While Gantang and the others were standing at attention during military posture training, the instructor patrolled among them to help correct their form. Thanks to surviving military training in middle school, high school, and college in her past life, Gantang's posture was exceptionally standard.
At the same time, Gantang kept every command firmly in mind. She still remembered that during her very first time standing at attention in her past life, the instructor had occasionally tugged on the students' sleeves.
At first, none of them knew what was going on, and whenever the instructor gave a tug, they would instinctively move along with him. It was only later that they learned this was a trick instructors used to test whether a posture met the standard, which had felt quite unbelievable back then.
Therefore, drawing lessons from that experience, Gantang stood with immaculate posture in this lifetime. The instructor wouldn't be able to budge her even a fraction of an inch.
Moreover, thanks to the blessing of the Body-Strengthening Pill in this life, Gantang's physical stamina was vastly superior to her past life. While running the 800-meter felt like absolute torture back then, finishing the 800-meter now left her feeling like she could run another one.
If her ambitions didn't lie elsewhere, she might have even considered becoming an athlete to bring glory to her country. Still, for Gantang, bringing honor to the nation wasn't restricted to being an athlete alone.
Although the instructor had claimed they would only stand for twenty minutes, Gantang felt certain they had stood for much longer than that—it was probably getting close to forty minutes.
At last, the instructor spoke: "Alright, time's up. Everyone relax."
Hearing the instructor's words, the students instantly moved to sit on the ground, but before they could even hit the dirt, the instructor barked, "Don't sit down yet! Move your arms and legs first, or you won't be able to lift your legs tomorrow."
Upon hearing this, the students had no choice but to lean against one another in pairs, supporting each other as they laboriously stretched and flexed their arms and legs.
After they had moved around for a bit and caught their breath, the instructor from the neighboring class came over to ask for help carrying the drinking water back.
Since quite a few people had already filled their water bottles beforehand, just like Gantang and her friends, everyone slowly shuffled over to where the water bottles were kept.Even though everyone tried their best to place their water cups in the shade, the water was still lukewarm when they picked them up, which did little to quench the thirst of the students who had just been scorched by the sun.
Listening to the students' complaints, the girls from Room 304 felt that the water in their own thermoses was even more refreshing.
Still, out of a sense of classmate camaraderie, Gantang and the others told the rest of the class about using thermos flasks to store water.
This resulted in the thermos flasks that the school convenience store hadn't been able to sell for a long time suddenly selling out completely.
During the break, Gantang even took wet wipes and sunscreen out of her small backpack, wiped down all her exposed skin, and then applied another layer of sunscreen.
Wang Xiaohua, watching from the side, asked with a puzzled look, "Tangtang, why are you wiping it off and reapplying?"
"The stuff I put on this morning has melted off in the sun and doesn't work anymore. Besides, I'm all sweaty, and wiping it down makes me feel cooler." With that, she handed the wet wipes and sunscreen to them, urging them to hurry up and reapply as well.
Soon, Zhao Zihao and the others came back carrying the water buckets, and Gantang and the group quickly filled their thermos flasks before the water could be heated by the sun.
After everyone had rested for about half an hour, the drill instructor called everyone to assemble. This time, instead of making everyone stand at attention in military posture, he taught them how to turn left, right, and about-face.
This was actually a very simple drill, but turning continuously made it very easy to make mistakes.
Often, after turning, students would find themselves face-to-face with the classmate next to them and couldn't help bursting into laughter. What's more, turning round and round made them dizzy.
The entire morning was spent practicing turns and standing at attention.
At lunchtime, they sang "Solidarity is Strength" before eating as usual.
By the time they finished eating and returned to the dorm, it was already 12:40. Since assembly was at 2:00 in the afternoon, Gantang and the others quickly washed their faces and climbed onto their beds for a nap.
As she lay in bed, Gantang was still thinking that starting tonight, she would have to set aside an hour every day to do some practice problems to maintain her test-taking feel, so as not to underperform on the stream-placement exams after military training ended.Soon, 1:30 PM arrived. After turning off their alarms, everyone got up one after another. Gantang still went to the outside public washroom to freshen up, leaving the indoor one to the other three.
