Volume 1 – Between Daybreak and Evernight, Chapter 15: First Time

Qianye hadn’t expected Mimi’s senses to be so sharp. Due to the agitation he felt after just watching her kill someone that abruptly, he slightly moved the hand he had on a brush. This created a faint sound, unexpectedly causing him to be noticed.

“It’s me, Qianye.” He walked out from his hiding spot.

Qianye felt rather lucky to be able to meet Mimi so early in the examination. Meeting a teammate he could trust in a place where enemies were in every direction was extremely beneficial.

Seeing that it was Qianye, Mimi’s face relaxed. “So it’s you! You scared me. How about it? Want to team up?”

This was what Qianye wanted. He nodded. “Alright!”

“Take this.” Mimi threw a whistle at Qianye.

Accepting it, Qianye said, “You’re pretty lucky. Let’s go back now!”

Mimi immediately shook her head. “No, we can’t. There’s two of us now. We can use this advantage to kill others and split the rewards. We have the chance to enter the top ten.”

Qianye hesitated, but he eventually agreed.

Even as a two-man team, there were still risks. In fact, it wasn’t much better than the risk of moving alone.

The other students could’ve also form teams. Furthermore, true warriors of the dark races were all very strong. They weren’t forces that immature girls and boys could easily fight. According to the descriptions of the dark races that the instructors provided, even Qianye and Mimi working together might not be able to win against a strong dark race warrior.

Looking Mimi up and down, Qianye noticed three whistles hanging from her waist!

Not counting her own whistle, this meant that she had actually managed to kill three people within the short amount of time that had passed since the exam started!

One of the whistles on her waist swayed with her movements, revealing the number behind it. Qianye’s mind trembled. He felt like he had seen this number somewhere before.

Mimi suddenly flashed a hand sign to Qianye as he thought, signalling for them to move forward with him in the lead.

Crouching down, Qianye slowly moved through the forest. Mimi followed behind him, occasionally glancing behind them, as if she was singlemindedly covering their rear.

After walking a few steps forward, lighting suddenly struck through the fog in his mind! He remembered where he had seen this number!

That whistle belonged to a powerful youth in their class whose ranking was close to Qianye’s.

That youth was also close to Mimi, and it was rumored that they even had an intimate relationship. He had also originally hated Qianye at one time because of Mimi.

However, since Qianye had Song Zining’s open protection along with his own vicious reputation which made him hard to mess with, he didn’t dare to voice his anger toward Qianye’s relationship with Mimi. In any case, Qianye wasn’t interested in Mimi’s affairs because they didn’t actually have a romantic relationship nor planned to have it develop in that way.

Yet that youth’s whistle was currently at Mimi’s waist!

At that instant, Qianye came to a vague understanding, and a chill struck his heart!

Without further thinking, Qianye immediately leaped forward with all his might!

Behind him, a sound of surprise came from Mimi, followed by an attack flying toward his waist. No matter how fast Qianye was, his waist still went cold, which was then followed by fiery pain!

Rolling forward, Qianye hid behind a large tree before standing. He had to dodge Mimi’s multiple attacks while escaping, but even so, two wounds appeared on his body.

After looking down at the wound on his body, he looked back to Mimi and asked coldly, “Why?”

“To pass and for the rewards.”

Gently pulling at her messy hair, Mimi laughed coldly. “Why would I willingly get close to a few of you if not to destroy all of your wariness? F*ck, I even had to sleep with a few of those idiots! Thankfully you’re not like a man at all, and didn’t ask for that from me. However, you’re more wary than I expected. Yet you’re still injured, huh? In that case, you’re doomed!”

“I thought that teaming up would be more beneficial,” Qianye said, brows furrowed.

Mimi laughed coldly. “Beneficial? No matter profitable it is, would splitting the rewards with another person help me enter the top ten? It might make sense if you were Song Zining, but the current you? What are you supposed to be? Without Song Zining, you wouldn’t even be standing here like this.”

Qianye weighed the dagger in his hand as his gaze went ablaze. He spoke, “I understand now. Come at me if you want to kill me!”

“Then I’m not going to be polite!”

Like a panther, Mimi pounced and instantly engaged in battle with Qianye.

The two of them had fought many times in combat class so Mimi originally felt that she was extremely familiar with Qianye’s fighting style. However, in the moment that they exchanged their first blows, she suddenly felt that Qianye’s style changed immensely, no longer the smooth counterattacks from before. Instead, it was bold and decisive, filled with extremely sharp attacks!

Qianye abandoned defending his body and aimed for a clash where both sides would be injured. Mimi instantly landed three stabs on his body, but Qianye had similarly struck her twice! The both of them were injured in their arms.

When they exchanged blows once more, both of them used the Combatant Formula’s fierce origin power, but Mimi involuntarily trembled from the pain in the injury on her arm.

In that moment, Qianye shouted as the origin power in his body surged, causing an incomparably mighty force to appear from the dagger!

Mimi’s entire body trembled, and her hands went soft. It was an immediate tiebreaker! Qianye’s dagger flew, instantly opening a large wound in her shoulder and revealing her tragically white bones.

“Y-you—!” Mimi held her wound, both furious and shocked.

Qianye also had wounds on his arms that were even deeper than Mimi’s. However, whether it was his strength or attacks, they were completely unaffected. It was as if his injuries did not exist. Mimi started to doubt that Qianye could feel pain!

Contrary to her doubts, Qianye knew what pain was. However, compared to the constant torment of the Combatant Formula when he was cultivating, these bodily wounds were nothing.

