Chapter 31: Swimming Dragon

Chapter 31: The Wandering Dragon

“WAAAGH!!!”

It was not a mere roar.

It was more like a psychic shockwave, coalesced from hundreds of chaotic wills, mixed with the most primal, unadorned lust for slaughter—like an invisible hammer, smashing brutally into the depths of every freshman’s soul in Class Three, Grade One.

Then, the earth began to tremble with a frequency that chilled the heart.

Dark red gravel danced underfoot, as if shivering in anticipation of the coming tide of destruction.

A green torrent erupted violently from the mine shaft, which gaped like the maw of an abyss!

Over a hundred greenskin boyz, brandishing rusted, misshapen choppas, axes, and metal clubs, formed this wave of annihilation.

Their charge was utterly chaotic—shoving, trampling over their own kin, all to be the first to reach the enemy and sink their blades into flesh.

The overwhelming stench, a foul mixture of rust, sulfur, and rotting matter from unknown creatures, nearly made several weaker-willed students vomit on the spot.

“Boom—!”

The students’ defensive line and the green tide collided with a thunderous crash on the wasteland.

In that first instant of contact, these geniuses, raised in simulators and training halls, came to deeply understand the chasm between “real combat” and “training”—a chasm forged of blood and death.

A boy, agile with his sword and ranked in the top twenty thousand of the high school entrance exam, faced a roaring greenskin boy. Calmly, he sidestepped, his alloy longsword tracing a graceful arc, precisely parrying the heavy blow.

“Clang!”

A crisp ring of metal.

He succeeded, but a brute, unreasonable force—unlike anything he had ever felt in training—surged up his arm through the blade.

His entire right arm went numb in an instant, his tiger’s mouth torn with searing pain, and the sword nearly slipped from his grasp.

That thousandth-of-a-second freeze was fatal on a real battlefield.

Before he could adjust his stance, another greenskin, charging from his blind spot, bared its bloody maw. Its axe, reeking of gore, swung with savage simplicity straight at his head.

His pupils dilated in an instant.

“Watch out!”

His roommate let out a heart-wrenching cry, throwing himself forward, using his own body to shove the boy aside while raising his shield.

“Thud!”

The heavy axe slammed into the alloy shield with a deafening crash.

The shield-bearing boy was sent stumbling backward, his feet gouging two deep furrows in the ground, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

This was but a microcosm of the entire battlefield.

The seemingly perfect pocket formation, meticulously devised by Chu Lan before the battle, was instantly shattered by the greenskins’ mindless, suicidal charge—a tactic that ignored all strategy and simply threw lives into the fray.

The students’ advantage lay in skill and equipment; the greenskins’ lay in numbers, their fearless will, and a killing instinct honed through countless bloody skirmishes—far beyond what these hothouse flowers possessed.

A girl, using a nimble dagger, slit open a greenskin boy’s belly. Dark green intestines and entrails spilled out, reeking of foulness.

Her face paled; she instinctively stepped back.

But the greenskin seemed utterly unfazed.

It merely glanced down at its own spilled guts, then, with its free hand, roughly stuffed them back into its abdominal cavity. With an even more frenzied roar, its bloodshot eyes locked onto the girl, and it raised its choppa once more.

This madness, transcending the concept of life and death, shattered the mental defenses of some students.

“Ah—!”

A boy, surrounded by three greenskins and with a wound on his arm that cut to the bone, finally broke.

He dropped his weapon, let out a terrified scream, and turned to flee.

“Stop! Come back!”

Chu Lan’s voice rang out sharply in the team channel, but it was too late.

The fleeing boy had run less than ten meters before a greenskin, charging from the flank, brought its axe down on his back, felling him.

In the distance, Wu Shangfeng’s figure vanished and reappeared, dragging the boy out of the fray—otherwise, he would have been instantly swallowed by the surging green tide.

“Hold the line! Steady, damn it!”

Chu Lan’s roar carried a note of uncontrollable urgency and anger. “By dormitory units, groups of four, back to back! Abandon the perimeter, collapse toward the center! Form a circular formation!”

His orders were timely and correct.

But in the midst of this chaos, a cold, scythe-like gleam of a blade suddenly flared.

Shi Potian!

He had stood at the very front from the start, facing at least five greenskins head-on without retreating a single step.

His expression was as cold as ice, his eyes utterly unruffled, as if the ravening monsters before him were no different from the stationary targets on the training ground.

He moved.

No wasted motion—just a simple, textbook step forward.

His war blade traced a line in the air—a line so clean, so minimal, that the naked eye could barely follow it.

*Shluck!*

The unstoppable edge effortlessly tore through the air—and through the throats of three greenskin boyz standing in his path.

No great sound, no flashy light show—only the faint, grating noise of steel slicing through flesh.

