The video had been edited in post-production and even came with added subtitles. Time had been short, though, so the final product was a little rough around the edges.
The opening segment was an introduction to their squad – or rather, an introduction to Cheng Feng.
Each of the others got about two seconds of screen time.
Cheng Feng had over ten.
Well, she was the MVP.
The four of them exchanged furtive glances, all sharing the same uneasy premonition.
The instructor by the door propped up his terminal, aimed its camera at them, adjusted it carefully on the table, then, grinning from ear to ear, strolled over to stand behind them.
Goosebumps prickled across Jiang Linxia’s skin. A chill crept up his back, and he couldn’t help asking in a low voice, “What are you guys doing?”
The instructor replied, “The production team wanted to record your reactions. They said they might play the footage during the post-match interview.”
Jiang Linxia turned his head, but before he could get a good look at their faces, a large hand grabbed him and turned him back around, wasting the bright, camera-ready smile he’d just put on.
He could only protest, “Isn’t the team event’s post-match interview at eight tonight? We’ve all won MVPs before – you don’t need to make such a production out of this!”
A younger instructor chuckled quietly behind them. “We’re mainly worried you might not be in the mood to do the interview tonight, so we’re recording it in advance.”
Without changing expression, Jiang Linxia said, “We did pretty well, didn’t we? There’s no way we won’t be in the mood. We’re pro…”
The instructor cut him off.
“Watch the video. No whispering among yourselves or chatting with the instructors.”
By then, the video had finally reached the main feature.
For the moment, though, Jiang Linxia still couldn’t tell what was coming.
The first perspective was from the mountain on the eastern side of the exam zone. Two young men, their faces obscured, were jogging back and forth along the mountain trail.
After a while, they stopped and crouched in the grass.
One of them said to his teammate, “I wonder where Cheng Feng is. There’s been absolutely no sign of her.”
“Who in this entire exam isn’t looking for Cheng Feng? Out of all the MVPs over the years, she’s probably the weakest in terms of pure infantry combat. If anyone runs into her before Xiang Yunjian and the others regroup with her, it’ll be like hitting the jackpot.”
After squatting for so long, one of the young men felt his legs go numb. He shifted slightly, tapping a knee against the grass as he leaned toward his companion.
“Honestly, I still don’t get it. How did someone who pilots manual-operated mechs end up winning the infantry MVP?”
“A mech pilot is a mech pilot; infantry is infantry. Manual operation is a completely different skill set. It’s a shame the team event rules are so unfavorable for her. Without Xiang Yunjian and the others backing her up, I don’t think Cheng Feng will survive for long.”
“Out of respect for an MVP, I’ll guess she’ll manage… three kills.”
“The moment she opens fire, she’ll give away her position. I think even three is generous. Though… I could be wrong.”
As they talked, the tactical map on-screen kept zooming out. Then a red dot appeared in one corner. Afraid the audience might miss it, the editor had thoughtfully added both an arrow and the name Cheng Feng – very much in keeping with Cheng Feng’s own habit of marking things as obviously as possible.
The camera shifted to the red dot’s location and zoomed back in.
The screen filled with a stretch of terrain shrouded in thick smoke.
Gunfire erupted from every direction. While nobody could actually see what was happening inside the smoke, the kill counter beside Cheng Feng’s name in the upper-left corner suddenly ticked upward –
One.
Two.
Three.
Immediately afterward came a highlight reel of Cheng Feng’s shooting.
Accompanied by the steady rhythm of gunfire, the numbers in the upper-left corner skyrocketed in dramatic leaps.
For the sake of runtime, the editors kept only seven shots in the montage, finishing with three firework-like explosions to round the kill count up to a nice, satisfying whole number.
The scene changed.
It was still the eastern mountain, but now another pair of young men – clearly different from the last, judging by their voices – were whispering to each other.
“It’s been three hours since the match started. This doesn’t make any sense. How is there still no news of Cheng Feng? She couldn’t have been eliminated already, could she?”
“If she’s alive, we should see the person. If she’s dead, we should at least see the body!”
“Maybe she’s really playing dead? Just hiding in one spot without moving until the match ends or something. I don’t think Xiang Yunjian would bring her along while they’re farming points. She’s too conspicuous – basically a walking kebab skewer. She’d only make it harder for the four of them to rack up kills.”
“That’s a good point. As their data analyst, finding herself a nice hideout and lying low shouldn’t be difficult.”
