Chapter 7: Boot Camp

All of Ladies' Academy's students had to finish returning to campus before 18:00 on the afternoon of the day before classes began. Ye Wuyou sat in the restaurant where he worked, studying the selfie Song Xuan had taken in her dorm room mirror. In the photo, the young woman smiled as she lifted her right hand, fingers together, palm flat, raised to her right brow in a textbook salute.

Aside from the post she had uploaded last on LetsTalk, he knew he would not get another chance to contact or even see her for the next month. Still, Ye Wuyou was not idle. While browsing hacker forums like HackField, BlueNet, and InternetWonder, he also tried to crack Ladies' Academy's firewall and servers.

For the girls, the freshman-year military drill was a tradition handed down from the old Republic.

Although almost all schools in the East Asia Democratic Republic had long since abolished military training at colleges and universities, Ladies' Academy treated it as the best chance to temper the girls' steadfast will, their composure in the face of honor and disgrace, and their character of obeying orders without blindly submitting. So the academy not only preserved the drill intact, it expanded it.

Ladies' Academy's military training was strict, and it ran through the entire training cycle. Starting in the first year, once summer break ended and the new school year began, every student had to undergo a month of military drills each year.

Not only that, but students from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, master's programs, and doctoral programs all had to go through it. The same was true for the teachers on staff at Ladies' Academy. Any teacher under a work contract with Ladies' Academy, including everyone from elementary through high school staff and the university instructors who were fully employed by the academy, had to wear the lady uniform while on campus, submit to the academy's automated network and school rules, and take part in the military training program. Teachers hired through partner universities were not included; they did not have to wear the lady uniform, were not bound by Ladies' Academy's rules, and did not need to participate in military training.

The teachers' participation was not just for show. Assistants, counselors, office staff, teachers, department heads, and even the principal were all broken up and assigned into the high school division's student platoons.

By then, the army hired by the House of Ladies would take over the entire academy, garrison on campus, and hold administrator privileges over every single lady uniform worn by students and teachers.

School rules would be temporarily replaced by military discipline, the academy's external network would be cut off, and the whole campus would go into lockdown.

The soldiers did not care who was a student and who was a teacher. Punishments and rewards were handed out equally. There had once even been a new female teacher who was made to cry by an instructor. In another Ladies' Academy, there had even been rumors of a head teacher or principal being singled out and punished in front of the entire staff and student body. Of course, that was not done out of any personal vendetta. The instructors themselves simply did not care who the principal was; it was just that the unlucky principal had run into a ruthless drill instructor.

This year, for the Ladies' Academy in Zhuzhou, the House of Ladies dispatched the 108th Mountain Division, a legendary East Asian ace field division well known among military enthusiasts. They were equally infamous inside Ladies' Academy, where teachers and students alike feared them as the Devil Force. Their greatest claim to fame was that in every academy they took over for drill training, at least 90 percent of the girls ended up crying, and after a month of training, every one of them, whether she liked it or not, would come out proficient in a full set of fieldcraft and wilderness survival skills...

During military training, students of the same grade were mixed together, and after the teachers were added in, every ten people formed a platoon, each platoon assigned one instructor.

As for instructors, in principle they could be men or women. But given Ladies' Academy's special circumstances, all of the students who underwent training were girls, so the army almost never sent male officers for Ladies' Academy's drills.

Only in extremely rare cases would a male officer take part in the academy's military training, and that was the only time anyone might see a man at Ladies' Academy.

Even then, there were strict rules. Instructors were forbidden from forming any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with the trainees, and forbidden from asking for the trainees' contact information or giving out their own. Anyone who broke the rules would be sued under the House of Ladies' training contract, and in serious cases could end up in prison.

Xia Yan and Song Xuan happened to be assigned to the same platoon, along with two young teachers and the remaining six classmates, whose faces were familiar enough but whose names they could not quite remember.

Maybe because Xia Yan's oddly styled lady uniform made her stand out as something the instructor had never seen before, the instructor spent most of the first morning focusing on her. Add in her impatient expression and attitude, and it was only natural that Xia Yan got the worst of it.

Marching in step in five-centimeter heels was already hard enough. The instructor had Xia Yan's heels raised to seven centimeters, then made her do repeated frog jumps as punishment.

That unruly young woman fought back against the punishment mode's electric shocks, which were five times harsher than the confinement suit's, that same afternoon. The female instructor, a special-forces soldier, naturally had fighting skills far beyond ordinary people. Even a grown man over 180 centimeters tall was often flattened in a few moves, let alone a girl who was only 165 centimeters tall in heels. On top of that, the lady uniform was still mercilessly punishing her nipples and clit.

