Chapter 36: The Asura Hell
Wang Ba let out a muffled grunt of pain, but his eyes grew even more ferocious. Ignoring his own wounds, he used his one good hand to clamp tightly onto his opponent’s throat, while his injured arm, using every ounce of remaining strength, struck the man’s neck at a gruesome angle.
"Crack!"
The sound of the vertebrae snapping was clearly audible.
Breathing heavily, Wang Ba tossed the corpse aside. He glanced at the gory, mangled wound on his shoulder and simply spat out a glob of blood.
He had won.
The second one.
Zhao Tieniu walked up with an expressionless face and placed fifty taels of silver in front of him.
Wang Ba snatched the silver and, without even glancing at it, shoved it into his tunic. His gaze had already shifted to the next prisoner still struggling on the field.
Once the slaughter began, it could no longer be stopped.
The training ground had been completely transformed into a hellish purgatory.
Cries of agony, the snapping of bones, furious roars, and pleas for mercy wove together into a symphony of the bloodiest and most brutal kind.
Comrades who had trained side-by-side just yesterday were now perfect, lethal partners in slaughter.
They no longer followed any formal discipline; their minds held only the moves Xiao Zhan had taught them the day before—gouging eyes, crushing throats, kicking groins, snapping joints...
Every move was fatal, with no wasted motion.
A scrawny soldier was pinned beneath a burly prisoner, on the verge of being strangled to death. His companion, a young man who usually appeared timid, now had bloodshot eyes. He picked up a stone from the ground and, like a madman, slammed it into the prisoner’s skull!
Once, twice, three times...
Only when the prisoner’s head had been reduced to a puddle of red and white pulp did he stop. He collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.
On the commander's platform, Zhang Wei’s face was drained of all color.
His stomach churned violently, and he nearly vomited several times. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight any longer.
This was not war. This was not training.
This was a slaughterhouse.
And Xiao Zhan was the butcher, standing there with a blade in hand and a smile on his face.
Qin Cang stood straight as a ramrod, but his tightly clenched fists betrayed his inner turmoil.
He forced himself to watch everything unfolding below, forcing himself to memorize every bloody scene.
He saw those soldiers who, just yesterday, stood with poor posture and mouths full of profanity, now harvesting lives in the coldest, most efficient manner possible.
Their eyes were changing rapidly.
From initial terror to mid-process madness, and now... to numbness.
Yes, numbness.
After one soldier snapped his opponent’s neck, he did not vomit like Li Ergou had; he simply stood up, wiped the blood from his hands, and walked aside to wait for the next order.
It was as if the life he had just taken was not a human being, but merely a chicken or a dog.
Less than an hour had passed.
The battle was over.
On the training ground, nearly a hundred prisoner corpses lay scattered in every direction. Not one survived.
The "Ghosts," too, had paid a heavy price.
Seven died, and over thirty were severely wounded.
The three thousand survivors were all bloodied and battered.
The air was thick with a nauseating stench of blood and sweat.
Yet, no one complained.
They simply stood there like silent, blood-stained statues, gazing at the devil standing before them.
In their eyes, the fear remained, but it was overshadowed by a complex mixture of awe, dependence, and even... worship.
It was this devil who taught them how to kill.
It was this devil who allowed them to survive the life-and-death struggle.
It was this devil who gave them cold, hard silver.
"Very good."
Xiao Zhan’s voice cut through the deathly silence.
"You finally look a little like 'Ghosts' should."
"Clear the bodies. Take the wounded for treatment."
"Everyone who survived today gets an extra five taels of silver! Add two hearty meat dishes to tonight’s dinner!"
"Roar!"
His response was a synchronized, unified roar that erupted after long suppression!
This roar made even Zhang Wei, standing on the platform, shudder.
He snapped his eyes open and looked down.
What kind of monsters were these!
Their faces were still stained with blood, and their bodies were still covered in wounds.
Yet, their eyes burned with a fire more intense than ever before!
It was a raw, naked hunger for blood and gold!
It’s over.
These two words were all that remained in Zhang Wei's mind.
This group was completely ruined. They could never go back; they could never be ordinary soldiers again.
They had become Xiao Zhan’s most loyal dogs, who knew only how to kill and obey.
Qin Cang’s Adam’s apple bobbed with difficulty.
He suddenly understood.
Xiao Zhan was not training an army at all.
He was forging a blade—a blade that belonged only to him, the sharpest and filthiest blade in existence!
This blade could be used to kill barbarians, and naturally... it could be used to kill anyone in the imperial court!
The days that followed were an endless nightmare for the "Ghost" reserve force.
Xiao Zhan’s training methods were simple, crude, and extreme.
The mornings were for limit-testing physical endurance: cross-country runs with heavy loads, obstacle courses, combat conditioning... every task was designed to push their physical limits to the brink.
The afternoons were for live combat.
Every day, new death-row prisoners were delivered to the camp.
From initial hand-to-hand combat to mutual stabbing with short knives, and later, small-unit coordination to surround and kill armed, vicious bandits.
Death became a daily routine.
Every day, people died.
And every day, others received generous rewards for killing the most and showing the most ferocity.
Money and death.
They became two swords hanging over everyone’s heads, forcing them to keep getting stronger, crueler, and more numb.
They learned how to find an enemy’s weakness in the shortest possible time.
They learned how to exchange the smallest cost for the greatest lethality.
They even learned how to step over their comrades’ corpses to collect their bounty without changing their expressions.
In just ten days.
The original group of over thirty-eight hundred men was reduced to barely three thousand.
But those three thousand were all reborn.
The hooliganism and laziness they once possessed had long since vanished. In its place was a silent, beast-like sense of danger.
They stood together without a word, yet a chilling murderous intent rose into the sky.
On this day, Xiao Zhan gathered them all together.
He looked at the killing machines he had forged and nodded with satisfaction.
"From today on, you are officially members of my 'Ghost' unit!"
"However, knowing how to kill with fists and knives is not enough!"
Xiao Zhan waved his hand.
Zhao Tieniu and the others walked up, carrying heavy wooden crates.
The moment the crates were opened, the breath of every "Ghost" soldier hitched.
Inside the crates were rows of sleek, jet-black, and menacingly designed... "Thunder God Cannons"!