Chapter 22: Sang Ling

City outskirts. Task Force Training Base.

This was where the finest Alpha soldiers of all Capital Star were gathered.

Life at the base was unbearably dull, and this gymnasium had become the place where every Alpha vented her excess energy.

Every week, the stadium raised a new arena for the Alphas to challenge one another.

Brawling off the arena—and getting injured doing it—would earn punishment from the officers.

But on the arena, as long as no one died, you could hit as hard as you liked. The spectators could even run a few harmless wagers, provided the Commander didn’t catch them.

And so this gymnasium had come to be known among Task Force soldiers as the Colosseum.

Usually, the Colosseum was deafening. Blood, sweat, and the hormones Alphas were born with, all churned together in the air, brewing an atmosphere on the verge of detonation—countless Alphas jeering and cheering for the ring.

But at this moment, the Colosseum was utterly silent. Even the wind seemed able to produce nothing but a sigh.

As if God had exerted her power to force every soul into stillness—and now even God could do no more.

Sang Ling’s opponent, that short-haired Alpha, was named Sister Zhao. She had climbed into the ring several times already, and before enlisting she had fought bare-knuckle bouts in the Underground Casino.

She had a very ordinary face—square, hard-angled, honest-looking.

No matter how her captain ranted and postured, she never said a word, never bothered to provoke her opponent. She only prepared for the match in silence.

A stranger would have underestimated her for it. But every Alpha soldier here knew: this silent Sister Zhao had once held a title in the underground fighting pits. Her name there was: Madman.

Sister Zhao’s style was unmistakable.

Her punches carried crushing weight, yet her hands moved with startling agility—and layered on top was the underground pit fighter’s habit of going straight for the vitals. Countless soldiers who fancied themselves fighters had walked away from her with bitter, painful defeats.

Little by little, everyone had accepted her as the Arena King among the rank and file, and no one was foolish enough to provoke her anymore.

Today, everyone had been waiting for the “Madman” to teach Sang Ling a lesson—to make this young Alpha, young to the point of baby-faced, learn respect for her seniors.

But now, every eye was fixed on that short-haired figure sprawled on the ground, clutching her stomach in agony, cold sweat pouring down—and for a moment, not a single sound came out of anyone.

The “Madman” had lost.

Every soldier below the ring looked silently at the Alpha standing at Sister Zhao’s side.

The nineteen-year-old still wore her hair half-long, her eyes carrying none of a veteran’s killing edge, her white shirt buttoned meticulously to the top.

She had beaten Sister Zhao flat without adding a single wrinkle to that shirt—as if this match were a matter of no consequence whatsoever, not worth one extra ounce of effort.

Sang Ling looked slowly down from the ring. At her understated, unboastful expression. At those calm, rippleless eyes—and every Alpha present felt a chill crawl up her spine.

Danger. Danger. Danger.

Ordinarily, an even match, blood freely spilled, only excited this crowd and stoked their hunger for battle.

But this—a crushing of truly terrifying proportions—shut every mouth at once.

This was a survival instinct carved into biological DNA: when you face a wild animal far larger than yourself, stay quiet. Stay ready to run.

How long had Sang Ling’s fight actually lasted?

Twenty seconds? Did it even make twenty?

The invincible “Madman” Sister Zhao had simply gone down—beaten by a nobody whose name no one knew.

Captain Zhao stood below the ring in a daze, scarcely able to believe it was real. She said blankly, “Hit me. Go on. See if I’m dreaming.”

Beside her, Jiang Yunzhao’s expression had turned grave. Sang Ling’s movements, the decisiveness and precision of her strikes, had far exceeded her expectations.

But hearing Captain Zhao’s words, she threw a punch to the right without a moment’s hesitation, landing it squarely on the other woman’s face.

Captain Zhao took the hit, cried out in pain, wiped her face—and, uncharacteristically, didn’t get angry.

She muttered to herself, “Fuck. The weather’s changing. What are they feeding these kids nowadays? Monsters, the whole lot of them.”

As a Task Force captain she might not match Jiang Yunzhao—but her eye for a fight had never once been poor.

The silent soldiers below might not yet understand what had just happened, reacting only on instinct, beginning to be wary.

But Captain Zhao knew exactly what had occurred in those heart-stopping twenty seconds.

At the start, everyone could only see Sang Ling standing on the ring, motionless.

Sister Zhao attacked first.

Even when the fist was thirty centimeters from her, Sang Ling still hadn’t reacted—like a deer caught in headlights.

But the next second, a fist too fast for the eye, leaving only an afterimage, landed squarely on Sister Zhao’s face—like a crossbow bolt hidden in Sang Ling’s sleeve, lethal and swift.

And the “Madman” lived up to her name. Sister Zhao took the heavy blow head-on. Pain exploded across her brow bone—yet she didn’t retreat an inch. She attacked harder.

The Madman’s creed: your own injuries meant nothing. What mattered was making the other one bleed!

As long as Sang Ling went down, those wounds would be Sister Zhao’s medals!

She closed in on Sang Ling, reaching to force a clinch—because from there she could drive her knee into Sang Ling’s vulnerable abdomen.

Clinching was a foul in boxing. Shameful. But this was no exhibition match. This was the Colosseum, where Alphas fought for their lives!

Her eyes were scarlet—Sang Ling had genuinely enraged her—teeth bared, looking ready to bite her to death, a complete reversal of that silent, honest face from before.

