right? There’s no faster way to get close to people than having shared memories of getting through something hard and miserable together. And, you know, life happens; sometimes you really do have to hurry. Above all, it’s good to do it at least once because...”

Qing just said whatever came to mind.

And as Sima Chunbong listened, her reaction went: not bad. No, that’s pretty good. No, that’s wrong—this is actually great.

Sima Chunbong was hooked.

“Heavenly Flower Sword, could you be a bit more specific? From what you’re saying, it sounds like a kind of training we absolutely ought to try.”

Distance? Just have them walk a thousand li and back, right?

Too many days, you say?

Eh, if there’s no time, you just don’t sleep. What kind of martial artist can’t handle going without sleep for a few days? You leave in the morning: breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack; breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack; then breakfast, lunch, and have dinner back at the academy.

Yeah. Yeah. Three days and nights, no sleep.

Ah. Well. There was that.

For third-raters, that’s a bit much; for first-raters, it’s too light.

Then, mm. Just split the difference.

The result: procession trial training, approved!

They’d try it once, and if it worked as Qing claimed, they would apply it to the next incoming class of cadets next year as well.

In other words, Ximen Qing had once again released poison into the martial world.

And with that, the academies’ administrative warriors’ real work began in earnest.

How could it possibly be easy to move over a hundred martial artists all at once?

They had to go ask the local offices for all kinds of “cooperation” (bribes).

They had to scout the road.

They had to prevent all sorts of potential incidents that might crop up along the way.

And so, the day of the training arrived.

When Qing looked down from the platform at the Grand Drill Yard at the cadets fully packed for the march, there was something downright majestic about the sight.

The only thing that left her a little unsatisfied was...

Mm, the inspection of full combat gear was one of the highlights of any march.

But these cadets were voluntary entrants. And although their enthusiasm had... somewhat dropped down from fever-pitch to normal enthusiasm thanks to being rolled by all three curriculums in the name of safety—

Unlike a garrison, these cadets had no habit of scheming to cut corners and make things easier on themselves for the sake of their own skins.

Besides, the purpose of Righteous-Proper Martial Academy was to nurture people who dreamed of sipping honey inside the shelter of the orthodox factions. Would such people stoop to something as paltry as trying to shave off baggage?

And most of their load had been prepared by the academy anyway.

Two canteens, rations for ten meals. Personal mess kit and fire-starter.

Their weapon and a spare weapon (this was the one and only part where martial artists without weapons had an advantage).

A bedroll, two blankets, a spare academy uniform. A towel.

The training itself was structured as follows.

Ten people formed one team.

The headcount per curriculum was adjusted as needed, but for now, one team was on the order of ten people.

Each team would hit seven checkpoints in turn and then return to Righteous-Proper Martial Academy.

They’d receive bonus points based on order of arrival; on the other hand, there were penalties for coming in late, and they had to be back by the evening of the third day.

In the end, instead of the group march Qing had talked about, the event settled into a category more like an independent-command march from an officer-training program.

Of course, Qing had no way to know that such a “command curriculum” even existed, so as far as she was concerned, if you were walking with a load the whole time, it was a march, whatever you called it.

And above all, there was the “cargo.”

Each team was issued a certain amount of sandbags—cargo—adjusted to their level and body size.

This cargo could be thrown away if it became too much.

However, after the march, each team’s cargo losses would be tallied, and they’d be penalized for any shortfall.

These were cadets looking to make their careers off high marks at Righteous-Proper Martial Academy.

So when the cadets stood in formation for inspection, they were all full of motivation, vowing they’d get back first and grab a big bonus in one stroke. Except...

“Now, before the training begins, the Director has a few words of advice!”

At that, the atmosphere abruptly cooled.

In an instant, the dim pre-dawn fell quiet; only the mountain birds, out early to catch the diligent worms that woke with the morning, were chirping.

Director of Righteous-Proper Martial Academy, Dagger-Sword Lord Yu Seonyeop, strode forward with a confident gait.

