Chapter 7: The Initial Experience of Soldiers

  Time passed bit by bit, and the sun rose higher and higher. Sweat slowly appeared on the faces of the team members.

  Liu Yun, standing in front of his teammates, suddenly remembered the instructor who had retired from the honor guard.

  At that time, he was a new recruit who had just enlisted. The instructor took them to the training ground for four hours. The scorching sun made it hard for the new recruits to persist, and one by one they fainted and were helped aside to rest. He showed no mercy at all, but instead said to the remaining people: "I don't know who the next coward is. If you can't make it, get out of the way and take a break!"

  Liu Yun always thought he was an unfeeling person, until one bitterly cold morning. On the frozen playground with a temperature of over minus ten degrees Celsius, he adjusted the formation alone, facing the biting wind and leaving his back to them. Looking at the frost on the instructor's hair and eyebrows, he finally realized that soldiers also have feelings, they are just hidden too deeply.

  That small action moved him deeply in his military career as a special forces instructor.

  "If my ruthlessness can make you understand the cruelty of the battlefield and give us one more chance to survive, then I am willing to be ruthless for a lifetime." He later said this to his teammates.

  "Remember the key points of movement! Heels together and aligned, toes separated at about sixty degrees, legs straight, lower abdomen slightly retracted, chest out..."

  Training twenty people was originally an easy task for him, but turning these martial artists into soldiers that met his requirements in mind was not. Physical transformation was easy, but mental transformation was not something that could be achieved overnight. So, Liú Yún decided to start with the new recruit training content.

  Before training began, Liú Yún said only three sentences:

  "A soldier's duty is to obey orders, in a soldier's dictionary, there are only two words: yes or no, no explanation!"

  "There's no young master here, only a boss, and I have the final say in everything!"

  "Reasonable is training, unreasonable is tempering but for you all are tests!"

  "Isn't it very tiring and exhausting, almost unable to hold on? I think this is the most real feeling of your body at this moment. However, if you persevere, you will understand that one's will can overcome physical suffering, and you can surpass yourself."

  Liu Yun gently tapped on the knees of his teammates while loudly saying.

  "Don't look so gloomy, smile a bit. Think of something pleasant, like the happy times with your woman, and forget about the suffering you're going through."

  Then, Liú Yún told jokes to his teammates, but if anyone really laughed, he would be severely punished by him.

  This is also a trick that old soldiers like to use to torment new recruits. The idea is to make you break the discipline in the ranks, and then fix you. Although it seems unreasonable at first glance, a soldier's calmness in the face of temptation is also honed bit by bit in this way.

  The most basic military training is often the most torturous, it confines your originally flexible body, turning you into a statue, forcing you to use willpower to resist the immense physical pain, and constantly reminding you: you have already lost the freedom you once had.

  Every soldier, after going through these painful days, will learn to find joy in suffering and call the past, present and future pain: dedication.

  Liú Yún was from then on learned to find pleasure in bitterness, he even felt that he had become somewhat abnormal. After standing at attention for several hours, his whole body drenched in sweat, he actually felt a kind of "horse-killing-chicken" afterglow of relaxation, every muscle in his body extremely relaxed, and even hoped to do it again immediately.

  A drop of sweat trickled down Ah Xiu's cheek and slowly flowed into his neck. Ah Xiu's face twitched, and he shouted loudly: "Report!"

  "Speak!"

  "My neck is too itchy, I can't stand it!"

  "Say it again!" Flowing Cloud approached him, shouting in his ear, staring at him fiercely.

  Ah Xiu stood up straight with all his might in the midst of Liu Yun's angry roar, without the courage to speak again.

  "Is your neck still itchy?" Liuyun asked again in a stern voice.

  "It doesn't itch anymore!" Ah Xiu felt that his neck really didn't itch anymore.

  "Actually, your neck is still itchy, you just forgot at this moment." Liú Yún gets up and walks away.

  "You can conquer yourself, remember what I said."

  Two periods of time have passed and it's finally time for a break.

  When Liuyun announced the disbandment and rest, unexpectedly none of the team members could move.

  Extreme numbness! Legs no longer belong to oneself, can't even take a step. Most people choose to sit down on the spot, and immediately a groaning sound arises.

  "My goodness, this is even more painful than a military training session!" Zǐ Wén Chéng's spirit remained high, and his loud voice immediately rang out.

  "Just now, the sweat dripped into my neck, it was so itchy. Later, I was scared and forgot about it. Now it's itchy again. Only now do I realize that being able to scratch an itch is such a happy thing!" Ah Xiu said with a smile while scratching his neck.

  "That's because you have a thick skin, a drop of sweat from your forehead hasn't even reached the ground after a while, haha." Tie Lie's words triggered a burst of laughter.

  Liuyun smiled and walked into the team. He also remembered a fellow's sigh in the tense days of new recruit training.

  "It's only now that I realize, leaning on the sofa, pouring a cup of clear tea, and watching TV for a while, is actually the greatest happiness in life!"

  A simple sentence, yet profound philosophy of life. Many people, because they are in the military, ultimately lose a lot and experience the meaning of this sigh. The carefree days under the moonlight, after putting on the uniform, became an unattainable dream, a luxury. Behind the grandeur and glory of thousands of troops, hiding is the bitter inner world of each man.

  "How is everyone feeling?" asked Liú Yún with a smile.

  "It's more painful than eating a bun." Xi Bo said with a deliberately bitter face.

  "To be honest, it still feels great. Especially when you feel like you can't hold on anymore, but you finally get through." Wijek said, rubbing his legs.