Sang Ling looked at that face, so full of hatred, so plainly written with fight to the death—and showed no reaction at all.

Her right foot slid back, her body tilted, slipping past the left hand reaching to seize her. Then her hand came up, clamped onto the other woman’s forearm like an iron vise, and dragged Sister Zhao irresistibly forward—softness overcoming hardness, dissolving the force of the charge entirely.

Then: forearm muscles tightening, shoulders dropping, a reverse flip of the hip!

Sister Zhao went airborne, then crashed heavily to the ground. And now Sang Ling showed none of her usual softness—without a moment’s hesitation she stomped down hard on her back.

Thoom.

One short, muffled impact—and Sister Zhao, who had been struggling to rise and fight on, could not get up at all. She lay flattened against the ground, great beads of cold sweat bursting from her forehead.

The entire hall was silent as the grave.

Too fast. Almost no one had even processed it.

When Sang Ling’s gaze—hunting for enemies—swept across the spectators below, every single person who met her eyes felt as if some giant serpent of the primeval forest had marked them, the hair on their bodies standing straight up.

One jumpy, short Alpha even took a small step backward under that gaze, terror written across her face and impossible to hide.

It was that one small step backward—like a silent alarm bell—that woke Sang Ling. She tore herself out of the combat state all at once, and looked down at the prone Sister Zhao with a complicated expression.

That follow-up stomp of hers had broken at least one of the woman’s ribs.

She walked over in silence, held out her hand, and said, her voice a little hoarse, “Let me help you up.”

Sister Zhao endured the pain and rose with her help.

The “Madman” had come out of the underground pits with plenty of bad habits—but she observed the etiquette of respecting an opponent impeccably.

Grimacing against the pain, every facial muscle pulled tight, she opened her arms toward Sang Ling.

It was boxing’s post-match ritual: opponents embrace, to show respect for one another, to show that everything before had only ever been a match.

“Your ribs are broken…” Sang Ling said, unable to bear it. An embrace now would only hurt her more.

But Sister Zhao insisted, “If you refuse the embrace, it means you look down on me.”

Truly mad, this one.

Out of options, Sang Ling gave her the briefest, lightest of embraces, then hurried her off to the medical office for treatment.

The victor’s excessive calm drained the spectators away as well. The Alphas didn’t stir up any more trouble or spectacle; they murmured among themselves and slowly filed out of the stadium.

Only the glances they kept throwing back at Sang Ling were so complicated—proof that their hearts were nowhere near as calm as their footsteps.

The last one remaining was Jiang Yunzhao. She leapt up onto the ring and said, thrilled, “Well done!”

The Major General’s eyes were shining. “When are you and I fighting? No holding back. Full strength, all of it.”

Sang Ling was half a beat slow in repeating it. “Well done?”

Her voice was very soft. “You think I did well?”

That overwhelming urge to attack, to put the other person down for good, to never stop short of absolute dominance—that ferocity. That was well done?

Seeing her expression, Jiang Yunzhao turned serious too. “Sang Ling, you need to understand—a broken rib is nothing.”

“Sister Zhao’s previous opponents didn’t leave the ring until she’d broken three of their ribs. Today she only lost one. That’s deserved, and lucky.”

“An Alpha’s urge to attack is not a sin. It’s our inborn weapon—a talent God granted to the strong.”

Jiang Yunzhao’s hand came to rest lightly on Sang Ling’s shoulder, her gaze utterly sincere. “And you will be the strongest of them all.”

Sang Ling seemed to smile. The corner of her mouth lifted, just slightly—whether in sincerity or in mockery, impossible to say.

“Then I really am the Alpha of Alphas.”

Jiang Yunzhao was satisfied. “That’s the attitude. Your combat ability doesn’t need any more training at all. Come with me to the meeting this afternoon as my deputy. You can join the exoskeleton training later.”

She was cultivating her. Sang Ling recognized it clearly.

Jiang Yunzhao was nothing like the person Su Qingyue had described—no abuser of power and position. That was probably a good thing. But Sang Ling couldn’t smile.

She only looked at Jiang Yunzhao quietly for a while before saying, “Fine. But right now I need to make a call.”

Jiang Yunzhao agreed.

So Sang Ling stood in a corner of the gymnasium, back against the wall, head slightly lowered, the toe of her boot idly kicking a pebble back and forth.

The Light Brain was dialing.

She undid the buttons of her white shirt and drew out the opal necklace, clutching it in her hand. The cut facets of the gem bit into her palm—and she only gripped tighter.

The fragrance on the necklace had grown faint, but she kept searching for it, kept breathing it in, as if it were some medicine that could make her calm again.

The Light Brain gave a soft beep.

Sang Ling spoke at once, before she could stop herself:

“Sis.”

A pause. Then she said: “All Alphas are dangerous. None of them can be trusted. Including me.”

The next second, a mechanical female voice came through the Light Brain. “The party you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later.”

So she had misheard. That beep hadn’t been a connection—it had been the sound of no one answering.

Sang Ling ground the toe of her boot down onto that little pebble, pressing with all her strength.

And at the entrance of Capital Star First Hospital, Lin Jinxu watched coldly as the avatar representing Sang Ling’s call dimmed and went dark.

She tightened her grip on the lethal Injectable Solution in her hand, and drew one deep breath.