The crowd had already lined up on their own. But as soon as the instructor roared, they immediately snapped to attention, adjusting their posture as if on a parade ground – standing straight and proper, aligned front to back, left to right.
The instructor walked over with his hands behind his back, swept a rough glance across the line, then used two fingers to grab a few students by their collars, pulling out those whose heights didn’t quite fit and rearranging them. He then strode through the ranks, weaving in and out, checking everyone’s uniforms.
Though he found no problems, his expression remained far from satisfied the entire time.
The instructor from the neighboring squad finished his harsh warnings and waved for the allied students to start their warm-up jogs.
Chen Feng’s gaze followed their figures as they drifted toward the edge of the training ground. Just then, the instructor who had been inspecting the line for so long finally spoke again. In a hoarse, low voice, he introduced himself:
“My surname is Zhou. Remember my face – don’t mistake me for someone else. From now on, I’ll be your physical training instructor.”
Chen Feng was genuinely a bit face-blind when it came to people in uniform. After hearing that, he glanced over at the neighboring squad a few more times.
The instructor over there was relatively short – less than 1.75 meters tall – with deeply tanned skin and a faint scar running from the left corner of his mouth down to his chin. He was still fairly easy to recognize. He told everyone to call him Mr. Xue.
In comparison, Mr. Zhou’s face had no distinguishing features at all. Chen Feng stared at him for two full minutes and only managed to remember that he had big ears.
…Of course, she didn’t dare say that out loud.
Both instructors carried an intense, oppressive presence. Unlike the friendly, joking new recruits from the freshman military training, these two had a fierce and ruthless look in their eyes. Whenever their gaze landed on someone, even without malicious intent, it felt like a blade edge – enough to make anyone feel like they were sitting on pins and needles.
Under his intimidation, everyone barely dared to move their eyes.
“You all heard what the squad next door said,” Mr. Zhou said, turning his head. Shamelessly freeloading off the other’s speech, he added, “So I won’t repeat it. Just make sure you remember every word!”
The instructor who had been about to drag a chair over to rest cursed loudly. “Oh, screw you! Train your own damn squad!”
Mr. Zhou raised a hand, signaling him not to undermine him. Then, with aloof elegance, he extended a single finger toward the track and said, “Get moving.”
No one reacted. Mr. Zhou clicked his tongue and said in an unfriendly tone, “I said move! Today, between the two squads, whichever one has the slower average speed – there’s a surprise mission waiting for you tonight.”
Mr. Xue, who had leisurely carried a chair back, slapped his thigh, pressed the amplifier clipped to his chest, and kindly reminded them, “Dear students, I forgot to tell you! Near our base, there’s a village. At the end of the village, there’s a small pig farm. None of you kids from the new generation have ever shoveled pig shit or mixed feed, have you? If you lose, we’ve asked the villagers for a few precious slots – let you all have an experience. Seize the opportunity while you can! If you lose badly enough, you’ll be sleeping in the pig pen tonight.”
Hearing this, the UFU crowd’s expressions changed dramatically. Their first thought went to the two younger female students. After all, although Shen Dan was tall, her limbs were slender and frail – she looked like she couldn’t fight at all. As for Cheng Feng, even more so: short, malnourished – push her out the door and she probably couldn’t even poke through a paper tiger.
The senior student beside them was just about to impart some life philosophy rich in our military’s distinctive characteristics – such as “go long, take a different path,” “if you’re not up to it, you can still make the opponent unable to perform,” and “when society’s harshness is applied to the opponent, that’s the light of righteousness” – when Cheng Feng had already lowered her head and dashed out from the side.
Shen Dan, unwilling to be outdone, pushed off the ground with her toes and chased after Cheng Feng.
The rest exchanged bewildered glances.
Mr. Zhou, deeply perplexed, urged them on. “Run! What are you looking at me for? Waiting for me to cheer you on? Is your reaction time as UFU students really this slow? And you call yourselves technical workers?”
The people in the front row quickly set off.
During military training, everyone had different training grounds, so some of the upperclassmen hadn’t yet witnessed Cheng Feng’s wild side. Seeing her dash off like a puff of smoke, quickly catching up to UMU’s main formation, they were somewhat dumbfounded.
But since this competition was about average performance, everyone maintained their own pace, preparing for a long haul.
After four laps, Cheng Feng was still bounding along happily like a wild monkey on a mountain trail. Shen Dan abandoned her own rhythm and chased after UMU’s male student group.
The male student group ran a bit faster than the female student group; the formation from UMU had already been lapped a full circle by Cheng Feng.
The two instructors sat side by side on chairs, legs crossed like old masters. After observing for a while, they shouted through the megaphone again, “Slacking off, are you? Running that slow? You think I’m blind? Alright, here’s the deal – the results will be based on the total time your two teams take to complete the goal, but the first-place guy and the first-place girl… their times won’t count.”