Three ugly green heads, still wearing expressions of disbelief, flew into the air almost simultaneously.

Hot, dark green blood spurted like fountains from their severed necks.

Shi Potian’s thunderous strike, like a divine pillar steadying the sea, instantly stabilized the wavering student line.

Instinctively, they began to cluster around him, following Chu Lan’s orders, rapidly contracting into defensive circles of four—shaky, but at last formed.

The battle, from its initial rout, gradually settled into a steady grind.

…

“Nice hook!”

Not far away, a boy hard-pressed by two greenskins watched as one of his assailants was precisely “hooked” by the ankle with a spear thrust from the side—courtesy of Qin Feng.

The greenskin lost its balance, stumbled, and its massive body crashed straight toward the boy, perfectly blocking the attack path of the other greenskin in front of him.

Seizing that fleeting opportunity, the boy roared “Nice hook!” and thrust his longsword straight through the off-balance greenskin’s heart.

“Nice block!”

In another squad, a girl was about to be struck by a huge axe. She had already closed her eyes, bracing for impact.

But the anticipated pain never came—only a crisp *clang*.

She opened her eyes to find Qin Feng had somehow moved to her front flank, his long spear held like an unyielding barrier, firmly parrying the lethal blow. The spear shaft didn’t even tremble.

Every move Qin Feng made was so unhurried, so perfectly timed.

The spear in his hand seemed to possess a life of its own.

Sometimes like a venomous snake emerging from its hole, in the gaps between enemy attacks, it thrusts from an inconceivable angle, leaving wounds on the greenskins’ bodies that, though not fatal, are enough to slow their movements.

Sometimes like a nimble fish, it uses the spear shaft to constantly parry and deflect, guiding the enemy’s attacks into empty space or toward their own comrades, sowing chaos.

Every attack he made, every defense he executed, seemed so unhurried, so effortless.

He had taken the two words “Wandering Dragon” and performed them to perfection.

With minimal expenditure of physical strength, he achieved maximum tactical effect.

This was the true essence of the *Thousand-Army Spear*, a spear technique created for large-scale, prolonged battlefield slaughter!

“Qin Feng, left flank! That one’s about to charge!”

Qian Duoduo roared hoarsely, his massive body like a moving wall of flesh. Each swing of his heavy hammer carried a howling, vicious wind, smashing a greenskin lad who tried to approach into broken bones and mangled flesh.

But the greenskins were too many. He had just sent one flying when another greenskin howled past his defensive range, raising a rusted cleaver high, slashing straight at Qin Feng’s unguarded back.

Qin Feng didn’t even turn his head.

The alloy spear in his hands, as if an extension of his own body, shot backward with a speed that arrived before the blow, delivering a sudden parry.

“Clang!”

A crisp, piercing sound of metal striking metal rang out clearly across the chaotic battlefield.

That deadly cleaver was precisely deflected by the spear shaft.

Borrowing the force of the rebound, Qin Feng spun his body like a top, and the spear in his hands transformed into a silver streak that sought life and claimed souls—a dragon unleashed!

Every move he used was the most basic, the most unadorned technique from the *Thousand-Army Spear*.

Under the siege of three greenskin lads, his figure moved like a butterfly flitting among flowers, constantly shifting, dodging, and weaving.

He was not like Shi Potian, who pursued the ultimate destructive power of a single fatal blow.

His strength and speed were not top-notch in the class; a single thrust could not even fully pierce the skin and muscle of a stronger greenskin.

But his mastery of timing, distance, and the application of force had reached a level of pure refinement.

A greenskin swung a battle-axe, chopping down at his head.

Qin Feng neither dodged nor avoided. With a flick of his wrist, the spear tip rose lightly at an extremely tricky angle.

“Tap!”

That tap, neither off-center nor off-mark, struck the greenskin’s wrist nerve precisely.

The greenskin felt his wrist go numb, a piercing pain shooting through it. His fingers involuntarily loosened, and the heavy battle-axe clattered to the ground with a “bang.”

Another greenskin swept in from the side, aiming at his lower body.

Qin Feng shifted his footwork, pressed the spear shaft downward, and gave a gentle “deflect.”

This deflection, seemingly casual, contained the exquisite force of using four ounces to move a thousand pounds.

He did not resist the sweeping force head-on; instead, he followed the opponent’s momentum, lightly guiding the spear head, and that powerful strike brushed past his pant leg, hitting nothing but air.

“Roar!”

Seeing that they could not break through, two more greenskin lads, drawn by the battle, howled and charged over.

Five greenskins, from five different directions, launched a simultaneous assault, completely sealing off all of Qin Feng’s escape routes.

“Qin Feng!”

