Chapter 56

"Huh? HUH?!" Cheng Duó went pale. "No, no way! This isn't on me! I didn't expect ugly handwriting to have this kind of power — is it actually some kind of curse? Doctor! Doctor—!"

"Stop yelling." Gu Yunchi slowly turned his head back toward the ceiling, his chest rising and falling. "Read me that student's file."

Doctors and nurses came rushing in at the alarm and immediately started their checks. Cheng Duó got pushed to the edge of the crowd. Without hesitating, he started reading aloud at the top of his lungs, dragging his bad leg along.

"S City Aerospace University, School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation."

"Heart rate 128."

"Aircraft Manufacturing Engineering, Class 1242, Li Shu, 22 years old, gender Omega, male."

"Temperature normal, blood oxygen normal."

"Awards: League Aircraft Design Innovation Competition, second prize; National Aerospace Model Championship, first prize; Aircraft Equipment System Innovation Design Competition, first prize."

"Wound normal, no bleeding observed."

"Personal motto: I am a very, very tall tree!"

"Major Gu, is something bothering you?"

"No photo, and that's all the personal info. If you want me to read the application essay, sorry — I genuinely can't read a single character except the punctuation."

"I'm fine." Gu Yunchi's face was calm. "You can all go rest."

The medical staff left, half-convinced. Cheng Duó hopped back on one leg to the bedside, sat down, brows knit tight. "So?"

Gu Yunchi didn't speak. He just stared at that little black dot on the ceiling.

19:03. Speedboat Explosion.

19:18. Fourteen rescue boats arrived around the blast site.

19:20. The Search and Rescue Operation officially began, expanding outward one hundred meters from the blast point, recovering human tissue and remaining hull.

Rainfall, tides, water depth, and visibility all limited the rescue work. Recovery was extremely difficult.

20:30. Large-scale professional salvage equipment was mobilized.

21:40. The equipment arrived on site. Search radius expanded to five hundred meters.

4:00 the next morning. Most of the remaining hull had been collected. No human tissue found.

Based on damage assessment of the wreckage, the TNT equivalent of the blast was calculated at roughly 1.3 kg. If the victim had been at the center of the explosion at the time, the high-temperature, high-pressure shockwave would have caused vaporization and liquefaction of body tissue, with small fragments scattering outward. Once they hit the water, recovery became nearly impossible. The search had to keep expanding in both range and depth.

...

Some passages from that salvage report — the one that ran to tens of thousands of words — Gu Yunchi could recite with his eyes closed.

Wen Ran really had vanished in the explosion. At the time, three Alphas had even been watching his death from a hundred meters away. The helicopter and rescue boats had been too far off, and the sky had darkened so fast that in those final moments, no one had really seen clearly.

He'd learned in his training at the Army Academy what a body looked like after an explosion — most of it gone, the rest in fragments, swept away by the sea, maybe even eaten by fish. Exactly like searching for a needle in the ocean.

But he still hadn't called off the Search and Rescue Operation, even though day after day turned up nothing.

No one had thought of it. No one would be absurd enough to suggest it: what if Wen Ran had left the speedboat before the explosion.

What if the direction had been wrong from the start. What if "Wen Ran was on the boat when it blew" was just a false assumption everyone had locked in too early.

There'd been about thirty seconds after the call ended. If Wen Ran had jumped into the water in that window — sinking, then swimming outward along the undercurrent — the blast's shockwave might have actually pushed him further from the site.

The rescue boats had taken over ten minutes to reach the explosion site. More than enough time for one person to drift at least two hundred meters with the current, let alone if he was actively swimming. Add the darkness, the heavy rain, and the fact that Wen Ran had been wearing black.

And the rescue boats had been outfitted to intercept and save, not to salvage. Their gear was all basic. After the explosion, they couldn't do an efficient, thorough recovery — they had to wait for more specialized ships and equipment, and that took more time.

Every second of those delays added up to four years of Wen Ran secretly being alive under the accepted fact that he'd died in the blast.

Who would have thought it — that desperate, fragile-looking Omega, in his last moment, had thrown himself into the sea, overcome every physical and psychological fear, and swum hard out of the ring of fire.

"Say something. You're scaring me like this." Cheng Duó crept closer to Gu Yunchi. "You know him?"

"Just met him." Gu Yunchi drew a breath. "Get me my Mobile Phone."

"Young master, didn't you leave your Mobile Phone back at the Army Academy? You spend every day on the battlefield — where would you even have a phone? You use communicators. If you want one, I'll go ask the nurse to borrow one right now."

Saying that, Cheng Duó stood up, grabbed his crutch, and went off in person to find a nurse for a phone — body broken but spirit unbowed. The moment the door opened, he snapped to a salute. "Commander Pei."

"Yunchi's awake?"

"Yes, yes, he wants to play on a phone. I'm on my way to borrow him one."