For some reason, the mood felt exactly like some black-masked someone’s tragic background music ought to start playing.

In that stillness, Yu Seonyeop opened his mouth.

—When I look upon you now, you seem the same as on the day of the entrance ceremony, and yet already twelve days have passed; such is the transience of time, I suppose. But as the saying goes, “rub your eyes and look again”—it is said that when a man has been gone three days, you must rub your eyes and look anew, for he should already have changed so much. And when this Director looks upon you cadets, I see already a faint weight settled in your breath, and a righteous light glimmering in your eyes; I can only be astonished. I congratulate you on your achievement and am proud of you.

Waaaaah!! Thank you, sir!!

—Good. Now, I would like to entrust you with just three things.

Waaah...

The cadets’ vision went dark.

Where did he even keep finding these “three things” to pull out like this? And though he said “three,” they all had a firm, ominous premonition that by the end it would once again be four.

In the end, their premonition proved correct.

Before they even started marching, the cadets were already mentally wrung dry. You could say it was a cruel measure that added an extra layer of difficulty on top of three sleepless days’ worth of extreme-endurance training.

****

On the first day of the march.

The cadets’ steps were light.

The fifty jin of pack weight on their backs was not exactly light.

But the physical capabilities of Central Plains people were something else entirely compared to the people of Qing’s homeland civilization.

Most civilized people, if you had them hang from something and support their body weight, couldn’t even last an eighth of an eighth of an eighth of an eighth of an eighth of a “count” (about thirty seconds) before dropping.

And if just hanging was that hard, then climbing up using their own weight while hanging was the kind of brutally difficult challenge that maybe one person out of ten might succeed at.

But if you took a Central Plains person with no physical defects, just hanging from something with their own weight for a “count” was a breeze for them, and they’d hop over walls and climb cliffs for fun; their baseline strength was simply different.

Even the civilian commoners were like this; so if they were martial artists—even if they were just third-rate—they were strongmen worth the name.

So this much was nothing.

In fact, they pushed their pace quite briskly right from the start in order to place well, and strode out in long, quick steps.

Qing, as a safety officer, was assigned to escort Sword Hall’s First Team.

Given that they had ten sturdy martial artists and Henan was practically the Martial Alliance’s front yard, you wouldn’t expect any unsavory trouble.

Even so, just in case, the instructors, assistant instructors, and academy warriors had all been mobilized; one person per team was assigned to provide escort and supervision.

Escort and supervision—also to handle the supervision part.

Any fooling around during the march was strictly forbidden.

They’d been provided with three days’ worth of food, so all acts like dropping into a village along the way to eat were likewise forbidden.

Honestly, with a thousand-li route over three days, they’d have to walk straight through the nights; there was no time for fooling around anyway.

On top of that—

“You have been attacked by bandits, and one member of your squad has taken a severe injury and is unconscious.”

“Sir?”

“You can decide among yourselves who’s injured. It’ll be best if you rotate the role. However, an unconscious patient must be carried on a stretcher.”

Just walking for three sleepless days with a pack on your back—what martial artist couldn’t do that?

One injured, unconscious, in need of transport.

That was the scenario assigned at the first checkpoint.

Naturally, an unconscious patient couldn’t carry a pack, so on top of the stretcher, the patient’s share of the load also had to be split among the others.

Only then did a shadow finally cross the cadets’ faces, as they realized at last that this training was not going to be so easy after all.

“Perfect. I’ll be the one who’s hurt.”

Sichuan Young Lord Mandarlo immediately stepped forward.

He was volunteering to be the one on the stretcher.

It wasn’t exactly something that ought to be coming out of his own mouth; the squad’s mood instantly turned icy.

What a slippery bastard, and thick-faced on top of it.

Qing found herself newly impressed with Mandarlo.

Squad captain Yang Chil quickly stepped in to mediate.

“If you think about it, this isn’t such a bad situation, is it? We can all take turns getting a bit of rest. For now, let Young Lord Man take the patient role first and—”

“Why bother swapping back and forth like that? I’ll just stay the patient the whole time. That’s not such a bad deal for you either, is it? With an instructor here watching, you’ll want to show how hard you’re working and get on her good side anyway, won’t you? Hehe. If you don’t have money or connections, working hard is all you’ve got.”

