Chapter 23 — Double Second-Rank Soldier

From dusk Chen Ning had been practicing the Mighty Tigers Art, training straight through until midnight.

In his illusion realm the once-dry lake now shimmered with a faint moisture; the surface glinted like liquid glass. Yet he was still some way from the next breakthrough — from “filling the lake and lighting the next meridian node.”

The hellish drills of daytime had paid off: this time he could sustain six hours of cultivation and more, reaping rich rewards.

An ordinary imperial soldier — class in the morning, drills in the afternoon, a few hours of self cultivation at night — would long since be collapsed in bed, utterly spent. But Chen Ning could not fall asleep.

He carried a dual martial vein. Where others needed to ignite a single node each time, he had to light one node on both his black vein and his white vein simultaneously — two nodes at once.

That meant he had to put in twice the effort to keep pace with his comrades.

By day he trained like everyone else. In the early night he cultivated like everyone else. If he wanted to pull ahead, there was only one option: squeeze every minute of sleep dry.

Though Chen Ning was exhausted, sleep wouldn’t come. He tossed and turned for a long while, then suddenly sat up with a grunt, pulled on his uniform, and slipped quietly out of the barracks.

Curfew had been in effect since 11 p.m.—strictly no movement or outdoor activity allowed. By this hour, the base was dead silent. Only the sentries at their posts and the roving patrol squads were still awake.

Chen Ning moved like a shadow, skirting the guards and evading the patrols, until he reached the rear of the base.

Behind the compound stretched a dense patch of forest, and beside it loomed a concrete block known as the Black Room Building—a grim structure filled with countless “black rooms,” each used to confine wild beasts: wolves, bears, and worse. Even at night, the air here vibrated with their occasional roars and snarls. Most soldiers avoided this place after dark.

But that was exactly why Chen Ning had come. He needed somewhere secluded—somewhere no one would see him—to continue training his body in secret, to push himself further in mastering the Mighty Tigers Art.

“Thud! Thud! Thud—”

Facing a tree thick enough for two men to embrace, he attacked with fist and foot. Each strike bit into bark; splinters flew and the dull impact rang through the woods. At first he held back, then surrendered to the work — fists like driving rain, kicks like thunder — the whole trunk shuddered.

Two nearby sentries, alerted by the noise, crept closer and froze: it was Chen Ning of the elite squad. They exchanged a look of trouble. Had he been a regular, they would have hauled him off to confinement long ago. But Chen Ning was a disciple of Colonel Butcher and a member of the elite — men like him were the officer candidates of tomorrow.

One sentry whispered, “You watch him, I’ll go tell the Colonel.”

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The Butcher had not yet gone to sleep. He sat beneath the dim barracks lamp, reading a letter from headquarters.

The message was grim: the Phoenix Legion was locked in fierce combat with the zombie armies in the plague zones—and had been suffering devastating losses for weeks.

The Legion Commander’s order was clear and urgent: the Azurebird, Dragonsparrow, and Blazebird training camps were to accelerate their programs immediately. They were to forge new warriors at any cost—fresh blood to be fed into the Phoenix Legion, to keep the empire’s most resilient army alive.

The Butcher had just finished reading the letter when a duty soldier came rushing in with a report.

“One of the elite group members, sir—he’s not sleeping. He’s out in the back mountain woods, making a racket.”

The Butcher frowned slightly, then rose and followed the soldier toward the rear of the base.

From a distance, he could already see him—Chen Ning, drenched in sweat, training alone in the dark forest.

His fists and legs struck with the force of thunder, each blow landing on the tree trunks with a deep, muffled thud, thud, thud.

The backs of his hands were bloodied, yet he showed no sign of stopping.

The Colonel’s mouth twitched into something like a smile. He murmured, “This kid… interesting.” Then he ordered quietly to the two soldiers at his side, “If you ever see him training again at night, pretend you didn’t. Let him have it.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

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Chen Ning trained like a possessed man for three hours until exhaustion finally bent him. He staggered back to the barracks, drenched and bleeding, but did not sleep; he sat and meditatedn until dawn paled the sky. After a cold shower he managed only half an hour’s rest before the shrill reveille called everyone up. He kicked off the blanket and leapt to formation.

Morning classes, afternoon drills—each day a brutal cycle of training to the brink of collapse. At first, his strength surged; by the end, his body barely obeyed him. When exhaustion hit, the whip followed.

And yet, when night fell, Chen Ning still rose in secret, pushing his body beyond its limits to refine the Mighty Tigers Art to perfection.

For the next week, he lived in this storm of madness—training by day, bleeding by night.

To others, he seemed like a brainless fool, a punching bag obsessed with pain. Even Xiao Zihao and his cronies mocked him endlessly.

None of them knew that with every strike, every drop of sweat, the power within him was rising— day by day, the lake in his illusion realm was filling, and by the week’s end, it was full to the brim.

That night, in the stillness of the dormitory, Chen Ning finally prepared to attempt the ignition of the second nodes in his dual martial veins—the black and the white.

Instructor Jiang Qing had once explained to them: when the spiritual lake within one’s mind fills completely with the power of martial force, it signals the chance to illuminate the next node.

