Chapter 14: All Masters of the Stage

Jiangcheng 110 Command Center.

On duty, Commander Ling Du looked at his subordinate with a strange expression. First, he kept pulling the receiver farther and farther away, then rubbed a wad of paper back and forth near the microphone, and finally just hung up the phone altogether. Unable to hold back any longer, he burst out, “Xie Xiaoduo, what on earth are you doing?!”

“Sigh, young people these days, they’re really something else…” The freshly graduated operator was sighing with a world-weary air, but jumped in fright at her boss’s roar. “Reporting, Commander, I’m working, sir.”

“Working? You call that working?” Ling Du was furious. “If you want to fall in love, do it after work, or at least go outside! Why are you using the emergency hotline? What if you cause a real delay?”

“Boss, I really wasn’t!” Xie Xiaoduo protested, feeling wronged. “That was a student from No. 3 High School calling just now. They’re out on a field training exercise and said they ran into a wild beastman…”

“What? A wild beastman! And you just hung up…” Ling Du started in alarm, but when he saw Xie Xiaoduo’s surprised look, he understood at once. “Ah, so it’s a teaching exercise.”

He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Come to think of it, it’s that time of year again.”

“It is…”

“Hard to believe it’s already been ten years!”

“Boss, aren’t you only twenty-eight?” Looking at this tall, thin man with a full beard that made him anything but imposing, Xie Xiaoduo was skeptical.

→_→

“With math skills that sharp and a mind so clear, you can pull an all-nighter on duty tonight!”

“Boss, I was wrong! Of course you’re twenty-eight this year—no, judging by your looks, you can’t possibly be twenty-eight, at most twenty-seven years and eleven months. No, ten months…”

“But back to the point, how did those students even manage to call in? They’re outside the city, and there’s supposed to be a signal jammer—there shouldn’t be any signal at all.”

“Exactly!” Xie Xiaoduo nodded with a sigh. “That’s why I say, young people these days are just getting more and more impressive!”

“Indeed!” Ling Du sighed deeply, his gaze drifting out to the endless, looming black wall beneath the moonlit sky. “Well, it seems at last we have a golden generation of our own…”

==========

Once the call was disconnected, Ye Chao confirmed his suspicion—there was no real danger; they were still being tested.

More precisely, the daytime had been the first half of the exam, testing their basic field survival skills. Now, it was the second half, testing their ability to adapt to unexpected situations.

Otherwise, how could it have been such a coincidence: the cave-in at the entrance just happened to separate the teachers and students? The moment he tried to hack the monitoring system, the signal was cut off? And, of course, the most direct evidence—the emergency hotline call had been hung up.

“You already knew the truth, didn’t you?”

“I told you long ago, I had a bold idea, but you didn’t want to hear it.” Alpha Princess said, cracking sunflower seeds.

She really had said that.

Tsk, missed another chance to threaten her… Though I reached the conclusion quickly, it was thanks to my ability to read micro-expressions. This one, with her abysmally low emotional intelligence, still managed to deduce it just as fast by pure reasoning—what a terrifying intellect!

Meanwhile, the others were still arguing…

Someone suggested Ye Chao should try calling again, insisting he had to get his message across no matter what.

Someone else thought they should all fight their way back, since if the teachers really couldn’t hold on and the wild beastmen broke through, they’d all be doomed.

Another favored staying put: “Maybe they can track our location through the phone,” “That’s how it always goes in old movies from the 2020s,” “I suggest we stay here. Ye Chao’s information is enough. No. 3 High, field exercise… If they just ask at the school, the emergency center will definitely know where we are.”

Waiting definitely wasn’t the right answer—because this was a test.

But Ye Chao couldn’t reveal the truth.

He might be emotionally blunt, but he wasn’t stupid—he’d never do something so pointless and self-sabotaging.

He wasn’t worried, though. There were others who were more anxious than he was.

“Waiting is one option, but have you all forgotten what the orders were? This isn’t just a training exercise anymore—we’re on the battlefield. What’s the first rule of the battlefield? Obey orders!” He spoke up, gently nudging everyone back on track and subtly earning some points with the teachers.

Just as he finished speaking—“Boom! Boom! Boom!”—a series of tremors shook the ground, echoing thunderously. The cave quaked, dust swirled everywhere.

The students were instantly alarmed.

“What is that sound?”

“It’s coming from behind us—is it…the wild beastmen?”

“Could it be that the teachers couldn’t hold them off, and the beastmen are about to break through?”

Although their hearts were pounding, a handful of braver students turned and hurried back to the entrance of the logistics hall—they hadn’t gone far in the first place.

At the entrance, the wild tremors had ceased, replaced by a high-pitched hissing, like steam escaping from the vent of a high-pressure cooker, only multiplied many times over.

Along with the noise came a biting chill. The cave was already damp and cold, and now the temperature dropped further, fog immediately condensing in the air. Frost was visibly spreading and crystallizing along the cracks in the rubble.

The cold was emanating from the logistics hall. Even separated by the barricade of rocks, the chill was so intense it was hard to imagine how low the temperature inside must have fallen.

Guan Junyuan’s voice rang out again: “Students, this wild beastman is too strong! The teachers… I’m afraid… we can’t win. But don’t be afraid, we… still have one last… last move… Liquid nitrogen, compression, emergency freeze array!”

“This move will create… temperatures close to… absolute zero… super low temperatures, freezing the beastman… and us… and the entire hall… completely! But at most… it’ll only last… one—one night…”

“You must… you must find… another… exit, leave… here, and get help from the city.”

“If you bring help in time, and we’re properly thawed, we’ll all be fine. But… be careful not to damage… the ice… doing so will shorten… the freezing time.”

“Stu-students… everything depends… on you now!”

With every word, his voice grew colder and shakier, stammering so badly it sounded almost comical, as if he were reading some risqué novel. Finally relieved, he “crack-crack” smashed the ice forming around him with his arms, then lit a portable heater, basking in its warmth with delight.

At the doorway, the Green Giant was squatting down, helping the teachers with the water hoses, spraying them over the rubble. The energy-ability teachers were focusing to draw out heat, methodically freezing the collapsed entrance, letting the cold seep out.

Watching Guan Junyuan, the Green Giant sneered, “Guan Junyuan, you’re already the grade director; one more step and you’ll be vice principal—basically, you’re on the administrative track now. Yet you still can’t manage to tell a convincing lie. You really need to work on your acting skills!”

“Yes, I struggle with lying, and my career’s going nowhere. But what about you, Yao Dexian?” Guan Junyuan wiped the dust from his head with a towel until his scalp was shining again, and replied lazily.

“You got yourself a bureaucratic post, district head now, and yet you still have to play the wild beastman, not even a single line to say.”

District Head: “…”

“Hahaha…” A group of teachers tried not to laugh, but couldn’t hold it in, stifling their amusement until it hurt.