Ye Jingqiu gazed into Shi Zui’s calm eyes, momentarily at a loss for words.
Ever since entering the Base, she hadn’t had much time to truly delve into the history of humanity’s battles against the Exotic Beasts.
Though Ning Wan had said that the explosion four hundred years ago had destroyed so much, the library’s surviving books still filled shelves to bursting.
It was only in mid-July that her door to a new world had swung open, and Ye Jingqiu felt it was a pivotal turning point. From then on, time’s arrow had sped up, hurtling toward her laden with an overwhelming flood of information.
From accepting the existence of Exotic Beasts to recognizing her Instinct, from hazy memories to finding her sister—even squeezing in time this past month to set off a couple of fireworks for the He Ju Beasts—her life as Ye Jingqiu seemed to be loading at breakneck speed.
So when Shi Zui informed her of the delay in that instant, a fear from nowhere enveloped Ye Jingqiu. She had witnessed firsthand the He Ju Beast, battered by the Five Thunder Array and Yinghuo in turn, rise once more to its full height. She knew just how hard these things were to kill.
In countless midnight dreams, Ye Jingqiu had deeply doubted her so-called Word Manifestation Instinct. Instability was its fatal flaw. Though it could carry her onto the battlefield in critical moments, there was no precedent for such a situation. What if it failed her one day?
What if that day came… on a battlefield where she fought side by side with others?
The words “successor” weighed heavy. Ye Jingqiu stared at Shi Zui, suddenly gripped by unease.
“But Captain…” she hesitated, “what if I can’t change?”
Perhaps at first, her entry into this new world had been driven by the search for her memories. But now, the force propelling her forward went far beyond that. The old her must have been deeply entangled with these Exotic Beasts.
“Not everyone in the Base is an Awakener. Many people share that worry, including A-Xie,” Shi Zui said with particular patience on this topic. “The Full State Shame Grace consumes an enormous amount of Rampage Value, which means this Instinct can’t appear frequently by design.”
“But the Base’s final creed provides the answer. Every member must allow themselves the right to temporarily retreat, but they must also retain the courage to return to the battlefield.”
Shi Zui swiped her tablet, pulling up a mission record. “The grudges between races have twisted together over endless years. This isn’t a problem that can be solved overnight. Xiao Qiu, you’ve already changed many things.”
The screen soon displayed the details: Mission A20200722, marked 100% complete—the very Jingtang Building incident Ye Jingqiu had taken part in. Shi Zui scrolled down, and Ye Jingqiu could sense Yi Fengyan’s satisfaction in the minister’s notes.
Ye Jingqiu stared at those notes, quickly grasping the Captain’s intent.
For some reason, she suddenly felt a bit embarrassed, her heart oddly warmed with a strange joy. She looked up after reading, meeting the Captain’s gentle gaze head-on.
A thought bubbled up from somewhere within. No longer afraid of the Captain, Ye Jingqiu spoke bluntly, her voice soft:
“Captain, you’re really great.”
Such a simple sentence, yet those few short words seemed to trigger some odd mode in Captain Shi. Shi Zui’s right hand clenched and then released. She turned her face away unnaturally, staring ahead and feigning composure. “Anyway, don’t overthink it.”
Taking it all in, Ye Jingqiu let out a silent “wow” in her heart, wondering what had come over the Captain.
But now wasn’t the time for that. Ye Jingqiu thought for a moment, then hesitated again. “But my Instinct… it seems a little unstable.”
“That’s a special case, but rest assured—there’s never been an instance of an Awakener losing their Instinct,” Shi Zui replied, her demeanor flowing smoothly back to normal as they returned to business. “Besides, I submitted your S-level Rating myself, and the Base Leader approved it without delay.”
Shi Zui didn’t spell it out, but Ye Jingqiu understood the implication.
It meant: I believe in you.
With no precedent for losing an Instinct, Ye Jingqiu felt somewhat reassured. But the Captain’s words only sparked more curiosity in her.
“Are there standard criteria for S-level Rating applications? A-Xie told me I’m the sixth S-rank, but I always feel a bit uneasy about it.”
Shi Zui shook her head. “A to D ranks are divided based on Instinct and Rampage Value, but S-rank has no strict metrics. It’s part of an Awakener’s intuition.”
“So, did you sense I’d be an S-rank the moment you saw me?” Ye Jingqiu hesitated, then asked.
This time, the answer was brief. Shi Zui simply dipped her head with a soft “Mm.”
She offered no further explanation, as it touched on things Shi Zui didn’t want to reveal too much about.
What Shi Zui had submitted back then wasn’t just an S-level Rating—it was also an application.
She had requested the Base Leader’s approval for Ye Jingqiu to join Team One as a member, citing her temporarily unstable Instinct as needing proper guidance.
Something unusual had happened on the day of the Harbor Seal. She and Xie Pingzhi had just wrapped up their investigation of the Kola Drilling Rig and returned to Shanghai when they were immediately sent on the observation for the C-Class Mission.
The weather that day was stormy, the clouds hanging like an iron curtain. From her position, Shi Zui had watched Ye Jingqiu charge into the harbor through the pouring rain.
The slender figure sliced through countless rain lines. Ye Jingqiu had been utterly soaked through, but even so, after successfully evading the staff, Shi Zui could still see the clear smile on her face.
