Wen Jifei had gauze wrapped around his right hand. His left hand was actually fine, but over at the equipment yard, he was being lovingly pampered, fed meals brought to him by the female officers.
Han Qingyu sat alone in a noisy corner of the bustling mess hall. His pair of numb, rigid arms lay sprawled lifelessly across the tabletop like limbs that no longer belonged to his body. Face buried directly in his food tray, he took bites straight from the dish, grease and grains of rice sticking to his face.
"If I help feed you, how do we count the source energy blocks? How about one block for three meals?" A somewhat familiar voice came from behind him.
Han Qingyu turned his head to look. It was Wan Xiujing, standing there holding a large white porcelain pot.
The young girl had asked around after going back and learned that this guy in front of her already had a Silver Azure Guard to his name, and was very likely to receive a gold one soon.
Which meant that this entire person was practically a walking pile of source energy blocks—or, in his own words, a man of immense source-affinity.
"Keep dreaming," Han Qingyu mumbled, turning back to bury his face into the tray again.
"..." Wan Xiujing had wanted to laugh when she first saw the rice grain stuck to the tip of his nose, but hearing his response, her dainty nose wrinkled instantly.
"Like I even care! I didn't want to do something so gross anyway. Hmph, tomorrow he'll beat you until you can't even bend your neck."
With that, the girl turned around, chin held high, and stomped away carrying her porcelain pot.
A wave of low laughter rippled through the surroundings.
There were probably some female recruits who were willing to help in their hearts. If the one unable to move had been just an ordinary comrade, they would have stepped in. But because it was Han Qingyu, they felt awkward approaching him openly in front of everyone.
And so, Han Qingyu laboriously finished his meal. At the washbasin, he used his face to push the faucet open, washed his face, rinsed his mouth, and then pushed the faucet closed with his face.
Under gazes that viewed him as utterly pathetic—though he felt fine himself—he limped and stumbled back to the dormitory one halting, limp-limbed step at a time.
Then he slept for the night.
Come next day's training, he was full of vitality once more.
"What terrifying physical resilience."
"Well, he does have the source energy blocks he was awarded before. He can use them to nourish and recover his body."
"..."
Exhausted after training, the recruits sat under the trees by the edge of the field, chatting among themselves.
"Where's the source energy block?" Wan Xiujing asked, holding out her hand.
"Didn't bring it," Han Qingyu said flatly.
"Didn't bring it?!" Wan Xiujing glared at him again, as if trying to look fierce and terrifying.
"Yeah. Based on my current assessment of you, if I give it to you on the second day, I'm afraid you won't put your heart into it anymore," Han Qingyu said earnestly. "To be fair, I need to observe a bit longer."
Wan Xiujing: "..."
"It's not like I can run away, right? There's still nearly a month left of recruit training."
For the second day's training, to avoid being excessively gawked at, Han Qingyu submitted a special application to move the session to the simulated combat arena, barring spectators from entering.
Fifteen minutes was neither long nor short.
The recruits saw S-19 and the young girl walk calmly out through the arena's main doors.
The cat perched on a high window jumped down into S-19's arms.
The three creatures left together.
Then, about a dozen minutes later, Han Qingyu finally rolled and crawled his way out of the side door.
Day three.
Day four.
Day five.
Wan Xiujing still had not gotten her source energy block. S-19, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy these sparring sessions more and more—or rather, enjoy brutalizing people more and more.
During this time, Lao Jian shamelessly sneaked in to watch twice.
He was the head instructor, so Han Qingyu naturally had no right to bar him. Nor could Han Qingyu say anything when other officer-looking figures showed up unannounced and sat straight in the stands.
"I've known about the kid's tenacity for a long time, but the speed of his daily progress is genuinely terrifying," Lao Jian said over the phone in his instructor's office to Regimental Commander Li, who had already returned to Regiment 425.
Li Wangqiang's hearty, gratified, and smug laughter came through the line.
"There's another situation. Yesterday and today during his sparring, a few unfamiliar faces showed up in the arena. They looked... like they just came off the front lines," Lao Jian added cautiously.
"..." Regimental Commander Li stopped laughing.
"One of them... I think I've seen him before. If I remember right, I'm afraid even 402's Golden Eraser was there," Lao Jian said. "I didn't notice if anyone came from White Eraser, but they'll almost certainly drop by for a look."
In the Ninth Army's fifty-year history, only four color Eraser squads had ever existed. Of those, only two remained active today: Golden Eraser and White Eraser.
And among the corps' regulations for recruits graduating from camp, there was one rule: regional squads ranked in the top twenty of the entire army in the previous year were exempt from divisional and regimental roster restrictions when drafting new members.
In other words, they could extend an olive branch to outstanding recruits from other regiments.
It was called a mutual choice, but who could possibly turn down an olive branch extended by a color Eraser? Greater safety, more learning opportunities, greater glory, easier access to source energy rewards...
Granted, after a recruit joined a squad in another division or regiment, once the day came that they became a squad leader themselves, the army in principle recommended that they return to their original regiment to form a squad, thereby elevating the overall strength of the entire army.
However, once gone for several years, bonds shifted over time, and the person themselves might not even be willing to return. And if someone truly didn't want to come back, excuses and workarounds could always be concocted.
And if this person had the potential to forge the next color Eraser, the opposing division commander would probably step in personally to keep them, shamelessly playing hardball with the corps command.
Once Lao Jian finished speaking, both ends of the line fell dead silent. Perhaps it was because Regiment 425 had not encountered this sort of situation in far too long, so both of them had unconsciously overlooked it until now.
Regimental Commander Li stammered nervously for a long while. "Then... aren't you right there? Your relationship with the Han kid..."
"We're practically half-enemies," Lao Jian said wryly. "The kid is exceptionally filial, so he inevitably holds a bit of a grudge against me."
"What?! Then what do we do?" Regimental Commander Li panicked. His distress at this moment was the exact source of his earlier joy—Han Qingyu's performance during recruit training was simply far too outstanding.
Lao Jian thought for a moment. "How about sending Milla? Isn't she due for a promotion this year..."
"No." Even though it was just a two-person phone call, Li Wangqiang still lowered his voice, as if speaking of something inappropriate to disclose publicly. "The army command shot it down later."
"What?"
"When ranks were promoted a while back, the army command fought for her and got her extra merits to promote her to lieutenant. Part of that was actually intended as advance appeasement... I've known about it for a few days, but I've kept putting it off. When I went over last time, I didn't know how to break the news to Milla either."
...
On the sixth day, Han Qingyu returned to the dorm once again looking like a dead dog.
Their dorm room number this time was 22, exactly twice the number back at the regimental base. Yet the people from back then had decreased by nearly half.
One had sacrificed his life in Squad 1123, and Grave Robber Lai Shitou was nowhere to be found, completely without news.
When Han Qingyu arrived, the guys in the dorm were reading a letter.
The letter was from Yang Qingbai, who had gone to the Order Legion.
In the letter, he said he had been discovered to be a piloting prodigy. Within days of driving vehicles after arriving at the Order Legion, he had already been selected for flight training;
if he continued to perform well, he would most likely head to the 10th Air Combat Reserve Army to become a "fledgling eagle";
and if the opportunity came in the future, maybe he would even pilot a source energy airship to carry the brothers and fight their way beyond the dome.
"I don't know why, since we clearly didn't spend that much time together, but I miss you guys like crazy," Yang Qingbai wrote at the end of the letter. "Maybe it's because in a place where you could lose your life at any second, meeting people right at the start whom I trust and hope to survive alongside isn't easy at all."
Chapter 76