chapter v. eternal night and dawn

　　Thousand Nights was incredibly tired at the moment, from his body to his mind, and in the blink of an eye, he fell into a deep sleep. 　　But after only three hours, Chiyo was awakened by the shrill ringing of a bell. Almost instantly Long Hai's order stabbed into his mind, he immediately got up, lunged over and grabbed the clothes thrown at the end of the bed and put them on as fast as he could, in the process of course he couldn't help but to touch the whip marks on his back, whereupon the pain caused him to suck in a breath of cold air again. 　　From the time they got up to the assembly, these kids only had five minutes, and the last three would get an additional punishment of three lashes. 　　Nearly numbly, Chiyo stepped into line, and nearly numbly, as ordered, began to start running along the path up the hill. By the time he finished running the five kilometers and finally returned to the original point, he was truly numb. 　　On this run, thanks to the experience of surviving in a garbage dump, Chiyo did quite well and was the tenth to run back to the finish line. 　　Next was an hour of strength training, and those who didn't complete the amount of training would be given a whip. The skinny Chiyo was unfortunate enough to receive a whip. 　　This was just the beginning, the whip would be the thing that would impress these kids the most during the rest of the training. 　　Strength training ended before it was time for breakfast. 　　Breakfast was the most praiseworthy part of the entire training camp, not only was there a wide variety of food, but there was also an unlimited amount of food, so you could eat as much as you wanted without any limitations, except for time. The allotted time for breakfast was thirty minutes, long enough to border on extravagant, so no one would go over. 　　The past day's experience had long since taught these children that any behavior beyond the allotted time limit would be rewarded with a whip. 　　There were sons of prestigious clans in the Yellow Springs training camp, but the vast majority of them were civilian children selected from all over the world, and there were also a few orphans who had similar experiences as Chiyo. Those children who had struggled with hunger for years saw such a sumptuous first meal and most of them lost control and ate desperately, fearing that they wouldn't have this opportunity next time. 　　Qianye, however, cautiously ate until he was slightly fuller than normal and stopped. In the junkyard, he hadn't seen too many people accidentally pick up a large bag of food, only to be propped up instead. 　　Breakfast time was over, and when the hypnotic bell rang, the children rushed like a tidal wave to the front door. At that moment an accident occurred when a little girl suddenly fell to the ground, and then rolled over in agony, hissing and screaming continually, and in a moment ceased to move. 　　She had eaten so much that she had given away her life. 　　This breakfast, and this little girl, taught moderation to the children who survived. 　　After breakfast, there was training again. The whole day was a variety of drills, and all of them had to do with strength and endurance. 　　Halfway through each training program, Chiyo felt like he was going to be unable to keep going. However, the stubbornness and perseverance he had since childhood supported him, allowing his small body to do the required movements one by one in numbness to complete the training tasks. The days at the junkyard taught him that even in the most desperate times, as long as you grit your teeth and keep going, you will always see tomorrow. 　　When finally laying down on his bed again, Qianye didn't even know how this day had come to pass. This time he didn't hurt himself anymore, and was sleeping on his back. And there were three whip marks on his tender back. 　　Almost as soon as he got into bed, Chiyo immediately drifted off to sleep. This night he had a dream that was filled with the windy sound of whips slicing through the air. 　　At six o'clock in the morning, the ear-piercing bell woke Chiyo from his sleep. He jumped out of bed with a flip, then dressed all by instinct and rushed out of the barracks at full speed. Throughout the entire process, he didn't even fully open his eyes. 　　As soon as he left the barracks, the sunlight that greeted him instantly pierced Qianye's eyes. He suddenly remembered that it was supposed to be the dark season, so how come there was sunlight at six o'clock? 　　In the next moment, Qianye realized that he was no longer in a junkyard, but had arrived in the middle continent where the empire was located: the Qin. The sunlight here was rarely blocked by the other upper continents, so naturally there was sunlight at six o'clock. 　　Chiyo only froze for a blink-like instant before rushing to her position and standing as straight as a javelin. 　　A new day had begun. 　　This day, Chiyo's most vivid memory was still the whips in the hands of the instructors. He received another whip for failing to complete the required number in the allotted time. 　　The other children suffered similarly to Chiyo, with only the strongest ones not being punished. And the weakest one took five lashes and ended up collapsing on the ground, unable to stand up by his own strength, and he was immediately dragged away from the training ground. And since then, Chiyo never saw this kid again. 　　On the third night, the instructors brought a large bucket of black ointment-like stuff for the kids to apply to the whip marks. This stuff hurt to apply, very much so, even more so than when the whip landed on the body. But after most of the night of pain that made it impossible to sleep soundly, the whip marks on Chiyo's body were close to healed by early the next morning. 　　Just like that, the days passed by. Every night Chiyo would have dreams, and these dreams were all related to the whipping. 　　It wasn't until a month later that Thousand Nights had its first day without being whipped. And that night, Chiyo suddenly counted his partners who had started training in the same period. He was shocked to realize that there were only seventy-six of them around now. The more than a hundred kids at the beginning had already been missing thirty in a month's time. 　　What followed was still endless strength and endurance training, as well as endless whippings. 　　