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

silence.

Zhao Xiaohu's expression went from shock to fear to bewilderment, a complete replay of three changes on his face.

His lips moved several times, the sound coming out as if someone was choking him: "Po-Po Kong? That Po Kong? The Po Kong that even the national army can only coexist peacefully with? The Po Kong who dares to take on any mission as long as the money is right?"

Lu Xiao nodded, a smile playing on his lips.

Qian Duoduo's voice was even lower than Zhao Xiaohu's, almost as if she were talking to herself, but every word was trembling as she tried to remain calm: "Can we—can we still run away in time?"

"What do you think?" Lu Xiao tilted her head to look at him, her tone as relaxed as if discussing what to eat in the cafeteria today. "It's come to this. The base's alloy gate is locked, the 20,000-volt high-voltage power line on top of the fence is running 24/7, there are no other buildings or cell phone signals within a 200-kilometer radius. And—"

He smiled, a smile that, in the setting sun, carried an inexplicable warmth that sent chills down your spine. "Even if you run away, where do you think you can go? Two hundred kilometers into the Gobi Desert, two hundred kilometers into the no-man's land—either way, you're going to die. You might as well stay."

Zhao Xiaohu and Qian Duoduo fell silent at the same time, their faces showing a long, relentless sense of despair.

Xuan Xiao put his backpack down on the ground. The movement was slower than ever before. Then he turned around, facing Li Mo and Lu Xiao, his face showing a calm that he had suppressed to the extreme and hadn't yet exploded.

"You are the ones who broke through the void."

Li Mo looked at him and said, "Yes."

"You are the captain of Breaking Through the Void. You are the vice-captain of Breaking Through the Void."

"Yes."

"You served as squad leaders and deputy squad leaders in basic training—"

"This is part of the mission," Lu Xiao continued, his tone unusually serious. "Every year, the recruit training company produces a few promising talents, and our job is to select them. Once we've chosen them, we bring them back. You were among those selected."

Xuan Xiao didn't speak. His chest heaved once, a small but deep rise and fall, as if he were using all his strength to suppress something that was about to escape his lips.

His family is a military family. He grew up in a regular army barracks, and everything he was taught and influenced by from a young age told him that a soldier's mission is to serve the country. But Po Kong—Po Kong is not a regular army soldier.

Po Kong is a mercenary, an armed force that sells its life for money, someone he was taught to keep his distance from from since childhood. Although he has never truly followed the family's arrangements, he never imagined that one day he would join the group of people the family despised the most.

"If you had said you were from the Void Breaking Realm earlier—" Xuan Xiao's voice lowered for a moment, then suddenly rose, "I absolutely would not have come!"

Lu Xiao shrugged, his smile remaining unchanged: "You came of your own accord. When we asked if you wanted to come with us, you didn't even ask which unit we were from. As soon as Bai Ye nodded, you immediately said you'd come too—you said that yourself, and now you're going back on your word?"

Xuan Xiao's expression froze. His mouth was open, and a hundred eloquent arguments were stuck in his throat, but each one, in the process of searching for logical rebuttal, stumbled upon the same fact—Lu Xiao was right.

He was the one who volunteered to say, "I'll go too."

Of the three, Zhao Xiaohu and Qian Duoduo were dragged onto the boat by Bai Ye, while he volunteered without knowing anything about the situation.

Bai Ye stood beside him, holding a half-empty bag of snacks she'd bought in the rest area. She tilted her head to look at Xuan Xiao, blinked, and asked directly, "Are you leaving?"

When Xuanxiao met Baiye's gaze, all the words in his heart shattered, and the noise in his mind cleared away in an instant. He looked down at the concrete ground beneath his feet—a dilapidated air force base on the edge of the Gobi Desert, the mercenary group his family looked down on the most, and the heart of a no-man's land with no signal for two hundred miles around.

"...I'm not leaving." His voice was muffled, as if he were arguing with himself. "I didn't say I was leaving."

Lu Xiao looked at him with a smile, "Then who said 'absolutely not coming' just now?"

"I said that. Now I'm saying I'm not leaving. Is there a problem?"

"No problem, no problem," Lu Xiao raised his hands, his surrender gesture extremely perfunctory. "Po Kong welcomes you. Although your old man will probably be so angry he'll vomit blood if he finds out, that's your problem, not mine."

Xuan Xiao's temples started throbbing again at the thought of his old man at home, whose temper was so fierce he could overturn the war conference table.

He cursed under his breath. He wasn't cursing Lu Xiao, nor Li Mo, but himself.

He cursed himself for being unable to move after just one look from Bai Ye, for knowing full well that this was a trap yet still jumping in, for having been revolving around this person since the first day of recruit training, and now even having boarded the mercenary ship, unable to jump out even if he wanted to.

"How pathetic," he thought to himself.

Zhao Xiaohu and Qian Duoduo were still reeling from the dramatic change in their identities. They stood side by side next to their backpacks, looking at each other, then at Lu Xiao and Li Mo, and then at the alloy gate and the dense snake-belly-shaped barbed wire fence behind them.

Zhao Xiaohu silently mouthed – "Is he going to kill me to silence me?" Qian Duoduo's face paled, and she grabbed his sleeve, mouthing back the same words silently – "Don't say anything."

Li Mo stood next to Bai Ye, took the half-bag of snacks from his hand, and helped him carry it up the steps. Lu Xiao clapped his hands with a smile, turned around, and pushed open the glass door of the main building.

Inside the door was a spacious hall, brightly lit as day. In the distance, a few figures in black training uniforms walked by in the corridor. They were all lean and steady, and each of them would nod to Li Mo and Lu Xiao as they passed by, glancing at the new recruits for a moment before calmly looking away.

The evening breeze blew from the Gobi Desert, and the cracked flag on the flagpole fluttered in the wind.