Chapter 133: Guaranteed to See Red
Next, Song Chuhe assigned responsibilities to every Martial Artist above the Eighth Grade as well.
He split the twelve hundred men into nine battalions and appointed nine battalion commanders.
After Li Mu had stuffed pills into both Zhang Zhiwei and Lu Chenfeng, the two of them were now both at Yellow Rank Fifth Grade.
Moreover, Li Mu had given Lu Chenfeng one extra High-Grade Body-Solidifying Pill and Zhang Zhiwei one extra Earthvein Spirit Blossom Pill.
Their combat strength had already been hard to match among those of the same grade.
Now they were even more terrifying.
So Song Chuhe gave the two of them the positions of special company commanders.
Each of them would lead a special company, and everyone in those companies had to be at least a Fifth Grade Martial Artist.
Each company had twenty-five men.
The two special companies would serve as elite rapid-response forces, coordinating movement and reinforcement.
Duan Yuwen would remain behind to guard the camp.
Qu He and Zhou Tong would patrol the construction work at the three Forward Outposts.
Li Mu would transform into a bird and go out to scout.
Once everything was in place, everyone carried out his assigned duty.
Time passed very quickly.
In the blink of an eye, three days had gone by.
During those three days, Li Mu spent the daytime transformed, flying across the Abyss.
Whenever his True Qi was close to running low, he would descend and fly at low altitude to lure in some monsters.
Then, after landing and killing them, he would recover a bit of True Qi before continuing onward.
It had now been a full week since he had taken those pills. He had started at the middle stage of the Sixth Grade, and by now his cultivation had long since reached the peak of the Sixth Grade.
Over the past few days, the Triumph Points he had earned had also increased the weight of his Divine Weapon Art quite a bit.
Now Li Mu’s Divine Weapon Art had reached 8,580 jin.
With one use of Heavenly Might, he could bring down a crushing force of a full 80,000 jin.
His remaining Triumph Points had also risen to 7,518.
Over those three days, Li Mu had focused mainly on expanding the breadth of their exploration, greatly enlarging the mapped area.
Because he was flying high in the air, there were many resources he could not detect. His main goal was to search for traces of camps belonging to the Divine Elephant Nation.
At night, Li Mu stayed busy inside the Blessed Field Art, harvesting herbs and planting new ones.
After three days, the first batch of Low-Grade Qi-Gathering Pills and Low-Grade Body-Fortifying Pills had already been harvested.
Altogether, there were six to seven hundred of them.
Li Mu then planted a second batch.
As for the camp, ten full Chase-and-Evade Game arenas had been built, and they were already up and running.
And over the past few days, a strange spectacle had appeared in the Pearl Military District.
Early in the morning, in the training area of Pearl Military District Base One, a group of soldiers came out of the base and saw what looked like a row of small hills passing by them.
Everyone hurried to move aside.
When they looked carefully, they realized they were Abyss-Suppressing Army soldiers carrying custom steel frames on their shoulders.
Bound to or piled onto the sides and top of the frames were huge amounts of meat and beverages.
Judging from the weight, the custom steel frame alone had to weigh three to four hundred jin.
Once a bit of cargo was added on top, the total load was no less than seven or eight hundred jin, and for some, it exceeded a thousand.
There were twenty men in all, carrying those supplies as they ran toward the Teleportation Gate Area.
“What the hell is that?”
“You don’t know? Tiger Roar Camp. They’re hauling food.”
“Hauling food??”
“Yeah. It started yesterday. They say they’ll be doing it every day from now on.”
“They teleport out to the maximum possible distance from here, then run a hundred li all the way to Tiger Roar Camp.”
“But... why not just use Storage Rings to move it?”
“They are. Didn’t you notice there aren’t any vegetables or fruit?”
“The vegetables, eggs, and fruit, the fragile stuff, are all stored inside Storage Rings.”
“But Storage Rings can only hold so much. After they’re full, they’re allowed to carry all this extra load. The main point is weight training.”
“That is ruthless. Carrying a thousand jin for a hundred li? Even a donkey couldn’t take that.”
“Thank goodness I didn’t sign up for Tiger Roar Camp. Wouldn’t that run a man to death?”
Wherever those soldiers carrying food passed, people pointed and commented like this the whole way.