"Nonsense!" Pei Yan glared. "He can't even lift his hands and he wants to play on a phone? Don't lend him one. You go rest too."

"Yes, sir!" Cheng Duó awkwardly turned sideways, gave Gu Yunchi a small apologetic fist-palm salute, then hobbled off on his crutch.

Pei Yan walked over and sat down in the chair. "How's the body feeling? Already wanting to play on a phone — guess you're not in bad shape?"

After a long moment, Gu Yunchi looked at him and gave a slight nod. "Commander Pei."

"..." Mindful that he was still seriously injured, Pei Yan held his patience. "The doctor told me another month or so of rest and you'll recover. Don't worry about anything else for now. Just heal."

Gu Yunchi said nothing, just looked at him. But Pei Yan could clearly feel that something was off about Gu Yunchi's gaze — it was a little empty. That was genuinely rare. Gu Yunchi had taken worse injuries than this before and never been in a state like this.

Honestly speaking, Gu Yunchi was the best of the best among Army Academy students in recent years — an absolutely outstanding student, soldier, sniper, and commander. Pei Yan had lost count of how many times he'd bragged about him to his colleagues behind closed doors.

And now this kid wakes up and the first thing he wants is to play on a phone, with that empty look in his eyes. Every part of him was giving off something strange.

Pei Yan glanced at the monitor, unusually hesitant as he spoke. "Why's your heart rate so high? Should I get the doctor to take a look?"

It wasn't just Gu Yunchi — Pei Yan felt his own heart rate was up a bit too, his blood pressure was high, and his vision was going faintly dark at the edges.

"I'm fine." Gu Yunchi's gaze shifted, gradually clearing. He was back to his usual calm, rational self. "What did you want to see me about?"

Pei Yan exhaled in relief and cleared his throat. "You just woke up. I shouldn't be rushing to tell you this, but I wanted you to be prepared early."

"The center of the battlefield is shifting — Northern Theater Command. It's expected to become the main front for the next five years, and it'll happen within a month or two. Like I proposed to you before, I want you to go over there and train for a few years." Pei Yan paused. "Four years at the Army Academy, plenty of merit to your name, and at your age you've already made it to White Lion 7th Squad captain. There's no second person like you."

"But I have higher expectations for you. I know you have higher expectations for yourself too. Not just leading a squad like now, but leading an entire theater — becoming one of the future leaders of the League Army. You have every bit of the ability." Pei Yan looked at him. "So I'm here to discuss with you: once you're healed, we'll initiate the transfer. You'll go to Northern Theater Command as deputy commander."

Those few short sentences carried years of weight and responsibility. But Gu Yunchi just nodded, the same quiet, composed way he took on mission after mission as captain of White Lion 7th Squad. "I accept the assignment from my superior."

Surprised but not surprised by his answer, Pei Yan let out another breath and patted his knee. "Good. Then heal up first. But I want to warn you — North Theater Command is going to be long and hard. Once war starts, there's no breathing room. And... it's dangerous. No one can guarantee you'll survive."

Gu Yunchi gave a small "mm." "I know."

For something this big, Gu Yunchi's heart rate hadn't budged from start to finish. Pei Yan was even more puzzled by his abnormal reaction from a few minutes ago — but as long as he was okay. Relieved, Pei Yan gave a gentle squeeze to the hand of Gu Yunchi's that had the Detector clipped on. "Alright, I won't bother you anymore. If you have any thoughts, let me know right away."

"Understood. Please get me my Mobile Phone." Gu Yunchi said. "Thank you, Commander."

Pei Yan: ?

Thirty-one days later, evening. A military aircraft touched down at S City. Nine members of the White Lion assault squad, about to be transferred to Northern Theater Command, walked down the ramp and rode to League General Headquarters for a meeting. After that, they'd immediately catch another flight straight to North Theater Command.

By the time the meeting ended, it was already half past nine at night. Everyone had to reach the airport by eleven. They left the meeting building and were about to grab a quick bite at the cafeteria when Gu Yunchi took the car keys a soldier handed him and headed alone toward a military vehicle.

"Captain, where are you going? We've only got a little over an hour!"

"I know." Gu Yunchi pulled open the car door without looking back. "One hour's enough."

Red taillights. The car rolled steadily off into the dark. The night wind swept up late-autumn leaves. Pat, pat — and then it started to rain.

"Booking out the whole place really is the move. Everything's ready in advance — that's what I call solid happiness." Lucien was mixing a drink at his leisure. "Right, Xiao Shu?"

Wen Ran was staring, unblinking, at the three-tier Birthday Party cake. "You think the guests can finish it?"

"Doesn't our bar serve desserts every day? Why are you this hungry?"

"This is a Blue Glass cake." Wen Ran said.

"You mean the Blue Glass that charges 78 for a single Croissant?" Lucien was stunned. "Then this cake has to be over ten thousand?"

