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

The blood on the snow was still steaming, slowly congealing into dark red ice crystals in the cold air. The person's body lay face down in the pool of blood, the wrists bound behind their backs by the parachute ropes, fingers curled up as if trying to grasp something in their last moments.

Eleven special forces soldiers stood at the foot of the hillside, none of them speaking. Some had trembling lips, some clenched their fists and then relaxed them, and some stared intently at the corpse on the ground, as if their brains were still refusing to process all the information they had just received.

The man who had just been checking the parachutes with them in the cabin was now a mangled mass of flesh on the snow. And the man who had stabbed him to death—their instructor, the one they had saluted every morning for the past two weeks—was now standing beside the corpse, slowly and deliberately rubbing the bloodstains on the blade of a blood-stained dagger in the snow, as if he were polishing an old tool.

The silence was broken by a devastating roar.

"You—you killed him!" One of the team members staggered back two steps, pointing a trembling finger at Li Mo, his voice broken and barely audible. "Even if he was wrong—even if he pushed the instructor—he should be court-martialed! What right do you have to resort to vigilante justice?! This is murder! I'm going to sue you! I'm going to report you to the military region! You—none of you will escape!"

Shen Zhuo wrapped the blood-stained parachute cord twice around his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. He turned around and looked at the teammate. He took two steps forward, stopped in front of the teammate, and tilted his head to look him over.

"Go ahead and sue, who's afraid of who? Military court? Guess why your superiors invited us? Because they know that conventional methods can't train people who can fight. Guess why we dared to use knives in front of you? Because this isn't the first time we've done this, and it won't be the last. If you want to sue, go now. The communications equipment is in the camp office; just turn left and walk for ten minutes. By the way, give your superiors a message for me—tell them that Pokong cleaned up some trash for him, you're welcome."

The team member stared at Shen Zhuo's nonchalant expression with his mouth agape, feeling as if something was blocking his throat, unable to utter a single word.

He had thought that "reporting to superiors" was his last resort, a deterrent that would at least make these lawless mercenaries behave a little. But from Shen Zhuo's reaction, he gleaned a fact he didn't want to face—their superiors already knew who Po Kong was, and had tacitly accepted it all when they invited them here.

Li Mo sheathed the dagger. He walked up to the eleven team members, stopped, and scanned their faces from the first to the last.

"I don't want it to happen again."

No one answered. No one dared to answer. The eleven men stood ramrod straight, barely daring to breathe.

Bai Ye stood at the edge of the crowd, without saying a word from beginning to end.

He watched the teammate's breakdown-filled accusations, watched Shen Zhuo's nonchalant rebuttal, watched Li Mo's single sentence silence everyone. Then he withdrew his gaze, took a step forward, and stood before the eleven team members.

He was shorter than everyone else, but when he spoke, there was no room for discussion, no hesitation, and not even any extra emotion in his tone.

"Disband. We can't continue."

All eleven team members were stunned at the same time.

Disband? What do you mean? There are still two weeks of training left, and the contract clearly states a one-month period. He's just going to disband like that?

Immediately, someone protested—it was the same teammate who had been rebuffed by Shen Zhuo earlier. He turned his anger towards Bai Ye, his voice filled with barely suppressed rage and a hint of resentment at being looked down upon: "Why can you just disband like that? You guys were paid! The contract was for one month! You think you can just quit like that? Is this all the professional ethics you have in Pokong?"

Bai Ye turned to look at him. The teammate was almost a head taller than him, standing in front of him like an iron tower.

Bai Ye looked up at him with unwavering eyes, calm and indifferent, like a mirror reflecting all the other's anger and resentment, then deflecting them back untouched.

"Your strength is insufficient." Bai Ye's voice wasn't loud, but every word clearly reached everyone present. "Your mental fortitude is also lacking. Out of the twelve of you, in two weeks, not a single group has met the physical fitness standards. You failed all three tactical simulations. Today, someone attacked the instructor during training due to personal emotions, and none of the other eleven noticed or stopped it in time. You can't even see the problems within your own team, you can't even anticipate the abnormal behavior of your comrades. How can you rely on each other on the battlefield? With your level of skill, you can't be special forces soldiers."

The eleven people were completely silent. Every word was true, every syllable precisely hitting their most sensitive spot.

They remembered the man's unusual quietness before boarding that morning, how he pulled harder on the buckle than usual when checking his parachute, and how he volunteered to be in the third group—all these details seemed glaringly obvious in retrospect, but no one thought of them at the time.

Bai Ye is right. They are special forces soldiers, people who should be able to anticipate threats and protect their teammates in any environment. But they failed to do so.

They wanted to argue, to say that they had done their best, and that the training intensity of the past two weeks had exceeded the normal range. But before they could speak, Li Mo's gaze swept over them—just a glance, neither too strong nor too weak, but all the words that were about to come out were blocked by that look.

Bai Ye didn't look at them again. He turned and walked back, his combat boots crunching on the snow, a corner of his scarf fluttering in the wind before falling back down. He paused when he reached Lu Xiao's side.

Lu Xiao was leaning against an equipment box that Shen Zhuo had found. The thin red mark on his neck from the parachute rope was faintly visible at the edge of his collar. His breathing had become steady, but his face was still a little pale.

He looked up at Bai Ye, opened his mouth as if to say something—probably something like, "Why do you love to scold people just like the captain?"—but Bai Ye didn't give him a chance to speak.

"Help the vice-captain and captain to the infirmary." Bai Ye's gaze lingered for a moment on the ligature marks on Lu Xiao's neck, then glanced at Li Mo beside him, who was wiping his dagger clean and putting it back in his waistband. His gaze swept over Li Mo's back, chafed by gravel, and the scabbing bloodstains on his face, before turning to Shen Zhuo. "Pack your equipment, contact the base, and head back this afternoon. Take this man back too—" He glanced at the corpse on the snow, now no longer bleeding, "There are ways to handle the living and the dead. This isn't over yet."