# 1020
Chapter 1020: Questioning the Heart on the Cliff
Fang Mo stared blankly at the falling figure and fell into silence. In his mind, only Lu Baoyou's resolute and proud expression remained in the moment he broke free from his arm.
He stood in place for a moment, took a deep breath, and continued to slowly climb toward the mountaintop.
Lu Baoyou's body rapidly fell down the cliff face.
Just as he was about to crash into the valley floor and be smashed to pieces, Lin Qiye, who was standing on the cliff above, opened his mouth and murmured something softly. A gust of wind billowed out from the void, catching Lu Baoyou's body and gently setting him down on the ground.
Lu Baoyou's physical strength had been completely depleted. He lay weakly on the snowy ground, gazing up at the cliff that stretched endlessly upward, and closed his eyes.
"...I won't make the same mistake twice." he murmured to himself.
Wind and snow howled around him. The new recruits nearby stepped forward one after another, wanting to pull Lu Baoyou up, but he simply lay peacefully in the snow, motionless, as if dead.
On top of the cliff, Lin Qiye, who had been resting with closed eyes, let a faint smile curl at the corner of his mouth.
At the base of the cliff, Su Yuan and Ding Chongfeng, who were about to begin climbing, passed by Lu Baoyou. The latter looked at the figure gradually being buried by snow, about to step forward and pull him up, when Su Yuan beside him stopped him.
"Don't worry about him. He's focused on recovering his strength."
Ding Chongfeng was silent for a moment, then sighed and walked past Lu Baoyou, beginning his ascent.
Time passed. By now, nearly half of the new recruits had arrived at the base of the cliff, beginning their climbs one after another.
Su Zhe bent at the waist, hands resting on his knees, gasping as he gazed up at the towering cliff that pierced the clouds. A bitter smile appeared on his pale face.
"This is going to kill me..."
After a brief rest, he followed the main group up the mountain.
During training camp, the instructors had already taught survival techniques for extreme environments, including hand-over-hand climbing. However, due to terrain limitations, they had never truly practiced it.
After climbing nearly one-fifth of the way in one breath, Su Zhe finally realized just how difficult this was.
He was rigidly wedged between two protruding rocks. The muscles in his arms had begun to tremble from exhaustion. The increasingly thin air forced him to加快呼吸的频率. But even so, his consciousness gradually blurred.
He took a deep breath, forced himself to stay alert, and continued to inch his way step by step toward the top of the cliff.
By this point, new recruits were continuously failing to hold on, falling past Su Zhe. However, only a very small number of them had exhausted all their strength like Lu Baoyou before falling off the cliff. Most of them simply felt they had reached their limit and jumped down voluntarily.
Whenever they landed, a gust of wind would steadily catch their bodies, preventing injury.
They lay weakly on the ground, continuously gasping for breath. Despair flickered in their eyes...
Impossible...
For them, this was an impossible task to complete.
Su Zhe tried to distract himself from his exhaustion, forcing himself not to think about his own fatigue. Gritting his teeth, he slowly shifted his stiff body.
Just then, a voice rang out clearly from above on the cliff, echoing in the ears of every new recruit who was climbing:
"If you can't hold on, you might as well give up."
Instructor Lin?
Su Zhe was stunned. He looked up in shock, staring toward the faintly visible peak of the cliff.
The other new recruits—whether they were climbing, preparing to climb, or had already failed—all looked up in confusion. They all recognized Instructor Lin's voice.
"If you can't get over this mountain, it means your strength and willpower aren't outstanding. So why are you so stubborn about joining the Night Watch?" Lin Qiye's voice rang out again, drifting悠悠地 through the silent valley:
"Do you have any idea what the annual death rate is for the Night Watch of Great Xia?"
"On average, one out of every seven Night Watch members dies within a year. This rate of sacrifice even exceeds the number of new recruits补充 each year. Ninety-five percent of these fallen Night Watch members died during the process of purging 'mysteries.'"
"When the war begins, you new recruits will have to shoulder the responsibility of protecting the cities. Are you truly prepared to stake your life to protect the people in distress?"
"If you're not prepared, it's not too late to reconsider."
"You don't need to keep pushing. If you're eliminated in this training session, you can quit midway and return to the ordinary world, far from slaughter, sacrifice, and endless suffering. You don't need to become a Night Watch standing before millions of people. Instead, you can安心地 become one of those millions being protected."
"This is your last chance to choose before you step onto this irreversible and thorny path of the Night Watch."
After Lin Qiye's words fell silent, the new recruits below fell into silence.
On the cliff face, among those recruits who had climbed to the point of exhaustion, some had struggles flickering in their eyes, some continued climbing steadfastly upward, and others let out agonized howls, closed their eyes, surrendered to their inner weakness, and leapt off the cliff in a single jump.
Su Zhe's fingers were clenched死死地 around the protruding rocks of the cliff. His face was deathly pale. Lin Qiye's words echoed in his mind, and his expression twisted with inner turmoil.
Was he... truly prepared to become a Night Watch?
These past months of training had indeed changed him a lot. Compared to that otaku Su Zhe from before, it was like night and day.
But as Lin Qiye had just said, was he truly prepared to sacrifice himself to protect people in distress? Was he truly prepared to walk this irreversible thorny path?
...Not necessarily.
After all, he had come to participate in the new recruit training only because of his sister, Su Yuan.
He clearly remembered that in the car accident, both he and his sister Su Yuan had awakened their Forbidden Ruins. After that, the Night Watch had主动找上了 them. The moment he received their recruitment offer, his instinctive reaction was to refuse. After all, Su Zhe was just a shameless sis-con otaku with no grand ambitions to protect the world.
If it hadn't been for him getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and happening to see Su Yuan secretly packing her bags, preparing to go to Shangjing alone to join the Night Watch, he might never have left that small county town in his entire life.
He had to admit that he couldn't rest easy knowing Su Yuan was going to the Night Watch alone.
At this moment, on the wind-swept cliff face, Su Zhe reexamined his original intention, questioning his heart over and over again whether he was ready to become a Night Watch.
The answer was... he wasn't.
In the instant this answer surfaced in Su Zhe's mind, whether intentionally or because his body had reached its limit, his hands released their grip on the cliff's protruding rocks. His entire body, like a bird with broken wings, fell helplessly from the clouds above.