With her shoulder damaged, Mimi could no longer raise her left arm.

She watched as Qianye walked closer step by step. The originally delicate face that she had originally belittled was completely cold and calm. Mimi began to cry and shrieked, “No, don’t kill me! I don’t want to die! Let me go!”

As if in extreme shock, she cried as she suddenly turned to leave. Her appearance was extremely wretched as she ran with her back completely exposed. It seemed as though she had already broken down before the frightening face of death.

Clenching and unclenching his five fingers, Qianye tightly gripped his dagger and circulated his origin power, throwing it with all of his strength!

The dagger released the dim misty red radiance of origin power. Amid the sharp whistle of the blade cutting through the air like a shooting star, the handle of the dagger stopped right before the back of Mimi’s heart!

Mimi stopped abruptly and looked back in shock. She hadn’t believed that Qianye would kill her, even when she was at death’s doorstep.

Although Mimi had seemed to have been in a panic, she had actually been slowly charging her origin power to the limit. At that point, she would have been able to make an explosive escape. She had believed that, with this secret explosive short distance movement skill, no one in the Yellow Springs Training Camp would be able to catch up to her. Yet, at the last moment, Qianye’s dagger came.

At that moment, a soft sigh appeared deep within Qianye’s heart. The sigh was then quickly sealed with ice in its deepest corner. This was his first time killing something with his own hands.

Gathering the whistles, he quickly entered the forest. His surroundings were already filled with sounds of movement. Someone had obviously heard the sounds of battle and were coming to take advantage of the situation.

The night in the dark forest was long, and Qianye encountered two powerful opponents. After two painful fights, he painstakingly used his berserker method to kill them. This helped him collect nine whistles from them in total, so it was obvious how powerful they were.

After killing Mimi and the other two, one after another, Qianye suffered many injuries that he could no longer endure. This forced him to find a spot to hide in among the trees and wait for the next opponent. Although his injuries were severe and his origin power was close to running out, after some thinking, he chose to not use the whistles to leave.

The nature of the origin power that Qianye painstakingly cultivated was much more tyrannical than others so he had the energy for one last strike; and this final blow could rival a rank two Fighter! As long as he wasn’t seen by his opponent, he would have the ability to end them with one blow.

Since he had already endured to this point, Qianye wanted to hold on until the end—not only to increase his score, but to improve himself for the harsher environment of a battlefield. If he failed to see this exam to its end, he would easily die in the future. Qianye’s heart slowly calmed down as he stopped moving, trying to save every last bit of his energy.

Yet, a while after he hid himself, three sharp whistles echoed throughout the mountain area. This signaled the end of the examination!

Qianye was shocked. It was over? Not even a night had passed, and it actually ended?

This meant that, in a single night, almost half of the thousand students had died.

Looking at the whistles hanging on his waist, which numbered over a dozen, his originally dark feelings changed into numbness. Grabbing one of the whistles, he blew it forcefully, and an instructor immediately appeared before him. Following the instructor, Qianye slowly left the examination grounds.

Qianye knew that he had left something on these grounds. In this kind of a world, and in this kind of an environment, things that one expected to last forever would always be slowly changed.

On the morning of the second day, the results were announced. Unexpectedly, Qianye saw his name in tenth place! One needed to keep in mind that the participation count was over a thousand!

Other than Song Zining, who was ranked seventh, no one else in his class had entered the top ten. Tenth place also meant that Qianye was entitled to obtain the special rewards, and the prizes of the training camp were known to be generous enough to cause envy. Qianye, who was normally calm, could not help but feel anticipation for the prizes the moment he saw his rank.

It was unknown when Song Zining had appeared beside Qianye, but he suddenly patted him on the shoulder and laughed. “Not bad! There’ll probably be a break tonight. Why don’t we celebrate together?”

Qianye was at a loss. “How?”

“With women and drinks, of course! I’ll introduce two annoying fellows to you as well.” Song Zining spoke in an old-fashioned manner, as if he had experienced the money-wasting establishments on the upper continent of the Empire.

Qianye could not help but roll his eyes. Song Zining had clearly entered the Yellow Springs Training Camp in the same year that Qianye did. It was just that they hadn’t been together during the first few years. The year that they arrived, Qianye was seven and Song Zining was eight. Could he have been so gifted that he was able to enter those places at the age of eight?

As expected, they were given their first break in several years that night.

Song Zining and Qianye, along with two other youths that rushed over from another class, brought food from the dining hall and alcohol from god knows where to a mountain slope with good scenery. It was there that they lit a campfire and had a picnic. The two other children also had formidable backgrounds, and were similarly ranked in the top ten.

Though there were only four of them, they were accompanied by seven or eight girls. The alcohol was surprisingly decent, all of which were considerably aged spirits.

Just a small sip sent Qianye into a coughing fit. His face was instantly dyed red as his body swayed.

Seeing how weak he was, Song Zining and the two other youths laughed loudly, taking advantage of the situation and convincing him to drink more.

Qianye felt that every mouthful was like a clump of fire in his stomach. His consciousness blurred and strange thoughts appeared in his mind. His courage also seemed to suddenly swell up. It was so big that he himself found it hard to believe how large it had become. He would later recall promising a lot of impressive things when he was drinking.

It must be known that Qianye was originally an extremely daring child. At this moment, however, it was like he did not have a single fear. For example, he seemed to have promised that whoever who fell unconscious first would have to wear a skirt and dance in front of everyone.