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

Xuanxiao's perfect 100 rings and Baiye's perfect 10 rings briefly boosted the morale of the entire recruit company, but as the recruits took their positions, reality relentlessly crushed them. The crooked bullet holes scattered across the target shattered the illusion created by the previous two spectacular performances.

It's Qian Duoduo's turn now.

He walked to the firing position, took a deep breath, and his prone posture was standard—his basic shooting skills were solid, and his basic movements weren't bad. But when he actually put his eyes behind the sights and put the front sight on the target, something just started to go wrong.

The target paper a hundred meters away swayed like a leaf in the wind in the crosshairs. No matter how he tried to adjust his breathing, he couldn't suppress the swaying of the gun muzzle. His heart was pounding in his ears, louder than the gunshot.

The first bullet was chambered. He held his breath, his index finger pressed against the trigger, and pulled hard.

The gun fired. The recoil jolted his shoulder back, and the muzzle jumped high into the air. He squinted at the target paper, but couldn't see anything. When the target signal device rose from the target trench, he froze—a five-ring. Too far to the left, too low, hitting the edge of the target paper.

Second shot. Four rings. Third shot. Six rings. He spent a long time adjusting for the fourth shot, but it was still a four ring. By the seventh shot, his palms were sweating; the anti-slip texture on the trigger was slippery from the sweat, and his fingertips couldn't find a foothold. The eighth shot missed the target; the target indicator dangled next to the target paper, indicating that this shot hadn't hit the target at all. The ninth shot was a three ring.

After firing the tenth shot, his legs were weak when he stood up.

The target test results came in: ten bullets, twenty-nine rings.

Xuanxiao stood in the queue, laughing without any attempt to hide his smile.

"Twenty-nine rings." Xuan Xiao repeated, emphasizing each word as if savoring a fine cup of tea. "Duo Duo, are you sure you're shooting at a target and not just tracing the outlines on the target paper?"

Qian Duoduo put the gun back on the rack, turned around, his expression a mix of grievance and annoyance. He looked at Xuan Xiao's beaming face and curled his lip.

"What are you laughing at? Is that how you laugh?"

"I just feel—" Xuanxiao wiped his eyes, "Ten bullets, twenty-nine rings, that's less than three rings per bullet. How did you do that? Were you deliberately aiming outside the target paper?"

"I don't!"

"So you just aimed at the target and shot, and that's how you ended up like this?"

Qian Duoduo opened his mouth, but found he couldn't refute it. He was indeed aiming at the target, trying his best to aim with every shot, but the sight just wouldn't cooperate. The moment he pulled the trigger, the muzzle would always deviate by just a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, and it would be several centimeters off the target paper.

"If you're so good, then you do it." Qian Duoduo sat on the ammunition box, put her headphones on the ground, and said in a tone that was both aggrieved and sour, "So what if you got a hundred rings? Go compare yourself to a monster like Brother Ye, don't laugh at me. I'm not some genius, I'm just an ordinary person. This is the level of an ordinary person when it comes to shooting. So what if I got twenty-nine rings? Twenty-nine rings are still rings, not zero."

Xuan Xiao was amused even more by his words. He walked over and squatted down next to Qian Duoduo, patted him on the shoulder, and said in a tone that was unusually not so irritating, "Alright, alright, twenty-nine rings are still rings. At least one shot hit a six, which is better than that guy from the next class who missed all the shots."

Are you trying to comfort me or insult me?

"Yes, we have them all."

Qian Duoduo rolled her eyes and shook his hand off her shoulder. But she couldn't help but smile slightly.

He recalled Bai Ye's target paper from earlier, then looked at his own target paper, which was scattered like a shower of flowers, and sighed, "I wish I could hit targets at Brother Ye's level someday."

Bai Ye, who was standing to the side, looked down at the gun in his hand, and raised his head when he heard his name called.

Practice more.

"...Brother Ye, your way of comforting people is so unique."

"truth."

Zhao Xiaohu watched Qian Duoduo's target paper from the side, a bitter smile of shared misery on his round face. He patted Qian Duoduo on the back, so hard that Qian Duoduo stumbled forward: "Duoduo, don't be sad, I'll go find some balance for you. You watch, I'm definitely worse off than you."

"Don't talk about yourself like that."

"I'm not being modest; I'm just self-aware."

When Zhao Xiaohu walked to the firing position, he was completely tense. He was already the worst in the class during rifle training; he couldn't even hold a spent cartridge case upright on the barrel for three minutes, and when Lu Xiao hung up his water bottle, his cartridge case flew off. Now, with live-fire shooting, the pressure on him was even higher than the chamber pressure inside the gun.

He crouched down, tucked the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, supported the handguard with his left hand, and gripped the handle with his right. His posture was slightly better than during rifle training, but it was only an improvement from "appalling" to "barely presentable."

As Zhao Lei passed behind him, he paused, bent down to correct the angle of Zhao Xiaohu's chin, and moved his left hand forward half an inch. Zhao Xiaohu nodded gratefully, beads of sweat rolling down his forehead.

The first shot went in, a three-ring. Zhao Xiaohu breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the target indicator; at least he hadn't missed. The second shot was a four-ring, and he was quite pleased, feeling he was improving. The third shot was back to a three-ring, the fourth a two-ring, and the fifth a miss. His composure began to crumble.

Eighth shot. Two rings. Ninth shot. Three rings. His score was completely dismal, even worse than Qian Duoduo's, barely twenty rings at most. But he didn't care anymore; he just wanted to finish the last shot and get off the plane. The tenth bullet was chambered, he took a deep breath, placed his index finger on the trigger, and pulled it hard.

There were no gunshots.

Zhao Xiaohu was stunned for a moment. He pulled the trigger again, but there was still no response. He thought he hadn't pulled it all the way down, so he pulled harder, and the trigger was fully depressed, but there was still no sound from the chamber.

He turned his head, and the gun followed his body's turn.

Bai Ye stood there. He was looking down at the gun in his hand, his fingers resting on the receiver cover, probably still pondering the subtle differences between this Type 95 and the one in his memories of his past life. He was completely unaware that a dark gun muzzle was pointed directly at his head.

Lu Xiao was the first to see it.

He was leaning against the ammunition box, drinking water, the canteen raised to his lips, when he caught Zhao Xiaohu turning around out of the corner of his eye. His face paled instantly, and he opened his mouth to shout, but his vocal cords seemed to be locked, and no sound came out.

Li Mo stood at the other end of the firing line, about ten meters away from Bai Ye. The moment he saw the gun muzzle turn, he sprang up as if electrocuted. He rushed towards Bai Ye, all the color draining from his face, his pupils shrinking, his mouth agape, before the sound could even escape his throat.

Zhao Xiaohu was still turning his head in confusion, his mouth open, as if he wanted to ask, "Why didn't the bullets come out, squad leader?"

A shot rang out.

boom!