Chapter 46: The First Rest Day, Re-examination!

After roughly eighteen or nineteen minutes, as the very last person crossed the finish line of his additional three-kilometer lap, Company Commander Tong Lianzhong walked away with a beaming smile, leaving the Second Company Commander standing there with a face as dark as iron.

"Beep, beep!
Fall in!"

At the shrill sound of the whistle, the men of the First Company rushed toward him from all directions.

Even the final ten recruits, who had just finished running and had not yet caught their breath, hurriedly forced their uncooperative legs to shuffle over.

"Today you didn't let me down, though some comrades in our company still performed rather poorly.
A three-kilometer run, and you actually managed to clock fifteen or sixteen minutes. Absolutely disgraceful."

Tong Lianzhong’s words forced the recruits in formation, whose breathing had yet to stabilize, to press their lips together, suppress their discomfort, and lower their heads.

"Humph!" Tong Lianzhong’s face remained stern. "I said last night, physical fitness is the capital of revolution. I don't care what you were like at home, but from now on, you must get your physical stamina up!"

Pausing for a moment, his tone shifted: "Today, I want to offer special praise to Comrade Chu An from Squad Four!"

In an instant, Chu An became the center of attention as recruits before and after him turned to look.

Tong Lianzhong shouted loudly, "I noticed Comrade Chu An. When we fell in early this morning, his legs were clearly trembling, and Squad Leader Four later confirmed it to me.
Comrade Chu An lacked physical training in the past due to studying and taking the college entrance examinations, which resulted in severe muscle soreness this morning—so much so that when he tried to get out of bed, he tumbled right onto the floor and couldn't even stand up!"

"However..." The veteran's tone deepened. After sweeping his gaze across everyone, he spoke again: "Even so, Comrade Chu An still completed the three kilometers, and he ran it in eleven minutes and eleven seconds. He finished nineteenth among all the men in our two companies, and he was the eleventh man from our company to break into the top twenty. He was a decisive soldier in achieving today's victory.
Let's give him a round of applause!"

With that, Tong Lianzhong took the lead.

Instantly, applause erupted like thunder, causing the recruits of the Second Company, who were falling in not far away, to turn their heads in spite of themselves.

But immediately, they paid the price for looking away.

"Look... is looking any use? You're given a chance, but you're just not up to the task.
This morning, aside from the nine who made it into the top twenty, everyone else is only allowed one bowl of porridge. No seconds!"

Having roared this, he turned and strode away without a moment's hesitation, not even bothering to dismiss them.

……

"Deputy squad leader, help everyone check their quilts and see if you can help shape them up to look neater.
Everyone else, hurry up and clean the dormitory. Once we're done, we'll head out together to wash up and get ready for breakfast!"

Dismissed from the parade ground, Chu An and the others were not led straight to the mess hall.

According to the daily schedule, there is actually a twenty-minute gap between morning physical training and breakfast.
This time is allocated for cleaning the barracks and personal hygiene.

However, time was actually tighter today. When Chu An returned and checked his wristwatch inside the locker, it was already 6:47 AM.

Still, it was no major issue.
The dormitory had already been cleaned the previous night, so a few minutes were enough to polish it up.
As for washing up, it was quick as well: squeezing around the outdoor washing troughs, filling a cup of water to rinse the mouth, and another to splash the face wrapped it up.

At 7:00 AM sharp, the on-duty platoon leader blew the assembly whistle on time.

To everyone's surprise, however, when they fell in on the parade ground, they saw no sign of the Second Company emerging from across the way.

"Heh heh, I bet the Second Company is too embarrassed to march alongside us!"

As the formation wheeled around, Chu An heard someone in the ranks chuckle softly.

En... Chu An shared that sentiment.

Shortly after, marching all the way to the mess hall while roaring the song *Unity is Strength*, Chu An and his comrades were about to enter when they finally heard the Second Company approaching to the cadence of "one, two, one."

Yet even though they had arrived, their breakfast wasn't about to reach their mouths anytime soon.

