Chapter 164 - Stupid Soldier
Meng Chao frowned a little when he heard it.
“Since he turned into a heroic spirit, no matter how low his cultivation realm was when he was alive, he had strong beliefs and a determined spirit. He’s someone worthy of respect,” he said seriously. “Besides, he chose you, which means that your spirit has resonated with him on some degree. Even if he’s slightly weaker, you can’t say that about a senior, right?”
“I’m not the one who said it. His squad leader said it. He is indeed a stupid soldier!”
Chu Feixiong told Meng Chao the story of the stupid soldier.
Around three decades ago, a teenager lost his parents during a monster invasion and nearly died under a monster’s claws. Fortunately, he was saved by the Red Dragon Army. He then naturally joined the army to become an honorable soldier.
But this teenager named Xu Wanshan had always been rather foolish. He was not stupid, but his brain worked a little slower, and he was a stubborn person to boot.
When he arrived at the new recruit training camp, he had a hard time learning the saber techniques, gun techniques, squad tactics, and all the regular courses. He spent three times the time others would take to learn, and he always dragged the others down.
The other last place scorers were mostly people who were not very determined. They were afraid of hardships, and they liked to play tricks to slack off.
But Xu Wanshan worked hard, and he really trained day and night, regardless of rain or shine. The squad leader and the instructors all saw it, but since he was rather slow, he ended up moving his left arm and left leg together even after practising the simplest goose step for a few months. The others did not know whether they should laugh or cry when dealing with him.
Fortunately, the foolish man had an advantage. He was honest, obedient, obstinate, but obeyed orders without question and did what he was told.
If he were slow, then when others ran ten laps, he would run thirty laps, fifty laps, or one hundred laps. If he were not strong enough and could not throw his grenade far enough, he would practice throwing grenades one hundred times, three hundred times, or five hundred times more than others, which made him end up with arms and thighs thicker than those of other people. If his saber technique wasn’t good, he practiced drawing his saber, swinging it, and sheathing it. He kept practising as if he were a machine.
He always worked much harder than other recruits. In the end, he finally passed the test of the new recruit training camp smoothly and could join the battlefield.
Unfortunately, real fights were different from training. With his intellect, he could somewhat pass the rather rigid courses in the training camp. But when he arrived at the battlefield, the rapid changes and the sudden accidents left him dumbfounded. When he first arrived on the battlefield, he grabbed a bundle of grenades and went forward to commit double suicide with a monster, but the problem was, the monster was already fatally wounded, and there was no need for him to be the hero and save his comrades!
The higher-ups quickly saw that Xu Wanshan was simply not someone suited to be a soldier. Coincidentally, at that time, the intensity of the Monster War was starting to drop. He was also famous for training hard in the new recruit training camp, so they sent him to the military school, which had just been set up. Naturally, he was not sent there to be a student or a lecturer. Instead, he was sent there to be part of the military logistics. He could help out with miscellaneous tasks in the military school.
Xu Wanshan was an honest and obedient person who could endure hardships. He had a good time as part of the military logistics in the military school, but he did not know his own limits. He felt that if he worked hard, he could eventually gain results. As long as he staked his life while training, he could also become an ace soldier, despite the fact that he was known as Stupid Xu.
So he started training madly, just like he did when he was in the new recruit training camp.
If someone ran five laps, he would run ten laps, or twenty, or thirty. If someone swung their saber one hundred times, he would swing it five hundred times or one thousand times.
In other words, he watched the others’ training programmes while he performed his tasks during the day, and when it was quiet at night, he ran to a deserted corner and started competing against the others in secret.
But a fool was a fool, and Xu Wanshan forgot something. His comrades in the new recruit training camp were all normal people like him, so among them, he could cover his weaknesses with hard work.
However, the students in the military school were all genius teenagers. They were one in ten thousand. Many of them had awakened to supernatural abilities before joining the school, and a foolish logistics officer like him could not hope to win against them.
Everyone knew about the great difference between normal people and superhumans, but this fool was stubborn. He felt that they were all humans. They were born of a man and woman, had shoulders and a head, so if the others could do something, he could do it too!
At that time, he played a little trick. He knew that he would definitely be scolded by the higher-ups if they learned that he was training madly despite the fact that he was a logistics officer, so he decided to use the advantage of being very familiar with the environment of the military school. He searched for a few incredibly hidden training spots and started his training to become an ace soldier.
But the cultivation programmes for superhumans were not something that a normal human could withstand. Yet he was really slow-witted. Any other soldier would have started groaning after going through half a day’s worth of training, and in three days, they would be sent to the medical office to be treated. It would have healed them to perfect health.
But no matter how much Xu Wanshan suffered, he refused to speak, even if he trained to the point that he coughed up blood and suffered internal injuries. When his higher-ups noticed what he was up to, it was already too late. He had drained every bit of his life within a few months and died because he ran out of strength.
The comrades and squad leader who learned of this all felt their hearts ache for him. They scolded him for being the most foolish soldier that the Red Dragon Army had ever seen.
“I see.” Meng Chao pondered over this. “If that’s the case, this Senior Xu was a normal person up to the end of his life? Can a normal person turn into a heroic spirit?”
“A heroic spirit is made of the vitality magnetic field and brainwaves a person leaves after their death. As time and spirit energy nourish them, they grow stronger and firmer through all sorts of coincidences.