On-site, there was immediately a chorus of wails.
“Here we go again with this trick. Do all you instructors come from the same school or what?”
The younger students from the allied forces turned their heads in a rather pathetic, groveling manner and pleaded, “Go, sisters! Go, sisters! You can do it!”
The sisters cursed back, “Get lost!”
“Sisters, save us from the pigpen today, and in the future, we’ll serve you tea and water! We’ll be your beasts of burden!”
“No need for the future! Just repay that debt today – inside the pigpen!”
“Shut your little mouths! Don’t say such unlucky things!”
One young man scrunched up his face and protested, “If anyone ever calls UMU a ‘stirring stick’ again, I’ll shove Cheng Feng out there! She’s the real deal! Someone like her is the real stirring stick!”
Several upperclassmen from UFU objected and immediately retorted, “Oh, shut up! Our junior is just excellent on her own – you guys just can’t stand seeing others excel! You own that ‘stirring stick’ title fair and square – it’s exclusive to you UMU, so don’t try to pass the blame!”
The two unis traded insults, wailed in a jumbled mess, and cried out as if the sky were falling. Meanwhile, they quietly sped up, vying for first place.
Disordered footsteps echoed through the hall, accompanied by increasingly heavy, ragged breathing. Lap after lap… until the entire group was panting and exhausted, yet the instructor never called a stop.
Some of the students with poorer stamina could barely hold on. Their legs felt heavy and sore, as if weighed down by iron blocks, and they could only dejectedly jog along the edge of the training ground. They couldn’t remember how far they had run, and didn’t dare look at the statistical panels clipped to their chests. They clung to their last bit of endurance, just trying to keep from falling too far behind.
Cheng Feng’s pace also slowed down, her rhythm adjusting between bursts of speed and recovery. Her brain felt unavoidably dizzy from the surging blood, but it was still within a tolerable range.
Having experienced the limits of life and death many times, Cheng Feng roughly categorized that kind of suffering into three levels: feels like dying, really is about to die, and feels like dying but actually isn’t dead yet.
She estimated that she was currently hovering around the edge of the first level, so she still had enough energy to sneak glances at the two instructors on the sidelines.
The two ruthless young men had started eating fruit on the sidelines – bananas and tangerines – looking completely at ease, as if they had forgotten they still had a team under their command.
Shen Dan blinked hard, but couldn’t clear the haziness from her vision. Beneath her exhausted body, every nerve ending was transmitting the urge to slack off.
She took the initiative to approach someone, grabbing the hem of a UMU student’s shirt, and asked, “How many laps are you guys supposed to run anyway?”
The student turned their head and said, with deep resentment, “They didn’t say!”
Shen Dan: “??”
“Then why are you running so fast?!” the UMU student said, on the verge of breaking down. “The instructor never said how far we had to run – he only said we were warming up!”
Upon hearing this, the UFU students also felt a wave of dizziness – as if the sky had darkened and the earth spun beneath them.
This kind of aimless pursuit was even more tormenting than a clear, difficult goal. Some people immediately stopped running and switched to power walking to reset their rhythm.
Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Mr. Zhou swayed his legs and asked with feigned concern, “What’s the matter? Can’t hold on anymore? How come you students are so strong on the outside but weak on the inside? I am very disappointed.”
“Strong on the outside?” Mr. Xue shook his shoulders with a sneer. “They’re already hollow on the outside too. I could knock out a whole string of them with one punch.”
A young man happened to run up behind him and asked, exhausted, “Sir, how many kilometers do we have to run in total?”
Mr. Zhou turned his head, handed him a small slice of tangerine, and encouraged him, “Don’t ask how many kilometers. We have our own plan. But the way you’re going now definitely won’t cut it. If I threw you into the Infantry Department’s training team, you’d get trained until your skin peeled off.”
The whole group screamed inwardly: We never planned to compete with those brutes from the Infantry Department in physical fitness anyway!
“Training here – physical fitness is important, but it’s not the most important thing. Let me tell you something. Many years ago, there was a student – from the Command Department – with terrible physical conditioning. Arrogantly, she signed up to train alongside the Infantry Department’s team. And guess what happened…”
Mr. Zhou peeled the tangerine skin, deliberately slowing down his speech. He paused for a few seconds before continuing.
“She stayed in the first echelon the entire time and never fell behind. She relied on exceptional technique and tenacious perseverance to push through. That’s real skill. Sure enough, just a few years later, she was recognized for her merits, got promoted, and became famous. You’re all from the Command Department too. Learn from your senior.”
It was hard for anyone to feel inspired by this heroic tale from the past – it was simply too distant. No matter how hot and hearty the chicken soup for the soul, right now it couldn’t compare to a single word from the instructor: “Stop.”
