For the past twenty-odd years, the Huaxia Front had held its All-Army Conference nearly every year, though neither its scale nor its profile remained identical from year to year.
This year, coinciding with the fall of Xilang Peak and the outbreak of the Flag War, one would have expected it to be rushed and stripped down to the bare essentials.
Yet upon arriving at Corps Headquarters, people discovered that this year's conference was extraordinarily grand in both scale and prestige.
The higher-ups seemingly intended to use the occasion to rally the entire army's morale while projecting an aura of sheer martial strength.
As one of the three mightiest armed forces within the Azure system—and home to the human world's foremost super-combatant—virtually every major move by the Huaxia Front exerted a colossal influence on this world hidden behind the curtain.
At Corps Headquarters, a sea of heads surged amid the bustling crowd.
The seasoned veterans, knowing the ropes, mostly chatted among themselves, exchanging greetings, passing out cigarettes, and gathering to brag and shoot the breeze... Meanwhile, the rookies fortunate enough to attend for the first time were excited yet visibly uneasy. Mindful of military decorum, they checked the time on their wrists and reviewed their conference schedules again and again.
It was still early, with nowhere to go. Han Qingyu and his group found a corner of the plaza outside the venue to stand and shoot the breeze.
"So, Qingzi, you're really not going to wear your medals? Today is Medal-Wearing Day, you know."
When Yang Qingbai had come over from their garrison earlier, he had followed the advice of the personnel staying behind and brought along Han Qingyu's two medals.
"Nope." Han Qingyu gave a firm shake of his head. He found wearing them too much trouble—wherever he went, he would have to exchange salutes with people.
"Well, that's kind of boring," Wen Jifei said with a wry smile.
If borrowing medals to wear weren't a violation of military regulations, he would have loved to pin Qingzi's Gold Azure Guard on himself just to show off... He would strut right into a crowd of female soldiers, bask in the feeling of being surrounded and worshipped by young women, and ask warmly after their lives and health.
"How about a game?" Utterly bored out of his skull, Wen Jifei pulled a small round tin from his pocket and signaled to them.
Inside was bubblegum produced and supplied by Azure itself. The only reason it came in a tin was to keep it from getting crushed during transit. The candy inside wasn't special at all—just the little colorful watermelon-shaped bubblegums popular on the market.
A tin like this held twelve pieces.
"Still... seven left." He opened the tin, glanced inside to count, and snapped the lid shut. Gripping the tin in his palm, Wen Jifei turned his wrist downward, gave it a shake, and then rattled it vigorously up, down, left, and right like a dice cup.
Then he tossed the tin to Yang Qingbai.
Yang Qingbai caught it, clutched it against his chest, and gave it a few clicks and clatters.
Then he turned and threw it to Wu Xu.
This was actually a silly little game Squad 1777 had invented to kill time. The outcome depended on who could sneak a piece of bubblegum out and chew it during the handoffs without getting caught. Once someone managed to blow a bubble without being caught in the act, the winner of that round was decided.
The tin had already gone around for two rounds.
During that time, Wen Jifei's mouth had been moving constantly, but no one called him out. The penalty for falsely accusing someone in this game was far worse than simply losing: a loser only had to take a kick from the winner, whereas a false accuser was treated just like someone caught cheating and had to take a kick from everyone else.
"Hold on."
Just as Han Qingyu caught the tin, Wu Xu spoke. He looked up and, deadpan before their very eyes, blew a bubble... right until it popped with a crisp snap.
"Woohoo, a winner! Stick out your butts! Stick 'em out!..." Rusty Sister directed the punishment from the side, looking as overjoyed as if she had won herself.
At the wall, Wen Jifei, Han Qingyu, and Yang Qingbai obediently lined up, sticking out their behinds and waiting.
Wu Xu stepped up and gave each of them a kick. None were hard, and his face showed no smile, but deep down he was thoroughly delighted and smug.
"Six left. Again!" Wen Jifei dusted off his rear, swapped spots with Yang Qingbai, and readied himself for Han Qingyu to toss the tin to Wu Xu.
This round started with the previous winner.
"Qingzi! Qingzi?!" When Han Qingyu didn't pass the tin to Wu Xu after a moment, Wen Jifei called out impatiently, only to find Han Qingyu staring off into the distance, seemingly lost in thought.
Wen Jifei sidled up to him, looked in the direction of his gaze, and asked, "What is it?"
In their line of sight, a figure stood out jarringly against the sea of Azure military uniforms.