Qian Duoduo’s face turned pale with shock. He wanted to rush forward to help, but was tightly entangled by his own opponent, unable to spare a hand.

At that critical moment,

Qin Feng’s eyes suddenly sharpened.

He took a deep breath, his feet rooted to the ground as if they had taken root. The alloy spear in his hands, under his movement, instantly transformed into an impenetrable circular barrier shimmering with silver light.

Spear shadows layered thick, water could not seep through!

He had not yet learned the three killing moves of the *Thousand-Army Spear*; he merely linked the four most basic defensive techniques—“deflect, block, parry, sweep”—at a speed so fast they seamlessly merged into one.

Ding! Ding! Clang! Clang!

A series of metallic clashes, as dense as rain beating on banana leaves, erupted wildly before him.

The five greenskins’ cleavers and battle-axes hacked madly from all directions, yet none could breach that seemingly flimsy line of spear shadows.

All attacks were dissolved one by one with an inconceivably exquisite skill.

“Fine spearwork!”

Shi Potian, who had been circling nearby seeking an opening, flashed a gleam in his eyes.

He seized the invaluable opportunity Qin Feng had created, moving like lightning to close in.

The war blade in his hand brought streaks of bone-chilling, deathly cold light, and like cutting through tofu, it precisely swept across the necks of those greenskins who were fully focused on attacking Qin Feng, their backs wide open.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

Three heads flew up in response, and three headless bodies, still in attacking postures, crashed to the ground.

Almost at the same moment, Qin Feng’s spear momentum abruptly shifted from defense to offense.

He exerted force from his waist, channeling all his power through his spine layer by layer, finally converging at the spear tip.

“Ha!”

With a low shout, the spear in his hand thrust forward with an unyielding, fierce momentum.

Shiiik—

The remaining two greenskin lads were solidly pierced by that immense force, letting out a shrill scream as they were run through, cold and dead.

In just a few breaths, the immense pressure faced by the three-man squad of Dorm 402 was completely dismantled by their near-perfect coordination.

Qin Feng’s spear technique, on this chaotic battlefield of flying flesh and blood, displayed a dominance far exceeding his own level of strength.

He was not like Shi Potian, an unstoppable, ever-forward spear.

He was more like an indestructible reef, a stabilizing pillar that could at any moment seize an opportunity to launch a deadly counterattack.

Under his support and defense, Shi Potian’s killing efficiency was greatly enhanced, and Qian Duoduo could unleash the impact of his heavy hammer without restraint.

The three-man squad of Dorm 402, like a sharp and resilient dagger, was firmly anchored on the left flank of the entire battle line.

Not only did they hold their own ground, but they even had the spare strength to continuously support other dorm squads nearby that were locked in desperate, perilous struggles.

“Incredible! Such divine spearwork!”

Chu Lan was overjoyed.

He shouted in the team channel: “Fight around 402! Everyone follow 402’s rhythm!”

The students stirred, instinctively obeying the command under the pressure of life and death, slowly closing in on Dorm 402.

As time passed, the overall battlefield situation, under Shi Potian’s powerful assault and Qin Feng’s steady control, began to tilt irreversibly, bit by bit, in the students’ favor.

The students gradually adapted to the greenskins’ combat rhythm. Their initial fear and panic had long been replaced by boiling blood and the will to survive.

They began to skillfully use their own techniques, cooperating with their roommates, calmly and efficiently reaping greenskin lives.

When the largest greenskin leader, wielding a bone cleaver, was finally split in two by Shi Potian and Chu Lan under the siege, the entire battlefield’s atmosphere underwent a qualitative shift.

WAAAGH……

The greenskins' roar, once so fervent it could shake the soul, began to falter, to waver, even to tremble with a hint of fear.

Their crimson eyes, blazing with the flames of chaos and cruelty, slowly dimmed.

An emotion called "terror"—one they had not felt in ages—spread like a plague through the hearts of these beasts, who knew only slaughter.

The swings of their cleavers grew hesitant.

Their charge no longer knew no fear of death.

Then, a sight that astonished every newcomer unfolded.

The eight or nine remaining greenskin lads on the battlefield—their bodies, like balloons suddenly drained of moisture and courage, began to shrivel, shrink, and dwindle at a visible pace.

Their muscles, once knotted like rock, turned slack and feeble.

Their skin, once deep as ink, rapidly faded to a pallid yellow.

The savage aura that could chill ordinary men vanished in mere seconds.

"Run!"

From one of the greenskins, now shrunk to half a man's size, came a piercing, ear-splitting shriek of boundless terror.

With a clatter, it dropped its weapon and fled, scrambling on all fours.

The others, as if waking from a dream, cast aside their arms and armor, scattering like terrified curs toward the distant dark red wasteland.

(End of chapter)