Chapter 71: The Crater Theory

At this moment, Zongya Yu had finished sharing his thoughts about the day of the exam.

When he arrived at the examination room, he discovered he was the only candidate there. In the vast emptiness of the “testing hall,” he met the sole examiner. The contents of the test paper all looked familiar—thanks to Meilihua’s remarkable algorithm, nearly every question had been predicted—so he had no trouble with the written exam.

Then came the interview. Zongya Yu began to chat with the kindly-faced officer. At first, he was a bit nervous, but within five minutes, the conversation unexpectedly became lively, and he blurted out that he was very good at fighting, having been skilled in brawling during his days as a street thug.

As soon as he said it, Zongya Yu realized he had let something slip, his face flushed crimson, and he nearly wished the ground would swallow him up. Yet the officer seemed to care little about his past as a thug; instead, he was interested in Zongya Yu’s claim to be “good at fighting.” So he took Zongya Yu up to an indoor training arena on the fourth floor, saying he wanted to spar with him.

Zongya Yu was bewildered; the officer didn’t look like someone from the combat division but rather gave off a scholarly air.

Could this officer really fight?

Wait, were they about to start now?

One moment, Zongya Yu was confused, unsure how to make his move, and in the next, his vision spun—the scene before him was suddenly the ceiling of the training hall.

“Getting distracted in a fight isn’t a good idea, is it?”

The officer, who had effortlessly closed the distance and thrown him to the ground, was already back in his original spot. His uniform was immaculate, with not a wrinkle, as if he hadn’t moved at all.

...A master, clearly!

Zongya Yu quickly sprang to his feet, warily guarding against the officer, who seemed to have no intention of attacking further.

The next moment, Zongya Yu was on the ground again.

This time, he was utterly stunned. When he recovered from his dizziness, he realized—it wasn’t just that the officer’s movements were quick as lightning, it was... teleportation!

Officer, you’re not even human!

So Zongya Yu began to summon the non-human strength he usually kept suppressed, and this time he teleported to dodge a grab. The smile on the officer’s face grew wider.

Zongya Yu hadn’t even had time to catch his breath after evading that move before the familiar sensation of weightlessness returned, and his back met the floor again—fortunately, the training arena was equipped with special padding, so he wasn’t hurt, but the experience was... quite shocking.

Yuxing listened and was speechless. If it was that captain, not even mentioning his fighting skills, his combat experience alone would be enough to create an overwhelming situation.

“So you still passed?” Yuxing asked.

“Yes, the captain said later that I managed to land a hit on him, though I don’t remember it at all—I was so dizzy from being thrown around...” Zongya Yu replied uncertainly, wondering if the captain had told a small lie to spare his pride. After all, while he was sweating profusely, the captain showed no signs of fatigue, his uniform as crisp as ever, not at all like someone who had just fought.

Yet faced with such a vast gap in strength, Zongya Yu never doubted his own abilities. If he was an accomplished swimmer, then the captain was a mountain flood—if a swimmer is swept down a mountain by a flood, is it because his stroke is wrong or his stamina insufficient?

No matter who it was, the fate would be the same.

As the traffic light turned green, Zongya Yu resumed driving, turning onto the right road, and the surroundings became familiar.

“Yuxing, you’ve got a package. It arrived at Aegis this morning.”

“Oh?... Oh!” Yuxing responded automatically at first, but as he ran the sentence through his mind again, he let out a second “oh.”

“Is it from Mom?”

“Yes, you know about it?”

“Mm... She told me before she sent it.”

“Yuxing” nodded; after all, he had thoroughly gone through Yuxing’s phone. The lock screen password was his birthdate, very easy to guess. Perhaps Yuxing considered that he might sometimes need others to unlock his phone, so he didn’t use a complicated password, just made sure to keep track of his phone.

So Yuxing browsed his phone freely, and found a message in his SMS inbox from someone labeled “Mom,” telling him she’d packed and shipped some items from his room.

That was probably a few weeks ago; he’d almost forgotten about it, and the package had only just arrived—delivery efficiency here was truly terrible.

Only now did Yuxing vaguely recall that the package contained a quest item: a rusty juice bottle cap. As a child, Yuxing had a hobby of collecting bottle caps—just the caps from drinks he’d had, nothing approaching the level of a collector.

That rusty cap was from a juice called “Sunrise,” an orange juice that was produced in only a few batches before being discontinued. On Vanton Star, there were many cap collectors trying to acquire this cap, whose total issue was less than 2,000. Nearly twenty years had passed, and there were almost none left in circulation.

Although he now had more reliable channels, perhaps he could use this cap to get some information from those Vanton Star traders under the bridge... No, that fellow was probably the lowest link in the whole information supply chain—just a street vendor. It’d make more sense for Yuxing to supply him, not the other way around.

Mom... sent it.

Yuxing slowly savored the word “Mom” in his mind, but his thoughts were blank. That was natural, since the original story never featured his mother—who knows what kind of person she was? All “Yuxing” could glean from the shipping slip was a home address and a name, and from old text exchanges between Yuxing and his mother, he could surmise she wasn’t skilled with mobile phones; her wording was always as brief as possible, probably finding typing a bother.

That was all.

Yuxing and Zongya Yu returned to Aegis, and now Zongya Yu was the main character. He was immediately surrounded by the two ladies still studying at headquarters, bombarded with questions. Zongya Yu tried to dodge, but eventually gave in and used Yuxing’s excuse: he’d signed a confidentiality agreement and couldn’t disclose any information about the exam.

Just one day had passed, and they were already planning a celebratory meal for Zongya Yu’s success; Yuxing declined.

He needed to prepare for the mission, and also handed Zongya Yu a list, asking him to help gather some items.

Zongya Yu took a look—the list included weapons, armor, and supplies, all things a private citizen could only obtain through black market or underground channels, illegal contraband.

But times had changed. Zongya Yu could now take the list straight to the logistics department of the Foreign Affairs Unknown Division and requisition them—this was the “benefit of following protocol” the captain had mentioned.

As for Yuxing, he was responsible for securing the ship tickets.

Since disappearance didn’t seem linked to the route itself, Yuxing planned to buy a ticket for the journey to Alpha Centauri. His reasoning was simple—

“Have you heard of the crater theory?”

“Anyone who’s been in the military knows that craters are very safe, because the chance of another shell hitting the same crater is less than one in ten thousand. Different times, differing intervals, temperature, wind, recoil, and the shell’s own propellant factors all play a part. In practice, it takes about a million shells for seven to land in the same crater.”

“To this day, there’s been no report of two disappearance incidents on the same route.”

“So choosing a route where something happened before might actually be safer.”

Thus, after leaving Aegis, the two wasted no time and split up to begin their preparations for the mission.