Cheng Feng kept close to the grass, advancing covertly. She had to stop and scout around every few crawls, making the process excruciatingly slow.
By now, it had been over half an hour since she’d left the chaotic battle zone.
The woods ahead were deathly silent – footsteps and gunfire alike had vanished without a trace, as if the mountain were completely empty.
Cheng Feng was certain they hadn’t dispersed.
With such a hefty supply cache at stake, over fifteen combatants – and possibly more joining in – from multiple factions locked in chaotic skirmishes, plus the early smoke-screen visual obstructions… all these factors meant half an hour was far from enough to resolve the core conflict.
Clearly, her earlier ambush had riled everyone up, temporarily halting the infighting among the hostile youths and turning their muzzles outward in a unified direction, forming a new equilibrium – or one might call it a stalemate.
Cheng Feng had already stopped some three to four hundred meters out. Farther ahead, there was no suitable cover; getting any closer would risk exposing her. The terrain she was on now was relatively high, offering a fairly open field of view and making it easier to seize the right moment.
She set up her long-barreled rifle in a crevice between rocks, aimed it at the battle zone where undercurrents ran strong, and used the scope to observe the distant situation.
Two more bodies had appeared inside the zone, lying almost horizontally by the roadside. Clearly, they were unfortunate bystanders who had unwittingly wandered in – strolling right into the encirclement as if nothing were amiss.
She could only wonder how many rounds they’d taken before bowing out.
Cheng Feng shook her head in pity, gripped the rifle with both hands, adjusted her posture slightly, and lay still, waiting.
Fifteen minutes…
Half an hour.
Time stretched interminably in the frozen tableau, like shadows lengthening under a westering sun.
Cheng Feng held the same position throughout – still, focused, utterly absorbed. She had shed all restlessness, reined in every sharp edge, and now watched her prey with benign, unthreatening attention.
Leaves drifted down in the fading golden light, swaying and tumbling in the rising evening breeze, until one came to rest on Cheng Feng’s helmet.
Still and serene.
If not for the black rifle barrel making minute adjustments in direction, new viewers joining the livestream would hardly have noticed that someone was even hiding there.
In-game time: 5:00 PM sharp.
The atmosphere around her grew increasingly awkward.
Everyone present was reluctantly coming to the same realization – their opponents in this circle had far more patience than they’d expected.
Just as the others began to wonder whether they’d be stuck here all night, someone finally cracked.
The young man, apparently deciding to abandon the supply cache altogether, clutched his rifle and began edging backward in small steps, muttering under his breath, “You guys are so boring!”
The endless wait had drained his patience completely, leaving him flooded with a sharp sense of regret.
He’d given up the precious early-game assembly time, all for a supply pack that wasn’t even in short supply – and now he’d ended up with no kills, no military crate, and a standoff with a bunch of people whose minds he couldn’t begin to fathom, all the way until dusk.
The whole arena – a thousand two-legged creatures, all evolved monkeys – they’d all make fine kills under his gun, no ranking required. He wasn’t picky. So why waste his time here?
Can’t hang. Bye.
He’d barely taken a few steps back when Cheng Feng’s gunshot suddenly rang out, shattering the silence and startling a flock of birds that had just settled on the branches overhead.
The crowd stirred again.
The snipers who’d been lining up their own shots, poised to steal a kill, were thrown into confusion, swiveling their sights left and right to spot the hijacker. But the shot had come too abruptly – no one had caught where it came from.
A guy shrieked in frustration. “Who the hell was that! Who! Where! Don’t you know there’s a queue?!”
“Over there!”
“I can’t see you, how the hell am I supposed to know which ‘over there’ you mean?! If you’ve spotted them, then shoot!”
“Don’t think I don’t know – you’re trying to bait me!”
Amid the chaos, a gruff voice bellowed. “It’s been almost two hours, guys! It’s getting dark! Please! There’ve been eleven packs dropped here so far, two of which were snatched by that bastard earlier – let’s just split the rest and call it a day!”
“I agree. You go pick them up – I’ll let you take a whole pack.”
“Staying here waiting is pointless anyway. There are bodies with packs lying all over the road – anyone with eyes can see this route’s a dead end. Let’s be real with each other and stop treating everyone like idiots. Let’s negotiate.”
“We’re on different sides – how can we negotiate? Let’s just fight, brothers! Quit pretending to keep the peace, or I’m really walking!”
“There’s a sniper out there. Even if you don’t take the pack now, you’re not getting away.”
Cheng Feng was too far away – even with a loudspeaker she wouldn’t have been able to make out what they were saying. She could only see figures shifting around, and soon someone started firing warning shots, trying to provoke the opposing side.
Before long, the gunfire grew erratic, and someone threw down a smoke grenade.
Cheng Feng couldn’t help but think: Finally, a smart one. If it were her, she’d have done that ages ago. How are you supposed to fish in clear water?
Now, the braver examinees, just like Cheng Feng had done earlier, took advantage of the spreading white haze to scavenge the supply packs scattered across the ground – grabbing what they could and making a quick getaway.
A few students, worried about catching stray bullets, simply withdrew from the fray altogether. Many more, however, raised their guns and fired in all directions. Cheng Feng also blind-fired several shots into the heart of the battle, adding fuel to the fire.
In this current state, anyone still left in the game was basically fighting on pure luck -who knows, maybe fortune would favor them with a hit.
The commotion dragged on without cease, and the sky had gone completely dark.
Perhaps it was because ammunition was running low – the gunfire, once as dense as a downpour, gradually began to taper off. Or perhaps the number of survivors had dwindled to a point where the spoils could finally be divided more cleanly.
