In the cabin, no matter how the Fatty Middle-aged complained or how confused all those trainees looked, Young Ke didn’t seem to change her mind.
It didn’t take long before the treasure ship landed on a bare mountain peak. Young Ke led the trainees out of the ship.
Young Ke stood upright, with her bobbed black hair fluttering in the whistling wind. Her slender figure presented a kind of elegant beauty.
“That’s the No.10 Training Field, where there are lots of Golden-flame Spiders. You are supposed to keep fighting there for three hours.”
Young Ke pointed to the foot of the mountain, where was an expansive rocky zone.
Golden-flame Spiders!
All trainees present were stunned at the moment. Those were surely savage beasts, able to spew fire toxin. Once poisoned, they would either fall into a coma, or directly die for worse!
But you should never be blinded by its tiny size. The Golden-flame Spiders were gregarious, which meant once one launched the attack, hundreds of them would show up and join the attack; thus, it was pretty troublesome to deal with them.
Even Lin couldn’t help but stand in awe. Golden-flame Spiders were not that hard to kill, at least for a practitioner at the fifth level of Martial Realm.
The point was that you had to keep fighting for three hours, which meant continuous attacks from groups of Golden-flame Spiders!
This was exactly the scariest part!
“Remember, no internecine fight is allowed! And whoever flees or can’t keep fighting within three hours will be eliminated. You can each pick one weapon for this fight.”
Hardly had Young Ke finished her words than Fatty Middle-aged in the distance joined them, with a huge wooden box on his shoulder.
With a bang, the wooden box hit the ground. All kinds of ordinary weapons, including sabers, spears, swords, halberds, hatchets, axes, hook-like swords and tridents, scattered around.
“Go get your handy weapons at once. Move!”
In a flash, all the trainees scrambled for the weapons they were good at. Lin Xun also grabbed a one-meter-long darksteel saber, which was quite sharp.
After what happened yesterday, there had been no one who dared go against Young Ke’s command. All, gritting their teeth, rushed to that rocky zone at the foot of the mountain.
…
“This is just their first day here. Even if they are powerful enough, the No.10 Training Field is still too dangerous for them. It’s not a place where rookies should come."
On the top of the mountain, Fatty Middle-aged sighed, “It will only cause you a lot of unnecessary losses of trainees.”
Young Ke looked calm, “Sooner or later the incapable will be eliminated. It’s better to weed some out in advance.”
Fatty Middle-aged plonked himself down onto a rock, squinting at the foot of the mountain. The trainees had begun moving in the No.10 Training Field.
“Ke, if you can’t yet get enough points this time, who the hell knows when the next chance to leave this damn place will come. Are you willing to stay here for the rest of your life?”
Young Ke frowned and fell silent.
…
At the foot of the mountain.
Lin separated from the others, moving carefully in the rocky zone. He needed to find a place where it was favourable for both attack and defence, otherwise it would be difficult to stand up to the attacks from groups of Golden-flame Spiders for three hours.
Many people’s thought was the same as Lin’s. On such an extensive rocky zone, it was not likely for them to have a dispute with each other over domains.
Interestingly enough, both Lin Xun and the other trainees had tacitly chosen to act alone.
Suddenly, a flaming shadow popped out from beneath a rock in front of Lin Xun, leaving the moving trail like a golden line in the air, and rushed straight towards Lin.
Whoosh!
Instead of jinking, Lin Xun, with the spiritual energy surging all over his body, heavily brought down his saber, and instantly, that flaming shadow was split into two halves under the shiny blade. This move was the “heavy splitting” of Six-word Saberplay.
That was definitely a Golden-flame Spider. It was about the size of human’s hand, with a golden body and eight long legs as sharp as saws, emitting a kind of threatening blaze.
Lin Xun flashed forward with no hesitation. What made him worried was there was hardly a place for defence on this rocky zone. In addition to some broken rocks, all left were dust and fine sand.
“Could the layout of the No.10 Training Field be specially designed to train the trainees’ ability to fight and fight for long? If that’s the case, no matter how hard I keep searching, it will be impossible to find a perfectly safe place…”
After a quick thought, Lin Xun finally stopped and refused to keep running. What lay ahead was three hours’ fighting. He must save as much energy as he could.
Chi! Chi!
In no time, the Golden-flame Spiders with hideous faces rushed out of the ground one after another, like a series of golden blaze.
But only earnestness and calmness showed on Lin’s handsome face. Once in face of a fight, he seemed to become a totally different person. With spiritual energy surging inside him, his Qi was highly concentrated, rendering his eyebrows as sharp as swords. In the meantime, the power of perception spread all around his body which already resembled a bow at its full strength.
Swing the saber!
Kill the spiders!
To and fro, Lin dodged and flashed around there!
Performing the profound meaning of Six-word Saberplay, Lin Xun, waved the darksteel saber, and started a protracted fighting.
The trick to the long haul was to conserve your physical strength. Therefore, every time you went for a kill, the move had to be both quick and clean; and every time you dodged, you did for a better position to kill.
Redundant movements or use of strength would only lead to unnecessary consumption of physical strength.
Lin Xun knew this principle long time ago, but when he was really set up to fight over the long haul, it was, still, very hard for him to make it in deed.
