Everyone in the circle knows that Mo Heng had a great disciple because Mo Heng always boasted about him. In fact, he said the word “disciple” more than he said the word “son”. Not many people had actually met Cillin before, however. Those who tried to investigate the young man often found their attempts balked by their own people.
Sayd was a GAL Research Institute academician. Naturally, he had heard of Mo Heng’s prestigious disciple as well. He had never met the young man in person, and he hadn’t attended the Sector Z engineering project due to health reasons. However, he knew that all the old men who participated in that project agreed that Mo Heng’s disciple was great, that he was ridiculously young, and that he was the exact same type as Gangster Mo: born to this world to piss people off.
Right now though, none of those recommendations was of any help in this god forsaken place. Sayd curled his lips, “You’re not thinking that your disciple is going to rescue you from here, are you?”
Sayd didn’t want to hurt Mo Heng’s confidence, but the current situation was hardly something they could change easily. When GAL was relatively stable, the political, the military, and especially the business giants who smoked on credits might have afforded them some of the respect they deserved. But now?
Every academician in GAL Research Institute be it one-star or five-star was manhandled into their projects. Those who managed to escape stayed missing like they were some sort of convict, too afraid to even show their faces. Even Mo Heng, one of the few people with a strong background, couldn’t avoid his fate. He might’ve been treated better because his son was an admiral, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still a prisoner.
In the past, Mo Heng would’ve expressed his irritation at Sayd already. Not this time though. The old man looked unnaturally cheerful for some reason.
“What on earth are you planning, Gangster Mo? It scares me every time you smile with your eyes narrowed into slits,” asked Sayd while giving Mo Heng a push.
“Nothing? I’m just thinking that I may be able to witness a new golden ratio record in the near future.”
In “Glory”, there was a leaderboard called the Gold Ranking. Everyone listed in it was said to be some of the closest persons to the golden ratio. They were also a legend in their respective industries and an authority in the textbooks.
People like Mo Heng dreamed of putting their name on the leaderboard, but Mo Heng knew that he had missed his chance a long time ago. He was perfectly happy to let his disciple compete for the title though. Who knows, the boy might even be able to reshuffle the top 10 list!
Anbixin thought that Mo Heng would concentrate on the special armor Cillin was wearing or the strange weapon he fired, but he was wrong. What really got the old man’s blood pumping was Cillin’s assembly. It had been almost three years since they last saw each other, and it appeared that the young man hadn’t neglected his practice. Not only did Cillin look more practiced than before, the fact that he managed to assemble the cannon almost perfectly showed that he was brimming with confidence. At the end of the video, Mo Heng had a feeling that the young man had hit a certain threshold, but he didn’t dare to reveal it just yet. He wanted to watch that video again just in case his eyes and his hopes were deceiving him.
All the same, Mo Heng felt like he saw the shining gold he had pursued his whole life from Cillin’s assembly, and it filled him with hope and expectation toward the future.
Sayd rolled his eyes at Mo Heng’s “excuse” before sighing. “Saym why do you think our academia devolved to this state?”
In GAL, academicians were nowhere as important as they were in the Mist Bodhisattva Empire. Moreover, it was practically impossible for anyone to pursue their studies unimpeded without some sort of background or connection in a big environment like this.
The academia had always played second fiddle to the military, political and business world. It had its moments before the chaos happened, but as the saying went, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Today, those badges of honor only made their shame even greater.
Currently, the Ci Family was literally the only family that remained unswayed by external forces in the entire academia, and they weren’t even academia-focused. While the Ci Family had fought for and won many rights for the academia, their main focus lay in the military and the political world. Their Heavenly Edict General also shared no ties with the academia, so why would he ever use his connections to help them?
“How nice will it be if there comes a day where someone at the top will truly care for our circle?” Sayd said.
“That day will come,” Mo Heng replied softly while tossing a part into the air.
His friend smiled sardonically. “You know I’m just dreaming, right? Who on earth will do that for us? The Heavenly Edict Generals who only focus on military strength, rank and merits, the old foxes who only cares about climbing to the top and enjoying all the benefits that comes with it, or the businessmen who only has eyes for profit and nothing else? And don’t even get me started on those barbarians who call themselves hunters. It would truly be the end of the world if we have to rely on them!”
