Volume 1 – Between Daybreak and Evernight, Chapter 13: Coming of Age Ceremony
Walking to the sofa, Qianye came close enough for Zhang Jing to reach him.
Reaching both of her hands out, she continuously massaged Qianye’s body as threads of origin power entered, testing the reactions of every part of his body.
This sensation was indescribable. It was a mixture of pain and numbness, an uncomfortable feeling that was worse than being whipped.
Qianye could only shift his attention. Standing as straight as a pen, not moving at all. Instead, his gaze roamed about, looking at everything, and it somehow swept over Zhang Jing’s chest, causing him to flinch involuntarily.
Zhang Jing’s chest stretched her bathrobe to the limit. From Qianye’s perspective, her movements made dots of red flit past his line of sight.
This was a sight that Qianye had never seen before. He did not really understand what was in front of him, but he still couldn’t control the sensations that her snow white chest aroused.
After a while, Zhang Jing said, “Alright, I’ve checked your status. It seems that your node is much more injured than I thought it would be, but it’s not completely hopeless. Don’t rush when you cultivate. Start by getting used to the acceptable range of pain. You will need at least fifty percent more origin power to ignite this node than other people.”
Zhang Jing only let him leave after a detailed explanation of the important points.
When he returned to his room, Qianye could not fall asleep. Zhang Jing’s bountiful, snow white chest kept swaying in front of his eyes. From this night onward, Qianye was aware of the differences between men and women. Not just the differences he learned from Biological Structure class either. They weren’t just statistics or images.
However, the next day’s pain of cultivating immediately erased the fascinating thoughts of Qianye’s virgin mind.
Qianye desperately withstood the barrages of intense pain, and because of that, there were times where he almost fainted. The suffering he felt was beyond that which a human could withstand. If a normal human were to experience it, they would probably die of pain, but Qianye, as a rank one Fighter, endured it.
After suffering, Qianye no longer dared to charge in. Carefully controlling his origin tides, he attacked places that were within his limit.
This cultivation session was particularly torturous, and when the chime sounded, Qianye could not believe that he had endured only two hours of cultivating. This session gave him a depressing discovery. He could feel that he would need two hundred percent more origin power to ignite this node, not just fifty!
Even though this could accumulate more origin power, the cultivation speed of two origin nodes would always exceeded that of one. His cultivation speed was immediately reduced, dropping from the top of the class to ranking in the lower middle.
There were no shortcuts to cultivation, however, and after learning of this, Qianye accepted his reality and calmed his mind. He was no longer in a hurry.
He would only require more time to reach rank two. There were countless humans who couldn’t even reach it. According to the standards of the Yellow Springs Training Camp, the lowest requirement to graduate was the second rank, so he had the chance to escape this hell.
Therefore, Qianye continued training both his body and mind as usual.
Perhaps because he rid himself of thoughts about success or failure, or perhaps it was because of his concentration, Qianye’s training results became better. After what seemed to be an eternity of painful suffering, Qianye’s origin power was much stronger and tyrannical compared to normal people’s. In that very manner, he barely managed to keep up with pace of the combat classes.
After half a year, Qianye’s group completed their foundation in unarmed combat; next would be weapon training. They learned about various bladed weapons of all sizes and shapes.
From this day onward, the children began to sustain numerous injuries on their person. The remaining children were all rank one Fighters who not only possessed powerful bodies but also attacks that contained origin power, which greatly added to their power. A random stab from one of them was no joke. Thanks to their strength, many of them suffered in battles, but because of that, they also learned to create defenses with origin power.
Only at this point did Qianye get to show off his extraordinary might. Against the children who wanted to start trouble with him, Qianye would exchange blows with them equally. The stabs and punches he received seemed to be nothing to him. As if his sensation of pain had disappeared, his counterattacks were ruthlessly precise. However, the injuries of those who received his blade were not just large.
One of the big children that had exchanged a dozen stabs with Qianye eventually fell, accompanied by his painful screaming, but Qianye simply stood before him steadily, blood drenching his body. The hand that held his weapon did not even tremble. The pain from this fight was incomparable to the pain he suffered everyday during cultivation; it was nothing at all.
And after that, no one dared to look for trouble with Qianye anymore in combat class.
This was mainly due to the fact that Qianye’s opponent was a bigger kid ranked fifth in terms of combat power. In both strength and skill, he scored better than Qianye, but in a real battle, he lost. Furthermore, in the Yellow Springs Training Camp, the children here learned to prioritize results above all else.
