A burst of semi-automatic rifle fire shattered the morning. The slumbering recruits snapped awake simultaneously. Those already on the ground managed to spring up with a single, athletic surge.
The recruits sleeping in the trees, however, nearly forgot their lofty perch the moment they woke. Many tumbled directly from the branches, saved only by their respectable martial prowess, managing to land—barely—safely.
“Morning, maggots? Yesterday, you were very brave, brimming with vitality. I like that energy.” With a sinister stretching of his grin, Satan dragged out his words: “Today, your old man has prepared an even more sumptuous training feast. I hope you can maintain yesterday’s vigor. Now, all of you, get into the sea! Your breakfast this morning is in the ocean! Catch whatever you can eat! If you’ve got the guts, eat a shark; if not, eat sand.”
“Report, Officer! I can’t swim! I can forage on land instead.”
One recruit projected his voice, loud and clear, posing his question.
“You can’t swim?” Satan’s smile became indescribably joyful as he swept his watery blue gaze over the other recruits: “Who else can’t swim?”
“Report, Officer, me neither!”
“Anyone else?” A group of seasoned soldiers immediately converged, seizing the two recruits and hoisting them up. They marched briskly toward the shore. \Xiaoshuo520.***\
“You… what are you going to do?”
“Officer, what are you planning…?”
“What am I planning?” Satan slapped his own gleaming head. “As your superior officer, it is my duty to teach you how to swim. If I can’t teach you, I might as well drown you to save me the embarrassment.”
Satan returned his attention to Qin Fen and the others. “You lot. Go eat breakfast immediately too! Next, even hotter, more thrilling ‘Happy Paradise’ tours await you.”
No oxygen tanks, no flippers, not even the most basic underwater goggles. What could they possibly catch diving into the sea? Seaweed.
The recruits stood on the silvery sand, gazing at the turbulent, churning ocean before them, then glancing back at the armed veterans behind them. Defeated, they shuffled step by step toward the sea.
The two non-swimmers were less fortunate; they were put into small boats that carried them a distance offshore before they were unceremoniously dumped into the deep blue.
“Help! I really can’t swim!”
“Officer… this is murder!”
The two helpless landlubbers screamed repeatedly, their cries nearly drowning out the sound of the crashing waves. \Xiaoshuo520.***\
A veteran soldier walking beside Satan leaned in and whispered into his ear, “Captain, the ocean piranhas are in position.”
Satan beamed. “Then give the signal to release them. Let’s get some wounds on these maggots. They’re all soft-skinned and delicate; hardly look like soldiers.”
Within ten seconds, shrieks more tragic than those of the two landlubbers ripped through the darkness before dawn.
“Ah! Something’s biting me!”
“Ah! I’m being bitten by fish too!”
“Me too…”
In the sea, the recruits’ screams rose and fell in a chorus.
Finally, a recruit with deep knowledge of aquatic life roared out, “Piranhas! South American Ocean Piranhas! How are they here? They shouldn’t survive here for long!”
“South American Piranhas?” Qin Fen clamped down hard on the gills of one struggling fish, crushing it instantly. He simultaneously grabbed another. In that small patch of water, there were at least a dozen piranhas.
Lin Ling was even more ruthless than Qin Fen. She crushed the body of a piranha completely, unconcerned that the resulting bloody cloud would attract more. \Xiaoshuo520.***/\
“Watch my Blue Electric Torrent!”
One recruit, completely enraged by the piranha attack, unleashed his new martial art. A powerful electrical current instantly electrocuted all the piranhas within a five-meter radius.
As soon as this move was displayed, other recruits quickly followed suit.
“Thousand Mile Freeze!”
The piranhas, previously active within half a meter of one recruit, instantly became sluggish and weak.
Qin Fen was startled by the Thousand Mile Freeze. It seemed many of these recruits came from wealthy or powerful families!
The new martial art, Thousand Mile Freeze, was vastly different from the ancient martial art’s Cold Ice True Qi! Thousand Mile Freeze manipulated nitrogen! The first requirement was installing a nitrogen controller internally—the exorbitant surgical cost alone could bankrupt a middle-class family ten times over.
“Damn it! Why is the intensive training in the ocean and not the desert?” one recruit complained loudly. “My Lava Art can’t be used!”
“Help! I’m drowning!”