It was because the enemies would not give you the time to think. While killing, you must try to conserve your own strength as much as possible by virtue of your combat instinct!
Take the Golden-flame Spiders for example. Thousands of spiders kept popping out of the ground in front of Lin and attacked from different directions. It was crucial to kill them with the least strength and by the most effective means.
As is often said, it’s easier said than done.
All trainees understood this, but it was now that their differences in practice began to emerge.
Poof***
One by one, the Golden-flame Spiders were killed by Lin, each in a different way; some with their body split to two halves right from their skulls, or heads chopped off, or eight long saw-like legs cut off, or the abdomens slit open, or the whole bodies directly minced to muddy flesh.
As the fighting continued, Lin Xun was also adjusting the way he went for the kill step by step. Soon, the Golden-flame Spiders that died now were all impaled through the place between their two eyes by the point of Lin’s saber.
The Golden-flame Spider was only in size of a hand, with its head like a pigeon egg. The place between its eyes was thus even smaller. But after trying for many times, Lin Xun found that place was exactly its soft spot. A single hit there could complete the kill and cost the least strength!
No doubt Lin could conserve more physical strength after knowing this. Nonetheless, it could be still very demanding for practitioners to stab right through the place between the two eyes of a Golden-flame Spider for every time.
The Six-word Saberplay which Lin cultivated was inexhaustibly profound and every move was abstruse and deadly, which in turn made it extremely difficult to cultivate.
Up until now, Lin’s fighting skill “Six-word Saberplay” had only reached the level of Nuance, a step away from Accuracy.
Lin Xun had, earlier in the Donglin Town, already been clear that if he wanted to have a breakthrough in the saberplay, he had to sharpen himself through the real combat.
Now, the fighting against these Golden-flame Spiders was undoubtedly a good chance for him to refine his saberplay. If he could reach Accuracy in the process, the fight would certainly grow much easier for him.
Accuracy meant consummate skill and exact move.
In the realm of Nuance, you got to figure out all those profound meanings of the saberplay, while in Accuracy, you were supposed to accurately perform the moves and unleash all the power of this saberplay!
As time went by, Lin Xun gradually immersed in the fight and bore nothing else in mind.
Meanwhile, the other trainees from Camp 39 were all engaged in the frenzied killing in different parts of the No.10 Training Field.
Aware of the intruders, Golden-flame Spiders began rushing out in a mad way. No one knew how many of them were underground.
The way in which the Golden-flame Spiders attacked was very simple, namely jetting the fire toxin. But its lethality was definitely not to be looked down upon. In less than a quarter of an hour, one trainee was hit by the fire toxin on face, letting out a terrible scream, with the skin burning instantly and the toxin starting to spread along the wound.
Caught off guard, the trainee was soon swamped by Golden-flame Spiders, and was reduced to screaming for giving up. Then one camp attendant arrived in no time and took the trainee away.
But obviously, that person was eliminated.
Some trainees’ performance was great while others’ was slightly inferior. Some young ones like Shi Yu, Ning Meng and Qi Can stood out, though they each had a different fighting style. No matter how many Golden-flame Spiders there were, all died before getting near to them.
In contrast, Lin’s performance only reached the average level.
At the top of the mountain, Fatty Middle-aged squinted at the battlefield. He glanced at eight or nine trainees like Shi Yu, Ning Meng and Qi Can, showing a great interest in them.
“When the Bloodthirsty Camp reopened after decades, I didn’t expect that it would recruit quite a few good trainees-- much stronger than former ones.”
Fatty Middle-aged fetched a deep sigh full of emotions, as if something from the past had occurred to him.
“I don’t know much about the past, but this batch of trainees do behave fairly well till now. Nonetheless, the way they fight is still too immature. It is obvious that they lack real battle experience and the momentum which exactly belongs to themselves.”
Young Ke said flatly, also staring at the battlefield.
After thinking for a moment, Fatty Middle-aged said, “How many of them do you think can hold on to the last?”
“Twenty-five or so”, Young Ke gave a random number.
Hearing this, Fatty Middle-aged sighed at once, “That means one third will be eliminated. But it’s only the first day! That’s not good for you, at least in the upcoming contest among camps.”
Determined, Young Ke, pushing back a wisp of hair over her ear, calmly said, “It doesn’t matter how many trainees you have. What matters is how many the real elites you have.”
Fatty Middle-aged was in a daze. He then said, “You are really different from you sister. She…”
A touch of coldness showed on Ke’s face. Suddenly, she swiftly whipped her leg towards Fatty Middle-aged. Upon this side kick, Fatty Middle-aged hit heavily against a rock, leaving a huge pit behind. Broken stones scattered around, showing the terrible force that blow held.
However, what was more startling was his body was unbelievably sturdy, despite the fact that it seemed soft. Fatty Middle-aged quickly picked himself up, and dusted himself down helplessly.
With a murderous look on her beautiful face, Young Ke said word by word, “Don’t ever speak of her in front of me. Otherwise, I will surely cut off your manhood!”
With a shiver all over his body, Fatty Middle-aged covered his crotch subconsciously and shut his mouth simultaneously.