“UFU’s mastery of the art of shamelessly camping it out has truly reached perfection.”
As they spoke, the camera gradually zoomed in.
Where the arrow pointed, the grass rustled ever so slightly, barely more noticeably than if the wind had brushed past.
There, over a hundred meters behind them, Cheng Feng was crawling across the ground with her rifle slung across her back.
Then the footage sped up.
The red dot representing Cheng Feng darted crazily from the southern end of the mountain to the northern end, zigzagging all over the map and tracing a winding, serpentine path behind it.
The supposedly “keeping a low profile” Cheng Feng had quietly passed by practically the entire world.
The next second, the supporting cast changed again.
This time there were three of them instead of two – a testament to just how popular Cheng Feng was in the tournament. She was practically surrounded by enemies on all sides, every step fraught with danger.
This group was hiding in an abandoned factory complex on the outskirts, each occupying a different position and communicating over the team channel…
“Word is there’s a candidate at the foot of the mountain who might be Cheng Feng. Everyone nearby has swarmed over.”
“And then?”
“They’re saying she was killed, but nobody dares go up and check if it’s really her. There are too many people at the bottom of the mountain now – we can’t get through.”
“The competition on the first day is just too fierce. If you can’t find a decent base, you might as well risk heading up the mountain.”
“This is awful. It’s only been a few hours, and the handful of female candidates in the entire exam have practically all been hunted down by those animals.”
“Exactly! We’d never do something like that! It would be way too unfair to Cheng Feng!”
“Hey, wait! Look north! Doesn’t that person look like Cheng Feng?”
The three of them all looked in the indicated direction.
They saw absolutely nothing.
That didn’t stop the same young man who had just been righteously declaring, We’d never do something like that, from suddenly bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Cheng Feng’s over there! Charge!”
Not long afterward, a military student with Xiang Yunjian emblazoned above his head followed the commotion to its source. He slipped in from behind the crowd, ambushed them, snatched two kills, and immediately turned and ran.
Watching the video, the four of them felt like they’d figured out the pattern by now. They managed to keep straight faces.
The title of this compilation should probably be:
#The Left Cheek and Right Cheek Gently Caressed by Cheng Feng or perhaps #There Were No Fools in the World… Until Enough People Ran into Cheng Feng
They understood the formula now.
The instructor had almost forgotten the best part. Reaching this segment, he hurriedly activated the “Featured Comments” overlay on his optical computer.
The viewers online had far sharper tongues than anything the four of them had merely been thinking.
As they watched the barrage of comments stream across the screen, all four maintained perfectly impassive expressions while silently reflecting on their own behavior.
We should be okay… right?
Sure, we took a little longer than expected to regroup, but we’d always treated her like a teammate.
At least none of us had ever looked down on Cheng Feng.
The next scene featured yet another pair of young men.
Judging by their slumped postures, they looked utterly exhausted. Both were leaning against the back of a large boulder, dejected, as though they’d just finished an all-out chase.
“Climbing this mountain is brutal. Let’s find a chance to head back down.”
“You think Cheng Feng’s up here? Someone said they spotted her nearby.”
“That rumor’s spread to every corner of the map by now.”
“Who’s going to be lucky enough to run into Cheng Feng all by herself? This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to killing an MVP.”
The young man was still wistfully indulging in the fantasy, lamenting his bad luck.
Before he could enjoy the daydream any longer…
…it came true.
Several bullets flew in from barely ten meters away, striking both of them with lightning speed and instantly claiming the points.
The video froze.
It rewound two seconds.
A sound-enhancement effect highlighted the center of the screen. As a pile of fallen leaves on the map gave an almost imperceptible twitch, Cheng Feng’s muttering could be heard from the background, “You may not get what you want, but I can still give you a taste of bullets.”
Jiang Linxia finally lost it.
He slapped his thigh and burst into laughter.
Xiang Yunjian and the others’ lips twitched as well, but unlike him, they didn’t dare laugh so openly.
Jiang Linxia turned to ask the instructor what all this was supposed to mean.
Then a very familiar voice drifted from the speakers.
“Cheng Feng must be terrified right now. She’s probably clutching her rifle somewhere, secretly crying. Yan Shen, however many tears she’s shedding, it’s all your fault.”
The sentence hit Jiang Linxia like a bolt of lightning.
Memories he’d nearly managed to bury began crawling back out of the darkest corner of his personal archive of embarrassing moments.
