Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei's War Journey

Chapter 60 The Beginning of the Devilish Training

A piercing whistle rang out, accompanied by Sergeant Hermann's furious roar.

"Get up now! You pigs! Lazybones! Parasites of the empire! You have three minutes. If I don't see you all fully armed and standing on the parade ground, you're dead!"

The barracks erupted in chaos. The new recruits were jolted awake from their nightmares. It was still dark outside, and they could only grope around aimlessly in the darkness.

Some people bumped into each other, occasionally letting out exclamations and curses.

In their panic, some people put on the wrong pants, some couldn't find their boots, and some were so exhausted from yesterday that their limbs went weak and they rolled off the communal bed.

Lu Mingfei sat up almost reflexively. He hadn't taken off his clothes when he went to sleep yesterday, so now he could skip the dressing process. He quickly picked up the gun and backpack that were on the bedside table.

He glanced at Caesar beside him. This somewhat arrogant rich young man reacted just as quickly, even more composed than him. Caesar had already fastened his belt, his movements clean and efficient. His face showed no signs of just waking up, only a cold focus.

"Quick!" Lu Mingfei shouted, slung his backpack over his shoulder, picked up his gun, and charged towards the barracks entrance.

Caesar followed closely behind.

The other recruits were still struggling in the chaos when they saw the two had already rushed out of the barracks, which made them even more panicked.

Three minutes isn't a long time, especially in the dark, and everyone was in a flurry of activity.

When Lu Mingfei and Caesar, fully armed, stood on the parade ground, the parade ground was still empty, with only a few dim gas lamps swaying in the morning breeze, illuminating the figures of Sergeant Hermann and several officers behind him.

Sergeant Hermann's gaze fell on Lu Mingfei and Caesar, who were the first to rush out, and lingered for a moment on their neat uniforms and tightly gripped rifles.

However, he didn't say anything. He just raised his wrist and looked at the watch on his wrist that was worn backwards. It was 4:32, and the second hand was still ticking.

One after another, new recruits tumbled and crawled out of the barracks. Some were disheveled, some had their backpacks askew, and some even forgot their rifles and ran back to get them, crying and shouting. The scene was extremely chaotic.

The second hand quickly completed its final revolution, and three minutes were up.

"Stop!" Sergeant Hermann shouted.

At least a third of the new recruits were still at the barracks gate or on their way when they heard the roar. They were frozen in place, their faces filled with despair.

"Those who are late, step forward!" Sergeant Hermann's voice was devoid of any warmth.

The late recruits were roughly dragged to the front of the line by the sergeants and lined up in a row. They hung their heads and trembled.

"I said, three minutes, fully armed."

Sergeant Hermann walked up to the first latecomer, a boy who looked to be only sixteen or seventeen years old, pale-faced, with his pants not even fastened.

"Where's your gun?" Sergeant Hermann asked.

"Report—Reporting, sir—I—I forgot—" the boy replied, his voice trembling with tears.

Sergeant Herman didn't waste any words and lashed the boy's thigh with his whip.

"Ah!" the boy screamed and fell to the ground.

"Useless!" Sergeant Herman didn't even look at him and walked to the next one.

The whistling of whips and screams rose and fell, sounding particularly bleak in the cold dawn wind. The new recruits who arrived on time were silent as cicadas in winter, their heads bowed, not daring to look at their comrades' miserable state, much less at Sergeant Hermann's cold face.

Lu Mingfei and Caesar stood at the front of the line, expressionless, but Lu Mingfei couldn't help but feel a pang of pity as he glanced at the new recruits being whipped.

After the punishment was completed, the recruits who had been whipped were allowed to return to their units.

"Listen up, everyone!" Sergeant Herman faced the ranks again, his gaze sweeping over each person, pausing particularly on Lu Mingfei and Caesar.

"Yesterday's run was just to wake you up. From today onward, you will learn how to be a real soldier, not a burden wasting bullets on the battlefield!"

"First item: military posture! Stand up straight! Head up! Chest out! Stomach in! Eyes forward! Imagine that you are facing His Majesty the Emperor! Anyone who dares to move will be whipped!"