It was a small thing, but it left Shi Zui momentarily dazed, as if many years ago, on some rainy night, someone had smiled just like that.
The afternoon corridor was bathed in dazzling sunlight, the surroundings so quiet that only the sound of keyboard taps could be heard. Shi Zui fell silent for a long while, and Ye Jingqiu across from her naturally said nothing.
She merely watched as the Captain’s right hand unconsciously brushed the jade pendant at her chest, then nodded.
In that moment, Ye Jingqiu suddenly recalled what Shi Zui had just said.
【To be precise, every member of the entire Base was once a victim.】
She looked up at the captain’s usual unchanging expression and desperately wanted to ask one question:
Captain, what drives you?
~~~
Money waits for no man, and neither does time. Without even waiting for the funds to arrive, the base was gearing up to officially start excavating the mountain and the ground beneath it, determined to conduct a blanket search for the Candle Dragon.
No one was worried about prematurely rousing the exotic beast. Slumber was one of the ways this creature restored its strength, and during that process, you could fire a hundred and eighty ceremonial cannons straight into its ears without disturbing it in the slightest. That was why the base planned to nuke the thing flat while it was still asleep.
From the internal historical records, the Candle Dragon had appeared and been suppressed repeatedly over thousands of years. Each time, the successful Awakeners were convinced the creature could never break free again, yet every few centuries, it would reemerge.
That was also why the base continued to monitor the Kola Drilling Rig. In fact, countless elemental weapons and nuclear warheads had already been placed beside that exotic beast’s corpse. If Koxiche showed so much as a twitch, Aether would detonate them all instantly.
Typically, the Candle Dragon’s awakening triggered a small-scale beast tide, so the base had pulled in plenty of manpower to make full preparations.
Whenever a mission could be delayed, it was delayed without question. Countless action teams were already en route to Beijing. And of course, vast quantities of elemental weapons were being transported in as well.
To quote Xie Pingzhi, they had to ensure that when the Candle Dragon awoke, the base’s welcome ceremony brimmed with the utmost sincerity.
The Alchemy and Dao Talisman Department had achieved a breakthrough. Loteria had arrived at the Beijing Branch a few days earlier, bringing the newly refined ultimate weapon. But Ye Jingqiu still hadn’t laid eyes on Professor Luo. Ning Wan said she was holed up in the laboratory, working on the most critical assembly.
The blissfully ignorant Ye Jingqiu blurted out, “Why not finish assembling it before coming?” No sooner had the words left her mouth than Xie Pingzhi, seated across from her, gleefully reached over for a high-five. “Turns out you didn’t read the mission brief either.”
Shi Zui, who witnessed the whole exchange: ……
It wasn’t until Ye Jingqiu flipped back to the mission log for July 22nd that enlightenment dawned. No wonder the captain had ditched the high-speed rail and plane that day to drive north. The main cargo being transported and protected wasn’t the two of them at all—they were just the escorts.
But what on earth required two S-rankers for protection?
Loteria had promised to reveal the truth at nine a.m. sharp, so Ye Jingqiu set her alarm without hesitation, mentally allotting twenty minutes to wash up and get dressed, twenty for breakfast, and the remaining twenty to link up with the captain first. She was a veritable time-management prodigy.
Alas, the “little prodigy” had overestimated her discipline. When Aether chimed at eight, Classmate Xiao Qiu opted to skip breakfast. Jostled awake at eight-twenty, she decided to meet the captain straight in the conference room. Dragged out from under the covers at eight-forty, she figured grooming wouldn’t take that long anyway.
In the end, Ye Jingqiu set out at eight fifty-two. Three minutes later, she reached the downstairs conference room with five minutes to spare.
The little prodigy Ye Jingqiu yawned her way out the door.
She was a touch surprised upon arrival. The meeting was five minutes away, yet the conference room door remained firmly shut.
Groggy and half-asleep, Ye Jingqiu’s wits were at rock bottom. Without a second thought, she slumped against the door, eyelids drooping for a quick nap. But just as she glanced down—
A little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, had appeared out of nowhere right in front of her. Golden hair, blue eyes—adorable beyond words.
Whoa! Whose kid is this?
Far from annoyed at the interruption, Ye Jingqiu perked right up. She bent down with a smile, her voice as soft as a summer breeze—softer, even, than when she spoke to her teachers:
“Little sister, where’d you come from?”
The blonde child said nothing.
Whoa, what a cool customer!
Ye Jingqiu doubled down, squatting to her level and mustering her kindest expression. “What grade are you in, sweetie?”
The blonde child: “Move.”
“Uh… huh?” Ye Jingqiu blinked around in confusion, wondering if sleep deprivation had sparked a hallucination.
Constance had run out of patience entirely. Shi Zui’s lifetime of sharp judgment was clearly being squandered on her teammates.
Xie Pingzhi was bad enough, and now this newbie too? Hadn’t anyone bothered to check the neighboring team’s personnel database? Did they not realize why certain fingerprint and iris scanners were set to such lax standards?
She simply skirted around Ye Jingqiu and unlocked the conference room door with swift precision.
“Authentication successful.”
The heavy aluminum alloy door hissed open, retracting to reveal Loteria and Shi Zui, who had been waiting inside for some time.
Ye Jingqiu, who had watched the entire scene unfold: ……