Since the bloody first day, Long Hai had stopped directly executing any children for trivial matters. Only direct violations of the ban would be executed. But that was how it was, when Qianye entered the training camp for three full months, there were still only sixty companions left around him, nearly half less. The disappearing children were mostly eliminated by the cruel training. 　　However, after three months had passed, Qianye's body had gotten much stronger, and was practically a different person from when he first entered the training camp. 　　On the first day after three months, Chiyo and her partners were brought to a building for a special class. 　　Their class was taught by a tall, beautiful woman, about twenty-seven or eighteen years old, with a uniform that could barely contain her extremely full breasts. 　　She strode up to the podium, wrote "The Nature of the World" on the blackboard, read it once, and then said, "I know most of you don't know these words, but that's okay, you have a month to learn them. I'll send you the textbook in a moment, so you'll be able to recognize the words while you're training. The exam will be in a month. Now, I'll talk about what the essence of the world we're in is." 　　The essence of the world was the Force. 　　According to this beautiful teacher named Zhang Jing, the root that supported the entire world was the Force. 　　The Force was not static, and it was also divided into two different natures: the one that favored light was known as the Dawn Force. And the one that favors darkness is the Dark Force. 　　All life is dependent on a certain side of the Force to survive, and is naturally divided into two different camps, the Dawn and the Eternal Night. However, even within the same camp, the degree to which the races favor the Dawn or the Eternal Night varies. 　　The human race was on the dawn side, while the dark races that had enslaved humanity for tens of thousands of years were on the eternal night side. Their power, and even their lives, were dependent on the Dark Force. The dark races were once incomparably powerful, and there were many branches within them, among which the Bloods, Lycans, Demons, and Human-Faced Arachnids were all powerful races with far-reaching reputations. 　　However, the human race is a strange race, and while most favor the Dawn side, there are quite a few who devote themselves to the Eternal Night. There were even some who awakened to the Dawn Force but ended up dedicating themselves to the Eternal Night. This was completely inconceivable to the dark races who were baptized in the Dark Force before they were considered adults, but it was not uncommon among humans. 　　It was said that between the eternal night and the dawn, there was the purest of the Force, yet it was rare for anyone to be able to feel the original Force, let alone cultivate it. In this world, there were also no races that corresponded to the Origin Force. 　　The Force and Cultivation ...... 　　Hearing this, Chiyo couldn't help but clench her right hand into a fist, as if to grab the remnants of warmth. That restless Crimson Moon night, that big, strong hand, was like a shimmering light in the darkness to him. 　　Zhang Jing patted the podium, and the flat, polished metal countertop parted on both sides, and with the sound of subtle mechanical rotations, a strange thing made up of countless metal wires, long and short metal branches, large and small metal gears, and more irregular components rose up and unfolded one by one in the air. This diorama was the world map. 　　The entire world was dynamic, the gears stirred, the metal wires pulled, and the components representing the continents and stars each moved slowly according to different orbits. 　　One by one, unfamiliar terms spat out from Zhang Jing's mouth. There were twenty-seven continents that had been explored by the human race in this world, and they were not standing still in the void, but slowly moving according to arcane trajectories without stopping for a moment. Above these continents, there were two suns, and around them were several different huge stars, which were said to be the moons that would be seen at night. According to the different orbits, the moon seen every night on the same continent was not the same. 　　Most of the children, including Chiyo, were baffled and could only swallow and memorize everything she said. At the same time, they stared at the model that had so many lines and was so complicated that their eyes were dizzy, hoping to memorize enough in the shortest amount of time. 　　There were only a few children from the great clans who looked like they already knew this knowledge, so they looked unperturbed by the changes. 　　"The sun's light gets blocked by the upper continents, so the lower the continent, the shorter the time it gets sunlight. Each continent's Force attribute is again all different, with some located on the dawn side and some on the eternal night side. The ones with clear Force properties were the natural habitats of each different race. There are also some continents with vague Force Attributes, and these continents are the focus of the two camps' battles." Zhang Jing's voice was melodious and spoke in depth, otherwise most children wouldn't have understood at all. 　　She pointed at the lowest group of continents and said, "This one, for example, is the one that has the longest darkness among all the continents. Although there are four seasons on the continents, they are more often divided into light and dark seasons according to the length of direct sunlight. Three months of the year is the light season, the rest is the dark season. Therefore, the survival conditions of this continent are exceptionally harsh. However, it was the origin of all the races. The Empire also rose here, although it is now dispensable on the Empire's map. This continent, which we call the Eternal Night Continent, is also known as the Forsaken Land." 　　Qianye's entire body suddenly shook, and something warm seemed to be flowing down from his eyes. This Eternal Night Continent was the place where he had lived since he could remember. In fact, in his memory, there seemed to be someone around him initially who lived together, but it was already hard to remember when, and that person left and never appeared again. 　　Without realizing it, the class had come to an end. 　　Zhang Jing took the model back to the podium before saying, "We will see you again in a month's time, and the topic of the next class is the Dawn War. This is the war in which the human race truly rises, the war of destiny, and the war in which the empire was founded."