When Qianye was eleven, the children finally completed the human biology course, and in return, old man Shen Tu brought them a strange body, a corpse belonging to a large spider, a whole meter in size!
Only after a long time did Qianye know that this was not a normal spider, but a powerful branch of the dark races, the man-faced arachne. The creature before them was just the lowest class arachne that hadn’t formed its human appearance or appendages yet; therefore, it was called a cave spider.
From that day onward, the children came into contact with all kinds of dark races. After a year, other than the most mysterious and strongest demonkin, they had witnessed every known dark race on the dissection table, including the human-like vampire and werewolves.
At that point, the children had all matured into young men and women. But despite that, they still lived together in the same quarters; they even changed and washed in the same place. Of course, the differences in the two sexes could clearly be seen, and some of the early maturing boys would bother the girls. However, they did not do anything else as that was prohibited in the camp.
Qianye started thinking more and more about the things he had seen in Zhang Jing’s room.
When he turned twelve, the Yellow Springs Training Camp held a special event, the coming of age ceremony.
On the day of the ceremony, the girls and boys were gathered in a large hall to eat a meal full of aphrodisiacs.
In the next moment, Qianye could feel his consciousness become blurry as his body became hot. His breathing seemed to carry fire with it as strange thoughts appeared in his mind. He quickly noticed that he couldn’t even think properly and started yielding to his instincts.
And at that moment, numerous naked men and women came into the hall and went to the children. In the blink of an eye, the entire hall became a world of carnal desire.
Zhang Jing and Long Hai simply looked on expressionlessly as they patrolled, occasionally punishing someone. They were completely apathetic to the world of flesh before them. However, some of the weaker instructors and many of the senior guards participated in this banquet. Today, these young girls were their tenure benefits.
Though, the instructors and guards did control themselves and did not dare to overindulge. They could use this special day for enjoyment, but they weren’t allowed to break the girls. The moment someone lost control, the long whips in Zhang Jing and Long Hai’s hands would make sure that they’d immediately regret it.
And from this day onward, the prohibition of bodily contact between the two sexes was lifted. For the weaker females, this was the start of hell.
The purpose of the Yellow Springs Training Camp was to eliminate any weakness in the people who walked out from it. Their bodies could be the weakness for females, but it could also be their weapon.
A few girls silently disappeared and did not participate in this banquet. Thanks to the influence of their family, they evaded this ceremony.
The coming of age ceremony lasted the entire night. Qianye and the others only fell asleep after exerting themselves before waking up at noon of the next day. Only then did the effects of the aphrodisiacs in Qianye’s body disappear.
What happened yesterday was like a dream, and while he couldn’t clearly remember the details, he knew what happened.
After the coming of age ceremony, Qianye’s life went back to usual. He continued training, learning and practicing combat techniques as usual. He even used the theory of machines he learned in machinery class to apply maintenance and make creations from all sorts of basic machinery parts.
The biggest changes in class happened to the females; many of them sought male companions. Only the powerful and the girls who avoided the ceremony managed to maintain their solitary life.
Song Zining, who was forever in first place, managed to monopolize two beautiful girls with no one daring to say otherwise, even the two girls themselves.
Life in the the Yellow Springs Training Camp was like that. One needed to win before they could say anything.
Qianye remained by himself. It was as if he was trapped in his own little world, unaffected by the events that occurred outside. Because of the hellish pain of his cultivation, he was permanently trapped in suffering. Qianye tempered an incomparably strong will for himself, but this also caused him to be disinterested in everything that happened outside of cultivation.
To him, quickly lighting his Aura Sea node and the day he broke away from this hell was the most important thing. He could only obtain the things he wanted after getting out of this isolated mountain valley.
Today, Qianye had just returned to his room to see Song Zining leaning against the door as he watched the sky, yet again looking at his great way and future.
Nodding his head at him, Qianye was just about to enter the room before Song Zining suddenly called out, “Qianye, wait a moment.”
“What is it?” He didn’t know what was going on.
Song Zining laughed. “Something good. It’ll let you grow up faster.”
Glancing at a group of students passing by, he suddenly pointed at a rather beautiful girl and spoke, “Uh. Yes, you! Fang Minghui, come here!”
The girl did not know what was going on and ran over without any objections, arriving before Song Zining and Qianye.
Glancing up and down, Song Zining straightforwardly spoke, “Tonight, sleep with Qianye, and continue to do so from today onward!”