Especially once they reached the Teleportation Gate Area, where there were even more people. Seeing such a bizarre sight, the crowd parted to let them through.
As for the twenty soldiers, they very consciously split themselves into four groups, entering the gate five at a time.
With a flash, one of the five-man teams appeared in the wilderness. They contacted the other three food-transport teams to confirm each other’s positions and the prescribed routes.
They were not running straight back to camp.
Instead, they would each follow one of two similar curved routes, because they also carried the responsibility of scouting enemy activity along those paths.
Once the routes were confirmed, the men hoisted the food on their shoulders.
“You lot had better not drag me down. The team that gets back first gets an extra ten points!”
“Are your ears stuffed with pig hair? It’s the first five people back who get ten extra points, and first place gets twenty more.”
“It’s not based on teams.”
“What? Damn it. I thought you were my teammates, but it turns out you’re my competition!”
“You lot keep chatting. I’m leaving you behind!”
One burly man let out a grin and burst forward at a sprint.
“Damn it, wait for me!” Another man quickly chased after him, the two immediately locking into a dead heat.
“My precious Spirit Treasure, the Qi-Restoring Pearl! I’m coming for you!”
Several team members shouted as they rushed out as well, sometimes running shoulder to shoulder, sometimes accelerating to cut past one another.
Most of those who came to participate in the Supply Run Game were heavily built Martial Artists with exceptionally strong physiques, mostly Fourth Grade and Fifth Grade.
A thousand jin was easy for them. Many of them could lift that much with one hand.
But sustained running depended on far more than strength alone.
It depended on endurance.
For the first fifty li, everyone joked and laughed. If they encountered monsters, they usually did not fight and simply shook them off at high speed.
At sixty li, no one was talking anymore. When they met monsters, they would stop to kill them and take the chance to rest a little.
At seventy li, everyone was drenched in sweat, their bodies flushed red.
At eighty li, all of them were panting like oxen. If they met monsters, everyone had to stop and focus fire together to conserve True Qi.
At ninety li, their legs felt as though they had been filled with lead.
Fortunately, the closer they got to camp, the safer it was. The surrounding monsters were cleared out every day.
But the final ten li were sustained entirely by willpower.
Especially the last five li, when they spotted another team in the distance.
Only then did the real contest begin.
“What the hell? How are they that fast? Then I won’t hold back!”
“Move, damn legs! Run! My Qi-Restoring Pearl is calling to me!”
“Ura! Ura! Ura! First place and those twenty points are mine!!”
From far away, the people of Tiger Roar Camp could see a pack of soldiers racing toward them while bellowing like beasts. They practically crawled up the final uphill stretch before charging into camp.
But the moment they entered camp, their shouts were swallowed by thunderous cheers and encouragement.
All ten Chase-and-Evade Game arenas were packed to the brim. The people lining up and the people watching had crammed the area so full that not even water could pass through.
Inside one arena, at the shout of “Begin!”
two soldiers shot out at the same instant, and the chase began.
The obstacle course did not just contain all kinds of narrow-gap obstacles. There were also elevated frames and ropes used as supports.
Martial Artists were already agile by nature, and with various Cultivation Arts enhancing them, their speed became even more terrifying.
So when one chased and the other fled, the two truly used every trick they had.
The one fleeing cultivated a special Cultivation Art. At critical moments, he could make his body go limp and boneless, becoming extremely thin and narrow.
He deliberately aimed for gaps his opponent obviously could not squeeze through.
There was one hole only the size of a human head, yet he still managed to slip through it like a fish, slick and elusive beyond belief.
As for the one chasing him, he excelled at explosive straight-line speed.
With each burst and leap, he was swift as a lightning flash!
As the two chased and fled, everyone in the crowd clenched their fists and followed them with their eyes as they darted madly around the field.
After one particularly brilliant dodge by the runner, he stopped atop an elevated frame, and the surrounding crowd erupted in thunderous cheers.
The boy could not help smirking with satisfaction. He raised his brow at the pursuer and crooked a finger at him.
The pursuer was instantly furious. He burst into motion again, finally using his true skill.
The runner became more and more endangered below, so he began leaping upward toward the higher structures.
Then, in the middle of one long jump, the pursuer suddenly launched himself into the air.
With nowhere to push off in midair, the escaping soldier was grabbed in a fierce hug by the pursuer, and the two of them rolled a long way across the ground.
