The Alpha’s face flushed crimson with anger, though he still tried to act tough. He pointed at Bai Chunian. “Anyone can brag. You say ten stars and we are supposed to believe you? Then I will say I got a hundred stars.”
“Damn, you even doubt ten stars? Do you think ten stars is that unbelievable?” Bai Chunian scoffed. “Just drop out already and save some educational resources for kids who cannot afford school. Your contribution to the country is not even as useful as someone farting less to help reduce the greenhouse effect.”
He weighed the ID card in his palm. “You want proof, right? Let us say this first—if I can prove it, will you kneel and call me Dad, or go to the broadcast room and apologize to the entire school? You have to put something on the line. If I just do whatever you say, I will lose face.”
The Alpha hesitated. Although ten-star examinees were extremely rare, Bai Chunian looked completely confident, not like he was bluffing. The Alpha suddenly felt uncertain and did not dare accept the bet rashly.
“What a coward. You have grown older but not smarter. If my trainees acted like you, I would beat them until they were crawling on the ground every day,” Bai Chunian said, putting his ID back into his pocket.
As he brushed past the Alpha, he casually slipped a set of keys out of the man’s pocket without him noticing. He tossed them up, caught them, tossed them again, and caught them again.
“You want me to show you proof? Do you even deserve to see it?”
When the keys landed in his palm, Bai Chunian lightly squeezed them into a lump of twisted metal. Raising his hand, he lazily tossed the scrap iron back to the dumbfounded Alpha.
“Go make new keys. They will tell you how many copies you can get.”
Lu Yan had been standing there the whole time with his mouth hanging open, watching the spectacle. Only when Bai Chunian turned around and called to him—
“Stop standing with idiots. It lowers your status. Come here.”
—did he snap out of it and trot over to follow behind him.
The combat test was the final subject of the promotion exam. For the rest of the day, the students were free to move around. Lu Yan jogged to catch up with Bai Chunian.
“Th-that, um…”
He chased after him as they walked, his rabbit ears bouncing up and down.
“Brother Chu… Chu… I will treat you to dessert…”
“And you are still calling me? You could not even win an argument. What am I supposed to expect from you?”
“I—I will definitely win next time! I learned it now!”
“Listen,” Bai Chunian said, “stop thinking about how to prove you are innocent. If people believed you, they would not come looking for trouble in the first place. There is no point. The only goal of arguing is to make the other person so angry they die.”
“Mm. Got it.”
Inside a café, Lu Yan hugged a strawberry cake, his ears drooping as he asked quietly, “How is Lanxing doing with you?”
“He is doing fine,” Bai Chunian replied. “If we let him come back now, he could wipe the floor with the entire Amphia Military Academy.”
Lu Yan looked shocked. “That amazing…? I…”
Bai Chunian asked, “What do you think about this school?”
Lu Yan shook his head. “I do not know. My dad said it was the best military academy in the country, so I came here. But after arriving, I do not really think it is that great. The management is strict and there are basically no chances to cheat or bribe during exams. But there are so many aristocratic families here. People form cliques all the time and compare luxury cars and villas.”
He sighed.
“Outside the school, big families bully small families. Inside the school, the children of big families bully the children of small families. The teachers will not interfere, because they cannot afford to offend them.”
Lu Yan rested his face on his hand miserably. “Actually, I have it worse than they think. My dad only fills up my meal card every month and buys me clothes. Other than food from the school cafeteria and things from the school store, if I want a new phone, a new computer, or a new camera, I have to earn the money myself. But because of that, people say I am just pretending to be cool.”
Bai Chunian was surprised. “I can understand the boss being strict, but does Uncle Jin not give you money?”
“He secretly does,” Lu Yan said. “But if my dad finds out, we both get in trouble. Buying a sports car is out of the question.”
He poked the cream on his cake with a fork.
“I can ignore the sarcastic comments from those people at school. Our family is richer than all of them anyway. But when they say I cheated on exams, or say I have no real ability and that everyone just goes easy on me… I cannot stand that.”
“Of course, there are also plenty of people trying to flatter me. But honestly, they are not much better than the others.”
“A few days ago I asked my cousin to investigate you,” Lu Yan sighed. “My dad bought you a house, bought you a sports car, and even gives you a lot of pocket money. Are you actually their real son?”
Bai Chunian said, “Do not talk nonsense. Other than those limited edition cars in the garage that Uncle Jin gave me, everything else I bought with my salary.”
Lu Yan blinked. “You are not a company president. What kind of job pays that much?”
“I work for the Alliance Special Agent Unit,” Bai Chunian said. “Interested?”
“…How do you get in?”
“First you go to the Aphid Island training base. Pass the assessment, become a full agent, then choose one of four departments to join: Investigation, Forensics, Armaments, or Psychology.”
Lu Yan frowned in confusion. “Training base? Did you not just kick me out of there?”
Bai Chunian coughed lightly. “Suit yourself. Honestly, I also think that place does not suit you very well. But at least I can guarantee one thing—there, strength proves everything. As for people who talk nonsense, you only need to beat them until they shut up.”
A faint light appeared in Lu Yan’s eyes.
“I will not talk with you anymore. I still have to rush back to the island tonight.” Bai Chunian went to the counter and packed a portion of milk pudding.
When Lan Bo returned home from the police station, a portion of milk pudding was sitting on the table. A small cluster of purple baby’s breath was stuck into the dessert box, its stems tied with a thin ribbon in a little bow. There was also a note left on the table.