*Unity is Strength* was deliberately sung over and over by the First Company until every single man had finished eating, and only then did the Second Company's commander finally order a halt and permit them to enter.

Chu An figured their commander simply couldn't bear to watch them witness the sight of the First Company eating eggs.

Though an egg was a trivial thing, the victory and defeat represented by those eggs were matters of great consequence.
It was a question of pride in the rivalry between the two companies.

……

"Beep, beep!"

At precisely 8:00 AM, the on-duty platoon leader's whistle sounded once more outside the dormitory building.

The official training for the recruit company had begun.

Starting with military posture, moving on to the stationary turns and commands briefly practiced in the morning, the rigorous schedule continued right up until the approach of noon, finally granting everyone a brief respite.

But it was merely the span of a single breath.

No sooner had lunch been consumed than everyone was back to "dueling" with their quilts until 2:30 PM. Afterward, the whistle would summon them back to the parade ground to resume the morning's drills.

This would persist until 5:00 PM in the afternoon, when the arrival of physical training time offered everyone a chance to loosen up the limbs and joints they had kept rigid all day long.

Naturally, this entire process was suffused with internal competition and rivalry.

With the First and Second Companies stationed on the same parade ground, whether they were engaging in physical conditioning, practicing stationary turns, or holding military postures, they constantly vied with one another.
Even when training was broken down into individual squad units, each squad would consciously select a counterpart in the Second Company to measure themselves against.

Was it exhausting?

Undoubtedly. By the end of the day, many people found their chopsticks trembling during dinner, unable to hold them steady.

Yet this was far from the end.

At 7:00 PM, as soon as the daily newspaper-reading and commentary session concluded, everyone fell in once more at the grand auditorium for evening classes.

Copying and memorizing regulations and disciplinary rules.

By today, Chu An and his comrades truly came to understand what it meant to "open your eyes at dawn and grind away until lights-out."

The crucial part was that even after lights-out, sleep was still denied.
They had to endure a late-night "sandwich" training session.

This was an extreme exercise of both body and mind. During his midnight trip to the latrine, Chu An even heard someone hiding inside a stall, quietly sobbing.

Although people of this era were capable of enduring hardship, this particular hardship was simply too bitter.
Rural youths might grit their teeth and bear it, but city kids who had never known suffering since childhood were beginning to crack under the strain.

Yet even unable to bear it, they could only grit their teeth and hold on, at most stealing away to an empty corner to shed a few tears in secret.

Chu An and the others endured this lifestyle for thirteen full days before finally welcoming their first breathing space.

Tomorrow was the weekend, and the company had announced a trip for physical re-examinations, which essentially served as a day of rest for everyone.

……

"Ah~ More than ten days! I finally get to take a proper bath. I wish I could turn into a fish right now and swim to my heart's content in this river!"

"Heh heh, sounds like you just want to swim away and desert!"

The setting sun bled across the sky like crimson silk. In the very same river where Chu An and his squad had bathed on their first day, men from both companies had now plunged into the water.

The water was bitterly cold, especially with dusk settling in.

Yet no one cared.

Having gone more than ten days without a bath, the "manly aura" radiating from every individual was simply off the charts.
If not for this, everyone was afraid they would have been suffocated in their sleep by the odors emanating from one another, given how exhausted and sweaty they grew each day like pigs.

As everyone knew, the most popular saying currently circulating in the barracks was:
"In the entire dormitory, our group is the filthiest; even the latrine floor is cleaner than our skin."

Right then, as Chu An rubbed soap all over his body and rinsed off, the surrounding water visibly turned a turbid gray...
He genuinely worried that the fish in this river might be poisoned to death by them today.

"Hurry, hurry... Two more minutes and everyone gets out on the bank! The water's too cold to stay in forever!"

On the riverbank, the political instructor roared at the top of his lungs.

Immediately, the men in the water frantically accelerated their pace. Those who had been lingering and splashing about for fun abandoned their games, furiously scrubbing themselves down with soap.