Typically, the lower nodes were easier to awaken—often achieved in a single attempt. But the higher one climbed, the more brutal the struggle became.

And regardless of success or failure, the power stored in the lake would be drained completely each time. To try again, one had to rebuild from nothing—train, fight, meditate—until the lake brimmed with energy once more.

Now, seated cross-legged, Chen Ning sank into deep meditation.

In his illusion realm, the spiritual lake appeared once again before him—vast and glimmering—and on either shore stood two towering structures: the black martial vein and the white martial vein, each lined with twelve radiant nodes.

At this moment, only the lowest nodes on both veins shone with light, like the first floor of two twelve-story towers, standing side by side in the depths of his soul.

“Mighty Tigers Art—Spin!”

Chen Ning roared within his mind, and at that very instant, the once-still surface of his spiritual lake erupted.

Like twin whirlwinds tearing open the calm, two vortices spun into existence at the lake’s heart.

They grew faster—wilder—until the spinning force became so immense that the lake itself began to rise.

In a deafening surge, two spiraling columns of water burst skyward, coiling and twisting like a pair of ascending water dragons.

With a thunderous roar, the twin dragons shot toward opposite shores— one plunging into the black martial vein, the other into the white.

A heartbeat later, Chen Ning felt it— two torrents of pure, violent energy slammed into his body at once. The power raged through his meridians, flooding his bones and flesh.

Agony exploded inside him— as if tens of thousands of steel needles were piercing every vein, every joint, every inch of his being.

“Ah!”

Even Chen Ning—whose will was forged in iron—could not help but let out a low, strangled groan.

The muscles on his face twisted in pain, cold sweat streaming down his temples. But still, he clenched his jaw and forced himself to endure, refusing to yield.

Within his spiritual realm, the lake’s martial energy surged wildly— the twin water dragons slammed again and again against the second nodes of the black and white veins, each impact sending shockwaves through his soul.

Just as the last of the lake’s power was about to run dry—

Wong!

A deep, resonant hum split the silence.

Both the black and white veins flared at once— their second nodes igniting simultaneously, shining with blinding, powerful light.

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Five hundred kilometers away, in the imperial capital Azure Dragon City, Imperial Governor-General Xiao Ke sat across from his aide, moving pieces on a Go board.

Suddenly Xiao Ke’s expression shifted—he had felt something. He rose at once, walked to the window, and turned his gaze to the southern sky.

Under Xiao Ke’s astonished stare and the aide’s shocked faces, a column of purple qi shot up into the heavens in the south.

The aide could not suppress his voice: “Heavens… could this be the birth of a peerless martial prodigy?”

Xiao Ke nodded slowly. “It seems a promising seed has sprouted. Though whether it belongs to our Empire—or to a foreign land—I cannot yet tell.”

The aide murmured, “It matters not whether it’s ours or from abroad — so long as it’s one of us, human. Whatever the cost, it must not be a newborn of the Zombie Realm.”

Xiao Ke’s face hardened. “Indeed. If a peerless martial seed were to be born to the Zombie Realm, humanity’s fate would grow far more perilous.”

He gave the order without hesitation: “Dispatch orders to the southern provincial legions — keep vigilant. Locate where this peerless martial seed has been born if you can. If it proves to be a zombie, you must snuff it out and annihilate it before it has the chance to grow.”

“Yes, Governor-General!”

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Chen Ning knew nothing that his dual martial vein awakening had rattled the capital. He sat in the afterglow of a breakthrough — he had become a double second-rank soldier.

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He had just stepped into the food hall when a handful of men blocked his way. They were his batchmates—soldiers from the regular squad who hadn’t made the elite.

The leader was pale and smug, a sneer playing at his lips; his name was Huang Haifu.

Huang Haifu was the son of Xiao Zihao’s retainer. When Xiao Zihao enlisted, Huang Haifu had followed him here. While others came as attendant scholars, Huang Haifu was the young master’s sparring companion in arms. He’d been Xiao Zihao’s lackey for years; now that the young master had joined the camp, Huang Haifu had come along too. He hadn’t made the elite—only the ordinary squad—but he’d heard the master speak of Chen Ning’s prize Tang sword, the Dragon Fang. The tone had been tinged with envy.

So this morning, eager to curry favor with his lord, Huang Haifu gathered a few cronies and waited for Chen Ning at the mess, planning to snatch the Dragon Fang. In his mind the camp was a jungle of the strong devouring the weak: Chen Ning was only a level one soldier; Huang Haifu, a second-rank. Stealing the blade would be nothing—what could Chen Ning do? Run crying to the instructor? The instructor would only disdain him.

He swaggered forward now and demanded, “Hand it over!”

Chen Ning froze. “Hand over what?”

Huang Haifu jabbed a finger at the Dragon Fang at Chen Ning’s hip. “That sword. Scum like you don’t deserve it. Give it to me now, or don’t blame the young master’s men when we bash your balls flat.”

A corner of Chen Ning’s mouth lifted in a cold smile. “You lot? And who’s going to make me?”