  "Every time you conquer yourself, what you gain is confidence." Liuyun sat among the team members, "Three months later, you will see a completely different self from the past."

  "But, boss, what's the point of practicing this stuff?" Zi Wencheng asked with a smile as he walked up.

  "This is called tempering one's will. To put it mildly, my people must stand taller than others!"

  Liú Yún didn't expect that a casual remark "standing must be more powerful than others" would later become the mantra of his veteran soldiers when training new recruits.

  This word of mouth directly gave his soldiers a sense of pride and honor that transcended any soldier.

  In the following days, Liú Yún taught the team members other formation movements and shape changes. However, when learning to salute, considering the characteristics of this era and the inconvenience of wearing armor, Liú Yún changed the hand salute to a single right-handed fist, with the fist facing the left chest. For this, Liú Yún also secretly complained for a long time: "What a pity, that handsome military salute!"

  For team members, if formation training is a kind of torture, then daily physical training in the morning and evening is to be tortured to death.

  Every morning at six o'clock, Liuyun leads the team members out of Kaidi Castle to run a five-kilometer cross-country. After running back, they start various exercises such as "frog jump", "duck step", "squat up and down" and "push-up" on the martial arts field. Every night before going to bed, there are also three "three hundred": 300 push-ups, 300 squats, and 300 sit-ups. As a result, team members often shake their hands when eating breakfast after training in the morning, dropping buns into the soup, and still counting numbers at night before falling asleep.

  Every time it's late at night and the team members are fast asleep, that's when Old Card loves to initiate his favorite project "Night Raid". This is a new trick that Liú Yún (Flowing Cloud) came up with after researching "Emergency Assembly", which involves letting some rogue magician sneak into the team members' rooms and cast low-level magic spells at the sleeping team members, simulating a sudden enemy attack.

  Team members said later that in their days of following the Flying Cloud, they had never encountered a more formidable enemy than "Night Raid" Old Card.

  "When Old Card asked Liu Yun: 'Will this affect the team members' rest and impact normal training?'"

  "By tormenting them like this, it's so they can learn to seize every minute and second to relax to the greatest extent."

  He also remembered when he was a new recruit, one night the squad leader called an emergency assembly nine times, and they ran three five-kilometer runs. The next day, after sweeping the cement road in front of the dormitory, he fell asleep on the side of the road.

  Of course, Liuyun wouldn't naively think that relying solely on these basics would allow his teammates to gain a foothold in the vast and competitive continent. He simply hoped that through these basic training sessions, his teammates could gradually accept this new way of training, cultivate team cohesion and unity.

  Half a month later, Liú Yún felt that the team members had acquired the basic temperament of soldiers and their physical fitness had also improved significantly, so he decided to move on to the next stage of training.

  "In the recent training sessions, everyone has shown great diligence and I am very satisfied. I know that many of you have questions in your minds, thinking that this kind of training is not much help for combat. However, as the training deepens, you will gradually come to realize the benefits of these basic skills for yourselves. You all know that I don't have any special powers or magic abilities. What can I possibly teach you? Now, let me tell you."

  After finishing, he ordered Xi Po to bring over ten pieces of green stone brick and stack them together. Liú Yún walked forward, slightly mobilized his energy, let out a loud shout, and with a vertical palm chop, the green stone bricks split in two like they were cut by a knife. Liú Yún had already discovered that all of his abilities from his past life had been preserved when he was reborn. Palm-chopping the brick was child's play; Liú Yún couldn't help but feel a little proud of himself.

  Such a scene, seen in the eyes of the crowd, caused a burst of shock. To achieve such an effect, on the Blue Moon Continent, it was impossible without the strength of a swordsman. For someone without internal energy to think they could do it, was simply a fantasy.

  Ignoring the shock of the crowd, Liú Yún said: "What you see is power and speed. Through my method of training, you can also achieve it. Forget about that boring warrior ranking, what you need to do is to strictly follow my requirements and train again and again!"

  If it is said that prospects are bright, then the road must be rugged, this is an eternal and unchanging principle.

  The next step is to arrange for the team members, mainly overloading training, anti-strike training and image temperament training. His plan is to extract their potential through overloading training, create a batch of small strong men who can't be beaten through anti-strike training, and further enhance the team's confidence through image temperament training. Those training methods derived from special forces are unheard of for these team members, and after the initial freshness has passed, it seems like an eternal nightmare that cannot be woken up from.

  Running with a sandbag on your back and iron blocks tied to your feet, as Liú Yún said, is to exhaust the body to the extreme, use up all one's strength, and tense the spirit to the extreme.

  What is known as hard qigong training, in the eyes of team members, is even more extreme. When sticks and rods are used on them, they still have to muster up the courage to shout loudly "It's cool, come again!"

  Every day after training is over, when Old Card casts healing magic on himself, the team members would look at him with tears in their eyes and shout: "Angel Grandpa..."

  And image temperament training is based on the noble etiquette of Liuyun, adding some new content, such as staring at the sunlight with eyes wide open when the sun rises in the morning, and standing with a brick on top of the head.

  Lao Ka used to think it was unnecessary, but Liu Yun's words made Lao Ka also involuntarily join the image training, so much so that Liu Yun thought wickedly, Lao Ka seemed to be looking forward to the sunset red.

  "Old card, what do you think they lack most?"

  "Great power."

  "No, you're wrong. The strength or weakness of power lies in how it is used. What they lack is confidence. A person without confidence will never truly be strong. The purpose of image and temperament training is to force them to change their mental state and gain recognition from others. This recognition will greatly enhance their confidence."

  "I want my teammates to walk out with an even more noble attitude than the nobles."