Wen Ran nodded. "Sister Meng said it's like eighteen thousand."

Lucien went quiet, then said: "Then I want some too."

Everything he knew about Blue Glass — that outrageously overpriced dessert shop — had come from Wen Ran. Once he'd caught the guy hiding in the break room, eating a Croissant with the reverence of someone handling a sacred relic. He'd casually joked, break off a piece for me. And from Wen Ran's visible dilemma, he'd ended up with a crumb the size of a fingernail.

He'd only learned later that one tiny Croissant cost 78 bucks. Someone like Wen Ran, perpetually broke, would only treat himself to one when he'd won a competition prize or gotten his paycheck — and then he'd agonize over it for days afterward, feeling he'd been too extravagant.

The Birthday Party hit its peak. Wen Ran and Ding Mengge helped wheel the cake out. Then Wen Ran stepped into the shadows to wait for the next instruction from the client. Not long after, the birthday-celebrating Omega came running over with a slice of cake and held it out to him. "You've worked hard — have some cake. You've been busy all night, take a break!"

Wen Ran blinked, took the cake with a string of thanks, and retreated a little awkwardly to a corner of the corridor under Lucien's envious gaze.

The music and chatter bent around a few corners, growing muffled and distant. Wen Ran dug into the cake very seriously. It was really good — but he still loved Croissants more.

The Croissants that hadn't changed in flavor across four years.

Lost in thought like that, he drifted further away. He didn't hear the very soft footsteps behind him — until something cold and hard pressed against the small of his back. Wen Ran froze for a beat, then quickly realized that was probably a gun muzzle.

A thousand thoughts and theories flashed through his mind — murder, robbery, trafficking — but he couldn't pin down any of them long enough to think it through. He stood rigid, not daring to turn around. After a long moment, he spoke. "What do you want?"

The person behind him stayed silent. Wen Ran felt them move closer. An arm came around his side, and then the gun at his lower back was withdrawn. Those hands wrapped around his body and pressed in.

He was pulled into an embrace that smelled of autumn-night cold and rain.

A strong heartbeat drummed against his back — an impossibly close, perfectly fitted hug from behind, the tall frame enveloping him completely. They were standing in this quiet corner, already so close, yet Wen Ran hadn't caught even a single breath from the other person. As silent as that gun.

Carefully, he tried to turn his head. The slightest movement — and the Alpha caught it instantly, lifting his left hand to grip his chin with just enough force.

Wen Ran breathed in short, fast bursts. In the dim light, he looked down at that hand — the cuff of a Black Windbreaker, black Gloves, no skin visible, no scent either. Maybe Blocker.

"Who are you." he asked softly.

No answer, of course. The Alpha lowered his head and buried his face against Wen Ran's neck.

His ear was brushed by a few strands of hair. A little ticklish. Warm breath. The Alpha's nose pressed against the side of his neck, lashes sweeping across his skin. Wen Ran shivered. He didn't ask again, didn't move.

Like being sealed inside a piece of amber — silent, still — they stood pressed together in that tiny patch of space.

A minute later, the hand at his waist suddenly let go. The warmth and heartbeat behind him vanished. Wen Ran was still holding the cake, turning around in a daze. The Alpha, like a bird that had only stopped to rest for a moment, was gone in the blink of an eye — nothing left but an empty corridor.

Wen Ran touched his own neck without thinking. Where the Alpha's eyes had grazed him, there was a faint dampness — like rain.

His breathing grew heavier. Wen Ran suddenly spun around and bolted. He set the cake down in a hurry, pushed open the back door, and ran out into the rain. A few meters in, he tripped over some junk in the Little Alley and went down hard, his uniform soaked through, cold everywhere.

He strained to lift his head and look toward the mouth of the alley. The rain blurred his vision. He still couldn't make anything out.

When was the last time he'd eaten a 78-yuan Croissant?

Months ago. Not a day he'd won a prize. Not a payday. Just an ordinary day.

Four years ago, on that day, he'd been sitting in a glittering banquet hall when the Engagement was announced to everyone present. To Gu Yunchi.

And that same night, Gu Yunchi had said, "I can't marry you."

He'd kept that sentence locked tight in his memory, because it felt right. Everything that happened afterward only proved how right it was. But maybe he'd held onto it too tightly — four years and he still couldn't forget. He kept thinking about that night, Gu Yunchi sitting in the moonlight, his gaze, his voice, his tone — even though every word out of his mouth had been ugly.

So he'd secretly bought himself a Croissant that was, for him, ridiculously expensive — wanting to mark the day that had once been given a special meaning. Even though the Engagement was doomed from the start. It didn't matter.

It didn't matter.

That year, in that remote Little Fishing Village, in that little room papered all over with the double-happiness character — maybe they'd already been married. Before all the cruel truth came crashing down.