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

Before lights out, Zhao Xiaohu handed the letter of self-criticism to Li Mo.

Li Mo turned to the first page.

"Letter of self-criticism"

"Respected squad leader and deputy squad leader."

"I am Zhao Xiaohu. I was wrong. Terribly wrong. So wrong that if my grandma knew, she would take the train from our hometown to the army base and pull my ear out."

Lu Xiao's grass stem twitched.

"Comrade Qian Duoduo has already written about the cause, process, and outcome of the matter, so I won't repeat it here. But I want to emphasize an important fact that Comrade Qian Duoduo didn't mention: although he threw the first pile of shit at me, the pile I retaliated with was much bigger. This is a fact. I'm not shirking responsibility; I'm just stating the objective situation. The force of my retaliation exceeded the scope of legitimate self-defense and escalated to the level of proactive aggression. Regarding this point, I admit my mistake."

"But what I want to focus on reflecting on today is not the act of throwing shit itself."

Li Mo turned to the second page.

"What I need to focus on reflecting on today is that pile of shit that almost hit Comrade Bai Ye."

"The moment that poop left my hand, I knew it was over. The trajectory was wrong. The old ladies at the entrance of my village used to throw soap across the river when they washed clothes. I grew up watching them throw soap, and I have an instinctive intuition about projectiles. The old ladies' soap-throwing arc is high and floaty, with a slight spin when it lands, so it won't hit the children playing in the water on the bank. But the trajectory of the poop I threw today was flat, straight, and fast, with no spin at all. Its ballistic characteristics were closer to the uncontrolled straight flight of a grenade when you first throw it in basic training."

Lu Xiao's forehead rested on Li Mo's shoulder, and he had already begun to tremble.

"I reflected on it for a long time afterward, wondering why I threw such a wrong arc."

There are three reasons.

"First, there's the issue of materials. The density and viscosity of feces are different from soap. Soap is hard, dry, and has uniform surface friction. Feces is soft, wet, and slippery; it deforms when held in the hand, and the friction between the fingers is severely insufficient when it comes out. This reflects my lack of theoretical knowledge—I've only observed older women throwing soap in my hometown, not throwing feces."

"Secondly, there was the issue of mindset. At that time, Qian Duoduo had already been hit in the left shoulder by me, and he was bending down to retrieve new ammunition from the basin. I was in a state of excitement about winning and didn't calmly assess the battlefield situation. On the battlefield, the more you feel you're about to win, the less you can relax your vigilance. The squad leader had mentioned this in tactics class, but I completely forgot it at the time."

"Third, the issue of positioning. I was standing too close to the edge of the septic tank, with slippery concrete under my feet and the soles of my shoes still covered in the sewage I had stepped into. This caused my lower body to be unstable when throwing, and my core strength was not being transmitted smoothly. To use an analogy—when I first practiced holding a rifle in basic training, I couldn't hold a spent cartridge case on the barrel for three minutes. That time it was because my arm strength was insufficient. This time it's because my core strength is insufficient. It's essentially the same problem."

"In short, after that piece of shit was thrown, my brain completed the trajectory prediction in a fraction of a second, and the conclusion was: it's over, it flew towards the White Night."

"At that moment, my feelings were very complicated. How complicated? Like the old hen my grandma raised, every time it saw an eagle flying overhead, it would tuck its head into its wings, but at the same time, it wanted to protect its chicks under its wings. I was that old hen—I wanted to tuck my head into its wings, but my chicks (referring to that pile of droppings) had already flown in the direction of the eagle (referring to Comrade Bai Ye), and I couldn't reach them."

"I have something else to say about Comrade Bai Ye."

"In my heart, Comrade Bai Ye is a mountain. He is Mount Everest. While others were still tying their shoelaces at the foot of the mountain, he was already standing on the summit."

"And today, I threw a pile of shit onto Mount Everest."

"That analogy is wrong," he read the next sentence.

"The shit didn't hit Mount Everest—it ended up on the ground. But even just throwing shit in the direction of Mount Everest is disrespectful to it. It's like you wouldn't spit in the direction of the Monument to the People's Heroes, even if the spit couldn't possibly fly that far. It's a matter of attitude. I'm sorry to Comrade Bai Ye, and I'm sorry to Mount Everest."

"When I wrote this sentence, Qian Duoduo came over and glanced at my manuscript. He said it wasn't appropriate for me to compare Bai Ye to Mount Everest, because Mount Everest is inanimate, while Bai Ye is alive. I argued with him. I said that Comrade Bai Ye will always stand tall in my heart, regardless of whether he is alive or dead. Qian Duoduo said that he should be compared to an active volcano, which has both height and power, and can erupt. I said, then what does Comrade Bai Ye erupt? Qian Duoduo said, the power of eruption."

"My rebuttal to Comrade Qian Duoduo is: Comrade Bai Ye doesn't need to erupt. The fact that he hasn't erupted is already the highest mountain in our class. If he really erupted, our whole class wouldn't even be able to stand at the foot of the mountain."

"Therefore, in the end, I have decided that Comrade Bai Ye is still Mount Everest. This is hereby declared."

Li Mo turned to the fourth page.

"Finally, I would like to offer a profound self-criticism to the class monitor and deputy class monitor."

"Squad leader, when you shielded Bai Ye from a bullet with your body at the shooting range, I was just five meters away. I saw you rush towards me from over ten meters away, faster than the fastest dog I've ever seen back home. Later, when you were getting stitches at the infirmary, Bai Ye did it for you. I was so restless in the dorm, I felt like such a useless piece of trash. I swore to myself then that I would perform well on the training field and not let you down for taking that bullet. But only a week later, I threw shit in Bai Ye's direction."

"I'm not human, class monitor. I'm not human."

"My grandma used to own a donkey. Every time that donkey carried something uphill, it would slip off one side of the load when no one was looking, then pretend nothing had happened and keep going. My behavior today was no different from that donkey's—I did something wrong and tried to pretend nothing had happened. But you, platoon leader, are much better than the old man who drives the donkey in the village. You saw the problem immediately and kicked me into the cesspool. That was a good kick. I wouldn't have woken up if I hadn't been kicked. While I was soaking in the cesspool, I thought about a lot of things. I thought about the platoon leader's heroic figure blocking bullets, about Comrade Bai Ye's Mount Everest-like height, about the donkeys back home, about the soap by the river. I realized I need to change."

"From now on, I will take the squad leader as my role model, study hard, and train diligently. I will treat every time I clean the latrines as a test of my skills and every time I hold a gun as a test of my will. I want to emulate Comrade Bai Ye and strive to one day stand halfway up Mount Everest—not to the summit, just halfway up is enough, it's too cold at the summit and I'm afraid of freezing."

"This concludes my self-criticism. I hope the class monitor and deputy class leader will offer their criticism and corrections."

"Yours sincerely. Respectfully yours."

"Reviewer: Zhao Xiaohu"