“As long as one’s willpower is strong enough, anyone can turn into a heroic spirit,” Chu Feixiong said. “But since the brainwaves of a normal person are weak and are no longer protected by the brain against the radiation from the stars, the planet’s magnetic field, and all sorts of interferences from spirit energy magnetic fields, they soon disappear. That’s why you don’t usually see normal people turning into heroic spirits.
“But while Xu Wanshan wasn’t strong, his determination was really firm, and his mind could be said to have been as sturdy as a rock. Since he ran out of energy while training, he died unable to accept his own death, so he left behind his determination—I must become an ace soldier.
“If he died elsewhere, no matter how strong his determination was, before long, it would have disappeared like smoke, but he had died in the field of the military school’s heroic spirit course.
“What sort of place do you think the heroic spirit course is? It’s where there are the most heroic spirits in Dragon City, and it’s the place where they are the strongest too. Many of the lecturers and instructors are high-ranking heroic spirit users. They have powerful heroic spirits from Heaven Realm elites and even Deity Realm elites!
“These powerful heroic spirits often create a resonance with their vitality magnetic fields, as if their souls are resonating with each other, and hence, without anyone noticing it, they formed a forcefield around the heroic spirit course which can block off the radiation from around the world and the interference from magnetic fields.
“Xu Wanshan’s determination stayed protected, and it was influenced as well. After around twenty years, he gained some strength and turned into a small heroic spirit… the weakest heroic spirit in all of Dragon City.”
“I don’t get it. Based on what you said, Senior Xu’s heroic spirit should be the determined and persevering type,” Meng Chao said with a frown. “Why did it acknowledge you and resonate with your mind to become your heroic spirit? Based on what I understand of you, you’re clearly not the determined and persevering type. There are plenty of other freshmen in the military school, so why didn’t he choose someone else but you?”
“I wish he would’ve chosen someone else!” Chu Feixiong said with a scornful look. “It’s all that woman’s fault that I’m bound to the weakest heroic spirit in Dragon City!”
“Wait!” Meng Chao’s eyes lit up. “So, there’s a woman involved! Is she pretty?”
“The most important thing about being a person is to be kind. What’s the point even if she’s pretty?” Chu Feixiong said angrily. “Didn’t a philosopher say that the more beautiful a woman is, the more diabolical she is? He was freaking right! That woman is my squad leader. She looks decent, but her heart is as wicked as a snake’s. If we compared Zuo Haoran to her, he’d be eligible to contend for the top ten most outstanding youths in Dragon City!”
“No way. Did she provoke you or did you provoke her?”
Meng Chao felt that with Chu Feixiong’s misdeeds in the past, the latter was more plausible.
“It’s all because my scores were terrible and I always dragged the squad down. It made her feel humiliated as the squad leader!”
Chu Feixiong told Meng Chao that the rules and regulations in the other normal undergraduate courses like the ones in Agricultural University did not have a concept such as a squad leader. The student council was simply in charge of the major and minor matters among students.
But in the military school, the competition between squads was incredibly fierce. The squad leader had more power than a class rep in high school, and they could be considered pseudo-instructors and commanders.
The squad which had Chu Feixiong, the joke of the course, was naturally ranked behind the others in all sorts of sparring sessions and competitions. This made their prideful female squad leader, who joined the heroic spirit course as a specially recruited student, really angry.
She, thus, always treated Chu Feixion as an eyesore and targeted him.
And their lecturers just had to pair them up into a study group. They wanted the female squad leader, who had extraordinary talent and outstanding abilities to help Chu Feixiong, who only managed to join the heroic spirit course out of sheer luck, which made him rank dead last. They wanted the person ranked at the top to help the person who showed bad results, and they gave the female squad leader an order she was not allowed to refuse. She could not give up on him or cast him aside. She had to make Recruit Chu Feixiong a new man and catch up to the monstrous geniuses in the course.
The female squad leader did not mind helping the weak students or comrades. The problem was, their standards were different. One of them was a rare super genius, and the other was a normal student who came from a normal family, had normal talents, and was normal in every aspect. Since they were forced to pair up, it was impossible for them to produce any results in an instant.
The female squad leader even felt that Chu Feixiong was intentionally going up against her by slacking off all the time and refusing to train honestly.
Chu Feixiong, in the meantime, thought that the female squad leader was intentionally making things hard for him by setting impossible targets and terrifying training programmes. She wanted to make things hard for him, torture him, and trample on him so that she could vent the displeasure she had for him dragging the entire squad down.
On the first day they paired up, they started arguing and fighting against each other. In just a few days, the female squad leader tried to persuade him to stop trying and change courses.
“Honestly, it’s not that I have to stay in the heroic spirit course. From the first day I entered military school, I knew that the heroic spirit course was a place for geniuses, monsters, and the children of generals and aristocrats. It’s not suitable for normal people like me. It would have been better if I had obediently written a report and applied to transfer to the martial arts course or the logistics course.”
Chu Feixiong then gritted his teeth and hissed. “But applying for the change is one thing, surrendering and running away like some dog with its tail between its legs after being looked down upon, mocked, and tortured by that woman is another! No matter how cowardly I am, I’m not going to bow down to that woman’s will!”