The tedious and painful military posture training began. No matter the country or the era, military posture is always the primary goal of training.

In the gradually brightening morning light, the new recruits, like wooden stakes forcibly driven into the ground, struggled to maintain their stiff posture under the hawk-like gaze of the sergeants and the ever-present threat of the whip.

Sweat streamed down their foreheads and necks, soaking their collars; their legs, initially aching, gradually became numb; the sun rose, and the temperature began to climb.

Lu Mingfei and Caesar were still standing at the front. Lu Mingfei felt his calves trembling uncontrollably. He had run for several hours yesterday and then stood for several hours now, and his body had not recovered at all.

Caesar stood as still as a marble statue, barely swaying except for his faint breathing, demonstrating astonishing physical control and willpower.

Time passed slowly, and people were constantly being dragged out and punished for shaking or other reasons, with screams and the sound of whipping becoming the background noise.

After standing there for an unknown amount of time, when the sun had fully risen above the horizon, illuminating the training ground, Sergeant Hermann finally called for a halt.

"At ease!"

The new recruits felt like they had been granted a pardon, but many of them even struggled to perform the "at ease" posture properly, nearly falling over.

"Everyone, get ready for breakfast!" Sergeant Hermann shouted.

Hearing this, everyone got excited, including Lu Mingfei and Caesar. They had been running all day yesterday without eating, and now they had been standing at attention for several hours. They were starving.

"Let's go." Seeing the excited crowd, Sergeant Herman gave a strange smile and led the group in one direction.

Lu Mingfei and the others felt a chill run down their spines when they saw the smile on Sergeant Herman's face. It didn't look like a good smile, and the direction he was heading didn't seem to be towards the canteen.

After walking for more than ten minutes, they came to the side of a deep pit, but they could smell a stench from afar.

Beside the deep pit were several cooks wearing gas masks, with large buckets of bean paste at their feet.

When the new recruits, including Lu Mingfei, smelled the stench, they began to gag. It was a completely instinctive reaction that they couldn't control.

If his stomach weren't completely empty, Lu Mingfei felt he could have vomited it all out; some of the new recruits next to him had already started vomiting stomach acid.

Even Caesar, standing nearby, looked extremely pale and barely managed to hold back from vomiting.

"This is the stench of a corpse—" Caesar said, his face ashen. When he was in school in Kassel, his teachers had taught them about it and even made them smell the stench of rotting corpses. He had only taken one sniff and had never forgotten the smell.

Humans have an extraordinary sensitivity to the smell of corpses. This characteristic stems from an evolutionary survival mechanism. When olfactory receptors detect key components such as cadaverine and putrescine, the brain triggers a fear response within 0.1 seconds. This speed advantage ensures that humans can quickly get away from potential threats.

However, Sergeant Hermann seemed oblivious to the surrounding atmosphere, calmly approaching the pit.

"You're in luck. Two pigs died of disease in the camp a few days ago, which will be perfect for your training. Now, you're to sit around this pit and finish all the food we've given you. This is your only meal today, so please cherish it," Sergeant Hermann shouted.

Sergeant Herman's words shattered everyone's expectations for breakfast. They would rather eat by the latrine than here; the smell here was worse than the latrine itself.

"No—I don't want to—" a young recruit muttered to himself, taking a step back.

Snapped!

A riding crop lashed across his shoulder without mercy, leaving a bloody welt.

"Anyone who dares to back down or refuses to eat will have their training doubled today, and there will be no food!" Sergeant Hermann shouted sternly, his eyes fierce.

Lu Mingfei suppressed the churning in his stomach and his physical nausea. His face was extremely pale. He had experienced hunger in the Andes Mountains and had even been in close contact with corpses, but even this stench of death was unbearable for him.

He looked at Caesar, the heir of the Gattuso family, whose lips were tightly pressed together and whose icy blue eyes burned with anger. Clearly, this training method had exceeded his expectations and even touched the bottom line of his dignity. But now he was just an ordinary soldier, no longer the heir of the Gattuso family.