The female instructor took Xia Yan down with a single move, then waited until Xia Yan struggled back to her feet before slamming her to the ground again.

After five or six repeats, on the final shoulder throw the instructor drove a knee into Xia Yan's neck and twisted both her arms behind her back, leaving her almost unable to breathe.

The other six girls in the platoon were too scared to make a sound. Only Song Xuan and the two young Ladies' Academy teachers in blue lady uniforms stepped forward to speak, and the instructor punished them too by making them run long-distance laps around the academy wall... When the afternoon drill ended and before night training began, the four girls supported one another as they made their way painfully toward the dining hall. It was then that Xia Yan looked at Song Xuan without a trace of impatience for the first time.

After that, Song Xuan took Xia Yan's punishment for her many more times. Xia Yan never said anything about it, but the way she looked at her had already changed.

Ladies' Academy's military training was exhausting. Standing at attention and marching in heels under the blazing sun was already the least unpleasant of the drills the girls had to endure. Even though everyone could feel the scorching heat, the protection of the lady uniform gave them a sliver of comfort: it would not let them tan.

At the most basic level, the girls really did have to run several kilometers carrying several kilograms of weight, just like soldiers. A kind instructor would have them change out of their heels and let them run in sneakers. A cruel one would not budge, refusing on the excuse that she did not know how to set the lady uniform, even though she was perfectly adept at configuring punishment programs when she wanted to be.

For the high school division and the teachers, the requirement was a ten-kilogram load while running laps around Saint Maiden Lake. The shoreline of the lake was exactly five kilometers long, so they ran one lap around Saint Maiden Lake at 7:00 in the morning and another at 19:00 in the evening, adding up to ten thousand meters a day.

Ladies' Academy had always put girls' physical education first. Many of the girls had been studying there since their first year, so for them military training was nothing more than very hard, high-intensity conditioning.

Painful and long, yes, but not so impossible that they could never do it.

As for the students who entered Ladies' Academy later, whether in middle school or high school, they generally had to arrive early during the summer before first year or freshman year and spend two months on conditioning and adaptation training.

That was why the officers were told that the girls at Ladies' Academy were all exceptionally fit and could be trained exactly like soldiers.

And for decades, no Ladies' Academy anywhere in the world had ever had an accident caused by military training.

As a result, the intensity of Ladies' Academy's drills only grew harder year after year.

The girls also had to undergo combat training. This was not the kind of military boxing done for show, but real techniques meant to hurt people, from judo to sanda, depending on what the troops stationed at the academy decided.

What's more, the combat techniques learned during military training would become one of the main subjects in Ladies' Academy's physical education classes for the entire school year afterward. It was no exaggeration to say that although the girls who graduated from Ladies' Academy all looked polite, quiet, and refined, no one would ever guess that if they actually got into a fight, they could knock a full-grown man over without the slightest bit of hands-on training.

Speaking of physical education, there was one thing worth mentioning. In addition to conditioning and combat training, there was also a training course that looked almost absurdly feminine: vaginal dumbbell exercise. Just like the internal training and combat training, vaginal dumbbell drills were mandatory in both daily PE classes.

"Vaginal dumbbells" were a special structure transformed from the vaginal plug inserted into the lower part of the lady uniform and into the girl's body: two spherical weights, one above and one below, connected by a thin, flexible band that had been narrowed down in the middle. During PE, the girls would either lie face down or on their backs on a forty- to fifty-degree incline, then use the contraction of the muscles in the vagina and lower abdomen to push the inner weight up and down inside the vagina. The gyroscopes inside the vaginal dumbbell recorded its movement and displacement. Once the up-and-down displacement in the vagina reached a set standard, it counted as one set. The exercise repeatedly stimulated the muscles of the lower body and the pelvis, effectively preventing vaginal laxity, promoting blood circulation below the waist, and doing the ovaries a great deal of good.

Usually, for each PE class, the teacher assigned the girls anywhere from fifty to one hundred sets, adjusted mainly according to their menstrual cycles and other physical conditions.

Of course, this course only started after high school, because the internal vaginal plug in the lady uniform did not reach full activation until the advanced stage of the training cycle, and the girls also needed a year of preparation. But that was a story for later.

In addition, there were shooting drills, cross-country drills, and water-based military training, but the most common of all were endurance runs with weights and mountain climbing. Ladies' Academy's military training standards were exactly those of frontline combat troops.

Basically, all the girls who had been studying at Ladies' Academy since first year had developed formidable endurance through this kind of training from a young age and were able to adapt to the high-intensity regimen.