Mo Heng chuckled. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Anyway, I have to get back to supervising some work, so talk to you later. Seriously though, what is wrong with that Anbixin kid? Why is he so obsessed with researching that? They discarded another group this morning, you know that?”
Mo Heng fell silent. Even he couldn’t maintain a cheerful mood when he heard this.
Sayd was talking about people, of course.
Anbixin had been using soldiers that were captured in battle—especially the ones who showed great strength or potential—for his experiments. To date, countless lives had been discarded like trash either because died in the middle of testing, or because the experiments they were participating had ended in failure.
“If there’s one thing the world got right, it would be that all those who stand at the top of the academia are either geniuses or madmen.” Sayd left after leaving behind these grim words and shaking his head.
Mo Heng turned his gaze to the ceiling after Sayd was gone. A while later, he murmured to no one in particular, “Will you do as I ask, I wonder? You’ve never been one to listen to instructions…”
At Vanguard’s headquarter, Ji Feng was video-calling with Cillin. After Cillin had solved Mo Heng’s message, he had contacted Ji Feng in secret and told him about the guy who had sent him the encrypted message. He didn’t mention why he suspected the guy, nor did he talk about Mo Heng’s role in the matter. In Cillin’s words, he just happened upon the incident and was informing Ji Feng because it was a matter that concerned the A Squadron.
“No problem, I’ll send someone to investigate this. By the way, what are you planning to do after this?” Ji Feng asked curiously.
“I’m going to settle a certain private matter.”
Ji Feng stopped that line of questioning since Cillin said it was private. “Alright, be careful. Do you want any more men? I still have a lot of good seeds who haven’t chosen a B Squad yet.”
“No thank you. I see no reason to accept someone who doesn’t want to join us.”
Ji Feng laughed when he recalled the message he received. “This certainly is the first time I heard a B Squad beating up an A Squad and dragging them into their base.”
In Vanguard, there was no one besides Ji Feng’s two most trusted aides who knew about their secret relationship. Otherwise, those hesitant people would’ve chosen to stay with the Eleventh Squad.
After the video call was over, Ji Feng picked up his communicator and ordered, “Suoli, put this guy under the level one kill list and get someone to watch him. You may take him out when the time is right.”
“Will do, boss.”
For a time, Ji Feng crossed and separated his fingers repeatedly with a dark look in his eyes. He had known that it would take more than one bloody lesson to remind those fools that the Vanguard name was earned, not given, and he would do that sooner than later.
After that, Ji Feng held another meeting with the seniors only after juniors such as Cillin had gone away. This time, he made little effort to conceal his fury and sent a clear message to everyone who was present—the punishment for betrayal was death!
Unlike normal people, hunters didn’t obey the law. They had their own custom rules that they abided to, rules that were often times crueler than their counterparts.
Back to the Eleventh Squad. When Cillin saw the five new recruits again, he saw Mogas speaking with the starship’s AI, Little Eleven through a communicator. It was because the newborn AI was the only one who could keep up with the chatterbox. On a related note, Little Eleven was still parked at the spaceport, hence the communicator.
The duo seemed to be arguing about something. Mogas was saying, “You didn’t think with your brain—wait that’s not right, I mean your CPU—before you speak, did you? Here’s an advice from your senior, laddie. Consider your words carefully before you say them, or one day you might run into a bad person who would shoot you for the mistake!”
The other four recruits directed their gazes at Cillin and waited for him to say something. Cillin had spent two days “resting” in his lounge, and as he ordered no one had disturbed him during this time. Nothing big had happened during this time unless one counted the debate caused by two controversial actions carried out by the A Squads themselves among them.
“So, are we staying in the base, or are we hunting, commander?” Xiao Shang asked while working his limbs. It was obvious that he was raring to go on another adventure.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your time building this base?” Cillin asked.
“Absolutely not!” Everyone answered in unison.
“Then we hunt.”
Immediately after the declaration, Eudy passed Cillin a mission list he had discussed with the crew beforehand. There were two commonalities between all these missions. One, the mission locations were all fairly remote. Two, the missions were more like training than actual missions. The reason it was customized this way was probably because the crew wanted to test out their new armor.