“Cheng Feng’s about to realize she simply can’t manage without us.”
In the pouring rain, Jiang Linxia had been half-closing his eyes – half because he was sleepy, half because he was bored – but he’d still forced eight parts out of ten of heartfelt concern onto his face for Cheng Feng’s sake.
“As for Zhong Yijie… tsk, tsk. I know exactly what kind of person he is. He’s definitely bullying Cheng Feng nonstop, working her to the bone. Sending her out to do all the dangerous jobs, making her go off and die… Cheng Feng is just too pitiful! Kids really shouldn’t leave home.”
If the young men from before had merely suffered from an inaccurate perception of themselves, Jiang Linxia’s performance was a little too fake and exaggerated, to the point where it had taken on a strong sense of theatricality.
But Jiang Linxia never could have imagined that the very next scene would show Cheng Feng dramatically slamming three “3s” onto the table with the force of a thunderbolt.
It was almost unbearably painful to watch.
Painful enough that a lost child suffering from insomnia was somehow playing Fight the Landlord in the middle of an exam.
Watermelon was still shamelessly flattering her from the side. “Richest person alive, you’re amazing!”
Zhong Yijie chimed in, “Can’t beat it!”
After one round ended, Watermelon stood up. “I’m going on watch duty. Someone else can take my place and play with you.”
Cheng Feng made a token attempt at politeness. “Why don’t I go too?”
“No, no, no. You’re not actually part of our team. Even if you notice something, you won’t be able to notify us in time.” Watermelon hurriedly waved her off. “Besides, you’re a VIP guest! Just rest! Leave everything to us!”
As he headed up the stairs, he still couldn’t resist turning back and calling out, “Captain, shuffle faster! Don’t keep the boss waiting!”
Jiang Linxia nearly jumped to his feet.
The instructors behind him had anticipated this. One immediately covered his mouth, while another grabbed his shoulder and held him firmly in place.
Jiang Linxia widened his eyes and let out several muffled cries. “Let go! I have something to say!”
The instructor covering his mouth frowned. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘F***ing let go of me right now, or I’ll jump up and knock your head off.'”
“He dares to curse at an instructor?”
Jiang Linxia’s eyes widened even further. Through his desperate struggles, his voice became clearer. “I didn’t!”
The “level-ten translator” immediately interpreted, “He said, ‘Either I exist, or you don’t.'”
“Now that’s some spirit! He’ll do ten laps carrying extra weight after this.”
The two instructors played off each other perfectly, piling another charge onto Jiang Linxia’s imaginary record.
Jiang Linxia was overwhelmed with grief. With his mouth still covered, he could only breathe through his nose, feeling like even exhaling was difficult.
The version of him in the edited video was suffering just as much.
He watched himself wipe the water droplets from his face. Behind his glasses, the dark circles beneath his eyes were unmistakable. He blinked his bloodshot eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Stop sleeping. Everyone, hold on a little longer. Hurry up and go find Cheng Feng.”
He swore that, at the very least, he had been completely sincere at that moment.
The next moment, Cheng Feng threw down her cards, flopped onto the ground, and lay there in the posture of an old man resting after a long day. “I’m tired.”
Watermelon immediately tore open a chocolate bar and handed it to her.
Zhong Yijie picked up her bag and asked, “Do you want some water?”
“No need,” Cheng Feng said. “I’ll sleep for a bit and let my fatigue level drop back down.”
He lowered his head and started organizing his own backpack. Holding a handful of loose bullets, he stuffed them into a small pouch. As he zipped it shut, he burst out laughing. “I think only bullets for Cheng Feng’s beloved assault rifle can comfort her. When she sees these, she’ll definitely be so happy she cries!”
The next second, Cheng Feng casually tossed an entire box of ammunition into Zhong Yijie’s arms. “Here, take these. Why are there so many bullets? Do these people just not use guns?”
But even Zhong Yijie wasn’t particularly interested. “Let’s hide them here for now. They might come in handy later.”
“Fine. If we end up not needing them, I can just throw them to my teammates.”
“Then aren’t you going to contact them? This is the first time I’ve ever seen a team lose contact with one of their members.” Zhong Yijie was genuinely shocked. “From a resource perspective alone, they should have come to pick you up much earlier.”
“I told them, but they didn’t believe me. They even mocked me!”
Jiang Linxia’s eyes were practically starting to water.
