A Youth's Renown Won at the Blade's Edge

Now this, Wu Xu couldn't understand at all. The others, however, understood completely. While secretly giving Yin Caixin a thumbs-up, they stole glances at Han Qingyu's expression and reaction, every one of them looking as if they wanted to laugh but didn't dare. "If he cries, will you give it back to him?" Wen Jifei chimed in on his behalf. "Not necessarily." Yin Caixin shook her head, turning away. "Unless he says he'll miss me." She was still peeved from earlier, or perhaps this was the courage to act coquettish and mischievous that only came with parting. "Well, he'll definitely miss you," Wen Jifei helped out. Yin Caixin still shook her head. "He has to say it himself." "The problem is he's never said that kind of thing before. He doesn't know how to express it." "Then teach him." Having said that, Yin Caixin went *roll, roll*. Almost demonstratively, her palm rolled a metal block back and forth on the tabletop—the largest of the remaining four. "Qingzi..." Wen Jifei turned to Han Qingyu, gesturing for him to yield a bit. Though really, what kind of yielding was this? Sigh. "To be honest, she deserves to take one," Han Qingyu said, then turned away, choosing simply not to look. "Hmph! You..." Furious, utterly furious. Yin Caixin looked down, picked it up, set it down, her hand turning round and round on the table. Finally, she picked up the smallest block and went *thud, thud*, slamming it twice against the wood. "Fine, this works too! This way you'll definitely miss me, humph! I'm the first person to ever snatch a metal block from your hands, aren't I? You'll definitely remember. I don't want the source energy blocks anymore!" With that, Little Caixin stood up and dragged Shen Yixiu straight back to their room. As they walked, her eyes reddened. Sniffling, she said, "This is what's terrible about Huaxia men. Would it kill him just to say it? It's really annoying!" Shen Yixiu didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Don't tar them all with the same brush. Plenty of Huaxia men have sweet mouths. But as for Qingzi... I've never seen him express emotions like that either, truly." "Then I'm really taking it!" "Take it. Painful as it is for him, when he said you deserve one, he wasn't lying," Shen Yixiu said with a smile. "After all, you're the winning captain of this trial. Wouldn't it look improper to go back to Switzerland without a single metal block?" Yin Caixin was stunned. "Is that what he was thinking?" "Yeah. I told you, he just doesn't know how to express himself." Shen Yixiu nodded. The two girls returned to chat. As for the remaining three metal blocks, Han Qingyu discussed it with Wen Jifei and He Tangtang, deciding to hold onto them for now instead of refining them. They had plenty of source energy blocks at the moment anyway. As for the remaining source energy blocks, naturally they wouldn't divide them for now either, keeping them as the squad's reserve. That night at bedtime, considering Wen Jifei's communication skills could help Wu Xu get familiar with everyone faster, Han Qingyu arranged for the two of them to share a room, while he went to endure He Tangtang's sky-shattering snores. Entering the room, Han Qingyu tossed He Tangtang one of his own source energy blocks, pointing to the floor. "Sit there and finish absorbing this before you sleep." With that, he hurried into bed himself. "*Snore*, *gulu-tututu...*" He Tangtang had already fallen asleep sitting up. In the other room, Wen Jifei looked up, lay down, and asked, "Do you always keep your spear by the bed when sleeping? Or is it just because of this special place?" "Always by the bed," Wu Xu said. "For a while, the patriarch sent people to kill me in the night. To train this." "Actually kill you?" "At first I took two knife wounds. Almost died." "..." Wen Jifei imagined that kind of life and found it suffocating—an infuriating kind of suffocating. He quickly changed the subject. "Did he also forbid you from eating meat? I saw earlier that you didn't touch meat yourself." Wu Xu nodded, then shook his head. Only then did he realize Wen Jifei couldn't see him in the dark, so he spoke up: "In the past, you only got meat if you won. Starting from age six, if you beat someone to death with fists and kicks, you got pig's trotters to eat." "Beat to death? Then... have you beaten anyone to death?" Wen Jifei asked, cutting himself halfway. "I did." Wu Xu nodded, then said, "We agreed neither would eat trotters, taking turns losing. He wanted to eat. While I deliberately lost and he was pinning me, he tried to beat me to death. I fought back and beat him to death." "Well done," Wen Jifei said, lighting a cigarette and tossing one over. "Know how to smoke? If not, learn to light one—it's good for chatting." Wu Xu lit it. "*Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough!