October 31, 2503 AD
Long Feng is thirteen years old. Because he defeated his instructor in yesterday's combat drill, he earned a day off.
He doesn't know who his parents are, nor how he ended up at this military base on the second planet of a small star system in the Orion Arm. The entire star system has six planets, each roughly the size of Earth. Originally devoid of life, with an environment similar to primordial Earth filled with primitive gases, it was gradually terraformed by China starting 350 years ago. Now, 15 billion Chinese people live and work across these six planets.
At age three, he began basic meditation training, spatial awareness exercises for three-dimensional environments, and practice in controlling objects with mental focus. At the same time, they were constantly instilled with one idea: "You are the most valuable assets of the People's Republic of China, you are the finest sons and daughters of the People's Republic of China…"
At age five, comprehensive training began in history, military affairs, politics, and other fields. They started attempting to use their faint psychic abilities to modify their own bodies. Each person was assigned a middle-aged man with the surname Long as their counselor, responsible for guiding the development of their superpowers.
At the age of seven, they began to be exposed to weapons—all kinds of weapons, from the most primitive stone flakes to the most advanced planetary orbital cannons. Their structures, functions, and in what situations which weapons should be used.
"To safeguard the interests of the motherland, do not hesitate to use any means. For the interests of the motherland, you can sacrifice everything—life, soul, dignity, personality…"
At the age of nine, they began brutal physical training, resting only three hours a day, with their instructors helping them recover energy and strength. Every morning started with running in a super-gravity room, followed by training with dumbbells, barbells, horizontal bars, pommel horses, and floor exercises in an environment with three times Earth's gravity. At noon, they meditated in an environment with one-third of Earth's standard atmospheric pressure. In the afternoon, they engaged in combat sparring with each other, pitted against adult instructors despite being only nine to ten years old. In the evening, they conducted shooting training using various single-soldier weapons.
At that time, their more important lessons involved watching many, many black-and-white film documentaries, photos, and documents—all available materials related to China's history.
Many children were eliminated, but they still far surpassed ordinary people. They entered regular military academies and civilian schools, deeply concealing everything about this base in their hearts.
At age eleven, they encountered blood for the first time. On a deliberately reserved asteroid teeming with countless cloned beasts, they began their wilderness survival training.
They started experiencing strict military discipline, began understanding all aspects of the Republic, and started learning about the current interstellar society.
Now, at thirteen years old, Long Feng and his peers were about to enter a new phase.
November 1, 2503 AD, early morning at 3:
Following his biological clock's ingrained habit, Long Feng awoke precisely at three o'clock.
The voice-controlled curtains slowly opened. Through the 15-square-meter glass window, countless meteors streaked across the sky. Faint flashes were visible as several meteors struck the massive moon of this Sagittarius No. 2 Planet.
Long Feng floated up from his bed and darted into the bathroom - he had exactly five minutes to complete all his personal hygiene routines.
3:05, Long Feng exited his bedroom on schedule. Two sergeants immediately entered the room after his departure to begin tidying up.
3:10, Twenty-three youths from Long Feng's cohort stood neatly in the training ground a thousand meters underground in the base.
After waiting for a long time, everyone was a bit puzzled by the instructors' late arrival when the heavy alloy door silently opened. Marshal Long led twelve instructors marching in step, followed by over twenty young men in black Zhongshan suits with handsome faces.
Marshal Long said loudly: "Like all of you, their surname is Long. In the future, they will individually tutor you for the next phase of training. Long Feng, your tutor is Long Ao."
"Long Teng, your tutor is Long Bing."
"Long Nu, your tutor is Long Han."…
"Now proceed to your respective training rooms for individual guidance from your new tutors." Marshal Long nodded to the young men in black Zhongshan suits and quickly walked out with several instructors.
Long Feng's personal training room was a square space over a hundred square meters, with walls, ceiling, and floor all made of hard alloy, coldly emitting a silver light.
Long Feng's first words to Long Ao were: "I don't like you people."
Long Ao looked at Long Feng with a grin for a long time, while Long Feng kept a cold face. Long Ao shook his head and said playfully, "Little guy, don't be so serious. Come on, smile?" Long Feng's expressionless gaze fixed on Long Ao's face.
Long Ao nodded, slowly approaching Long Feng, and said, "Why don't you like us? Give me a reason, big brother."
Long Feng said solemnly, "Absolutely no form of time deviation is allowed. As instructors, you should be even stricter. However, you were twenty-three minutes and nineteen seconds late. In any operation…"
Long Ao raised his hands in surrender, "Alright, alright, alright, I'm convinced. Hey, no wonder those old folks say the people from this base are all monsters. How old are you, and you're already like this? Well, our spaceship almost got sucked into a black hole… Haha, don't look at me like that, I'm telling the truth… Hmm, a few brothers were gambling on the ship and used psychic power to teleport the ship, ending up two light-years off course and nearly trapped. Heh, it took all twenty-three of us working together to barely escape. Satisfied with that explanation?"
Long Feng looked at Long Ao with slight surprise and slowly nodded.
Long Ao laughed heartily, striking a pose as he said: "Well, although we all share the surname Long, we actually belong to eight different branches of the entire clan that carry the Long name—quite different from you all. Heh, come on, let me see your basic skills."
Long Feng slowly and respectfully bowed to Long Ao. Long Ao rolled his eyes and said: "Don't be so formal, come on, come on, let big brother here see what you've got."
A powerful fist wind swept toward his face. Startled, Long Ao somersaulted backward, leaping ten meters into the air. A small dark shadow swiftly followed him upward, delivering several fierce blows to Long Ao's body mid-air, then kicked him down with a side kick before driving his knee into Long Ao's head, smashing it against the floor.
