Chapter 52 : Chapter 52
Chapter 52: I Thought You Were Such a Big Shot, Turns Out You're Just a...
At that moment, everyone in the hall turned to look at Zhou Qing.
After watching the video, Zhou Qing’s face had already gone deathly pale, so pale it was almost frightening.
Before this, all of her arrogance had come from the fact that she truly believed she was impressive.
After all, she had never seen how the other squads had fought their way out.
She had thought that simply surviving inside the dense fog already meant she was strong.
Even when she saw Li Mu’s Vanguard Squad slaughtering monsters like mad, she only felt that they had used their defensive formation well.
But Li Mu’s final one-man stand, protecting his teammates, was a level of power she could not even comprehend.
The ground had been covered in mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.
There had been more than two hundred Bone Ghouls.
How could one person possibly have done that?
Compared to the Vanguard Squad, even her own squad’s name had become a joke.
All of Zhou Qing’s confidence collapsed with a thunderous crash in a single instant.
But the angriest people there were not Zhou Qing.
It was the two rows of Reserve Force recruits standing behind her...
Almost every Reserve Force recruit was so enraged that their eyes seemed to spit fire, their chests heaving violently.
They were absolutely furious.
“Fuck you and your whole damn family!!”
“I thought you were some kind of badass, making us stand here and take it like you were lecturing your grandsons!”
“You motherfu—”
Before he could finish, one Reserve Force boy slapped Zhou Qing hard across the temple.
The blow sent her staggering sideways.
Another Reserve Force soldier beside him hurriedly reached out to stop the guy who had struck her, frantically signaling with his eyes to remind him that the Guidance Officer was still there.
But the young man shook him off, rolled up his sleeves viciously, and snarled, “Why the hell are you stopping me? Hit her!!”
At that command, all the Reserve Force soldiers rushed forward in a swarm.
They were truly maddened with rage.
Because of one sentence from this damned woman, they had been forced to stand there for nearly forty minutes.
And for absolutely no reason.
At first, they had really thought she was somebody formidable.
After all that, she turned out to be an idiot.
What did that feel like?
It was like sitting in a university classroom.
Then some guy in a white coat walked in and spent the entire class ordering all of you to taste your classmates’ shit.
You could not understand it, but you did it anyway.
Then when class ended, a group of staff from a psychiatric hospital came in, loaded him into an ambulance, and apologized to you before taking him away.
The more they thought about it, the angrier they got.
Not a single veteran moved to stop Zhou Qing from being beaten.
Ordinarily, they and the Reserve Force recruits were practically two separate camps.
They usually had nothing in common with them. These Reserve Force kids were all eighteen-year-old youths.
Among the veterans, some were already well into their twenties.
But now, every one of them turned to look at the Guidance Officer instead, worried that he might intervene in this mess.
If they had been able to squeeze in, they would have liked to punch her a few times themselves.
But when the Guidance Officer saw this scene, he acted as if he had seen nothing at all.
He merely waved a hand and strode out through the front door with his men.
Zhou Qing suffered terribly.
An hour later, she was sent straight to the ICU.
And in the other bases, the moment the promotional documentary was released, Li Mu’s name thundered across half the military district.
Most importantly of all, Li Mu had single-handedly transformed the prestige carried by those three words: Reserve Force.
Overnight, there was not a single Reserve Force soldier in the entire military district who did not feel like thanking Li Mu’s ancestors for eight generations.
Even those so-called veterans now looked at them with far more respect.
Some Third Grade Reserve Force soldiers were even proactively invited into certain squads.
They had finally understood something.
When it came down to a critical moment, knowledge really could save lives.
Even setting aside Li Mu’s monstrous combat strength, his understanding of the Bone Ghoul Domain and the deployment plan he had laid out for the squad at the very beginning had absolutely bought them a great deal of time and greatly increased the squad’s chances of survival.
Not every Reserve Force soldier necessarily had Li Mu’s level of knowledge.
But at the very least, all of them were still in school.
They were learning.
That alone made them far better than people who had never studied at all.
That night, in the Pearl Military District Command Center, Li Mu slowly opened his eyes on the bed in Wang Longcheng’s private lounge and saw Wang Longcheng flipping through a book.
“Commander...”
Li Mu weakly tried to sit up.
Wang Longcheng immediately set the book down, walked over, and gently pressed him back onto the bed.