*" Tears welled in his eyes. Then he asked, "Should I also call him Qingzi in the future?" "Of course. Since he was willing to let the old auntie go in exchange for you... from now on, we're brothers." Wu Xu nodded in the dark. "Then besides your Azure business, what else do we do?" "That's exactly what I came to talk to you about tonight." Having said this, Wen Jifei sat up, leaned against the wall, and said seriously, "Because of these things, Qingzi himself probably hasn't thought through them carefully, or even realized them, let alone spoken about them. For our group, most of the time, whatever Qingzi decides to do, we do. And each of us does our part well." Wu Xu sat up as well, nodding to show he was listening. "Take me, for example: don't cause trouble, don't be dead weight, practice shooting hard, do what I can," Wen Jifei continued. "As for you, Qingzi told me you're very strong. He said once you get surgery and upgrade to a Ninth-Generation device, you'll be even stronger... So, there's one thing, consider it my personal request..." Wen Jifei gathered his thoughts and spoke slowly, "As long as you don't die, Qingzi doesn't die." Wu Xu: "Alright." The next morning, very early, Wen Jifei got up to see off Yin Caixin, only to find Wu Xu was already gone. Gathering Han Qingyu and the others, they searched around and finally found him on the training grounds of the Nepal Front base. The guard soldiers said he had arrived at four in the morning. The black spear whirled like a dragon, curving into a bow behind his back before snapping free from his hand. The spear shaft vibrated irregularly in the air, flicking its head while streaking forward like lightning. The power and speed of this thrust were astonishing, and its trajectory erratic. Watching from the side, He Tangtang blurted out, "Holy shit." After all, he hadn't actually seen Wu Xu in action before. On the field, however, Wu Xu looked at the spearhead pinned into the target wall opposite him, shook his head, stepped forward silently to pull the spear out, and went at it again. "Is he imitating your Dimple Slash?" Wen Jifei asked. "He probably had a similar idea after seeing it," Han Qingyu said. "His main focus is controlling vibrations, hoping to achieve the effect of continuously shifting attack targets." "Oh." Wen Jifei nodded, not feeling it too deeply. Beside them, He Tangtang watched for a while and grew somewhat melancholy. In the blink of an eye, the third strongest combatant of their squad was seemingly no longer him. A sudden sense of urgency gripped him, and he couldn't help asking, "Then what about his degree of fusion?" Han Qingyu: "He said he doesn't know." He Tangtang sighed helplessly, "Oh." Wen Jifei chuckled and draped an arm over his shoulder. "Feeling down? Qingzi gets stronger every other day without rhyme or reason, being so outrageous, and you don't feel anything about that?" "Nothing at all," He Tangtang shook his head. "In the beginning, the first time I saw Qingzi fight, I thought 'holy shit' in my heart. Later it was 'holy shit, holy shit, holy shit' until now, without a single ripple. If anything, if he sucked badly one day, I might not be able to resist saying 'holy shit.'" Amidst laughter, the group didn't disturb Wu Xu and left first. Although everyone was leaving in the morning, Yin Caixin departed first. Han Qingyu and the others saw her off to her transport. Yin Caixin said her goodbyes one by one, reluctant to part. At the vehicle door, she paused, turned back once more, and pattered all the way back in front of Han Qingyu, glaring at him with a mix of fury and grievance. Han Qingyu thought she was going to say something. Instead, there was nothing. Little Caixin reached out, directly threw her arms around his waist in a hug, and then said, "Humph!" Turning around, she ran off to board the vehicle. Han Qingyu reached into his pocket and discovered the metal block she had taken yesterday was inside. Helpless, he chased after her and handed it over. "Keep it with you. Take it back so you can brag a bit... If you get a chance to come back to Huaxia in the future, come hang out with us." Just like that, Yin Caixin cried again, weeping profusely all the way as she waved from the vehicle. He Tangtang wiped a tear from his