The subtext: I, on the other hand, lack for nothing.

In that moment, there was a sudden FWOOSH of flame from somewhere.

“You dog-bone little fucker, you’re really putting on a goddamn show.”

“Wh-what, what did you just say?”

“Why did I call you a dog-bone little fucker? Because I’ve had it with your bullshit. When a bastard’s got a raging case of tantrum disease, the only cure is to beat it out of him. Hey, hold on, let go—let go of me.”

At Vermilion Bird girl Chang Yohong’s sudden snap, the rest of the squad swarmed her in a panic to hold her back.

If Qing hadn’t been there, they probably would’ve ended up in an all-out brawl.

“This instructor is not here.”

Honestly, Qing felt a little regret.

Not stepping in and just watching that brat get beaten to a pulp sounded kind of fun.

But they kept sneaking glances at Qing and then let it slide, hemming and hawing their way past it, so—mm. What a shame.

Still, the air had gone awkward, and Mandarlo’s shamelessness was nothing ordinary; sooner or later, there was going to be an explosion. She was sure of it.

And that explosion came rather sooner than she’d expected.

It was the first evening of the march, sometime in the afternoon, with the early-summer sun still blazing bright.

“Hey. Dog-Bone. Move.”

“What? You talking to me right now?”

“If we figure it’s around thirty shichen total to get back, then we’re about three shichen in now. Lie down while you can. Move it.”

“You lowborn bitch. Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Ha! And what are you, exactly? You some big deal?”

“Hmph. Someone so far above you that you couldn’t even imagine it. Frankly, you ought to be grateful I’m deigning to speak with—ow, what are you doing?!”

Mandarlo went tumbling as Chang Yohong grabbed the stretcher and flipped it clean over.

He sprang back up and pointed at her, raising his voice.

“You—you lowborn bitch, how dare you, you don’t even know your—uh.”

Mandarlo faltered.

Because Chang Yohong was on fire.

Not metaphorically; actual flames were whooshing up over her entire body, and her eyes in particular were blazing with a fierce, blue ghost-fire.

“Ugh, I can’t talk with trash like this. Damn it.”

Then he whirled around and stalked off somewhere on his own.

But somehow, with his joints creaking and his movements stiff and awkward, everyone had the same thought in their heads.

That bastard’s rattled.

Then Chang Yohong called out again.

“Hey, you.”

Two people flinched at that.

One was Mandarlo, who was trying to slink away; the other was the squadmate she was actually addressing.

“You’re third-rate, right? You look like you’re having a hard time, so you lie down instead of me.”

“Uh, Miss Chang? I’m grateful for the thought, but I’m still fine.”

“Who told you to be grateful? I said lie down. If you wait until you’re already totally spent, resting just means staying spent. You lie down while you’re still less tired so you can recover quickly. Don’t drag everyone down when you’re already falling apart. Well? You lying down or what?”

“I—I’ll lie down.”

The third-rate squadmate lay down meekly on the stretcher with a complicated expression.

You could call it... rough kindness.

She was clearly looking out for him, but it didn’t feel purely good, yet it didn’t feel ungrateful either.

The one certain thing was: she was a bit scary.

I mean, the person talking was a flame demon spewing blue fire out of her eyes.

“So where’d that dog-bone bastard run off to?”

“Now, now, Miss Chang. Please, calm down. Since things have turned out like this, it might be better to eat dinner a little early and then move on, don’t you think? Whatever his attitude, he’s someone trying to stay attached to the academy. He’ll be back before long.”

“Tch. I’m really going to wreck that bastard one of these days. Seriously.”

Chang Yohong’s flames slowly subsided.

Just as the squadmembers were each letting out a sigh of relief and relaxing—

—Aaaaagh!!!

That dog-bone bastard’s shrieking scream ripped through the air, raw and desperate.