"Monk robes?! Is that a monk robe he's wearing? What's that old man doing here?" Yang Qingbai asked, staring puzzledly at the old man in the tattered gray monk robes in the distance.
*It's not like he came to beg for alms, right?* he wondered.
Just then, an officer wearing senior colonel epaulets stepped forward in the distance, snapped to attention, and saluted the old man. "General Jiang... er, greetings, Master Longchi."
"Oh, hello, hello." The old man in the monk robes looked to be around seventy. He turned with a smile, peered closely at the senior colonel, and didn't recognize him at all.
"Master Longchi, did you just arrive? We haven't seen you for several conferences. Are you... looking for the Corps Commander?" The senior colonel didn't bother introducing himself, simply asking another question.
"Mm, that's right. Pardon me, I'm in a hurry. Let's chat next time." The old man waved a hand and made to keep walking toward one of the office buildings beside the main venue.
"You're going the wrong way, then. The Corps Commander's office is over there, in that building." The senior colonel stopped him and pointed in another direction.
The old man turned back, looking confused. "Oh? Did he move?"
"No, he didn't," the senior colonel said sheepishly. "The Corps Commander's office has always been there, for over twenty years."
"Really?" Scratching his head suspiciously, the old man headed in the direction the senior colonel had pointed.
"General Jiang really is getting more and more forgetful," someone in the nearby crowd remarked quietly.
Several veterans nearby nodded in agreement. "Even supers grow old."
"A super?! A general?! A master?!" Wen Jifei muttered as he pulled his gaze back. He gave Han Qingyu a nudge, and once the other snapped out of it, asked, "What's wrong? You don't actually know that old guy, do you?"
"Yeah... I know him," Han Qingyu said, somewhat dazed as he squinted at the old man's receding back.
"He's..."
"Remember what I told you before? My name was given to me by an old monk who lived in a run-down temple back home for years, mooching free food and drink," Han Qingyu continued.
"I remember," Wen Jifei said. "That's him?"
"Yeah." Han Qingyu nodded with certainty, watching the distance.
"Then how come he has hair?!" Craning his neck and looking at the old man's back as well, Wen Jifei suddenly asked.
"Huh?" Han Qingyu turned to him, momentarily blank.
"Going by what you said, isn't he a real monk? Then why does he have hair?"
"..." Han Qingyu choked up for a second before saying helplessly, "Is *that* more important than the fact that my name was given to me by a Huaxia Front general, an Azure super-combatant?! He lived in our township for five or six years, playing monk for five or six whole years... and made a profession out of mooching food and drink, you know?!"
"Fair point. If you hadn't brought it up, I wouldn't have even registered that part," Wen Jifei said, giving a sheepish chuckle. "I just saw it and wondered—why does a monk have hair?"
"If a monk doesn't shave his head for a while, of course hair grows back. It grows!" Han Qingyu was practically dying of exasperation.
"Is that so?" Wen Jifei finally turned his head all the way around, looking overly dramatic. "But on TV, monks shave bald once and stay bald forever."
Han Qingyu: "..."
"So they actually have to shave regularly too, huh?"
"Yeah. Otherwise it wouldn't be called shaving, it'd be called hair removal—and permanent at that," Han Qingyu sighed helplessly. "And what you're describing isn't a monk, it's a bald guy."
Wen Jifei: "Oh. Well, I really didn't know."
"So you know now?"
"Yeah."
"Then can you—can all of you—help me think about the issue I just mentioned?! My name was given to me by a Huaxia Front general, an Azure super-combatant! He lived in our township posing as a monk for five or six years..."
"And mooched free food and drink," Yang Qingbai chimed in from the side.
Han Qingyu: "Right."
"Why would that happen?" Wu Xu stepped forward and asked in all seriousness.
"Exactly! Why?!" Han Qingyu shot back.
...
In the Corps Commander's office, Jiang Longchi finally found Chen Buer.
"Before heading here this time, I made a special trip back to that place to take another look." Jiang Longchi shook his wide sleeves, sat down as soon as he entered, and went straight to the point. "The result was the same. Not a single trace of source energy fluctuation. Tell me, isn't that strange?"
"Not strange at all. I've told you for years, we don't know enough about the Great Spikes," Chen Buer said, steeping tea for him.
"But back then, there was such a massive surge of source energy... and yet in the end there was nothing at all. Is that really not strange?"
"It's not. Stop dwelling on it," Chen Buer said helplessly as he set the tea in front of him. "Keep thinking about it and you're going to give yourself senile dementia, Master."
Chapter 290