Long Ao's figure suddenly vanished and, almost simultaneously, reappeared in the corner of the training room.
Extremely embarrassed, he wiped his face and said pitifully: "Could you not hit my face? I have a date with a beauty tonight. Did you really have to go all out like that?"
Long Feng slowly and clearly articulated each word: "Once combat begins, one must go all out—this is stipulated in Article 3 of the daily conduct code." Long Ao twitched the corner of his mouth and muttered to himself, "Hey, little brother, your instructors are way too extreme, aren't they? What kind of people are they trying to train? Tsk tsk, it's practically like robots."
Long Feng remained silent.
Long Ao sheepishly walked to the center of the training room, his expression suddenly turning very serious as he said, "I don't know what your previous training was like, but your achievements truly astonish me. You're no more than fifteen years old, right? Yet you've reached triple the speed of sound, and that kick to my head delivered over nine hundred kilograms of force. You really are a monstrous little kid. However, what I'm about to teach you is something you could never even imagine in your entire life."
Long Ao's eyes suddenly gleamed with intensity, and a faint golden aura emanated from his body, filling the entire training room with immense pressure. Long Feng tried to steady himself but was swept to the corner of the wall like a willow catkin in the wind, pressed tightly against it.
For the first time, Long Feng cried out in shock, "What is this?"
Long Ao retracted his energy, shaking his head with a grin as he said, "Well, this is the 'Xuan Yuan Dragon Formula,' a method passed down from who knows how many years ago for cultivating internal energy and spiritual power. Unfortunately, the highest level is the seventh layer, and I, heh, have only reached the fourth. But it's more than enough to teach you."
Long Feng's figure suddenly vanished from the wall and reappeared in front of Long Ao. Long Ao tilted his head and said, "Well, there's no need to talk about confidentiality oaths or anything. After all, you all won't leak secrets, right? Listen carefully, I'll teach you the incantation. Memorize it first, and we'll go from there."
Long Feng nodded slowly. Long Ao frowned and said, "Big brother, can't you crack a smile? If you keep this up, you won't find a girlfriend. No girlfriend means no wife, no wife means no sons or daughters, and without sons or daughters, you'll be miserable when you're old… Oh, I forgot, you're still young. Well, learn from me and try to smile more from now on. As they say, 'A smile makes you ten years younger'…"
Long Feng said coldly, "The incantation." Long Ao nearly tumbled to the ground, making an exaggerated expression of disbelief. He sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled Long Feng down to sit beside him, and began teaching and explaining the so-called 'Xuan Yuan Dragon Formula' incantation, one phrase at a time.
March 12, 2505 AD
Long Feng stood alone atop the highest peak of Centaurus II, at an altitude of 12,370 meters, where the thin air seemed to have no effect on him.
He wore a silver military uniform, though the shoulder insignia had been replaced with a single gleaming golden star.
Facing the violent, raging hurricane, Long Feng stood steadily at the summit. The powerful energy of his partially mastered "Xuan Yuan Dragon Art" circulated rapidly within him, drawing in usable external energy and expelling waste gases produced by his body.
A 350-meter-long inner-space rapid assault fighter slowly flew past from three kilometers to his right. Long Feng's consciousness immediately tracked it, easily penetrating its three outer layers of energy shields and scanning everything inside the fighter. There were 375 people aboard: 75 operators with an average brain development rate exceeding 20%, and 300 ground assault troops with an average physical fitness index of 720 and an average brain development rate of 12%.
The fighter gradually accelerated, quickly reaching twenty times the speed of sound and moving beyond the range of Long Feng's psychic perception.
Long Feng slowly withdrew his mental waves. The brief ten-second scan had already consumed 78% of his internal energy.
The communicator on his body suddenly rang. Long Feng lightly pressed a button and said in a low voice, "Centaurus II Planet, Special Military Base A03, Major Long Feng."
A gentle and soft female voice came through: "Major Long Feng, emergency assembly. Conference Room 3 on the 172nd underground level. Please return to the base immediately. Hmm? You're 300 kilometers away? Do you need the base to send a vehicle to pick you up?"
Long Feng said calmly, "No need. I'll make my way back immediately. Have a vehicle waiting for me at the base gate."
After closing the communicator, Long Feng stood quietly for three minutes. His 180-centimeter-tall, straight body suddenly vanished. A piercing shriek echoed through the air as the air barrier was broken.
Five minutes later, Long Feng arrived at the base gate, having consumed another 10% of his energy. A faint sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.
A three-wheeled off-road combat vehicle roared in circles at the base entrance. Long Feng drifted twenty meters and mounted the rear seat, wrapping his arms around the waist of the petite, cute, short-haired female captain driving ahead. The vehicle swerved wildly as it sped into the base, its rear wheel incidentally knocking over a signboard… prompting several sentries at the gate to shout, "Ling Xue, this is the seventh one you've wrecked this month."
Ling Xue giggled all the way: "Charge it to Special A1 Team's account—they earn high salaries…"
The combat vehicle raced to a building clad in black metal tiles, standing three hundred meters tall with several kilometer-high cylindrical antennas atop it. Amid screeching brakes, Long Feng leveraged the momentum to leap into the air, soaring over Ling Xue's head and directly gliding through the building's entrance. Ling Xue cursed fiercely: "Long Feng, just you wait. Zero gentlemanly charm—I'm your big sister, not one of those brats from your Special A1 Team."
Long Feng rushed headlong toward an elevator a hundred meters away in the hall without looking back. At the same time, light, swift footsteps echoed behind him. Without turning around, he knew from the sound that it was Long Bao and Long Nu.