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

By the time Scorpion returned to the base, it was already getting dark. He went straight to Viper's room, paused at the door, and knocked three times.

"Enter."

Scorpion pushed open the door and went in. Viper was still sitting in the dark brown leather sofa, a teacup beside him, a thin layer of water droplets clinging to the white porcelain. His gaze had been fixed on Scorpion ever since he entered, and had not wavered.

"Where's the merchandise?" Viper asked.

"Fake goods." Scorpion stood in the center of the room, his posture ramrod straight, his voice steady. "The person selling these goods tried to slip them through with counterfeits. I've investigated, and the person has been dealt with. Lin Mo brought the counterfeits back; they're in the warehouse."

Viper leaned back on the sofa, silent for a moment. The light from the chandelier streamed down from above, casting interplay of light and shadow on his face. He picked up his teacup, took a sip, and then placed it back on the tray, the bottom of the cup clinking crisply.

"You killed someone."

"Um."

"Who told you to kill him?" Viper's voice wasn't loud, but each word was slower than the last, like a frozen block of iron slowly moving. "I told you to follow Lin Mo and see if he'd try anything funny. Did I tell you to kill him?"

The scorpion didn't argue, but simply lowered its eyes and said, "He sold counterfeit goods. He deserves to die."

"Deserves to die?" Viper repeated the word, his voice rising slightly at the end, carrying a cold laugh tinged with offense. "What do you consider deserved and what doesn't? Do you think you can make decisions for me? Do you think that just because you've been here for a few years, you can act on your own?"

Scorpion remained silent. His face was expressionless, his jawline taut, but he didn't utter a single word in his defense.

Viper stood up from the sofa and walked up to Scorpion. He was almost a head shorter than Scorpion, but he exuded a domineering aura as he stood before Scorpion.

"Since when did you start doing things behind my back?" Viper's voice suddenly became very soft. "You weren't like this before. Before, whatever you said or did, you would ask me. If I told you to go east, you wouldn't go west. You've gotten bolder and bolder these past few years."

The scorpion remained silent.

Viper turned and walked to a cabinet on the side of the room, opened a drawer, and took something out. It was a syringe, the syringe filled with a clear liquid that gleamed faintly under the light. He walked back to Scorpion with the syringe and held it up to Scorpion's eyes.

"You know what I mean."

Scorpion looked at the syringe, his gaze lingering on the needle for a moment. He pursed his lips, but only briefly, before reaching out and taking the syringe from Viper's hand.

Without hesitation, he rolled up his left sleeve, located the vein on the inside of his elbow, and inserted the needle into the skin. The medication slowly seeped into the vein, the clear liquid spreading under the skin and leaving a faint mark.

Then the medicine took effect. It came on extremely quickly, abnormally quickly.

The first wave of pain exploded from the base of the spine, as if a red-hot iron spike had pierced directly into the spine from the coccyx, shooting upwards along the nerve bundles, and the places it passed through felt like being burned by electric current and boiling oil at the same time.

Scorpion's knees buckled abruptly, and he braced himself against the wall beside him with one hand, his fingernails digging into the concrete, making a screeching sound.

The second wave followed immediately. Starting from the extremities and moving back, it felt as if his fingers and toes were being broken off and reattached one by one. All the muscles in his arms were tense, and the veins bulged from the back of his hands all the way to his forearms, as if something under his skin was struggling to break through.

His forehead was pressed against the wall, and the veins on the back of his head were so taut that they looked like they might burst at any moment.

The third wave is systemic. Every muscle is contracting and spasming at different frequencies, the ribs feel like they are being pushed outwards from the inside, and every breath feels like swallowing a handful of broken glass.

His back was hunched over at an extreme angle, his knees were completely on the ground, his hands were supporting him on the ground, and his knuckles dug four shallow white marks into the cement floor.

He clenched his teeth so tightly that blood seeped from his gums, trickling from the corners of his mouth and dripping onto the ground. He didn't utter a sound. Not even a muffled groan.

The viper stood before him, looking down at the scorpion kneeling on the ground, writhing in agony.

"You're still the same." Viper's voice descended from above, carrying a complex tone that was hard to decipher—it was hard to tell whether it was admiration or dissatisfaction. "When are you going to apologize to me?"

The scorpion did not answer.

Time ticked by. An hour later, the scorpion's pupils began to dilate.

The viper straightened up and called out towards the outside of the room, "The antidote."

A follower strode in, knelt beside the scorpion, and took another syringe from the box. The needle pierced the same vein in the scorpion's arm, and the pale blue liquid was injected into the blood vessel.

The scorpion's body twitched violently, as if it had been electrocuted, then its breathing gradually returned to normal, and the focus of its pupils began to narrow little by little.

Nearly five more minutes passed before Scorpion recovered. He slowly sat up, supporting himself on the ground, his back against the wall, his chest still heaving. His forehead was covered in cold sweat, the front of his T-shirt was soaked and clung to his skin, and a section of his collarbone, also soaked with cold sweat, was visible at the collar edge.

The viper walked up to him and looked down at him. There was no pity, no apology, no guilt in its eyes, only a calm satisfaction that came from having confirmed control.

"I don't want it to happen again," Viper said.

The scorpion sat against the wall and nodded: "There won't be a next time."

Viper stared at him for a few seconds, then turned around, walked back to the sofa, sat down, and picked up the cup of tea again.

His voice came from behind the teacup, carrying a languid quality that came after the conversation had ended: "Go take a shower. You smell too much sweat. Take Lin Mo to the warehouse to check the goods tomorrow morning; leave the receiving work to him from now on."

Scorpion braced himself against the wall and stood up, his steps faltering for a moment before he regained his balance. He turned and walked towards the door, pushing it open with the same steady movements as usual. After he stepped out, the door closed softly behind him.

In the corridor, Scorpion leaned against the wall by the door for a moment and closed his eyes.

His breathing hadn't completely calmed down, his fingertips were still trembling slightly, and the cold sweat on his back was slowly cooling. He stood for a few seconds, waiting for the lingering effects of the drug to subside from his extremities, then straightened up and walked towards the dormitory.

As he passed by the courtyard, he looked up at the window of the small room where Bai Ye lived.

A dim, yellow light shone from inside the window, casting a thin, blurry shadow on the glass. Scorpion looked away and continued walking, disappearing around the corner at the end of the corridor.