Once they had all tidied up, the four of them walked over to the playground together to begin the afternoon military training.
The afternoon session started with standing at attention in military posture for 40 minutes, but it was much hotter than the morning and far harder to endure.
Fortunately, many students in Class 1 had bought vacuum flasks at noon, so they could drink room-temperature water in the afternoon instead of boiling hot water that only made them feel hotter.
In addition to standing at attention and practicing turns, the afternoon training also included squats and formation drills.
Finally, 6:00 PM arrived, marking dinner time. For this group of students, every single minute of the afternoon had felt like torture.
Many students were so hot they didn't feel like eating, but worried they wouldn't make it through the evening if they skipped meals, they forced themselves to swallow it bite by bite.
After dinner, the students waited for the instructors on the playground. To everyone's relief, the instructor announced that tonight's lesson would focus on organizing living quarters.
At first, all the students assumed they would have to head back to the dorms for this, but that wasn't the case. The instructor said teaching props would be used, so returning to the dormitories wasn't necessary.
Before teaching everyone how to fold the military quilt, the instructor first demonstrated the correct sitting posture.
Once everyone had mastered the sitting posture, the instructor turned to face them and explained the key points of folding a military quilt step by step:
"Fold in half lengthwise, then halve the section by finding the center;
Measure ten outward from the mid-point, press both palms firmly down on the two grooves;
Turn left and right, tap lightly, bring top and bottom folding faces together;
Use arm pressure and palm smoothing to set the shape, hook with fingers and pinch solid;
Keep back and cross faces vertical, front two faces at ninety degrees;
Front and back aligned and equal in height, quilt corners closed without gaping;
Tidy the twelve terminal corners, press out eight distinct ridges;
Quarters shaped by sweat, tofu-block quilts show true skill."
Listening to the instructor's explanation and demonstration, the students felt as though they had all learned it.
Accordingly, the instructor called a student up to demonstrate. The first one called was Gantang. After all, having practiced it several times before, her foundation was quite solid. While not as neat as the instructor's work, it was still rather commendable.
However, the students who followed didn't fare as well and struggled to fold crisp edges.
Even so, the instructor didn't criticize anyone, simply telling them all to practice more, especially the boarding students, since they would face living quarters inspections and definitely needed to master it.
After finishing the lesson on folding quilts, the instructor went over the standards for placing personal items, which were relatively simple.
By the time everything was covered, less than an hour had passed. Considering it was the students' first day of training and not wanting to push them into further physical exertion, the instructor used the remaining time to ask if anyone had any talents they would like to showcase.
Fortunately, many of the students admitted to No. 43 High School had been cultivated in various skills since childhood, possessing multiple talents and plenty of willingness to perform.
The evening passed quickly. Five minutes ahead of schedule, the instructor had everyone line up, summarized the day's training, and urged everyone to soak their feet well and get to sleep early once they returned for the night, before finally dismissing them.
On the way back to the dorms, Gantang asked the other three girls from Room 304 to take a slightly longer route so they could fill their large vacuum flasks with hot water at the boiler room.
Sure enough, by the time they returned to the dormitory, the hot water station on the first floor was completely out of hot water.
"Tangtang, you're still the smart one. Otherwise, I definitely wouldn't have wanted to go back out," Zhou Mo said weakly.
Upon returning to the room, the girls clearly lacked energy, but they took turns showering following yesterday's routine.
After her shower, Gantang read a book while soaking her feet.
Lin Zhizhi poked her head out from her bunk and said, "Tangtang, you're amazing. You can still read? I don't even have the energy to breathe right now, I'm so tired~~"
"Alright, if you're tired, go right to sleep. I'll wake you up tomorrow morning."
"Okay, then I'm going to sleep first."
"Mm, I'll be going to sleep right away too."
Shortly after saying this, Gantang finished soaking her feet, dumped out the water, and climbed into bed to sleep—after all, today had been genuinely exhausting.