After a grenade blast rumbled through the air, Cheng Feng caught a whiff of impending peace from it.
She ducked down to swap in her second box of ammo, thinking she’d see if another opportunity arose to farm some more points.
As she looked back up, a young man sprinted to the edge of the smoke zone, slipped behind a tree trunk, and stopped – with his back facing Cheng Feng.
Her monitoring goggles happened to be able to pierce through the outer layer of fog, picking up the outline of his silhouette. She quickly chambered a round, squinted, turned her barrel, and – just before he could move again – pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The half-crouched figure crumpled to the ground.
What a sweetheart – so in tune with her wishes.
Cheng Feng neatly fired two more finishing shots, flexed her fingers, made minor adjustments to her posture, and relaxed her stiff neck and shoulders.
Add that to the three from earlier, and that made at least five kills so far.
Not a bad haul at all.
But that one shot also gave away Cheng Feng’s position to the others.
Before long, several candidates charged out, holding makeshift ballistic shields assembled from scrap parts in front of them. They quickly locked onto Cheng Feng’s location based on the general direction of the shot.
Cheng Feng immediately rolled to the side, tucking her entire body behind the rocks.
These military cadets – constantly splitting and regrouping, with ever-shifting allegiances – had once again set aside their mutual grudges in the face of this sniper who excelled at swooping in for the kill. They were determined to eliminate this external threat first.
The extent of their caution manifested in darting back and forth between different cover points, while leaving a few behind to lay down suppressing fire and keep Cheng Feng from poking her head out.
Cheng Feng could hear the thunderous impact of bullets striking the rock behind her, her ears ringing with the reverberations. Still, she risked peeking out – bullets whistling past her head – and reached sideways into her pocket, pulling out a remote detonator.
For anyone running from their position to where Cheng Feng was now holed up, they would inevitably have to pass through the patch of grass where she’d lain in ambush during her earlier sneak attack. Just as the two young men were about to reach it, she calmly pressed down on the red button.
A mature person always leaves a backup plan.
With a featherlight press – less than 10 grams of force – two explosive devices detonated simultaneously, igniting brilliant flames in the dark night. The blaze mirrored a sudden red flare that lit up the hillside below, drawing the eyes of countless candidates.
As for those two candidates, they were ejected from the arena amid looks of sheer horror, leaving behind them four dazed and solitary survivors.
“Beautiful!”
Cheng Feng snapped her fingers in satisfaction, hoisted her pack, and turned to leave.
She adjusted her helmet and didn’t look back, reconnecting to the team channel to brag to her companions. “I got about seven kills!”
Yan Shen didn’t even hesitate. “You’re bluffing, right?”
“Tsk, what’s with the attitude? Kids need encouragement,” Jiang Linxia chimed in with an exaggerated, shrill voice. “Well done, Fengfeng! You’ve even learned how to brag – I’m so proud of you!”
Cheng Feng snorted. “Fine, don’t believe me then.”
In stark contrast to their banter, the audience outside the arena was already in an uproar.
Most of Cheng Feng’s blind-fired shots had been aimed near the supply packs she’d memorized earlier. Unbeknownst to her, her actual kill count had already reached nine.
Combined with the four kills from Xiang Yunjian’s side, the entire team’s score had soared to sixteen.
A commanding lead – topping the kill leaderboard!
Keep in mind that in past years, in this thousand-player team exam, quite a few squads ended with zero kills. The vast majority scored between two and four. Five was a passing grade, and anything above six was a huge win.
And with the three-day exam having barely passed the three-hour mark, Cheng Feng was already on the verge of breaking double digits – once again charging toward a new kill record.
The competition had barely begun, but the manual operations majors and the Command departments were already celebrating ahead of time. Even San Yao Official had prepared a poster for the first player to break ten kills, ready to release at any moment.
The livestream chat was flooded with screams and exclamation marks.
“Nine kills! Is this for real?! Cheng Feng, you’re amazing!”
“No wonder they’re the all-MVP team – I blink and they’ve already got another kill. I don’t even dare eat now, I’m just camped in front of the stream.”
“I’ll admit I didn’t see this coming! I thought Cheng Feng’s individual combat strength was on the weaker side, that she’d definitely get taken out early, or at best stubbornly survive to the end – but I never imagined she’d be the one stealing the show!”
“Tsk, even Xiang’s 1v3 earlier feels bland now. Cheng Feng went into a circle with over a dozen people, slipped in and out twice, fleeced them twice, racked up nine kills, and nearly wiped them out!”
“I’ve got just one question – are data analysts really that strong? This is practically Cheng Feng’s personal showcase!”
“Cheng Feng’s arrival is like injecting revolutionary technical support into a world where people fight with their fists. Comrades, this is proof that knowledge is power! It’s the truth!”
“Anyway, this B-class commander has lost his mind. Never thought the glory of data analysis would end up being carried by a manual operations major! The sky’s clear, the rain’s stopped – I feel like I can do anything now!”
“From now on, Command majors are my long-lost brothers out in the world!”
…
Cheng Feng jogged back to her supply stash, grabbed a box of ammunition to top off her pack, and decided to head down the mountain to regroup with Xiang Yunjian.
She pulled up the map – and froze in bewilderment. That certain someone who’d said he was coming her way was now standing on the complete opposite side of the map, holed up with Yan Shen.
The distance between the four of them over there had already shrunk significantly, with signs they were about to link up – leaving Cheng Feng as the only one stranded at the easternmost edge of the map.
Cheng Feng: “??” Are you guys looking down on me or what?
