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

Scorpion walked ahead, his pace neither fast nor slow, each step steady and heavy, like a calibrated machine running at a uniform speed. Bai Ye followed behind him, keeping a distance of about one and a half steps, head down, shoulders slightly hunched, maintaining the pitiful look of being terrified just moments before.

They walked through a long corridor lined with several tightly closed iron doors, most of the paint peeling off to reveal rusted metal underneath. At the end of the corridor was a staircase leading downwards, the light gradually dimming. Scorpion didn't stop, walking straight down. Bai Ye followed him into the staircase, and in the dim light, saw a faded slogan painted on the wall, the words so blurred they were almost illegible.

At the bottom of the stairs was a narrower corridor with rough, unpainted cement walls. The iron door at the end of the corridor was ajar. Scorpion pushed it open, stepped aside to let it pass, and gestured with his chin towards the inside: "Yours."

The room was small, only about six square meters. A single iron-framed bed was placed against the wall, the mattress as thin as cardboard. In the corner was a table with a crooked leg, its surface covered in a layer of dust. The window, narrow and long, with iron bars welded to it, was located near the ceiling, and the light filtering through cut a small, grayish-white streak across the concrete floor.

Bai Ye stood in the doorway, his gaze sweeping across the room. He looked away, turning to Scorpion, his voice hesitant and tentative: "Big brother... is this my room?"

Scorpion didn't answer immediately. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at Bai Ye.

His gaze held neither the curiosity of scrutinizing a newcomer nor the playful scrutiny of a viper, but rather a calm, almost indifferent gaze, like watching an animal just locked in a cage from a high place, neither caring where it came from nor how long it could live.

"Close the door," Scorpion said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a sense of oppression in the small room.

Bai Ye paused for a moment, as if she hadn't reacted yet, and then carefully reached out and closed the door.

The scorpion remained leaning against the doorframe, his posture unchanged. His body cast a tall shadow in the doorway, blocking most of the light filtering through the narrow window.

He looked down at Bai Ye, his gaze sweeping over her from top to bottom as if he were re-examining a package that had already been unpacked.

"Stop pretending," he said.

Bai Ye's movements froze. His hand was still on the doorknob, his body maintained the slight turn he had made after closing the door, and the timid expression on his face still lingered. But he didn't move, nor did he respond immediately.

Scorpion looked at his face, his tone completely flat: "Your acting skills are not bad, but some details are not quite right. From the moment you entered Viper's room, you've been pretending. Pretending to be pitiful, pretending to be scared, pretending to be naive. The way you gagged after firing the gun was very realistic, and the way you trembled was also very realistic, but you got one thing wrong."

Bai Ye slowly turned around to face the scorpion. He didn't speak, but simply looked at the scorpion quietly, as if waiting for him to finish speaking.

"Eyes," Scorpion said. "You closed your eyes before you fired, but when you opened them, your first reaction wasn't to look at the corpse's face. Your first glance was at the bullet impact point—you were confirming that the bullet had hit right in the chest. A truly terrified rookie's first reaction would be fear and nausea, an instinctive avert of gaze. But you never looked at the person's face; you were looking at the bullet hole in his chest. You were confirming the mission's completion, not being afraid."

Bai Ye remained silent for a moment. He neither refuted nor explained.

Scorpion continued, his speech still steady, as if stating a fact already confirmed: "And although you deliberately made your gun-holding posture look clumsy, when you pulled the slide to chamber a round, your index finger slid along the outside of the trigger guard. You were very careful in your act; you even deliberately made your hand shake. But some muscle memories are hard to break."

Bai Ye listened expressionlessly as he dissected his facade point by point. He didn't refute a single detail, because he knew that everything Scorpion said was true.

Wen Yan's makeup and Xie Huai'an's identity forgery were both perfect, but his physical reactions—those instinctive reactions ingrained in his bones by more than a decade of training in his previous life—could not be changed by a single makeup application.

"So," Bai Ye spoke, his voice regaining its usual calm, devoid of any feigned tremor or cowardice, only a cool, almost indifferent composure remained, "what do you intend to do with me? Tell Viper I'm an undercover agent? Or do it now?"

"Why should I tell Viper?" Scorpion retorted. "Who you are, where you come from, who you work for—none of that matters to me. I don't need to know who you work for. I only need to know two things: first, whether you'll stab me in the back; and second, whether you can finish what you're supposed to do alive."

Bai Ye looked up at him and said, "The people behind me won't take your life. I'm only here to take one thing, and once I have it, I'll leave. It won't affect any of your interests, nor will it leave any evidence in your system."

"Take yours," the scorpion said. "I won't stop you."

Bai Ye looked at him, her brow twitching very slightly: "Aren't you going to ask me what I'm taking?"

"What you take is none of my business. After you take it, someone else will come to fill your place, and that person will take something too. Every year, people like you come in, a new batch every year, I can't manage them all." Scorpion's tone carried an almost weary indifference. "I just need to make sure you don't die too soon before you take what you want. If you die, Viper will make me investigate who you are, and that will cause a lot of trouble. If you live, take what you want and leave, it'll save everyone trouble."

Bai Ye remained silent for a few seconds. He was assessing the credibility of Scorpion's words.

Scorpion's expression was too calm, his tone too steady—there was no trace of probing, no intention to extract information.

Bai Ye nodded: "Okay."

"There are three rules here," Scorpion said. "First, don't look at what you shouldn't see. Second, don't ask what you shouldn't ask. Third—no matter what you're here for, keep your hands to yourself. Most of the people who have died here did so because they talked too much or had too many hands."

He pushed open the iron gate, letting in the dim light of the corridor, casting a long shadow behind him. He took two steps outside, his boots making a steady sound on the concrete floor. Then he paused, without turning around.

"Live on."

The iron door was gently closed behind me. The latch clicked into place, and the room fell silent again.