After Cillin was done checking out the mission list, he passed it back to Eudy and said, “Pick three.”
Eudy paused for a second before replying with a nod, “Understood.” The aide had understood immediately that Cillin had some sort of plan in mind. Another hunter squadron might think that three was just fine for a squadron their size, but that was without factoring in their new armor and the mild difficulty of the missions. Assuming that they were free, they could’ve performed more missions in the same amount of time.
“Qiuqiu, come with me.” Cillin beckoned Tang Qiuqiu to follow him, causing the young girl to put down her newly unwrapped bottle of sweet beans quickly. Before she left, she warned both Snowball and Wheeze to stay away from her sweets or be shot.
“What’s this? Are you giving Tang Qiuqiu preferential treatment, commander? This is too much!” Cary booed.
Cillin ignored Cary’s antics and walked into the base’s indoors shooting range with Tang Qiuqiu behind him. First things first, he asked Tang Qiuqiu to put on her bullet proof suit. She obeyed the order without hesitation.
“You’ll be using my gun this time, but before that, I’m going to give you a demonstration. Watch closely,” said Cillin while producing a gun that he had made himself. It had a snake-like lightning symbol on its surface.
It was a Purgatory Thunder Snake gun, the entry level B-type model to b exact.
Bang!
Cillin opened fire and hit a rapidly blinking target. However, Tang Qiuqiu saw clearly that the gun wasn’t pointed at it at all. She understood why Cillin had told her to put on her bullet proof suit now.
“What do you think?” Cillin asked her.
“I want to try,” the young girl replied with shining eyes.
After Cillin passed the gun to Tang Qiuqiu, she gave it a look and raised it in front of her. However, she didn’t pull the trigger immediately like she normally would because she couldn’t grasp the “feeling” per se. It was confusing. This was the first time she felt so loss since she became familiar with guns.
A short pause later, Tang Qiuqiu opened fire.
Her first shot missed wildly and hit herself. Thankfully, she had her suit on, and the bullet had only brushed against her left elbow, so it didn’t take her too long to recover.
The frowning girl took a moment to recall the memory before shooting again.
Her second shot still didn’t hit the target, but this time the bullet was nowhere close to hitting herself.
She tried again, and again, and again. Each time the gun spat fire, her shots would move closer to the target no matter how fast the latter was blinking about. Eventually…
Beep—
Her eighth shot hit the target. Although it wasn’t the bullseye, it didn’t change the fact that she finally got it. When she fired her ninth shot as decisive and unhesitant as she usually did with her own gun, and Cillin knew that she would hit the bullseye even without the system reporting the hits.
Tang Qiuqiu had never gone to school or received any formal education in her life. She didn’t even know how to calculate those complicated trajectory formulae that were an integral part of her practice. What she did have though was an inborn sense for shooting that even Cillin didn’t possess. Cillin’s shooting skill was a product of his astounding computing power, but Tang Qiuqiu was a true genius.
Tang Qiuqiu opened fire another five times after the ninth shot. Every shot landed perfectly on the bullseye.
“Feel free to adjust the target to your preference and practice yourself. I have to go and do something,” Cillin said after receiving a message from Czedow.
“Okay!” Tang Qiuqiu replied dazedly. Like a kid who just got a new toy, she was completely engrossed with the PTS B right now.
The crew had been watching the scene from the display outside the shooting range. A long, long time later, a dumbfounded Xiao Shang said to Cary, “I know that Tang Qiuqiu is a natural shooter, but how is it she so far ahead of us?”
Cary rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s all those sweets she’s been eating?”
Cillin returned to his lounge. Czedow was already waiting for him.
“How is it?” Cillin asked.
“He responded. He also sent a communication request,” Czedow replied.
“Accept it.”
“Okay.”
A ray of light appeared from Czedow’s left eye before transforming into a holo screen. There, a young man smiled at Cillin and greeted,
“Long time no see, Cillin.”
It had been almost three years since they last met, and his aura was slightly different from what Cillin remembered. However, his face and his voice were still the same as before.
“You too, Rikulab, or should I say Fourth Young Master, Shi Huajing.”