Beyond the Zenith

The chaotic battle in the dark reduced the gap in strength between the two sides to some degree. Everyone was fighting in the dark, with the recruits enjoying a four-to-one advantage in numbers, and the veterans having to guard the meat in the pots.

Courage in numbers was human nature, and the craving for food was probably one of humanity’s most primal needs. So, swept along by wild instinct, the recruits vented the long-bottled-up frustration and anger to their hearts’ content and swarmed forward in a rush like madmen.

The aroma of braised beef called out to them from the dozen-some big iron pots up front.

The veterans guarded the stove. They feared causing deaths, and in the dark, it was hard to gauge which body part they were striking, so they held back more.

“Fuck!” the bronze-mark veteran swore, voice carrying an audible anger and panic in the dark. “Is—Is there any order left at all? This is a military unit!”

No one paid him any attention.

“Quick, someone go turn on the lights!” he shouted to his own people, changing tack.

With his back against the stove, he kicked away two lunging recruits. Using the momentum, he swept his leg back and knocked down three more before immediately returning to guard the stove.

“Understood!” Several veterans joined forces and formed a triangular arrowhead formation, cutting their way through the dark toward the switch.

The recruits tried hard to block them, but the veterans’ individual strength and coordination were on a completely different level, and they soon could not hold.

“Gonna ignore that?” Wen Jifei asked breathlessly, following behind Han Qingyu.

“It’ll be fine.” Han Qingyu turned his head and slapped something into Wen Jifei’s hand.

The next second, over by the wall came a high, drawn-out scream.

“Motherfucker!” a veteran cursed in a quivering voice. “Who—fuck!—who pulled out the switch?! That nearly shocked me to death!”

Laughter filled the dark room.

If he can still yell like that, it means he won’t die. I guess they are source energy freaks, after all. Little Qing must have guessed that much, Wen Jifei thought, giving the thing in his hand a squeeze before hurriedly tossing it away.

The chaotic battle continued. Dormitory 11 all wisely stuck with Han Qingyu, using him as the arrowhead, while helping him fend off threats from the sides and behind.

The kitchen was in total chaos.

“Fire torches—No, flashlights! Get flashlights!” the bronze-mark veteran ordered, forced to improvise.

This order meant the time left for the recruits was running short.

“Little Qing...” Wen Jifei said anxiously as they darted around in the chaos.

Up ahead, Han Qingyu had already turned back from the stove.

“Let’s go,” he said, swinging his arm in a half circle to wrap a huge hunk of thigh meat into the clothing he had brought for this express purpose before cradling it in his arms. “Run out!”

They all headed out. They didn’t know how many recruits remained to grab meat, and it was none of their concern.

Grave Robber’s muffled grunt suddenly came from behind them.

This guy’s black mask actually stood out whenever the firelight happened to catch him, and a veteran had seized him.

“What do we do?”

“Go back and leave some for him?”

“Pray to the Bodhisattva for him...”

While the others of Dormitory 11 were still struggling through the crowd and debating, Han Qingyu had long since turned back. Using the occasional flicker of the red glow from the stoves to make out Grave Robber’s position, Han Qingyu rushed over at top speed, caught them off guard, and kicked the veteran away.

Han Qingyu hauled up the still slightly dazed Grave Robber and turned to charge for the door. “Let’s go!”

“Ah, fuck! Who was that? Who kicked me?!” a veteran screamed.

Hot gravy sloshed out with a splash as he scrambled out of a lidless iron pot, standing on the stove, hopping and slapping his backside.

“Who the hell did that?” he cried. “I’ll boil you alive!”

In the dark, he had used too much force...

Han Qingyu hurriedly picked up his pace.

Before long, the flashlights arrived. The recruits shrank back, and the veterans’ suppression rapidly unfolded.

By this point, Dormitory 11 was already running back to the dorm in the dark.

Running toward the dorm seemed illogical either way, since they could easily be identified, but they were already past caring.

Han Qingyu could smell the aroma of the braised beef in his arms as he ran, and unable to resist, he grabbed a piece and stuffed it into his mouth.

It was pure bliss.

The steaming hot meat had been steeped in spices and melted in his mouth with a burst of flavor.

Wen Jifei chased desperately after him from behind, craning his neck and opening his mouth, pleading, “Feed me, Little Qing. Give me a bite!”

“There’s no way I can feed you like this!” Han Qingyu said as he ran. “We’ll talk when we’re back.”

Liu Shiheng, a dignified, rich young master from Harbor City, suddenly made a horrifying request. “Then stick your hand back here and let me lick it at least.”

“Let me have a lick too,” Yang Qingbai chirped.

“Me too,” said Grave Robber.

Speechless, Han Qingyu ran even faster, making sure to carefully wipe his mouth a few times with his sleeve on the way.

By this time, the chaos inside the kitchen had been suppressed. The group behind the dark window came forward one after another, took a few glances at the scene of utter wreckage, and then turned back, caught between laughter and tears.

The regiment’s lead advisor pondered a moment, then said with a smile, “The Erasers of the Ninth Army have performed this tradition for decades. After this, it seems there’ll be a new legend, where the recruits were so hungry that they cooked a veteran.”

“And electrocuted one too.” Someone beside him chuckled.

Amid the laughter came the sound of Zhang Dao’an’s applause for this batch of recruits.