The surrounding crowd exploded in an instant!!
They shouted the pursuer’s name in celebration.
The pursuer climbed to his feet, irritably kicked the runner once, then reached down and pulled him back up.
From the way the two laughed and messed around together, it was obvious they knew each other and were on good terms.
The moment that round ended, the people waiting behind them could no longer hold themselves back and rushed into the arena.
Never before had the atmosphere been so feverish.
Normally, when they trained, it was lonely and tedious. There were no spectators at all.
But in this Chase-and-Evade Game, the surroundings were packed with people!
They were all hot-blooded young fighters. Who did not want to show his face in front of a crowd?
What was more, there were quite a few female soldiers among them!
Among the twelve hundred troops stationed at Tiger Roar Camp, around one hundred seventy or one hundred eighty were women.
At that point, it was no longer a question of points or no points.
This was a battle of pride!
If you went up there and got caught immediately, or spent half the match unable to catch someone else, it would be humiliating beyond words.
So every single person gave it everything he had. Invisible though it was, the training effect improved by leaps and bounds.
That was an unexpected bonus even Song Chuhe himself had not foreseen.
Meanwhile, inside the headquarters of the Pearl Military District, the four top brass of the Pearl Military District were seated in a conference room.
A document lay before them.
Liang Huajun picked it up and looked through it again, then suddenly let out a snort of laughter.
“This Divine Elephant Nation really does have a sense of humor. I start laughing the moment I read this notice.”
The document in his hand was a formal communiqué sent by the Divine Elephant Nation on the surface world to Huaxia.
And it had not even been sent to Huaxia’s upper leadership.
It had been sent specifically to the Bloodsea Military District in the Northern Frontier.
Its contents condemned the Northern Frontier defenders for their mass slaughter of Divine Elephant Nation soldiers!
And the notice went on to say that they had compared the area of the surface world with the area of the Abyss.
Based on the territorial proportions on the surface, that stretch of the Vacuum Zone in the Abyss belonged to the Divine Elephant Nation.
They demanded that Huaxia withdraw all stationed troops within one month and return the territory to them.
During that one month, they would supposedly unite with other nations and prepare for action.
If Huaxia still refused to return it after one month, then they would impose severe sanctions on Huaxia’s Northern Frontier!
Wang Longcheng gave a cold laugh.
“These idiots really are funny. I have never seen a country declare war without sending it to the higher authorities first, and instead sending it to some border city!”
This notice had been delivered by the Divine Elephant Nation to the Bloodsea Military District.
After the Bloodsea Military District reported it upward, the higher authorities responded that they would temporarily pretend not to know about it and let the Bloodsea Military District handle it first as it saw fit.
That was essentially a fallback move.
The upper leadership could not just slap the table and charge into war on impulse. What they had to consider was the livelihood of countless ordinary people.
If the nations really did join forces, Huaxia would definitely suffer badly.
By pretending not to know for the moment, the higher authorities would preserve much more room for diplomatic maneuvering.
Even if the final situation really turned unfavorable, the upper leadership could still step forward, play dumb, and make other plans afterward.
As for the Bloodsea Military District, its response had been to forward the notice directly to the Pearl Military District and let them handle it as they saw fit as well.
That already made its attitude quite clear.
After all, the stance of the Pearl Military District had always been very firm.
Liao Feng leaned back in his chair and said with a smile, “In truth, the fact that the Divine Elephant Nation did not dare send this directly to the higher authorities, and instead sent it to the Northern Frontier, already says quite a lot.”
“As for this one-month period, they claim they are going to unite with other countries.”
“But in all likelihood, they are only testing the waters.”
“If our attitude is firm, they may back down.”
“But if we show weakness, they will only push for more.”
“If we give up the Vacuum Zone, we would instead be sending all the nations a signal that Huaxia is weak. Other countries might really start getting restless.”
Then Liao Feng added one final line.
“Of course, that is only speculation.”
“It is also possible that they really will use this month to unite the other nations.”
Liang Huajun spread his hands.
“Then doesn’t that make it simple? If whatever we do might make them start eyeing us anyway,
then we ought to teach them a lesson.”
Wang Longcheng nodded and leaned back in his chair.
“That part is easy. Just put this notice right in front of Li Mu.”
“He’ll absolutely blow up over it, just like my daughter.”