Article 18 Chapter 1 Clause (5)

  "This time, I will definitely be the first." Yang Xian said, and then began to warm up.

  "Stay calm, stay calm." said San Zhang.

  "I understand."

  "Xiao Lie, does Yang Xian from Class 3 have a grudge against you?" Li Yifan asked.

  "No," Xiao Lie said.

  "How could he always want to win you over?" Liu Ye said.

  "It's natural for every man to have a competitive spirit, there's nothing strange about it. Moreover, if one doesn't have an opponent to compete with, how boring would that be?" Xiao Lie said.

  "Xiao Ran, this 400-meter hurdle is not your strong point. Just do your best and don't be overconfident. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future." Zhao Zhuangjie said, he was worried that if Xiao Ran wasn't careful, he might get hurt in the hurdles, which was different from long-distance running.

  "Understood, class monitor."

  Compared to Xiao Lie, Yang Xian appeared on the scene a bit earlier. Before that, his best result was four minutes, but when he ran 3:30, the squad leader thought it would be no problem for Yang Xian to take first place. Seeing this result, Xiao Lie felt shocked and amazed in his heart. The 400-meter hurdle race is different from others, with high walls and barbed wire, which consumes a lot of physical strength. All the new recruits felt that they had no chance when they saw this result.

  When it was Xiao Lie's turn, he walked calmly to the starting line. When the starting gun fired, he sprinted towards the finish line.

  "Go for it!"

  "Go for it!"

  "Go for it!"

  When the cheers erupted all around, Xiao Lie had already darted under the barbed wire and was slithering forward like a snake, his movements extremely practiced.

  "Xiao Lie! If you can get first place, I'll wash dishes for a week!" Li Yifan shouted loudly.

  "If you can get first place, I'll wash your clothes for a week." Liu Ye shouted.

  Yang Xian, who was outside the court, narrowed his eyes and stared at Xiao Lie's figure, his face expressionless. At this moment, his expression relaxed, because he saw Xiao Lie fall straight to the ground from the 2.5-meter-high wall.

  At the moment he landed, Xiao Lie felt a shock in his body, and then a painful feeling suddenly rushed to his brain. However, in an instant, he got up again and rushed towards the next target.

  "Great!" Liu Ye exclaimed. Just now, when he saw Xiao Lie fall from up there, his heart tightened. From such a high place, falling down would normally result in external injuries at the very least, and if the movement wasn't right, spraining or breaking joints was also common. But now it seemed like nothing major had happened to him.

  In Zhao Zhuang Jie's eyes, it looked different now, because he saw Xiao Lie's left leg clearly didn't use any strength.

  When Xiao Lie arrived at the suspension bridge, he found that his left leg was in severe pain. The suspension bridge was actually just a series of swings lined up in a row, although there were only ten, but if one didn't have a certain balance, it would be easy to fall into the water below, and here, one couldn't seek speed, only stability.

  Xiao Lie grasped the first swing and then suddenly grabbed the second one, followed by the third, the entire movement was done in one breath.

  "Good!" Zhao Zhuangjie shouted.

  The new recruits on the side also shouted along.

  When Xiao Lie finished the course in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, some people cheered because a new record was born, which is even more glorious for the new recruits of the same class as Xiao Lie. Although many people didn't care about this two-second difference, if it were 0.5 seconds more, the champion and runner-up would have been produced. Xianyang, who was outside the venue, heard this result and slammed his fist on the snowy ground.

  Behind the cheers, Xiao Lie felt a sharp pain in his left leg, and he also paid the price for his first place - muscle strain.

  Although being first in this way does not come with any rewards or certificates, it is enough for Xiao Lie, because only by becoming excellent can he get closer to his goal.

  "Come on, you have to rest for at least half a month now. Let's see how things go after that." Zhao Zhuangjie handed the medicine to Xiao Lie and said.

  "What about when I'm worried about my grades?" Xiao Lie asked.

  "Falling from such a high place without getting hurt is already good enough, you still want to train? Half a month's time won't be enough to achieve anything, if you want to train, you can do some physical training." Zhao Zhuangjie said.

  "That kid was ruthless enough to himself today, actually daring to use a needle to stimulate his own potential. Normally, people would feel pain after getting injected with one shot, and then their movements would become very tense, resulting in fatigue. But he's fine, he even managed to hypnotize himself, and really surpassed Yang Xian's record of three classes." Coach Zhang Mo said.

  "Hmm, indeed not bad, a good seedling, with a military man's momentum of breaking the cauldron and sinking the boat. He can be cruel to himself, so he won't go easy on his enemies either. I thought someone like him would be independent and alone, but he gets along well with his fellow new recruits. This shows that he has a humble mindset." Wu Minghui said: "But during the 400-meter obstacle course, this kid was too eager to succeed and paid the price. Alas, it's all because of this, all because of this."