The lights on the ceiling blazed harshly. Time stretched infinitely within the refracted light and shadows, until it could no longer be measured accurately.
No one knew how much longer passed. By the time the two instructors had finished chattering and reminiscing about history, these tech workers – who usually sat at keyboards all day – could taste nothing but blood in their mouths when they opened them.
Shen Dan’s lips were pale, and her eyelids hung half-closed in exhaustion, covering part of her pupils. When Cheng Feng ran up beside her, she stopped her and asked hoarsely, using just her breath, “Have you ever fed pigs before?”
“No,” Cheng Feng answered between ragged breaths. “Pigs… on post-war planets… are a luxury. I… only know how to grow cabbage.”
“Huh?” Shen Dan managed to squeeze out a few more words between her rapid panting. “Then… do you know how to feed them?”
Cheng Feng looked confused. “I don’t know… It shouldn’t be… too hard, right?”
“Then I can rest easy.”
With that, Shen Dan rolled her eyes back and lay down on the ground, completely at ease.
An upperclassman beside her urged anxiously, “Hold on a little longer! The revolution isn’t finished yet!”
Shen Dan raised a trembling hand, signaling that she needed five minutes first.
Cheng Feng watched her with envy, not turning her head back until she had run far away.
The classmate running beside her suggested, “Why don’t you take a break too? Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Cheng Feng’s running posture was already teetering and unsteady, but she still shook her head firmly and gave him a determined look. “Have you ever risked your life for a pig?”
From all around came the furious roar of the crowd: “That’s completely unnecessary!”
Mr. Zhou glanced at the statistical data on the optical computer. The leading students had actually already reached the target they had originally set. But after hearing that powerful, resounding outburst, he felt he could squeeze them a little more.
Mr. Zhou leaned to the side and asked the person next to him, “Did we set the bar too low?”
Mr. Xue said, “Don’t think that way. Life is full of little surprises.”
Mr. Zhou asked, “So… shall we keep watching a bit longer?”
“Let’s not. Life is also full of little accidents.” Mr. Xue held down his eager, twitching hand and sincerely advised him, “Don’t underestimate them just because they’re young now. We still have a long road ahead. Some of them might end up as our juniors someday. How awkward would it be to run into each other in the ranks then?”
Mr. Zhou thought it over carefully and realized there was truth to that.
Besides, these were all the famous “Category B darlings” – ones you’re supposed to hold in the palm of your hand.
Mr. Zhou adjusted his posture, pulled up the external display of the optical computer, and after transmitting the data, announced, “Alright. Students whose chest cards have turned red, you may now line up to swipe your cards.”
Cheng Feng looked down to check, confirmed that she had met the standard, let out a heavy breath, and turned around mid-stride to go report to the instructor.
She staggered as she walked back. There were already two young men waiting in line.
Mr. Zhou pulled out a small machine from behind his chair and gestured, “Swipe your card.”
The young man’s eyes were rimmed red – whether from the bitterness of being pushed so hard or the emotion of surviving an ordeal, it was hard to tell. He sniffled, inserted his ID card into the slot, bent over, and rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
Mr. Zhou suddenly asked, “What is the weapon in Section A, Row 3 of Dormitory 5?”
The young man looked up. His brain, barely functioning, could only produce a confused syllable: “Huh?”
The instructor pulled out his card and said sympathetically, “Go on. Continue.”
The young man, utterly bewildered and having barely tasted the joy of relief, was once again pushed back onto the cursed track.
The students behind him suddenly snapped awake, slapped their own heads vigorously, and stepped forward to swipe their cards.
As Cheng Feng approached, she heard a few of the questions. The content was a bit beyond her level, and it also seemed somewhat difficult for the other students who had just finished running. About one-third of them were caught completely off guard by the questions and could only shake their heads helplessly before heading back onto the track.
“I’m a first-year freshman,” Cheng Feng declared preemptively, before the instructor could ask her anything. “I’m a special admission student from a post-war planet. I won’t know any questions that are beyond my scope.”
Mr. Zhou lifted his eyelids slightly and nodded. “I know. These are the questions your course instructors submitted. What’s the name of the instructor who teaches you modern history?”
Cheng Feng had just been reviewing all the key points from last semester, but she couldn’t find the correct answer in her memory bank at that moment.
To be precise, this was indeed a new blind spot in her knowledge.
Cheng Feng’s lips trembled. In the end, she could only turn back helplessly, seeking help from her schoolmates.
“Go on,” Mr. Zhou said, watching her eyes. “I’ll pass this along to your instructor. This is a pretty serious problem you have.”
Her schoolmates behind her shook their heads with deep sorrow and regret.
Cheng Feng took back her card, turned around unwillingly, and muttered through gritted teeth, “Damn it!”