eye and let out a long sigh. "So unfair! This damn straight-as-iron bastard hasn't done a single decent thing, yet with one casual gesture, he has the girl crying her eyes out." Not long after Yin Caixin left, before breakfast time was even over, the dedicated small aircraft sent by the Huaxia frontier medical station arrived. Han Qingyu and the others bade brief farewells to the Azure comrades who had helped them and embarked on their return journey. While they were in the air: At the Sole Witness Legion Headquarters, Chen Buer was in his office listening to his secretary's report. "What?!" The old man hadn't listened to more than a few sentences before suddenly jumping to his feet. "You're saying people from the Cleansing Faction and Self-Preservation Faction sent over a hundred people after that boy after the trial ended?" The secretary nodded. "Motherfuckers!" Cursing, Chen Buer paused, then continued, "Those Self-Preservation Faction bastards have a death wish, don't they? Do this: compile everything we roughly know about the situation. Our Huaxia Front will unilaterally conduct a grand housecleaning." "Um, regarding the Alliance's current relationship with the Self-Preservation Faction..." the secretary said cautiously. "Legion Commander, should I submit an application to the Alliance Council first?" "Like hell I care! We'll explain after we're done." Chen Buer waved a hand. "Right, did he really hack his way to victory against that many people?" "Yes. Though how many experts were among them is unclear," the secretary said. "Word from the scene is the enemy fed in their forces piecemeal. All told, he cut down over forty of them, and the rest were terrified and surrendered straight away." "Aha ha ha ha! Splendid!" The Legion Commander put his hands on his hips and laughed heartily, changing his face as fast as flipping a page. But after laughing a few times, his face shifted again, turning shrewd and mercenary. "What about the captives? Those are our Huaxia Front's captives! We've got to bring them back." "Over sixty of them," the old man started calculating directly, looking down. "Weapons, source energy blocks, then kill who we should kill, lock up who we should lock up, and for those who have to be negotiated away, shake them down hard!" "Uh, Legion Commander," the secretary tilted his head, cautiously interrupting, "as for those captives' source energy blocks, he already pocketed them all himself." "He took them himself? Doesn't he know military regulations?!" "Yes, but the comrade who went to pick him up just asked, and the reply was that he doesn't admit to it." "..." "Legion Commander, what do you think..." "What do I think? Can I really order Lu Wuzheng to conduct a forced search and confiscation?" Chen Buer hesitated, then said, "Forget it. Direct the plane to fly here. I'll have a chat with him." The secretary went out to make emergency contact. Soon he returned. "Reporting, Legion Commander! The personnel on the aircraft replied that in Han Qingyu's squad, including him, two people are critically ill and must land at the nearest frontier medical station." Chen Buer's expression tightened with concern. "What happened? Didn't you say when contacting Nepal yesterday that they were all holding up fine?" "Sudden onset," the secretary said. "..." Chen Buer froze. "Land, land, land, let him land." This was 99.9% fake, but he didn't dare bet on that 0.01%. The secretary stepped out again. The old man sat down and fumed for a while. After a bit, while cursing, he couldn't help laughing again. Then, roughly ten minutes later—*pat-pat-pat-pat-pat*—the busy secretary trotted back, knocking on the door again. Stepping inside, he blurted out, "Reporting, Legion Commander! There's another urgent situation!" "Speak!" "The City of Iniquity rejected the original bounty task on Han Qingyu first thing this morning, demanding the issuer reset the bounty amount and required number of source energy blocks to meet at least the standard for a Second-Tier Difficult Target." The secretary finished, adding a bit of personal emotion and worry: "We should've seen it coming. He made too big a splash—this is the consequence of getting famous too early. Sigh..." Chen Buer raised a hand to cut him off. Thinking it over, he said, "Nothing to sigh about. Looking at it another way, this is a good thing... What a man is meant to go through, he must go through." As he spoke, the old man used a pencil to write a few words stroke by stroke on a piece of paper, the handwriting as ugly as ever: A youth, renown, won at the blade's edge.