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

The training on the second day was exactly the same as the first day.

The door was pushed open.

Lu Xiao walked in, carrying a stack of small booklets with blue covers.

"Come on, one for each of you, take them all."

Lu Xiao distributed the booklet in his hand to everyone like dealing playing cards—the recruit regulations manual.

The page numbers are marked in the bottom right corner; there are a total of 136 pages.

"One hundred and thirty-six pages?!" Zhao Xiaohu's voice cracked.

"I have to memorize it all?!" Qian Duoduo wailed.

"The random tests will start tomorrow," Lu Xiao added with a grin, "Those who fail will have extra training over the weekend. Those who fail twice will be disqualified from going out. Those who fail three times—"

He paused deliberately, enjoying the expressions on the recruits' faces.

"The company commander said that if you fail three times, he will personally tutor you."

The air in the dormitory felt like it had been halved. The company commander personally accompanying him on his journey—just imagining that scene made Zhao Xiaohu's stomach cramp.

Xuanxiao sat on the upper bunk, his legs dangling over the edge of the bed, flipping through the blue booklet in his hand.

"This won't do, this stuff works even better than sleeping pills."

The sound of pages turning came from the lower bunk, steady and without any pauses.

Xuan Xiao removed the booklet from his face and leaned halfway out to look down. Bai Ye was still flipping through it, already around page sixty or seventy.

"You can accept it?"

Bai Ye didn't look up.

"Just flipping through them for fun?"

The white night turns a page.

"You're not really memorizing it, are you?"

Bai Ye finally looked up at him briefly, then continued turning the page.

Xuanxiao chuckled, leaned back against his pillow, and held the blue booklet in front of him.

I don't know how much time passed, but the sound of turning pages on the lower bunk stopped.

Xuanxiao peeked out again. Baiye had already closed the book of rules and placed it beside his pillow.

"Give up?"

Bai Ye paused for a moment.

"I've finished memorizing it."

Xuanxiao tumbled down from the upper bunk and landed beside Baiye's bed, his movements as light as a cat landing. He picked up the blue booklet beside Baiye's pillow and flipped through it a couple of times.

"Have you memorized it all?"

"Um."

Xuanxiao stared at him for two seconds, then opened the booklet and randomly picked a page.

Article 17, Paragraph 3.

"Military personnel must apply for leave according to their rank and return to their unit on time. If an extension of leave is required due to special circumstances, the officer who approved the leave must report to the officer in charge in advance, and the leave can only be extended after approval. Those who exceed their leave without approval or fail to return after their leave will be held accountable."

Not a single word is different.

Xuanxiao turned a few more pages.

Article 42.

"Military personnel must abide by confidentiality regulations and must not disclose military secrets. They must not discuss military secrets in private communications, phone calls, or meetings. They must not take classified materials out of the workplace or copy, store, or destroy them without authorization."

It's still word for word.

Xuan Xiao closed the booklet and sat down next to Bai Ye. The mattress sank down a bit, and the two of them were about a fist's distance apart by shoulder.

"How did you do that?"

"What?"

"Memorizing. You memorized it after reading it only once?"

Bai Ye put down his pen.

"Photographic memory".

Xuanxiao remained silent for a moment.

He wasn't unfamiliar with intelligent people. The Xuan family compound was never short of geniuses; among his classmates from childhood, there were those with photographic memories, those who entered university at fifteen, and those who won gold medals in various competitions.

"So you've been like this since you were little?"

Bai Ye thought for a moment.

"almost."

This body in this life truly possesses an exceptionally strong memory. He remembers everything Bai Chen taught him. He also remembers everything he flipped through in the training notebook after Bai Chen disappeared.

Xuanxiao slapped the blue booklet onto his knee.

"help me."

Bai Ye turned her head to look at him.

"How can I help you?"

"Memorize this." Xuan Xiao held up the booklet in his hand and shook it. "I'll memorize it by myself, and it'll probably take me until 3 a.m. tonight. Can you help me figure out the most efficient way to memorize it?"

Bai Ye remained silent for two seconds.

"Take it yourself."

"Please help me out."

"I won't help."

"Let me help you." Xuanxiao moved half an inch closer to him, their shoulders almost touching. "I applied the ointment for you today."

Bai Ye's pen paused. He took a deep breath.

"Open the booklet."

Xuanxiao immediately sat up straight, like a large dog that had received a command.

Bai Ye took the book of regulations, flipped to the table of contents, and pointed to the chapter titles.

"The structure of regulations and ordinances is fixed. There are three parts: general provisions, specific provisions, and supplementary provisions. The general provisions explain the basic principles, which consist of twelve articles and form the framework for all subsequent articles. First, memorize these twelve articles, and the subsequent articles are all specific elaborations of these twelve articles in different scenarios."

"Chapters 3 through 7 are categorized by scenario. Chapter 3 covers daily management, Chapter 4 covers drills and training, Chapter 5 covers weapons management, Chapter 6 covers camp order, and Chapter 7 covers requesting leave for outings. Don't memorize them one by one; first, build a framework in your mind and fit each point into its corresponding scenario."

Xuanxiao followed his train of thought and continued reading. The lead type, which had been crawling haphazardly on the pages, suddenly became orderly, like a group of scattered soldiers being organized into a structured team.

"Anything else?"

"Keywords. The core content of each point consists of three to five keywords; the rest are just descriptive expressions. During the exam, as long as the keywords are correct, slight differences in order and wording will still get you points. First, circle the keywords for each point. Memorizing the keywords is equivalent to memorizing the skeleton of that point. You can fill in the details yourself."

Xuan Xiao looked down at the article and silently recited the keywords in his mind as Bai Ye had instructed. Then he found that the article, which had previously been a jumbled mess in his head, suddenly became clear.

"You really do have a way with things."

Bai Ye withdrew his hand and picked up his pen again.

"You'll have to carry the rest yourself."

Xuanxiao took the book of regulations, climbed onto the upper bunk, and began to review it again as Baiye had instructed.

Behind them, Zhao Xiaohu and Qian Duoduo sat on their respective beds, holding blue booklets in their hands, their expressions exactly the same—bewildered.

"Did you understand?" Zhao Xiaohu asked in a low voice.

Qian Duoduo slowly shook her head.

"I didn't understand a single word."

What is a framework?

What is scene classification?

What is keyword extraction?

The two looked at each other and simultaneously read the same despair on each other's faces.

What are those two people saying? What skeleton and flesh? They're clearly speaking Chinese every single word, so how come when they're put together they sound like a completely incomprehensible foreign language?

Zhao Xiaohu looked down at the book of rules in his hand, then looked up at Xuan Xiao on the upper bunk who was sketching keywords according to Bai Ye's method, and then looked at Bai Ye on the lower bunk who was writing with his head down.

He let out a resigned sigh: "Two geniuses explaining problems, we ordinary people can't understand them."

Qian Duoduo patted him on the shoulder, her tone heavy as if reciting a eulogy: "What a miserable life."

The two of them simultaneously opened to the first page of the regulations book and began to memorize them word by word.