“Don’t move.”
“I... I’m fine. I need to go home.”
Li Mu checked his condition and found that his body was not in serious trouble. Gritting his teeth, he tried to rise again.
“Do not worry. I already called your mother.”
“I told her I was keeping you here for training tonight, so you would not be going home.”
“There is nothing wrong with your body, but your mind is severely overdrawn. You still need more rest.”
“If you went home looking like this, your mother would be heartbroken.”
Wang Longcheng spoke with a smile.
Only then did Li Mu truly relax. He had been afraid Yang Suying would worry about him.
Glancing at the time on the wall, Li Mu asked somewhat awkwardly, “It’s already ten o’clock, Commander. I’ve delayed your going home.”
“I asked Aunt Bai for leave too. Ha ha. From now on, when no one else is around, just call me Uncle Wang.”
Wang Longcheng smiled faintly.
“Uncle Wang...”
Li Mu did not act coy about it.
The last time, Wang Longcheng and Bai Tiewei had stood up for him in front of so many officials.
From that moment on, Li Mu had regarded them as elders worthy of his respect.
Because neither Wang Longcheng nor Bai Tiewei was the kind of person who would casually bend the rules for private reasons.
What they had done for him had truly moved him.
“You broke through. You know that, right?” Wang Longcheng asked again.
Li Mu sensed the condition of his body and his eyes immediately lit up.
It was true. He had already reached Yellow Rank Third Grade.
Then he opened the system and took a look.
His Triumph Points had actually reached 6,980!
Terrifying!
Just thinking about having that many Triumph Points made Li Mu feel as though his ego was about to start swelling.
Suppressing his wild delight, he pressed his lips together in a smile.
“Yes. I felt it.”
“The speed at which you break through is astonishing,” Wang Longcheng said.
“Talent mutation.”
Li Mu smiled.
“Hahaha, are you trying to say that being able to immobilize monsters and turn into a mosquito to appear behind their heads all of a sudden...”
“...was all because of talent mutation?”
Wang Longcheng asked with a smile.
“Huh? Uncle Wang, you know how to answer your own questions now?”
Li Mu nodded seriously.
Wang Longcheng shook his head with a laugh.
He got up, walked to the table, and took out a set of documents, then handed them to Li Mu.
Li Mu accepted the papers and was just about to read them when Wang Longcheng cautioned him, “Put them away. Read them after you get home.”
“They are all confidential. You absolutely must not let anyone else know.”
“After you finish reading them, remember to destroy them immediately.”
That only made Li Mu even more curious.
But all he could do was nod and put the thick stack of materials into his Storage Ring.
“I already edited your battle footage into the promotional documentary.”
“Now half the soldiers in the Pearl Military District know about what you did.”
“You do not mind, do you? Ah, no, that is wrong. Even if you do mind, it is too late!”
Wang Longcheng chuckled.
Li Mu let out a bewildered, “Huh?”
“Why?”
“You fool, of course it was for Merit!”
Wang Longcheng replied irritably.
He rose and clasped his hands behind his back.
“There are three benefits to magnifying your deeds!”
“First, it broadens your influence, which makes it easier for me to fight for Merit on your behalf.”
“Second, this matter truly is worth publicizing. It is extremely useful for military conduct rectification!”
“It can greatly strengthen the cohesion of the troops. It is an excellent positive influence.”
“And it has also had an extraordinary effect on improving the status of the Reserve Force within the military.”
“Third, it raises your prestige!”
“In the military, prestige outweighs everything! Sometimes, it is not even less important than Merit!”
“You do not understand that yet, but sooner or later, you will.”
Li Mu nodded thoughtfully.
These were all things he would never have thought of on his own.
But Wang Longcheng had already planned them all out for him.
After chatting for a while, Wang Longcheng suddenly asked another strange question.
“Li Mu, back then, after you ran out of True Qi, you told Ma Jun and the others that if you reached your limit, you would definitely leave.”
“But in the end, even after you lost consciousness, you were still fighting by force of will.”
“You did not leave.”
“Why?”
Wang Longcheng asked the question very seriously.
Li Mu knew he was not looking for some perfunctory answer like “I did not have time” or “I forgot.”
After pondering for a long while, Li Mu also answered seriously, with eight words.
“When the feeling reaches its depth, one simply acts to the fullest.”