Chapter 7 : Chapter 7
Chapter 7: I’m Extremely Pissed Off Right Now!
“But that still doesn’t make sense. He really did enroll, and now he’s one of our students!”
Old Ma muttered to himself.
“Then why the hell are you still standing here looking for chicken feathers? Move! …No, I mean, why the hell are you standing there? Go find him!”
Zhao Qingshan also started talking nonsense in his panic.
“Right, right, right!” Old Ma suddenly came to his senses and immediately began searching the area for Li Mu.
And sure enough, it did not take them long to spot him.
At that moment, Li Mu was dressed in Blackwater High School’s black wave-pattern uniform, with the Blackwater school emblem on his shoulder, and was currently registering at the entrance.
To enter the Abyss, one had to receive two Return Stones and a turtle-shaped technological wristwatch.
The watch could display the real-time map and all kinds of information at any moment.
That entire set was worth more than twenty thousand.
It did not matter whether you were a student or not. As long as you were a martial artist entering the Abyss, the state issued one set to every person free of charge.
That alone showed how much importance the nation placed on encouraging martial artists to enter the Abyss.
By now, Li Mu had already received his set of equipment and followed the stream of Blackwater students onto the enormous transparent levitating elevator.
The elevator slowly began to descend into the pitch-black Abyss.
“Hey! Hey, hey!”
By the time Old Ma spotted Li Mu, it was already too late. When he ran over, Li Mu had already boarded the elevator.
Zhao Qingshan looked stunned. “That guy is Li Mu?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, let’s go first. They’ll come back out tonight anyway. We can talk then.”
Zhao Qingshan tugged at Old Ma.
At the same time, Li Mu slowly entered the Abyss along with the elevator.
The Abyss was not nearly as dark as he had imagined. On the contrary, once he entered it, the fortress directly below came fully into view.
Looking down from above, the fortress within the Abyss resembled a small city, echoing the fortress above it from afar.
Troops were stationed all along the edges of the fortress.
All kinds of teleportation arrays flickered with red and green points of light, like countless blinking stars.
When Li Mu looked upward again, he was filled with awe.
The entire sky above the Abyss looked as though it were covered by a black curtain, with only the circular Abyss entrance overhead letting in light.
There was a strange kind of energy within the Abyss that could scatter and amplify the sunlight from the world above, extending it for tens of thousands of miles.
The light was more than sufficient, roughly comparable to an overcast day in the world above.
But the entire Abyss maintained that same constant level of light, giving off an air of stillness and mystery.
As soon as the elevator reached the ground, the students filed out in orderly fashion.
Several thousand people had already gathered in the plaza.
Every student could not help but look around in curiosity. The Abyss made them uneasy.
An oppressive tension quickly spread through the crowd.
Then, at that very moment, a soul-shaking neigh rang out and drew everyone’s attention.
The crowd erupted immediately afterward.
Not far away, six or seven enormous horses came galloping over.
They were truly gigantic horses. Li Mu felt that they were more than a full size larger than any horse he had seen on Earth.
The black steed in the lead had twin horns on its head, crimson eyes, and a flowing red mane. It looked extraordinarily divine and imposing.
The other horses came to a halt.
That one horse, however, leaped into the air and somehow sprang cleanly onto a platform several meters high.
On the black horse stood a man dressed like a military officer, proud and upright.
He swept his sharp eyes across the entire crowd, his oppressive presence arising naturally.
“All students participating in the Abyss Military Training, listen up!”
“This is your first time in the world of the Abyss!”
“I must tell you one cruel truth.”
“Abyss monsters are ten times, a hundred times more terrifying than anything you’ve heard or seen!”
“When it comes to humans, monsters don’t have varying levels of aggression.”
“In their eyes, humans are flesh and blood.”
“And when they face flesh and blood, all they have is madness, madness, and nothing but fucking madness!”
“So during these three days of military training, I need all of you to do one thing.”
“Overcome your fear, obey orders, and show the courage that martial artists ought to have!”
“So that three days from now, during the First Abyss Battle, you won’t get your teammates killed!”
“Do you understand?!”
All the students answered in unison.
“Understood!”
The officer swept his gaze over the crowd, and the corners of his mouth suddenly lifted slightly.
He tugged on the reins beneath him, and the warhorse actually reared up on its hind legs, letting out a heaven-shaking neigh that rattled the heart.
“Kids, do you like warhorses?”
“We do!”
Countless male students let out passionate roars.
The officer nodded.
“Too bad you don’t belong to the Abyss-Suppressing Army yet, so there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“The Monsterblood Warhorses bred by the military are faster and fiercer than the warhorses sold outside!”
“And as long as you join the Abyss-Suppressing Army reserve early after the First Abyss Battle, every one of you will get one for free!”
“What’s more, the military has plenty of cultivation techniques and weapons that you can’t buy anywhere outside!”