But some of the newcomers, including Xia Yan, who did not arrive until high school and had only completed two months of conditioning, would complain bitterly at first. The instructors did not care whether they lived or died. On the contrary, they would pile on even more drill duties and could make them learn discipline in a single week. Every day, Xia Yan wished she could just break a bone or come down with typhoid or some other illness, but with the protection of the lady uniform, it was very hard for a girl to get sick. Even if she spent the whole day covered in bruises, by the next morning the lady uniform could restore her body to pristine condition.

After another week of shared suffering, Xia Yan came to regard Song Xuan as her confidante.

Because of the punishment mode in the lady uniform, the instructor, who was like a female tyrant, was always picking on her. On top of that, Xia Yan had the temper of a wild horse and kept butting heads with the instructor during drill, which meant all ten girls in the platoon had to take punishment and extra training with her. Aside from Song Xuan and the two teachers, the other six classmates all had at least some complaints about her. Only Song Xuan and the two teachers in blue lady uniforms never minded her through the punishments, and they often defended her in front of the instructor. The result, of course, was just that the four of them were left behind by themselves to keep Xia Yan company through extra training and punishment, running laps around Saint Maiden Lake in the center of the academy. Once, after evening drill ended, Song Xuan, Xia Yan, and the two other teachers were left behind alone by the instructor and punished to carry ten kilograms each while running three laps around the lakeshore. In the end, the four girls were still walking around the embankment at 2:00 in the morning before they were finally allowed to go back and sleep.

Only after formal classes began did Song Xuan and Xia Yan learn that the two young teachers who had trained with them were, in fact, their homeroom counselor Teacher Ren Xue and their class teacher, Teacher Zhao Xiaoxiao. Before Song Xuan and Xia Yan advanced to high school, they had already taught a class of high school girls.

But they were hardly the worst off. The biggest gossip of this training session in Zhuzhou's Ladies' Academy was the academy's principal.

The principal of Ladies' Academy was a very mysterious woman. None of the students or teachers knew her name. Everyone only knew she was the principal, and they all called her that, but nobody knew her actual name.

No one even knew what she looked like or how old she was, because the face section of the blue lady uniform she wore was not a mask but a Bane-style helmet - a shell with a hard-looking finish that wrapped cleanly around her head. You could tell it was the shape of a head, but the entire face was just a smooth curved surface with no features at all.

The whole helmet shell was seamless and smooth, and it fit her head so closely that it did not make the principal look like she had a huge head. Its color was the same blue-green as the latex bodysuit she wore.

When Xia Yan saw her for the first time, she even mocked her for being a half-finished cyborg. "Excuse me, respected Principal, did House of Ladies place the order for you in such a hurry that the cyborg manufacturer didn't have time to finish your face?"

The rumor was that this principal had once publicly criticized the 108th Division's brutal high-intensity training methods, and had repeatedly opposed House of Ladies' invitations for them to take on the instructor duties for student military training at Ladies' Academy - not just this academy in Zhuzhou, but every Ladies' Academy. In fact, she had blocked House of Ladies' invitation to the 108th Division several times.

No one knew exactly how House of Ladies had arranged things this time, but the original plan had been to use the relatively gentle and considerate Third Space Division as the training unit. Instead, the assignment was switched to the 108th Division. Whether out of revenge or not, the arrangement that had originally paired one instructor with a platoon of ten girls was changed at Ladies' Academy into ten instructors training her alone...

When the month-long military training finally ended, Xia Yan's original delinquent streak had been worn away by six or seven tenths through the combined pressure of the instructors and the lady uniform's punishment mode. She still got stubborn from time to time, but at least under the influence of Song Xuan and the two young Ladies' Academy teachers, she had more or less learned what it meant to respect teachers and treat classmates well.

Of course, the princess syndrome and rotten temper she had developed over the years could not be completely cured by just one month of Ladies' Academy training. Still, compared with how she had acted in the first week, she had improved a great deal.

This was the first time Song Xuan had witnessed, over all her years at Ladies' Academy, the lady uniform's remarkable corrective effect on a delinquent girl. Although Xia Yan still behaved unreasonably from time to time, Song Xuan was generous enough not to mind, and whenever Xia Yan's princess disease flared up, she would occasionally play the role of the one indulging her.

Xia Yan was deeply grateful for that. Little by little, she no longer felt too embarrassed to treat her roommate like a maid, and instead gradually opened her heart to her for real, becoming the kind of best friend she could talk to about anything.

