WMSR – QT Chapter 20

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 20

By

siofra

Chapter 20

This left him unable to help marveling internally—they were truly youngsters in their teens, doing things with such reckless hastiness.

What Bai Yichen remained completely unaware of was that these two youngsters, whom he inwardly evaluated as reckless and hasty, upon realizing that the other had also deployed this exact same tactic, were mentally cursing each other’s shamelessness using the most venomous vocabulary imaginable, practically itching to leap forward and help Bai Yichen wash his eyes clean.

Obviously, however, such blunt visual temptations failed to yield the desired outcomes, leaving the two of them with no choice but to seek alternative paths, each displaying their own divine magical abilities.

……

In the blink of an eye, a full year slipped by, ushering in another freshman enrollment season as the fiery, intense military training kicked off once more.

The scene featured the same miserable freshmen baking beneath the harsh glare of the sun, alongside the same obnoxious, chattering senior upperclassmen lingering along the edges of the sports field. Yet upon closer inspection, one could notice that these seniors had completely rotated into a fresh batch of faces—the vast majority of whom consisted of those exact same sun-baked, darkened visages from the previous year’s sports field.

Yet these sophomores, newly promoted to the ranks of upperclassmen, harbored zero mercy toward the sweating freshmen grinding away on the ground. Not only did they inherit every variety of showboating tactic from all preceding generations of seniors, but they even innovated by hatching brand-new methods. For instance, one particular senior had brought along an insulated bucket packed to the brim with glistening, frosty ice cubes. Right under the watchful gazes of the nearest square formations, this senior pulled out ice cube after ice cube, rolling them back and forth across his face and arms for an icy compress. From time to time, he would drop a cube into his 1982-vintage Sprite, which he purposely served in a transparent glass tumbler so everyone could clearly observe the square blocks of ice bobbing alongside tiny, upward-drifting bubbles. Just looking at it was enough to convey how bone-chillingly refreshing that cup of Sprite must be. Then, with an expression that practically spelled out the word “menace” across his face, that senior slowly raised the cup and downed it in a single, echoing gulp: glug, glug.

At the sound of that gulping noise, nearly half the occupants in the surrounding training formations involuntarily swallowed a mouthful of saliva. In the end, even the drill instructor lost his patience with this nuisance of a senior, roaring out the command: “Everyone, about-face!”

With a crisp snap, that obnoxious senior was greeted by a wall of turned backs.

Putting aside these upperclassmen who made everyone want to grind their teeth in silent rage, the collection of seniors lingering along the sidelines did include a few exceptions. Standing quietly beneath the canopy of a patch of shade were two tall, slender figures, drawing stolen glances from numerous students within the nearby formations. Quite a few female students felt a flush of pink rise to their cheeks, completely forgetting about the blazing sun beating down overhead as their minds spun with flustered daydreams: What is he looking at? Is he looking at me…?

The catalyst behind this phenomenon was simple: the two of them were overwhelmingly handsome. One possessed a face defined by handsome, aloof coldness; although an expressionless mask rested on those striking features and his dark, fathomless eyes remained entirely unswerving, merely catching a glimpse of that stern countenance was enough to spike anyone’s heartbeat, vividly conveying the definition of peak, natural-born hormonal aura.

If roughly half the girls present were staring at that handsome guy, the remaining half had their gazes permanently glued to the slender figure standing right beside him. His looks were in no way inferior to his companion’s, save for carrying an added layer of gentleness and refined elegance. Devoid of aggressive sharpness, every gesture he made was infused with an ingrained, bone-deep grace, resembling a prince straight out of a medieval fairy tale. He was the kind of person who captured instant goodwill at first glance, subsequently dragging people into an unrecoverable spiral of infatuation…

The reality that virtually every female student across several formations had their attention hijacked prompted the guys in those same formations to grumble inwardly. These upperclassmen were absolute animals, already making moves right in the middle of military training—were they trying to leave other guys zero path to survive?!

These resentful freshmen failed to notice that hovering around the perimeters of their training grids, thanks to the sheer presence of those two individuals, not a single trace of any nuisance senior could be found. Replacing them were various senior female students lingering at comfortable, intermediate distances under the guise of handling personal tasks. Yet upon closer inspection, one would realize that whether sketching or chatting casually, the gazes of those upperclassmen female students kept drifting sideways toward those two silhouettes.

“Everyone, take a localized break for thirty seconds.” Prompted by the drill instructor’s resonant, full-chested command, a formation that had previously stood rigidly upright instantly collapsed. Most people didn’t care whether the ground was clean or not, simply collapsing straight down into a seated sprawl—after all, they only had thirty seconds! Meanwhile, those plagued by intense thirst would stumble off to the side to locate their water bottles, picking them up to chug down massive gulps.

Simultaneously, the two figures who had remained planted beneath the shade finally stirred. The exact second the instructor called the break, Bai Yichen picked up a water bottle and stepped forward, quickening his pace the moment he spotted the approaching figure from that training square to rush over and steady him. Spotting Su Yuanhang’s pale complexion and the beads of sweat clustering across his brow, Bai Yichen felt a pang of profound heartache and urged urgently, “Sit down quickly—here, take a sip of water first.”

While Su Yuanhang clutched the water bottle to drink, a gentle touch brushed softly across his forehead, lightly wiping away the beads of sweat that had accumulated there. Inhaling the refreshing, clean scent radiating from the person standing right before him, and lifting his gaze to find lake-water-gentle eyes gazing quietly down at him, Su Yuanhang swallowed hard in his throat and tilted his head back to gulp down another large mouthful of water.

Song Junchi, trailing closely behind, watched the object of his affection feeding water and wiping sweat off that Su Yuanhang character, feeling his chest darken to the point of dripping liquid gloom. Yet in the end, he remained wordlessly stoic as he unfurled an umbrella, casting a cool, shady canopy of relief over the two individuals trapped under the merciless sun.

The thirty-second window evaporated in a flash. With a sharp blast of a whistle, the freshmen scattered in various states of exhaustion instantly scrambled back into formation, resuming their unyielding, unmoving postures beneath the glaring sun.

“Let’s head back, Yichen,” Song Junchi said softly, holding up the umbrella to shield Bai Yichen from every shred of scorching sunlight that might dare touch him.

“Mm.”

And so the two of them retreated back beneath the shade of the trees, reverting to their initial stances.

At this juncture, the sunlight reached its most ferocious peak of the day. Across the expanse, the sports field looked almost warped under the searing heatwaves. Watching Su Yuanhang stand entirely exposed to the blazing solar onslaught within the training grid, an uncontainable wave of worry welled up inside Bai Yichen. Little Hang’s constitution had always been relatively delicate; could he genuinely endure military training of this intensity? Consumed by anxiety, Bai Yichen couldn’t help muttering aloud, “If I’d known, I would’ve told Little Hang not to defer and make up for the training. The weather’s this scorching this year—even hotter than last year—how could Little Hang’s body possibly handle this?”