"Line up! Get your breakfast! Then find a seat by the pit! Hurry up!" The sergeants began to urge Lu Mingfei and his men on.

The recruits, like zombies, were driven by whips, lining up to the cooks who wore gas masks and had expressionless faces. Each of them received a bowl of thick bean paste and half a piece of black bread harder than a rock.

They were then forced to walk to the edge of the pit that emitted a strong stench. The pit wasn't deep, and Lu Mingfei and the others could see two dead pigs below. The pigs had already begun to rot, and they were crawling with white maggots the size of grains of rice. At the same time, countless flies were swarming around the pit.

"Sit down! Eat!" Sergeant Herman stood on the other side of the pit, arms crossed, coldly supervising them.

Lu Mingfei, holding the bowl of warm bean paste, found a slightly cleaner spot by the pit and sat down. The nauseating stench was everywhere, reaching straight to the top of his head.

He closed his eyes, trying to reduce his breathing as much as possible, his mind flashing wildly with images of Nono's face and his struggle for survival in the Andes Mountains.

He had to eat this food, otherwise he wouldn't have the energy to complete the afternoon's training. Although it smelled a bit bad, at least it was ordinary food, and he didn't have to eat human flesh.

He picked up the half-bread, broke off a small piece, dipped it in some bean paste, and without daring to look at it again, stuffed it directly into his mouth. He chewed it with all his might and swallowed it. The rough food slid down his esophagus, and his stomach convulsed at the same time, but he forced himself to continue.

Suppressed vomiting and sobbing could be heard from the side. Someone was trying to quietly throw away the food, but was immediately spotted by the sharp-eyed Sergeant Hermann.

"Want to waste food? You parasites of the Empire!" Sergeant Herman grinned, lashing his whip down hard, then grabbed a paste-like substance covered in mud and grass clippings and roughly shoved it into the recruit's gaping mouth, which was agape in fear and pain, forcing him to swallow.

Seeing this, no one dared to secretly throw away the food anymore, and they all started eating.

However, the recruit couldn't stand it and immediately vomited up the food he had just eaten. But Sergeant Hermann, who was next to him, grabbed his hair without saying a word and pressed his face hard onto the vomit.

Caesar sat not far from Lu Mingfei, his movements stiff but resolute.

Unlike Lu Mingfei, he didn't close his eyes. Instead, he opened them wide and stared intently at the dead pig and the wriggling maggots in the pit. At the same time, he expressionlessly put the food into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

His eyes were terrifyingly cold, so cold they seemed to want to kill, but he hadn't forgotten his current identity; he was a soldier, and soldiers must obey orders.

Time passed slowly amidst extreme pain and torment; every bite of food and every breath of air was a form of torture.

Lu Mingfei didn't know how he finished the bowl of bean paste and half a loaf of bread. When he put down the empty bowl, he felt like he had completed a marathon. He was drenched in cold sweat and his stomach was churning, but at least the food was in.

He looked around and saw many people still struggling in pain, eating and vomiting at the same time, and being forced to continue eating after vomiting. The scene almost made him vomit again, so he quickly turned away and stopped looking.

Sergeant Hermann watched this scene without any change in expression.

"Very good! It seems you're not entirely hopeless. At least you know to obey orders and that filling your stomachs is the most important thing." He clapped his hands and said this after everyone had finished eating.

"Remember this smell. This is the smell of the battlefield. It's a constant presence on the battlefield. You might eat next to the corpses of your comrades, rest in shell craters filled with mud and blood, or share your shelter with rats and maggots."

"You must adapt. You must eat without flinching in this environment. If you can't even handle this little appetizer, then I sincerely suggest you find a bullet or use your bayonet to end it all, so you don't end up on the front lines, dying because of weak legs, vomiting, or spacing out, and dragging down your comrades as well."

"Now, everyone stand up! Target: shooting range! Run! March!"

The recruits stood up numbly and, urged by the sergeants, began running towards the firing range.

Lu Mingfei and Caesar ran in the group, neither of them speaking, but after the breakfast they had just had, they were both holding back their anger, like volcanoes about to erupt.