The entire crowd of students broke into noisy excitement, eager and restless.
“Next, all of you head to the military training zone assigned to your school.”
“And go meet your instructors!”
BOOM!
All the students exploded into excitement in an instant.
Shouting excitedly, they rushed toward their own schools’ military training zones.
Warhorses were something many students had long looked forward to.
The Abyss was simply too vast.
Even with teleportation gates that could send you to a designated area, reaching a specific destination often still required traveling a very long distance.
Although martial artists themselves were not slow movers, they still had to expend True Qi.
To preserve one’s strength, having some kind of transport was extremely necessary.
And given the Abyss’s complex terrain, warhorses were the most suitable mounts.
Under the research of powerful experts in beast-taming and spatial talents, a kind of spatial Spiritual Treasure called a “Horse Token” had appeared.
It was a Spiritual Treasure specifically used to store living mounts.
Together with the Monsterblood Warhorses bred through crossbreeding with all kinds of monster bloodlines, they were not only tall and powerful, but their endurance and speed also far surpassed those of martial artists.
When students watched the livestreams of Abyss hunting teams or Abyss-Suppressing Army squads in everyday life, all they ever saw were handsome steeds and long spears as those warriors galloped freely across the land. Naturally, the students all yearned for it.
And even after joining the Abyss-Suppressing Army reserve, they could still continue studying Abyss-related professional knowledge at school.
Li Mu followed the main Blackwater group toward the military training zone as well.
The military training zones of each school were separated from one another.
At last, the people around Li Mu noticed that there was something different about him.
One after another, they turned puzzled looks toward him.
“Bro, you look both unfamiliar and kind of familiar at the same time… Are you Li Mu?”
A tall, skinny student could no longer suppress his curiosity and finally asked.
“Yes,” Li Mu nodded.
That nod alone caused an immediate uproar among the surrounding students.
With a rustling commotion, they all crowded around him and began talking excitedly.
“Li Mu? So you really are that Li Mu from the Li Family, the one who awakened an S-rank talent and then had it stolen?”
“Exactly! I thought you looked familiar too, but I’ve never seen you at our school before!”
The tall, skinny boy asked in confusion,
“No, bro, when did you come to our school? Weren’t you at Soaring Dragon Martial Academy?”
“I just transferred yesterday.”
Li Mu did not try to hide anything and answered truthfully.
“My name is Xiao Lingtong!”
Xiao Lingtong immediately reached out his hand enthusiastically.
Li Mu shook hands with him.
The surrounding students instantly joined in on the fun as well, introducing themselves one after another and stretching out their hands toward Li Mu.
Li Mu could feel that everyone was simply curious.
After all, just two days ago, he had still been an “S-rank prodigy.” Ordinary people did not often get the chance to interact with a prodigy.
But Li Mu could also tell that none of them bore any malice toward him.
Someone even asked Li Mu what kind of characteristics that S-rank Nine Heavens Thunder Surge talent had.
The surrounding students quickly stopped him.
After all, that was clearly a painful subject for someone. Asking too deeply was a bit rude.
By the time they finished talking, the group had already arrived at the military training zone.
At the front of the training grounds, three young men in military uniforms stood there with their hands clasped behind their backs.
The one in the lead actually had dyed red hair.
The young man on the left asked in a somewhat lecherous tone,
“Brother Red-Hair, so yesterday, between you and Zhao Meiting, did you…”
“No. Fucking hell, that bitch Zhao Meiting rejected me again and again, and she even dared to hit me!”
Red-Hair snapped irritably, unconsciously raising a hand to touch his face.
It still hurt even now.
The young man on the right did not seem very familiar with the two of them, so he did not join the conversation. In fact, contempt showed on his face.
What kind of person was Zhao Meiting?
She was a rising star in an Abyss-Suppressing Army squad. She had only been in the unit for two months, yet her battle achievements were already remarkable.
A woman like that absolutely admired strength above all else.
And what the hell was Red-Hair?
A late-stage Second Grade martial artist with a C-rank talent. He had been in the unit for half a year, yet his achievements were not even one-third of Zhao Meiting’s.
He had even pissed himself in fright more than once after encountering Abyss monsters.
The only thing he had going for him was a little more seniority.
He had applied to become an instructor by relying on that seniority, entirely to avoid patrol-and-suppression duty.
If the Abyss-Suppressing Army were not so severely short-handed, trash like him probably would have been kicked out of the military long ago.
“Zhao Meiting really doesn’t know what’s good for her,” the young man on the left said, shamelessly fawning over him.
Red-Hair’s expression turned cold. “I’m fucking furious right now!”
“When those students get here later, we’ll give them a show of force first.”
“Pick a few male students and beat them hard to intimidate the rest.”
“Then pick two pretty female students and take them alone into the private training room so we can have some fun.”
“Got it?”