The note read:
“If my pheromones were a kind of flower, that would be nice. Then I could order a bouquet every day and send it home to hug you for me.”
Lan Bo lifted the card and examined it, then licked the back and stuck it onto the outside wall of the fish tank.
There was a bottle of brandy in the liquor cabinet. Following the scent, Lan Bo took it out and placed it beside the pillow, pulled up the blanket, and patted it.
At ten in the evening, the speedboat arrived at Aphid Island. Bai Chunian stepped ashore amid the wailing complaints of the trainees.
Everyone had thought the instructor definitely would not return tonight, meaning the tactical exam would be postponed another day and they could slack off for one more day. But this old devil simply refused to let them have even a single peaceful day.
At the training base, a tactical exam was held once every month around the middle of the month to test whether the trainees had reached the required standards in various subjects. But once Bai Chunian returned, it turned into a test every week. Any trainee with poor results would be dragged into brutal extra training during the latter half of the month.
Each assessment lasted twelve hours. Ninety-six trainees would be randomly arranged into six-person squads. The entire Aphid Island would serve as the testing ground. The instructors observed the trainees’ performance through surveillance cameras placed around the island, and in the end gave a comprehensive score based on multiple factors—number of eliminations, tactical thinking, teamwork, survival time, support performance, mountain driving skills, and more.
After twelve hours passed, the instructors finished evaluating the trainees’ performances and handed the score sheets and edited footage to Bai Chunian.
What followed was the utterly exhausting post-exam analysis meeting.
The trainees sat upright in neat rows on the open beach. A huge screen had been set up there, and the recordings of the sixteen teams were projected onto it one by one. The footage had been edited from surveillance recordings, and each trainee had their own shots included—which meant that anyone who had slacked off during the mission would be publicly exposed.
Bai Chunian called out the name of a team captain. A mandrill Alpha stood up trembling, not daring to raise his head.
Bai Chunian planted the sole of his mid-calf leather boot on the edge of a chair with a scraping sound. “How did you act as commander? You occupied such a great position and still got counterattacked and wiped out. What did I teach you?”
The mandrill straightened up and answered loudly, “You said that after taking the high ground we must check the edges for ambushes, advance from high to low ground, and always maintain a higher vantage point than the enemy!”
Bai Chunian snorted with laughter. “And what did you do?”
Mandrill: “I led the team in an assault without cover!”
Bai Chunian was so irritated he picked up a scrap of paper from the ground and fanned himself with it to cool down. “Such a huge plain, and they were set up behind rocks. Their gun barrels were practically about to shove into your mouths. Could you at least have driven a vehicle? Is there water inside your heads? Four hundred meters of open plain and you just ran straight across like idiots. Look at the screen—wearing ghillie suits and sprinting like fools. What, did you rush over there to perform stand-up comedy for them?”
An Omega team captain nearby covered his mouth and snickered.
Bai Chunian lightly kicked his knee. “What are you giggling for? Just because I scolded him does not mean I did not scold you. That entire bunch of idiots had already been pulled down from the high ground, and you were behind cover throwing useless smoke grenades? Are grenade launchers too expensive so you are reluctant to use them? Your tactic was to choke the enemy to death without spilling blood, right?”
After scolding all sixteen teams one by one, Bai Chunian rubbed his temples. “If next week’s test looks like this again, I will send all of you to Amphia Military Academy. I do not see that you are much stronger than them.”
The trainees below let out disdainful noises. In their eyes, the country’s top military academy was no better than a kindergarten.
However, Bai Chunian had always been fair with rewards and punishments. After criticizing those who deserved it, he began replaying clips from each team that were worth learning from, letting every trainee watch carefully.
“Watch closely and learn well. Next time your teammates might be these people. Think about how to quickly coordinate tactics in the middle of a fight and enter the right state as fast as possible.”
“This flash grenade from Ying was thrown at an excellent moment. The enemy had just been forced into a two-way corridor. The grenade blinded them briefly while creating an opportunity for teammates to surround them without taking damage. This support play is flawless.”
He then opened the footage of a Nile crocodile Alpha.
“This sneak attack in the sand is pretty impressive. Opponents should remember—if you want to resist him, you must struggle immediately and break free first. His J1 ability is not instantaneous; it requires charging. If you wait until his death roll picks up speed, he will twist your head right off. Even an M2 level cannot withstand him spinning like a maniac.”
“This part from Bi Lanxing is good.” Bai Chunian replayed the footage several times. The timing of Bi Lanxing’s poisonous vine armor was extremely precise. His senses seemed far sharper than those of ordinary people, allowing him to observe the condition of every teammate. Bai Chunian had counted carefully—thanks to the protection of the vine armor, the five teammates beside him had avoided at least twenty-six fatal attacks. Although Bi Lanxing’s team did not place very high overall, his performance throughout the exam was absolutely stunning.
After weighing things for a long time, Bai Chunian selected the firefly Omega, the Nile crocodile Alpha, a mongoose Alpha, and a clownfish Omega to accompany the Alliance’s bomb disposal team in escorting members of the Medical Association to Enxi City to rescue trapped civilians. Although Bi Lanxing had performed well, his training time was still too short, and it was not suitable to send him out yet.
When the four trainees boarded the ferry, Bai Chunian stood on the shore watching them off.
He repeatedly reminded them, “Your mission is only to rescue trapped civilians. Do not go beyond that objective. Stick closely to the senior leading the team. You are trainees, not superheroes. The final goal is not to make a name for yourselves there—it is to return safely. Do you hear me?”
“We hear you! Do not worry, Instructor!”