Rebirth of a Mercenary: The Ace Mercenary Forced to Be the Beloved of the Group

Shen Zhuo looked down at his right foot.

"Who brought cigarettes?" Shen Zhuo asked, his tone as casual as if he were asking who brought extra bottled water. "I want to have one before I get blown away."

"What the hell are you spouting!" Xie Ran's low growl came from several meters away, his voice low but each word sounding like it was squeezed out from between his teeth, "What do you mean by 'before being blown away'—shut the hell up!"

"I was just saying it offhand, just trying to lighten the mood." Shen Zhuo remained motionless, his right foot planted on a landmine, only his mouth moving.

A bead of sweat slid down his forehead, along the curve of his temple to his chin, dangled there for a couple of moments, and dripped onto the decaying leaves at his feet. But his tone remained irreverently relaxed, "Look how pale you all are. I just wanted to help you all relax a bit."

"You stepped on a landmine and you expect us to relax?" Xie Ran's voice was trembling, whether from anger or fear, it was hard to tell.

"It's precisely because I stepped on the landmine that I should liven things up." Shen Zhu grinned, the smile appearing particularly white on his face covered in black mud. "If you had stepped on it, you'd be crying for your parents by now."

Xie Ran wanted to retort, but something seemed to be blocking his throat, and he couldn't say anything.

Wen Yan was already kneeling at Shen Zhuo's feet.

His movements were completely devoid of unnecessary procedures—he removed the medical kit and placed it within easy reach, drew a scalpel from his waist, held a flashlight in his mouth with his left hand, and gripped the scalpel with his right.

The white light of the flashlight shone on the edge of Shen Zhuo's boots. Wen Yan gently brushed aside the top layer of fallen leaves with the tip of her knife, her movements as slow as if she were peeling away the rust from a thousand-year-old artifact.

"Everyone," Li Mo's voice crackled in the comms, low but steady, "back up twenty meters. Find cover. Lu Xiao, how much longer until the patrol?"

"Less than five minutes." Lu Xiao had already climbed onto a slightly protruding rock face nearby, using his handheld binoculars to observe the direction of the factory through the gaps in the branches and leaves. He put down the binoculars, his voice half the usual volume, "And the next team has one more person. Three. Probably a shift change."

Li Mo looked at Wen Yan's kneeling back, and at Shen Zhuo's smiling face, motionless on a landmine, and said without hesitation, "That's enough. Wen Yan, how long do you need?"

"Old-fashioned French stuff, pressure-activated fuse. It'll explode if you step on it and then let go." Wen Yan's knife tip peeled away another layer of rotten soil, his tone still professionally calm. "The good news is the severe corrosion; the trigger mechanism might be unreliable, potentially causing a delayed detonation. The bad news is the severe corrosion means it's unstable and could explode at any time during disassembly. How much time do you want?"

"Less than five minutes."

"That's enough. Even if it's not enough, it has to be enough."

"Everyone," Li Mo turned around, his gaze sweeping over Xie Ran and Lu Xiao, "retreat twenty meters and find cover. Wen Yan and Shen Zhuo stay where you are. Execute."

Xie Ran's lips moved. He looked at Shen Zhuo's foot that was stepping on the landmine and wanted to say, "I'll stay and help." But Wen Yan didn't turn her head and said, "You'll only make things worse if you stay. Go."

He gritted his teeth and followed Lu Xiao back. After taking a few steps, he looked back again, then again, until Li Mo put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him behind cover.

Wen Yan's knife tip peeled away the last layer of rotten soil.

The mine's detonation device was exposed in the white light of the flashlight—a rusty, circular pressure plate, about eight centimeters in diameter, covered with decades of accumulated rust.

There is a faintly discernible engraving around the edge of the pressure plate, in French. Below the pressure plate is the fuse chamber, which is more severely corroded. The original cylindrical fuse casing has expanded and deformed, with several rust bulges on its surface. The firing pin is off-center by about fifteen degrees, and the spring may have partially failed, but the pressure plate itself is still functioning—as soon as the pressure is released, the firing pin will strike the primer.

"Look," Wen Yan gently touched the edge of the pressure plate with the tip of the scalpel, her voice as steady as if she were giving an anatomical demonstration on a lecture platform, "its firing pin is off by fifteen degrees, and the spring corrosion rate is estimated to be over forty percent. In this state, there are two possibilities for the fuse—the firing pin gets stuck after the pressure is released and doesn't detonate, or the firing pin gets stuck and then suddenly loosens, delaying the detonation. The ratio of the two situations is roughly one to one."

"So, I still have a 50% chance of not getting blown up?" Shen Zhu chuckled, the laugh a little dry, but his tone still had that irreverent, irreverent quality that made you want to punch him. "That's a higher probability than my last gacha pull. Last time I spent 80 pulls to get an SSR, and the probability was only 0.6%. 50%, I'm satisfied."

"Can you please stop talking about games when you're stepping on landmines?" Xie Ran's voice came from behind the cover, trembling as if he was about to break down.

"So what should we talk about? How about the time you were chased and bitten by the patrol dog?"

"You fucking—"

"Shut up, both of you." Wen Yan's voice wasn't loud, but Xie Ran and Shen Zhuo both shut up at the same time.

He pulled a second scalpel from his waist—this one was thinner than the first, its blade as narrow as a willow leaf, its tip almost transparent. He quickly wiped both blades with an alcohol swab, then handed the thinner scalpel in his left hand to Shen Zhuo. "See this? In a moment, I'll insert the blade between the sole of your boot and the pressure plate, using the blade to absorb the pressure for you. Stop when you feel your foot touch hard metal; don't step down or lift up. Understand?"

"I understand," Shen Zhuo said. "You want me to entrust my life to this knife."

"Leave it to me." Wen Yan looked up at him. The white beam of the flashlight shone on his face from below, casting the shadow of his gold-rimmed glasses on his forehead. The expression behind the lenses was calm and resolute. "This knife is just a tool. I'm the one who will wield it. Don't you trust me?"

Shen Zhuo looked down at the person kneeling at his feet and smiled: "Xin. Come on, my legs are a little sore. Let's finish this quickly so we can go back and eat Lao Zhou's braised pork ribs."

Wen Yan didn't speak again. He aimed the tip of the thin knife at the gap between Shen Zhuo's boot sole and the pressure plate, using his left thumb to stabilize the blade and his right hand to support Shen Zhuo's ankle and control the angle. Then he began to push the knife.

The blade pierced the almost non-existent gap between the boot sole and the metal pressure plate, advancing millimeter by millimeter. The sound of metal rubbing against rubber was suppressed to an extremely low level, but in the breathless silence of everyone, the sound was as clear as scraping against eardrums.

A bead of sweat slid down Wen Yan's forehead, along the curve of his nose to the tip, where it hung suspended before dripping onto the pressure plate of the landmine. The droplet struck the metal with a very faint, crisp sound.

Everyone's heart skipped a beat at the same time.