Satan watched the chaos on the water’s surface and burst into roaring laughter. “You should thank me. \Xiaoshuo520.***/\ To prevent you from eating only sea grass, I specifically prepared delicious fish meat for you. Whether you eat the fish, or the fish eat you, is up to you.”
Fifteen minutes was not a long time, but when the recruits returned to shore, they felt more exhausted than after a full day of standard training.
Those South American Ocean Piranhas were incredibly fast. Even using their martial arts, their speed was restricted in the water, putting them at a disadvantage!
Many bore multiple bite marks. The only fortunate aspect was that the male recruits had been very careful guarding their vital parts; none were disqualified from practicing the Sunflower Manual. Lin Ling, meanwhile, emerged from the sea covered head-to-toe in bloodstains.
The recruits near her in the water stared, dumbfounded. Floating around her body were at least one hundred and fifty South American Ocean Piranhas.
But that wasn’t the most terrifying or perverse sight! What was truly hard to accept was that this ruthless woman had not sustained a single bite from a piranha from the moment she encountered the first one until she killed the last. Du Peng and Du Zhanpeng were in a different league.
The Formless Waterfowl Fist was renowned as a super-cutting technique, but few ever witnessed its true power. Today, Du Peng gave everyone an education. Not a single piranha corpse surrounding him was intact; the segments were as smooth as if sliced by a surgical scalpel.
Compared to Du Peng, Du Zhanpeng’s Seven Star Immortal Thunder Art was even more terrifying. With his Seven Star Falling Strike Finger, he demonstrated what 'exploding corpses' meant, also showing everyone that he had not used his full strength in his fight against Du Peng the other day.
Every dead fish struck by the Seven Star Falling Strike Finger looked like a dozen small rodents were clawing and scrambling beneath its scales—bulging here, swelling there, until they finally exploded entirely.
Qin Fen also witnessed this miraculous scene but couldn't understand it. Did piranhas even have acupuncture points to allow for such precision? What exactly was the principle behind the Seven Star Immortal Thunder Art that caused internal explosions?
The fish floating near Du Zhanpeng were truly killed without a complete body. In comparison, Lin Ling, Du Peng, and Du Zhanpeng, who had killed nearly a hundred piranhas between them, didn't seem quite as dazzling.
When Satan’s subordinate asked this question, he didn't immediately answer. Instead, he roared at Qin Fen, “Slippery kid, toss me two of those fish you’re holding. I haven’t eaten either.”
Qin Fen sighed, having no choice, since Satan was the highest-ranking officer here.
Satan caught the two thrown piranhas, sliced them open with the survival knife on his waist, and meticulously examined their corpses.
The entire internal structure of the piranhas showed no damage. Only the fish’s brain had been bisected by internal zhenqi. The fish eyes, closest to the brain, showed no signs of force impact, nor were they protruding from any compressive force.
Both piranhas had died in exactly the same manner, and the damage to their brains was identical. The veteran soldier standing beside Satan was utterly stunned, and Satan’s own face shifted from initial ease to gravity.
To kill a single fish with such precision by vibrating zhenqi already required astonishing control. To maintain such precision while simultaneously attacking dozens of piranhas with both hands was an entirely different matter!
“This kid…” The veteran’s eyes were glued open. “His… his precision in controlling force is higher than mine, a Meteor-rank expert? This, this kid…”
Satan’s lips slowly cracked into a smile again, that slightly ugly grin reappearing. “The strongest in individual combat this time, excluding the three you just mentioned, should be this Qin Fen. If we talk overall strength, Qin Fen, Lin Ling, and Du Zhanpeng are probably neck and neck?”
The veteran nodded in agreement. Qin Fen and Lin Ling were almost all-around recruits. While Du Zhanpeng was slightly less versatile than the other two, he possessed an inspirational quality they lacked. Being able to quickly rally most of the recruits yesterday and successfully lead a counterattack was something an ordinary recruit could never achieve.
“Now this is interesting,” Satan tossed away the dead fish in his hand. “Next, I’m going to make them experience a pleasure worse than death.”
Time flew by swiftly. Once the recruits entered 'Happy Paradise' and fully committed to the training, they completely forgot about the passage of time. The two weeks that should have been agonizing passed in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Satan’s training methodology was very simple, boiling down to two words: real combat.