Chapter 6: Daybreak of the Empire (1/2)

Volume 1 – Between Daybreak and Evernight, Chapter 6: Daybreak of the Empire

Zhang Jing was gone. Qianye had new early learning material in his hands when he left the classroom. He needed to memorize one thousand words every day for the next month to be able to pass Zhang Jing’s examination. The price of failure was ten entire lashes!

It was only now that Qianye understood that whips were the only hobby shared by every instructor in the Yellow Springs Training Camp.

However, their subsequent training sessions did not slow down simply because the kids needed to learn how to recognize words. The duration and amount of training did not change in the least.

Upon returning to the barracks at midnight, Qianye was so tired that he felt like his bones would fall apart. He fell asleep the moment he climbed onto the bed. Only when he was woken up by the shrill bell the following morning did he remember that he had not memorized even a single word!

Obviously, there were plenty of kids who were like Qianye. Therefore, the night after they finished the next day’s training, most of the kids forced themselves to stay awake and did everything they could to memorize the incomprehensible words.

After forcing himself to memorize his fiftieth word, he eventually could no longer stand it and collapsed on the bed. Then, he fell asleep.

Time passed just like that, and in the blink of an eye, a month’s time was swiftly gone.

Zhang Jing’s second class finally arrived, and the exam was set before the class started. During the long hour and a half, Qianye wrote down a total of one thousand and five hundred words. This was his total after a month of effort.

Qianye’s total was ranked fifth out of all the kids. The first four kids were children of aristocratic families and had learned to read and understand words since they were small. Without a doubt, Qianye sat in first place out of all of the illiterate kids. After him were three other children of aristocratic families who had been studying since they were young.

A total of eleven people failed Zhang Jing’s examination.

“It is now time for you to pay the price for underestimating my class!” Gently saying this, the beautiful woman actually raised a whip of her own accord and cracked it right at the kids who had failed to pass the exam. The strength she used was even slightly stronger than Long Hai’s!

Ten lashes was an incredibly severe punishment. Two kids were actually whipped to death right before Qianye’s eyes!

It was then that Qianye knew this beautiful teacher was even more ruthless and terrifying than Long Hai!

This exam made Qianye and all the other children realize that reading and understanding words were just as important as training one’s physique.

Zhang Jing called in two stalwart men and had them drag the two motionless children out of the room. Then, without a change in expression, she wrote down four big words—“The War of Daybreak.”

Zhang Jing became unusually grave and solemn as she wrote these four words. Even her voice became tinged with seriousness. “It has already been twelve hundred years since the War of Daybreak…”

The War of Daybreak happened at the lowest point of the Evernight Continent. It was also the very first place that the human race dwelled and reproduced, growing stronger with each passing day.

During the War of Daybreak, the human race used every power in their possession—it was the final struggle of Daybreak origin power, burning black stones, steam gushing with power, rumbling firearms, and enormous rough machinery against Darkness origin power!

During this great, decisive battle of fate that continued on and off for more than a hundred years, the human race that had awakened their origin power paid a terrible price and was left with only one tenth of their original population. However, they ultimately defeated the dark races and forever freed themselves from a fate of slavery, subservience, and being treated as livestock. They drove the dark races out of the Evernight Domain and built Qin, the very first empire with the human race as masters.

In the history of mankind, this decisive, fateful battle was known as the War of Daybreak. This was because, at the end of this war, the humans who had been living in Evernight finally saw daybreak for the first time. The very first origin power that the humans awakened was established under Daybreak, and with this war as the dividing line, the two great factions of Evernight and Daybreak were officially formed.

The War of Daybreak was not the end, but the beginning. In the past twelve hundred years, the human race gradually attacked and occupied four new continents, the lowest layer of the world to the middle layer of the world. They also began to look up at the upper continents. While the great Qin Empire officially brought a majority of the distinguished families with them, migrating to the new continent, more human nations also started to form one by one.

The War of Daybreak occurred on the Evernight Continent, but since its natural environment was too poor and its resources were extremely scarce, it ultimately became a huge, trash-filled world that was once again overtaken by the relentless dark race.

Qianye suddenly shivered at this point. For as long as he could remember, he had never left the junkyard. However, he would hear the strong adults boasting about the various features of the dark races every so often. It wasn’t a legend after all. It was true, bloody darkness.

Yet Zhang Jing’s tone and expression made him feel even colder when she spoke of them. It was a kind of calmness that lacked any compassion.

Indeed, during the last twelve hundred years, the dark races and the human race never stopped warring with each other. Battles happened on every continent and every region where their borders converged. Thousands of years had passed. Hatred and bloodshed was everywhere in abundance. The Evernight Domain was not unique among these battlefields. In fact, it was one of the most overlooked battlefields of all.

When the class finished, Qianye felt that his heart was heavy with something inexplicable that had not been there before. The rest of the kids had the same general feeling as him. They were still young and did not yet understand the weight of history. When they left the classroom, the kids immediately ran toward the training grounds like they’d grown wings. They would suffer another three lashes if they were late again.

Life returned to its normal pattern once more.

Before anyone realized it, half a year passed in the blink of an eye.