The First Order

The battle was not over yet. After Ren Xiaosu and Chen Wudi made their way back from the rear, the intense battle at the front line was still ongoing. But once the Qing Consortium’s soldiers charged the high ground, the battle reached an impasse.

While the soldiers at the other positions battled for their lives, Ren Xiaosu lit a fire and got ready to cook after returning to their elevated position. It was time for dinner, and he had brought along pots and pans, after all.

Ren Xiaosu felt that they could not skip meals even though they were fighting a war. Furthermore, Chen Wudi was even craving fried rice with sausages.

Hearing artillery fire blasting the high ground next to them, Li Qingzheng hesitated before asking, “Is it really alright for us to start eating at a time like this?”

“What’s wrong with that?” After Ren Xiaosu lit the firewood, he placed the metal pot over it. “Didn’t we already complete our mission? Besides, we’re still fighting the battle anyway. We’re still pinning down that infantry regiment halfway up the mountain.”

Even though the regimental commander was still alive, he no longer wanted to attack this high ground. More importantly, they had rushed halfway up the mountain in a single breath all for the sake of providing laser guidance for a missile attack from the rear. In the end, Qing Zhen stranded them here where they could see bullets whizzing past their heads whenever they looked up. Without any supporting firepower from the rear to cover them, they could not escape even if they wanted to!

This battle made the regimental commander want to give up!

At this moment, Li Qingzheng said, “There aren’t many soldiers still standing in that infantry regiment. Why don’t we charge down and surprise attack them?”.

Ren Xiaosu decisively rejected his suggestion. “Our mission is to defend this high ground properly, and that’s all we have to do!”

Regardless of whether they would suffer any casualties from charging down at the enemy, Ren Xiaosu was unwilling to take this risk. After all, Ren Xiaosu was already annoyed and unhappy about the fact that they had been deployed to the most dangerous position of all.

When Chen Wudi got scolded at the medical center, did they stop to think for a moment if it was the Heroes Battalion’s decision to come to the front line?!

Even without Ren Xiaosu, the Qing Consortium would still have made a feint attack on Position 313. But even a feint attack would still be carried out with real bullets, albeit with a little less firepower. A lot of people would still have died in the end.

It was not as though everyone would just be standing there and taunting during a feint attack!

As they were discussing this, Ren Xiaosu was cooking the rice and dicing the sausages.

A group of soldiers from the Heroes Battalion went to defend the high ground while another group squatted down beside the large pot and waited to eat.

Ren Xiaosu split his focus while cooking and looked into the palace at the same time. He remembered that the palace was trying to explain something earlier on, but as Chen Wudi was getting yelled at then, he did not manage to hear the explanation.

Ren Xiaosu was taken aback when he read the record of what was typed on the palace’s brass typewriter. The line of words was written as such: “Strength and Dexterity attributes have exceeded the threshold point. ‘City Buster’ has now been enabled. Upon activation, the ability will double the host’s Strength and Dexterity for 30 seconds. There will be a cooldown time of one day before the next usage.”

What was this about?

Why would an ability like that appear all of a sudden? Although the duration of usage seemed a little short, Ren Xiaosu would have an equivalent of 21.0 Strength and 20.2 Dexterity after activating it.

If this ability were used well, it would be extremely effective. He might even be able to catch his enemies off guard with it.

But what was the threshold point the palace was talking about? Was it reaching 10 points in his attributes? Did it mean that he would gain another ability every time he exceeded 10 attribute points?

So it turned out that there would be additional rewards whenever his physical fitness surpasses a certain level!

Thinking of all this, Ren Xiaosu added the sausages into the pot and gave it a few stirs with a ladle.

Li Qingzheng was watching from close by. The fried rice was still not ready yet, but the high ground next to their position had already changed hands twice in this period. Such an intense battle was going on over there.

But something felt strange. The Qing Consortium was no longer sending any more troops to attack them at this position.

When the fried rice with sausages was done, Ren Xiaosu immediately scooped out a bowl for Chen Wudi. This bowl of fried rice was scooped in a particular way for him. After Chen Wudi took it from Ren Xiaosu, he realized the bottom of the bowl was full of meat!

Ren Xiaosu left the ladle into the pot and said, “Alright, you guys help yourself. The battalion commander isn’t going to serve you all!”

After saying that, Ren Xiaosu went and sat next to Chen Wudi. “How does it taste?”

“It’s delicious.” Chen Wudi smiled brightly, his lips glistening with oil. “Master, why do you treat me so well?”

Ren Xiaosu already realized that the more Chen Wudi came into contact with the evilness of this world, the more clearheaded he became.

Chen Wudi no longer addressed Luo Lan as Benbo’erba like before when he saw him and would often keep silent and even remain so for long periods. As a result, Chen Wudi was now beginning to sound more like a normal person whenever he spoke.

Ren Xiaosu did not know whether it was a good or a bad thing. He sighed and said, “When I listened to Mr. Zhang’s lessons in the past, I once thought about being a good person. But I gave up after realizing that it was not easy to be good.”

When Chen Wudi heard that, he got back to eating and did not say another word.

Ren Xiaosu continued to lament, “Sometimes, I feel a little ashamed whenever I see you. That’s because the light in my heart has probably already been extinguished. So even though I’m clearly not a good person, I still hope that you’ll be a good person. Perhaps that makes me a little hypocritical. But it’s only when I’m trying to protect you that I get this misconception. It’s like the light in me hasn’t been snuffed out yet.”

Somewhere in Stronghold 108, there was a huge secret base deep in the basement of a garment factory. Hu Shuo had attempted to thoroughly investigate this place, but his people had never been able to infiltrate it.

This place was under the direct jurisdiction of the Li Consortium’s Board of Directors, and it was only responsible for matters related to the nanomachines.

Very few people knew there was still a small armed force here in the basement of the garment factory.

An incandescent white light was hanging from the ceiling in a room underground. A middle-aged man was sitting in front of a blackboard and thinking about something. He was holding a dossier regarding the recent theft of the nanomachines.

The middle-aged man’s name was Li Dingding, and very few people knew of his existence. He was a Li Consortium Shadow, and like Qing Zhen, carried out all shady business dealings for the organization.

But unlike Qing Zhen who always put himself out in the open and even had control of the military, Li Dingding always remained hidden in the shadows.

Li Dingding was going through the dossier at this moment. A lot of the evidence in it was pointing to a supernatural being named Xu Xianchu, a suspected spy of the Yang Consortium, who had probably come here to gather nanomachine samples for the Yang Consortium.

However, Li Dingding felt that something was amiss after reading the file. If he was just collecting some samples, why did he end up obtaining so much?

Importantly, the nanomachines were stolen from dozens of corpses that had been recovered by the organization. This was not just about stealing samples! He wondered what the hell the previous investigator had been doing

Li Dingding sneered, “Buncha fools.”

The dossier in his hands was very detailed, and it even included the entire timeline from when Lin Qi and his group entered the mountains, to the Divine Arms Battalion’s preparations for the attack on the Qing Consortium, as well as the daily updates given by the Divine Arms Battalion, etc.

But even after browsing through the documents for a long time, he still couldn’t figure out anything.

At this moment, someone knocked on the door. Li Dingding said, “Come in.”

The person handed him a new set of documents. “Sir, the higher-ups have assigned us a new case. There’s been a batch of nanomachines that were damaged, and it seems that it was caused by someone whose synchronization rate was 0%.”