  "Lao Wu, we need to keep a closer eye on this kind of seedling. And also need to train him more."

  "Look up, what do you see?" Wu Minghui shouted loudly.

  "Attention!" The new recruits shouted in unison.

  "Right! Right, it's a military flag. But do you know what you've done? Look at your quality, look at your spirit, one month has passed, but you're still like a group of toddlers who just learned to walk. I can responsibly tell you that the place you are in is the most rigorous and demanding place for military training in the entire army. Do you know why? Because here we border eight countries, here foreign spies and terrorists are always active, if war breaks out, we will face attacks from multiple countries. Here what we learn is to be prepared to sacrifice ourselves at any time for our nation behind us. But look at you guys, in my eyes, you're just a pile of trash, a group of trash that can be eliminated by your enemies at any time. If you want to survive, you must learn to be cruel to yourself, only those who are cruel to themselves have the qualification to be cruel to their enemies."

  "Tired?" Wu Minghui called out.

  "Not tired!"

  "Is it cold?"

  "It's not cold!"

  "Alright, let's take a hot bath then. Everyone gather at the training ground, I want you all to run ten laps!"

  The new recruits had long been accustomed to the hot water baths mentioned by Wu Minghui. When they first arrived, as soon as they heard that they were going to take a hot bath, the soldiers were very excited, but soon discovered that it was not what they thought. After several rounds, their bodies indeed felt moist like after taking a bath, only to find out that the water was just their own sweat.

  The soldiers started running exercises when Xiao Lie was doing pull-ups on the parallel bars at one side of the playground. The iron bar with a layer of ice was very cold and slippery. Xiao Lie scraped off the thin ice from it, grasped the parallel bars tightly with both hands, and a chill ran down his arms, numbing them. However, he didn't care and started doing pull-ups.

  After completing a set of pull-ups, he immediately lay down in the snow and started doing sit-ups, with snow sticking to his clothes, slowly melting into water, seeping into his cotton jacket, but he didn't care at all. After finishing a set of sit-ups, he got up again and started doing pull-ups, alternating between the two exercises, resting for only one minute in between. Before long, wisps of heat rose from his body, and sweat flowed down his cheeks.

  When the soldiers practiced boxing, he stood in front of the sandbag. Although his left leg was disabled, he still had both hands. Among the soldiers, only he punched the hardest and heaviest every time, as if the sandbag had an irreconcilable feud with him. After a night, the sandbag would be frozen stiff. Although he wore a pair of gloves on his hands, hitting the sandbag was no different from hitting a stone.

  If saying that a strong desire to win is a driving force, then when Xiao Lie didn't relax his demands on himself, and there was someone else on the training field who was even more demanding of himself than before, that person was Yang Xian. It's as if some people were born to be role models, and from the moment Yang Xian saw Xiao Lie for the first time, he felt like he had found a rival. As time went on, the entire new recruit camp knew about this pair of arch-enemies, although the two people had never interacted with each other, never spoken, and never had any conflicts, but it was as if an invisible hand had placed them in opposition to each other, sizing each other up and competing with each other.

  "Do you still remember the welcome dinner when we first arrived?" Li Yifan said.

  "I remember," said Liu Ye.

  "That was the best meal we've ever had."

  "Right, I remember that at the time we were given a hot bath first, and then dragged into the cafeteria. After listening to a few words, we started eating. We were so tired after eating that we almost died. And then we had to listen to Old Classmate Liu talk for half a day before we could sleep."

  "Want to take a look at our Xiao Ban, this week is quite miserable, originally injured can have a good rest, but still training like crazy, is there a tendency of self-abuse?" Li Yifan said.

  "Alright, compared to him, Yang Xian from Class 3 is just the same. Do you think these two have a grudge against each other? They're fighting like their lives depend on it. Is this interesting?"

  "There must be a grudge from their past lives. These two have never spoken a word to each other since they met, but the gaze exchanged between them is like 7.62mm bullets."

  "What are you two talking about?" Xiao Lie appeared in front of them and asked.

  "Say your archenemy." Liu Ye said: "To be honest, you're going on like this, aren't you tired?"

  "Tired." Xiao Lie said: "Not tired is strange, I'm already dead from exhaustion."

  "What's wrong with you?" Li Yifan said.

  "It sounds good to say that competition is an upward momentum, but to put it bluntly, I'd rather die than make peace with him. This leg of mine was also given by him, and this face, I just can't swallow." Xiao Lie said.

  "Ah, Vice Squad Leader, you're not usually like this." Liu Ye said: "Didn't we say to treat our comrades with the warmth of spring?"

  "Alright, you have warmth, go and talk about it."

  "No, forget it." Liu Ye thought of Yang Xian's cold eyes and didn't want to anymore.