By the time military training was almost over, they were already talking about everything - from their individual hobbies to the type of men they liked, and from the times of month when each of them got her period. In the hour before bed after training ended, they would bathe together and compare the size of their breasts, hidden beneath the chastity bras. Xia Yan liked to prop her head on her hands and lie across Song Xuan's joined thighs when Song Xuan sat on the sofa. That was the maximum length allowed by the restraint cord connecting Xia Yan's wrists to the chastity belt. Her delicate high-heeled feet kicked playfully within the maximum range allowed by the restraint cord that also formed her ankle shackles.

Unlike normal conditions, when the academy canceled the suppression program for the mouthpiece speakers on the lady uniforms once students and teachers were outside areas where speaking was forbidden - such as the academic buildings, the library, the conference center, and the office tower - allowing the girls to speak freely...

Under punishment mode, the lady uniform was similar to a confinement suit. At all times and in all places, it kept the mouthpiece speaker function suppressed. Even when the mouthpiece was in mimic mode and turned into a thin membrane that fit against the mouth, it would still change at the vocal cords and suppress a punished female student's ability to speak even while it resembled a mask.

Except when a teacher asked them a question, if they absolutely needed to speak, they had to submit an application to Ladies' Academy through the lady uniform. Only after the homeroom teacher approved it would the suppression on the mouthpiece speaker be lifted for a certain period of time, and even then the release had to comply with the normal lady uniform approval rules for speaker use.

During military training, all of the academy's student affairs were temporarily kept away from homeroom teachers and the other teachers, because the homeroom teachers and department heads were training alongside the students themselves. Xia Yan and Song Xuan did not even know who their future teachers would be. Their class schedule had already been arranged, but there were no teacher names and no photos attached.

So during training, if Xia Yan wanted to speak, she could only submit an application to her own instructor. Her instructor was a woman in her thirties. Song Xuan had once been curious enough to ask what her name was, and after being punished to do four laps of frog jumps around the track while carrying a ten-kilogram load, no one ever asked her name again.

Although this instructor was like a devil during drill, she turned out to be surprisingly easy to talk to when training was over. On the night when the four students and teachers were punished to run around Saint Maiden Lake, the instructor ultimately only made them do three laps instead of four. Otherwise, by the fourth lap they would have had to crawl on hands and feet. Before she let them go back, she even brought them the military's issue watermelon-flavored stamina recovery drink, and it was ice-cold.

And every time Xia Yan submitted a request to speak, the instructor answered instantly, never dragging her feet. In practice, as soon as Xia Yan filed the application, she was allowed to speak.

The young woman, who had finally become willing to talk, at last told them about her background.

Xia Yan had been sent to Ladies' Academy by her father because of a murder case.

A month earlier, when the hoodlums she had been hanging around with for a long time had accidentally beaten an innocent passerby to death, she happened to be there. When the National Guard received the report and rushed over, the young hoodlums were still so stunned they had not even reacted before the soldiers shoved them into armored vehicles. Unluckily for Xia Yan, although she had only just arrived to look for her boyfriend, she was arrested too because her long hair had been dyed the same dark green as the other attackers.

That night, after spending 300,000 Republic coins to bail his daughter out, Xia Yunjie had finally had enough of that disrespectful, uneducated tomboy. She spent every day running around with her street-trash friends, hanging out in bars and internet cafés, and she could smoke, drink, get her hair permed, and dye it with the best of them. Ignoring his wife's pleas, he resolutely sent his daughter to Ladies' Academy, hoping that its strict environment would at least make her change those bad habits.

Ladies' Academy had never been a shelter for delinquent girls. Just Xia Yan's dark green hair was enough to make the principal and admissions director knit their brows together. "Oh, heh heh, Mr. Xia, we're not Yu Zhang Academy here~ With Miss Xia's temperament, she seems far too distinctive~~~ Please forgive us, but our Ladies' Academy may not be able to shoulder the task of properly educating your precious daughter~~~"

In the end, it was only through pressure from the higher-ups at Ladies' House that the school finally gave an answer approving her application, though the principal's tone was full of resentment.

The nearly desperate father hoped that at the very least, Ladies' Academy would keep his daughter's disciplinary uniform mode in place for a full year, so there would still be a chance to correct her bad habits. As for whether it should be extended after that year, he decided he would inspect her himself before making any decision.

Because of pressure from the higher-ups at Ladies' House, Ladies' Academy agreed to that arrangement. Xia Yan's punishment mode in the ladies' uniform had to remain in effect for the entire first year of high school. Even if Xia Yan later ranked first in her grade every month on overall scores, the principal still had no authority to approve the poor girl's application to lift the punishment mode. But with Xia Yan's unruly temper, all her bad habits, and behavior that had nothing at all to do with the words "ladies" or "grace," the fact that she would only truly be qualified to submit such an application nine months later was, from the perspective of that time, not unjust at all...