Then the bronze-mark veteran appeared in the doorway. “I’m here to report.”

Regiment Commander Li Wangqiang nodded with a calm smile and asked, “How did it go?”

“Not too bad. There were no casualties, and the ones who grabbed meat were basically all stopped on the spot. They were all kept from eating it, but...” The bronze-mark veteran’s expression held some alarm and unease. “One got away, and one big chunk of meat is missing.”

“What?!” All the unit leaders present instantly gathered around anxiously.

“We’ve already sent four juniors after them,” the bronze-mark veteran explained anxiously, looking as though he had committed a huge mistake.

“If I’m not mistaken, that person is very likely named Han Qingyu, from Dormitory 11. Hurry up and get him,” said Zhang Dao’an quickly and confidently.

Even though he hadn’t seen anything in the dark either, at the very least, he had seen who turned off the lights.

This sequence of events made it clear that this one was a point man. At least until he did his source energy integration test... he was a point man. [1]

“Quick, get on it,” the Regiment Commander urged, his expression solemn, even somewhat anxious.

“Understood,” the veteran hurriedly answered before dashing off.

The room was quiet for a moment.

Zhang Dao’an let out a long, slow sigh, releasing the tension in his body. “Honestly, I really do want to reward them with the meat they grabbed. It’d be nice if Tradition Night could be changed like that.”

That was just how cruel the thing was. Even meat that had been grabbed was not actually given. The few groups that had won the duels in the past never got to eat any meat either. The leaders would step in and forcibly hold the line for a while before explaining.

Regiment Commander Li Wangqiang nodded. “The reasoning is understandable, but...”

“But honestly, we don’t actually know whether the notes are right or not,” Zhang Dao’an said, a little uneasily.

The regiment commander did not take offense. “The person who wrote that notebook has always been right. The Coalition has always followed in their footsteps in our eighty years of history.”

Who was that person? Who were they?

In the distant year of 1908, at Tunguska, there was a long, bloody war of attrition filled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Back then, it was the most advanced weapons of every nation and over twenty million tons of TNT explosives that had finally allowed humanity to win its first small relics from another planet.

The world’s top scientists were secretly gathered to begin researching these relics almost immediately after.

In the end, three of them, with their genius intellect and pioneering thinking, and perhaps with a certain element of luck as well, joined hands to create the source energy maneuvering device.

This changed the basic state of war between humanity and the Sharpies. From then on, although humanity was still at a huge disadvantage, the once nearly insurmountable chasm between the two sides had been closed.

They were the first-generation gods of the Azure Coalition. In fact, in the scientific and cultural environment of that time, and among certain groups, they were truly believed in and trusted almost as gods.

Had it not been for that kind of luck, with all three having fine personal character and a heart obsessed solely with research, that situation would have been extremely dangerous.

After the three scientists died, everything they left behind was regarded as treasure.

For instance, the name “Sharpie.”

Another instance was a line one of the scientists left in his experimental notebook, which was never made public until his death.

The more primitive you are, the closer you are to source energy?

It was said this line originally ended with a period, but the period was later struck out and changed to a question mark. Basically, this line was more of a question that the scientist was asking himself, one with no final answer. The scientist himself never publicly discussed the question in his lifetime either.

Even so, starting decades ago, the later scientific elites of the Azure Coalition spent enormous energy on this question, making many postulations and conducting much research.

Some reasoned from this that source energy was a primordial force of the universe, that it was the very thing that had once created the long age ruled by beasts on Azure, prior to humanity’s rise.

According to this same notebook, during the first month and a half of the recruit period, before the source energy integration test, recruits were permitted only to “eat raw flesh and drink blood,” which would raise their test results. This too was one of the postulations.

This inference matched, to a startling degree, the “wildness,” “bestial nature,” and “endurance beyond ordinary people” that the Azure warriors themselves were required to have.

Thus, this tradition was carried out and maintained like a revered ancient rule.

It was also a tradition that had formed and enriched itself without anyone noticing.

No one felt there was anything wrong with it or had any need to question it. This postulation, having developed to this point, had become a comprehensive program. Beyond the necessity of following that conjecture, it was also one of the means of honing the recruits’ wildness and endurance.

The unit did not tell the soldiers these things beforehand as part of this honing.

They, too, had long gotten used to the existence of a seemingly reckless situation like Tradition Night, a chance occurrence decades ago that became a tradition.

The special nature of the Azure Coalition meant that the matter could always be easily kept under control. Veterans tempered over a long time by source energy, even without armor, were far beyond what recruits could match. History did indeed have recruit dorms that had beaten veterans, but they were eight against four, and there were still more than twenty veterans behind them holding the line.

Thinking about it this way, the Coalition, which had always striven hard for progress in science and technology, was in some sense closed off and conservative.

But so what?

The rare and hugely expensive construction and opening of a source energy field, combined with the recruits’ once-in-a-lifetime, irreversible integration test, were far too important to leave to chance, even if it meant being conservative.

Even if the ultimate effect on the test results was actually minute, every tiny sliver of a gap, on the battlefield, could turn into the difference between life and death.

Put simply, the stolen meat definitely had to be retrieved.

1. A ”point man” (尖兵 – jian bing) in warfare is the lead soldier or unit who walks at the forefront of a military patrol through unsecured or hostile territory. ☜