Even the scenes he least wanted to see began appearing.
Scenes like him being blasted into a wall by the shockwave of an explosion, crying while hugging Yan Shen, making fun of Cheng Feng for exaggerating her battle results…
The editor was extremely skilled.
They knew exactly how to stab someone right in the heart, turning the entire video into a negative example set in opposition to Cheng Feng.
In just fifteen minutes, the pent-up frustration in Jiang Linxia’s chest completely dissipated.
He went from howling in protest, to desperately resisting, and finally to simply giving up.
He sat there with hollow eyes, completely motionless.
Even the instructor couldn’t bear it anymore and ended up comforting him instead. “You’re already a fourth-year student. It’ll be over soon.”
The next victim was Xiang Yunjian.
Xiang Yunjian sat up a little straighter, feeling a pair of icy hands reach out from behind and press down on his shoulders.
The instructor leaned close to his ear and breathed out ominously. “Do you have anything you want to say?”
Xiang Yunjian stiffly shook his head.
His guilt was pretty obvious.
At the beginning of the match, he had given up on going to pick up Cheng Feng because of the small crowd gathered at the foot of the mountain, and he had even joined Jiang Linxia in making jokes about her. As a result, the entire team had continued drifting further and further down the path of poverty afterward.
Especially after three days and nights of exhausting battles, their kill count still wasn’t higher than Cheng Feng’s score from playing Fight the Landlord.
Yan Shen never expected that even his act of hiding cookies would be caught on camera.
The scene where he haggled with his teammates over a few bullets was also captured in crystal-clear detail.
Xin Kuang got off relatively lightly.
At most, he had questioned Cheng Feng’s reported results. Most of the time, he had merely gone along with the others and fanned the flames, while somehow managing to keep himself out of the line of fire. Later on, he had taken the very middle-of-the-road approach of following his teammates in showering her with exaggerated praise.
Out of the four, Jiang Linxia talked the most, and he was also the one who mentioned Cheng Feng the most.
As the team’s designated diplomat, he had practically voiced all of their collective thoughts. Naturally, the entire focus of the edited video ended up falling on him.
Yan Shen’s cookie-hiding incident also caused quite a stir online, probably because it looked genuinely too pitiful.
The two of them sacrificed their own dignity and managed to absorb 80% of the audience’s attention and discussion, leaving Xiang Yunjian and Xin Kuang deeply grateful.
Even so, the instructor still followed the interview script provided by San Yao and questioned the four of them for half an hour.
He also ordered each of them to write a 300-word reflection on the video after returning.
Only when the whole farce was nearly over did the instructor finally put away his joking expression. His tone sharpened as he asked calmly, “Do you know where you went wrong?”
The four of them nodded.
“Winning in the end doesn’t mean you don’t need to reflect. This time, I genuinely can’t praise you. You should all know yourselves how outrageous your performance was.” The instructor said. “Military students can’t just laugh off getting proven wrong over and over again. You should feel ashamed. Especially because Cheng Feng was your teammate, yet you didn’t understand her at all.
“All those reasons you think are understandable don’t count as excuses to me. How many times have I told you? Don’t be so blindly confident in your own assumptions!
“If we really want to take this seriously, I could make every single one of you write a ten-thousand-word self-criticism.”
Xiang Yunjian said, “It was my fault.”
The instructor replied, “You’ll be on break soon, and you also have to prepare for the large-scale battle, so I won’t punish you too harshly. Ten laps as a group. Go home after you finish running. I absolutely do not want to see the same mistake happen again.”
When the office door opened again, the four of them – Xiang Yunjian and the others -filed out one after another.
A group of ambitious young people who had once been full of confidence now dragged their feet heavily. Even in their dejected state, they still didn’t forget to ask each other for help with their reflection essays.
They walked past the second floor, preparing to share their grievances with one another and vent about how miserable they felt, when they suddenly heard a wild, unrestrained burst of laughter coming from the side.
Curious, Jiang Linxia peered through a door that had not been fully closed.
Inside, he saw the president of UFU.
Cheng Feng was there too.
The leaders of both the Infantry Department and the Command Department were also inside.
![Sick Beauty [Rebirth]](https://i1.wp.com/lazygirltranslations.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/007S8ZIlgy1gitg84z0hfj30rs12wmzj-1.jpeg?resize=151,215 "Sick Beauty [Rebirth]")
